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0,when it comes to aerospace innovation winging it takes on a whole new meaning as several teams competing in this years invent for the planet discovered an intensive 48-hour design competition hosted by the college of engineering at texas a&m university invent for the planet 2019 brought together a global community of engineering students to propose solutions to real-world challenges faced by society and industry today through the use of microsoft teams student groups from 25 universities around the world were able to video chat with mentors moderators and other student teams to collaborate share information and help guide one another toward success
1,awarded first-place at texas a&m for their solution to minimize hail damage to delicate aircraft wing control surfaces operational delays costly repairs and accidents team hail no included mechanical engineering students mazen ali and bamidele fadayomi the teams dual air bag module design similar to an inflatable sleeve would be deployed over the leading and trailing edges of an aircrafts wings and connected with nylon cables to secure the straps in the sleeves with cam buckles by a team of three airline employees once the sleeves are in place it would be inflated by an air canister to help protect the wings from the storm as ali and fadayomi described having a background in mechanical engineering gave them an edge in the competition and helped to bolster their team along with giving them a unique perspective on how to optimize mechanisms and storage and consider the cost of various elements in the design their mechanical engineering experience also aided them in the creation of a 3d model of their proposed solution this model in turn allowed the team to see the plausibility scalability and practicality of their proposal along with being able to apply what they learned in their classes to a real-world challenge invent for the planet gave both students a chance to take a step beyond the classroom experience and develop new skills it opened my eyes to the importance of marketing your ideas and working together as a whole said fadayomi i had always thought that you just needed to be smart but its really important to be able to communicate your ideas and actually market them as well
2,i feel like invent for the planet has really shaped my mindset about how other disciplines think and how i should think not only as a mechanical engineer but as an entrepreneur ali said team hail no also included students umang kantesaria computer science and engineering; jacob azbell electrical engineering; jobin george mathew industrial engineering; and william smith manufacturing and mechanical engineering technology now with the event behind them the team is taking their design to new heights by working with airbus a european corporation and international pioneer in aerospace engineering to develop it further for production and industry use the team is also planning to attend the engineering project showcase this semester to display their product with other industry representatives the fact that a company is actually looking at our product and thinks its feasible and wants to take it a step further is a really huge accomplishment said ali it isnt just a project in a classroom this is a real product that has actually impressed someone who has been wanting to do this and thats a lot to accomplish in just those 48 hours
3,researchers at texas a&m university are uncovering new methods of working on the nanoscale which could ultimately lead to the development of more advanced electronics and environmentally friendly engineering practices lead researcher dr jonathan felts an assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering was recently selected for the national science foundation faculty early career development (career) award for his work an honor designed to allow promising junior faculty to pursue cutting-edge research while simultaneously advancing excellence in education the career award means the world to me felts said it will allow me to pursue cutting edge research in nano-electronic device fabrication at the intersection of a wide range of disciplines including: chemistry tribology optics surface science materials and manufacturing this five-year funding opportunity provides much appreciated resources as my research program continues to gain momentum i am honored to receive such a prestigious award felts and his team are conducting research that could open the doors to several significant technological improvements by adding more complex functionality at a physical level smaller than the current state-of-the-art
4,"""i foresee our work providing insight into engineering surfaces with less friction and wear making optic and electronic devices with more sensitivity and efficiency than current technology "" felts said efficiency in particular is a significant focus of the team's research as they seek to develop more reliable ways to engineer surfaces at the atomic level if successful felts said the research could hold the answers to challenges such as creating faster electronics that dissipate less heat engineering highly sensitive optical sensors with faster response times and mitigating friction and wear at moving interfaces additionally the research could also help provide answers on how to generate essential chemicals while limiting toxic waste and excess energy consumption through the development of new strategies for chemical synthesis using mechanical force as well as creating new molecules not possible by any other means among the team's main objectives in the research is to develop techniques to drive complex multiphysical processes on surfaces at the nanoscale with a primary goal of locally tuning the properties of surfaces to impart functionality such as drawing electrical circuits optics magnetic domains and hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity ""from the standpoint of functionality if we can expand our ability to manipulate chemistry on the level of a handful of atoms we can dramatically expand the landscape of possible devices as well as the integration of those devices into other objects "" felts said"
5,"felts said the research is a multidisciplinary endeavor drawing on the use of mechanical force chemical reactions atomic physics and more through the study and application of these methods the team has been able to discern fundamental properties that are helpful in developing the ability to better plan for and predict the behavior of the processes on multiple levels ""developing techniques to create these functional surfaces involves quite complex physical processes "" felts said ""our work also uncovers fundamental insights into macroscale surface phenomena such as friction wear and thermal and mass transport"" where felts research diverges from others conducting similar research is in its primary focus on understanding the fundamental physics behind the use of nanomanufacturing methods rather than demonstrating the concepts which through trial and error have been shown to work ""unfortunately the lack of fundamental understanding limits the predictive power of the developed methods "" felts said ""we spend a lot of time investigating the fundamental physics behind the nanomanufacturing methods our hope is that the improvements in fundamental understanding will enable techniques and processes that would be otherwise difficult to stumble across phenomenologically"""
6,dr john valasek professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and director of the vehicle systems & control laboratory was an invited panelist on the topic of verification and validation in the age of autonomy at the 2019 american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) science and technology (scitech) conference held san diego california in january panelists in the session discussed the verification and validation of autonomous systems and how they pose a challenge for regulators and others tasked with evaluating those systems as the second and third waves of autonomy become reality concerns arise as to the safety and reliability of new technologies that leverage these capabilities methods for verification and validation of software that enable autonomous systems must be developed to support new certification processes for safety critical systems ethical issues regarding machine decision making and the role of human-on-the-loop paradigms must be addressed for defense applications mission assurance will be a significant driving factor in certifying systems for deployment the discussion centered around how government authorities companies and the general public can be assured that new autonomous technologies are reliable the webinar can be heard here valaseks introductory presentation begins at 41:00 before the q&a with the audience begins
7,the principal investigators for the autonomous material discovery and manufacturing via artificial intelligence project include dr bukkapatnam dr ding dr karaman dr arróyave dr kumar dr jianhua huang and dr bani mallick (statistics) dr doug allaire (mechanical engineering) dr dimitris lagoudas (aerospace engineering) dr xiaoning qian (computer engineering) dr joseph ross (materials science and engineering) and dr ravi sen (mays business school)
8,the autonomous material discovery and manufacturing using artificial intelligence project funded by several sources including the national science foundation and the new texas a&m university x-grants program is helping researchers at texas a&m university forge a novel path to create materials that are yet to be discovered creating new materials involves conducting tedious experiments that take decades of work soon artificial intelligence (ai) may be used to find the exact materials needed for any situation resulting in less material waste and increased progress in developing future products the vast majority of which will use materials that are yet to be discovered the grant allocates $500 000 toward project planning for 18 months ending in december 2019 we greatly appreciate the universitys generosity and support said dr satish bukkapatnam principal investigator industrial and systems engineering professor and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station's institute for manufacturing systems the x-grants are all about leveraging our collective strengths to address grand societal challenges bukkapatnam said texas a&m has thriving research areas in materials science artificial intelligence data science and manufacturing research thanks to investments in facilities and professors this project will bring all of these strengths together the bottleneck in 21st century inventing materials scientists and engineers design new materials particularly metals and alloys to enhance their performance for use in aerospace defense biomedical and other applications material discovery is the bottleneck to creating highly functional and 3d printed parts with an industry average for material discovery of 15 years in the last 20 years materials scientists have worked to accelerate the design of materials in 2011 the materials genome initiative proposed the synergistic use of data advanced computations and sophisticated experiments as a way of making this a reality as engineers search for a specific material to fit a project they consider many different properties including the distribution of the materials temperature strength and structural integrity my colleagues and i have been discussing this challenge for at least a year bukkapatnam said the x-grant provided the funding needed to solve this problem 3d printing represents a new frontier but it alone could not solve the problems of materials we knew there had to be a better way what material will you use to print what intelligence can we use to 3d print and choose materials we have to create new knowledge
9,the closed loop solution material discovery will transform from the work of human scientists to an autonomous experimental platform said dr yu ding industrial and systems engineering professor at texas a&m university and co-lead of the project tackling this enormous challenge requires three different kinds of expertise: materials science and engineering: the knowledge of how elements come together their properties the processing structure and property relationship advanced manufacturing: how the material can be processed and how to create different shapes from a material data science and ai: how to quickly assess the data and improve efficiently instead of through trial and error the smart hybrid platform will consist of a software brain that will run the experiments autonomously through simulated workflows using a form of machine learning that automatically predicts the next best step the computers hardware can then create the product assess it and repeat the process until an optimal match is found the brain will be able to test and assess dozens of options at once testing for pressure shaping temperature and more the platform will be materials agnostic meaning it will work for any material
10,experiments will be completely autonomous and able to use little to no input data creating a closed loop system a truly autonomous materials discovery platform will transform the way materials scientists think about the entire materials discovery cycle said dr raymundo arróyave materials science and engineering professor at texas a&m and co-lead of the project arróyave will provide computational domain expertise materials discovery is the future of this country said dr ibrahim karaman department head of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and co-lead of the project karamans role is to help fabricate bulk new materials in a high throughput fashion the department of defense is invested in discovering developing and designing materials much faster karaman said the materials portion of the project will use instruments funded by the air force office of scientific research and texas a&ms research development funds models can be created and even models of models (metamodels) will be created but in the end physical testing must take place ding said he plans to use engineering data science to reduce a large amount of raw data points from dynamic imaging data to a handful of key process indicators the filtered data will then lead to better decision making the machine learning system will use both experimental data and prior knowledge to actively formulate the next experiment to meet the target specifications active learning will allow researchers to design the next experiment from which to learn said dr pr kumar electrical and computer engineering professor and a co-lead of the project it marks the beginning of a new era in learning for materials discovery in the end the discovery platform may give us even a better answer than we hoped for said bukkapatnam it may discover a material that even exceeds the expectations for the experiment
11,collaboration: the key to progress it is an interdisciplinary problem kumar said without a multidisciplinary initiative of this sort i would not normally have been involved in a research project with materials scientists researchers from diverse backgrounds are coming together and sitting at a table from a texas a&m point of view we have a fantastic team and were ready to try to create a breakthrough several professors have selected their graduate students or post-doctoral fellows they will have the opportunity and financial support to work on a project that could change the course of manufacturing as well as contribute to the field of machine learning
12,for thousands of years geothermal energy has been harnessed as a clean and sustainable source of power long ago indigenous people around the globe such as the maoris in new zealand cooked their food using water from natural hot springs later the romans engineered a way to use the earths heat to warm their buildings now with modern technology geothermal wells are drilled deep into the ground in order to tap into the heat radiating from the earths core and transform it into electricity however one remaining challenge associated with drilling geothermal wells is the presence of hard rocks such as granite that slow down the process and wear down drill bits in turn this causes drilling time and expenses to increase
13,to combat this a team of researchers from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is developing shockwave and plasma accelerated rock cracking (sparc) drilling technology by making the creation of wells more efficient accessible and cost effective their us department of energy funded project will help make geothermal energy a more viable alternative to fossil fuels dr david staack associate professor sallie and don davis 61 career development professor and college of engineering director of laboratory instruction is leading the sparc project his team includes dr dion antao assistant professor dr alan palazzolo james j cain professor i and dr bruce tai assistant professor
14,the drilling technology that we are working on has the potential to increase drilling rates (rate of penetration) and reduce the wear and tear of traditional drill bits this is achieved by locally prestressing or precracking the rock being drilled prior to the cutting action of the drill bit said antao as staack further explained the teams sparc technology will equip traditional drill bits with high voltage electrodes on the tip that emit a microscopic plasma discharge to shock the rock and crack it like a tiny explosion creating fractures and weakening the rock will allow the drill head affixed with conventional diamond cutters to have an easier time breaking through the material as palazzolo described along with setting the stage for further development of geothermal energy using electric plasma bursts to increase the rate of penetration will enable the drilling process to be streamlined and therefore be more cost competitive with nonrenewable resources
15,its very exciting to be able to apply my expertise in machining research to study rock drilling with a real-world application said tai this is truly a novel interdisciplinary idea that will be a game changer a game changer that us secretary of energy rick perry summed up in his related press release geothermal energy is a clean and efficient base-load energy resource making it an important part of our nations diverse energy portfolio said perry developing new efficient drilling technologies will reduce these costs and increase the availability of this domestic renewable energy resource
16,rita and mark puckett 73 have established an endowed scholarship for global studies funds will be used to provide scholarships to full-time undergraduate students participating in a global program experience in the college of engineering at texas a&m university the pucketts had this to say: we have been blessed to live and work in many countries around the world our experiences enriched our lives and our families lives and we want to help enable that among aggie engineering students we greatly appreciate what dean kathy banks is doing at texas a&m including her emphasis on the x-factor - high-impact experiences as an integral part of a students education it will be exciting to see their accomplishments and contributions to the world after graduating from texas a&m with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering mark began a 35-year at chevron retiring in 2008 he has served as a director of concho resources since 2009 he is a recipient of the outstanding alumni award and has served on the texas a&m university college of engineering advisory council since 2002
17,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts senior director of development
18,a prize will be named in memory of dr m sam mannan executive director of the mary kay o'connor process safety center (mkopsc) and pioneer in process safety at hazards 29 the institution of chemical engineers (icheme) premier process safety conference in association with the mkopsc as a tribute to mannans career icheme has renamed the poster prize the sam mannan poster prize which will be given for the first time at the annual conference this year throughout my career sam mannan has always been a great friend and supporter of our work at the icheme safety center said trish kerin director of the center he was passionate about teaching process safety to undergraduates and postgraduates so it is fitting for the hazards poster prize to be renamed in his honor for several years the icheme safety center has worked with the mkopsc to explore key challenges in process safety and share lessons learned through workshops events and publications in 2017 both organizations launched process safety for the 21st century a report which set out a roadmap for the future of process safety mannan spent 20 years at the mkopsc and developed it into a leading international process safety research and education center he also helped to establish undergraduate certificates and post-graduate qualifications in process safety in addition mannan was a fellow of the icheme regents professor tees eminent professor and holder of the t michael o'connor chair i in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university sam mannan was a friend and colleague long before he joined texas a&m when he came to the university there was no safety center and in the intervening 20 years he was the major player in developing it into what it is today i am proud to have known and worked with him said dr james holste interim director of mkposc and professor emeritus of chemical engineering the conference will take place on may 22-24 in birmingham england and will feature more than 100 technical presentations from industry practitioners researchers and regulators sharing the good practice latest developments and lessons learned in process safety
19,dr ralph wurbs a senior professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as the first american academy of water resources engineers (aawre) outstanding research and innovation award recipient founded in 2004 in affiliation with the american society of civil engineers (asce) aawre strives to advance the leadership and societal impact of water resources engineering through certification continuing education and ethical practice this new award introduced in 2018 recognizes significant contributions in advancing the field of water resources engineering through innovative research and development i am greatly honored to receive the inaugural aawre outstanding research and innovation award being recognized and supported by the distinguished water resources engineers participating in the aawre awards process makes this award especially meaningful to me said wurbs wurbs is a fellow and life member of asce an aawre founding diplomate (2004) and was awarded the distinction of aawre honorary diplomate in 2014 he was selected for the 2019 award for his research creation and continuous expansion of the water rights analysis package (wrap) modeling system and its implementation in the texas water availability modeling system his work has been sponsored by various organizations including the texas commission on environmental quality texas water development board texas water resources institute us army corps of engineers and agencies within the us department of the interior and us department of energy wrap an elaborate set of computer simulation tools analyzes and assesses capabilities of river and reservoir systems in meeting water supply hydroelectric power environmental flow flood control and reservoir storage needs since 1996 wurbs and his graduate students have been continually expanding wrap modeling and analysis capabilities in order to provide vital tools for the water resources management community of texas in doing so wrap has played a fundamental role in major legislatively mandated advances in water management and planning in the state over the past 15 years these include analytical support for administration of the water rights permit system statewide and regional planning integrating environmental flow standards in comprehensive water management and improved operational planning for drought management my research team has been privileged to work within a community of outstanding professionals employed by government agencies engineering firms and universities to improve water management in texas through advances in both modeling and analysis methods and institutional partnerships innovative expanded water resources planning allocation and management capabilities developed by the water resources engineering community in texas are relevant throughout the world said wurbs learn more about wurbs and his wrap project on his research website
20,mohammad taghi nikoukalam a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil engineering and his advisor dr petros sideris an assistant professor in the department
21,nikoukalam and sideris are designing a novel system of sustainable bridge columns with damage-resistant joints and replaceable energy dissipating links
22,the design could save lives through more earthquake-proof bridges in the united states a vast number of bridges several of which are located in regions of moderate and high seismicity have been classified as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete new bridges built using their design will be more damage resistant from the outset because of the polyurethane joints and will be easier to repair quickly and inexpensively after a natural disaster by replacing the external energy-dissipating links which would be the only components of the bridge to experience damage the design can also be constructed rapidly thanks to its segmented nature nikoukalam was originally drawn to the problem because he comes from a highly seismic region the search for a better bridge took me in a direction i never expected he said we realized we had to research new materials beyond concrete the industry standard and instead use polymers the pair partnered with basf a leading chemicals company to choose the new materials after testing the new materials and models they designed the overall system their new bridge system design has undergone intensive computer-simulated testing now they are working on physically validating their design at the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) starting with load testing then simulating an earthquake to study the effects on a model due to the major socioeconomic advantages the system offers it provides an attractive alternative to conventional systems for implementation both in new construction and as a replacement for the vast number of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges throughout the country nikoukalam recently received the american society for civil engineers oh ammann research fellowship in structural engineering which is awarded to encourage the creation of new knowledge in structural design and construction after presenting his dissertation and graduating this summer he will enter the industry to lead safer bridge construction
23,leadership is an aggie core value and a common word found on resumes; however few true leaders get the recognition they deserve but this april environmental engineer bob pence 72 will be honored for his lifestyle of leadership that accompanied his others-focused attitude a former member of company b-2 pence feels that his leadership skills were kickstarted in the corps of cadets before being put to the test when he served three years in the army after his time in the army pence returned to aggieland to pursue a masters degree in civil engineering i had to go back to remember everything id been taught the first time around he says with two degrees in hand pence came to civil engineering firm freese and nichols as a design engineer and began working his way up to project manager operations manager and finally to ceo he jokes that these promotions were based on looks but quips no one will believe me in 2010 under pences leadership freese and nichols received the malcolm baldrige national quality award the first architectural/engineering firm to do so in the awards history the baldrige award recognizes corporations that not only are industry leaders but also are leaders in their home communities and contribute to the betterment of society in general not just their bottom line after his company received the baldrige award pence has helped others improve their focus anyone who came to us and asked for help or for advice on how to succeed we tried to help as best we could thats what leaders do for his continuing contributions pence who now is freese and nichols chairman of the board recently was selected to receive a leadership excellence award from the baldrige foundation an award given to industry leaders who are responsible for positive world change serving his community other engineering firms and the board of overseers of the baldrige foundation pence maintains his devotion to helping others and working hard every day i serve the community i live in and serve on the board of three other architecture and engineering firms pence says as a ceo he learned one factor that separates certain employees from others is good leadership skills i see a need for leadership training in the workplace thats something that i instituted at freese and nichols an intensive leadership training program he says pence recommends to young graduates that as engineers they must first prove their technical competence and then take every leadership opportunity offered to them and this includes taking the opportunity to follow before they lead another request pence makes of young aggie engineers is that they give back to their communities make your community better and be a working living part of it; engineers are essential to every community he says pence and his wife karen have three aggie daughters classes of ‘00 ‘03 and ‘08 and they all have aggie husbands none of the pences five grandchildren are old enough to attend texas a&m yet but pence says hes been working hard to convince them pence will receive the leadership excellence award on april 9 at a baldrige foundation luncheon during the 31st annual quest for excellence® conference in national harbor maryland the texas a&m college of engineering is proud of our former students like bob pence '72 who uphold aggie core values and are committed to training aggie engineers to be industry leaders if you know an aggie who is celebrating an accomplishment and would like them to be recognized by the college please send an email to the office of alumni relations
24,cristi and darrell petty 90 have established the petty family engineering scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in electrical and computer engineering from texas a&m university darrell currently serves on the external advisory and development council for the electrical and computer engineering department he graduated from texas a&m in 1990 with his bachelors degree in electrical engineering he is the chief operating officer of sullexis a professional services firm that specializes in helping organizations create manage and enhance data to accelerate and improve decision making he also serves as an advisor for waterfield energy which provides software and related services to midstream upstream and transportation energy sectors
25,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact jeremy quast senior director of development
26,q: what is your role at nasaa: one of the most important things i do is to help provide health and medical technical authority what does that mean after the columbia accident there was an external independent board called the columbia accident investigation board the board zeroed in on our culture and the fact that program managers are pressured by budget and schedule the board recommended nasa establish technical authorities that are independent of the program to serve as a kind of oversight to make sure programs werent accepting too much risk in the face of those budget and schedule pressures the job with the technical authority means we provide technical authority on disciplines such as radiation microbiology medicine toxicology human factors exercise physiology and so on when the programs push back because they run out of mass or volume or time or money the technical authority balances the need to accomplish the mission with the need to prevent any accidents and then makes recommendations if the program doesnt agree it can escalate all the way to the administrator for a final decision another part of our responsibilities includes creating testing and upholding health medical and performance standards we start with a standard that becomes a requirement for programs to meet in some cases we have a lot of data to create a medical standard and others we do not for example we don't have a lot of microgravity experience with humans so we do the best we can with the budget we have to create the standards and medical policies that will be implemented across the agency
27,q: how has your position changed over timea: i started out doing physics and engineering when i first started i was a part of the space radiation analysis group and sat at the console in mission control for at least a dozen years we used a lot of transport codes we did everything related to radiation radiation is just one of several hazards in space we would watch the sun for solar particle events work on dosimetry for a complex space radiation field work with design engineers on shielding and would do analyses when we flew radioactive payloads to make sure they were far enough away from the crew and had appropriate shielding then i started moving into management which is a whole different aspect
28,q: what steps did you take to move into a leadership positiona: i had to actively go out and let upper management know i was interested in a leadership position and then had to go on interviews it felt different difficult and risky compared to what i was comfortable doing when i became a branch chief i had all kinds of disciplines under me that i really didn't know a lot about but i still had radiation so i had a piece of my comfort zone i look back at some of those forks in the road and those decisions and i'm so glad i took those risks
29,q: are you contributing to the mars colony missiona: about five years ago going to mars officially became one of our long-term goals everything we're doing is trying to help us learn and get to the point where humans are an interplanetary species the next mission we have planned is a miniature space station that will orbit the moon and possibly a moon habitat our missions are all about national will and budgets during the apollo moon landing nasa received about 45 percent of the federal budget and at that time nasas main mission was sending people to the moon today we get about 04 percent of the budget and we're doing mars rovers the hubble space telescope the james webb telescope and we're supporting commercial ventures such as spacex and boeing technologically speaking i think we can get there but it takes a long-term commitment
30,q: can you go into some of the radiation humans would encounter on the satellite the moon and marsa: space radiation has three sources it can come from the trapped radiation belts known as the van allen belts which has a proton belt and an outer electron belt the inner belt is mostly protons and these are trapped particles that just go back and forth between the poles the second source is from solar particle events which can be shielded if planned for but can pose problems without adequate shielding the third radiation source is known as galactic cosmic radiation which comes from outside our solar system this source consists of heavy ions and is very energetic as soon as you leave earths orbit you get away from the van allen belts and then you're just left with the occasional solar particle event which can be shielded galactic cosmic radiation is very difficult because it's high-energy protons and heavy ions the passive shielding you need to block that takes a lot of mass which is expensive to launch there are also secondary neutrons that we worry about when interacting with the vehicle and the people themselves if you're standing on the moon or mars you have planetary protection so you have some shielding from that it's a little more risky on the transit to the moon and mars mars does have a little bit of an atmosphere which would provide some shielding as well
31,q: if far in the future humans were on a deep space probe what kind of shielding would that requirea: we've talked about that a lot hypothetically of course we are doing a little bit of research on active shielding which means basically creating your own magnetic field to deflect or shield the particles most of what we use right now is passive high-density polyethylene or water bags or fuel or food just mass if we go beyond mars we will need to look at active shielding
32,q: how much radiation is safe for humansa: our goal is to protect the astronauts and the mission currently we allow 500 millisieverts for the blood forming organs per year (the millisievert is a measure of the absorption of radiation by the human body) we were granted that exception in order to carry out our mission but our career limits are age and sex based theyre related to a 3 percent excess risk of death from radiation exposure after doing more research the difference in radiation exposure risks between men and women is not as high as we originally thought
33,q: do you think that space travel is ethical given the dangers of radiationa: i do one of the first principles of bioethics is respect for autonomy which includes volunteerism and informed consent if someone took the three-year round trip to mars today given our current technology they would have around a 10 to 15 percent excess risk from dying from that radiation exposure now while obviously a 10 to 15 percent additional risk of dying from radiation exposure is higher than our 3 percent threshold it's also not an automatic death sentence another consideration is the advances in medicine that may occur in the next century such as the ability to cure different cancers in my personal opinion i would argue that many explorers throughout history had a much higher risk of death yet we look back and recognize their accomplishments and it's hard to imagine if we never took those risks and made those journeys astronauts by the way are usually willing to take more risks than nasa is ready to allow astronauts are outstanding people they're great leaders and great followers
34,q: what do you think the future of space travel will look like a: i believe access to low earth orbit will become a lot more common in the next 20 years we will keep pushing the envelope for making humans a multiplanetary species we have more countries and companies interested and developing space travel than ever before it's exciting were going to see more innovations that come from unexpected places
35,q: with nasa specifically what are you most excited fora: we have broad political and public support and a workforce that will take on and can accomplish anything i honestly think the future is wide open its whatever the public space experts and our elected officials agree should be our path right now we're headed down a path of having humans on mars i don't know what happens after mars but we have a long time to decide
36,q: what life advice do you havea: you get out of life what you put into it so take risks the director of human resources (hr) came to me one day and she asked if i would be her deputy director for a year in hr i'm an engineer and i don't know the first thing about human resources but i took it and i went with it for a year and it was fascinating they taught me a lot about diversity and inclusion and how to give honest feedback the right way as just some examples i learned many things i never would have learned otherwise again take risks find people you admire seek out mentoring opportunities listen more if you're an introvert work on speaking up and engaging more if you're an extrovert make sure you occasionally speak up less and listen to others not just listening but seeking out their opinions and thoughts great ideas can come from unexpected sources
37,ravi lad who graduated last year from texas a&m university with a petroleum engineering degree looks back on his time as a student he was a member of the first cohort of students in the zachry leadership program (zlp) and he sat down with us recently to talk about how the program continues to benefit him ravi now works for apache corporation in houston texas q: what made you want to join the zachry leadership program a: back when i was a sophomore engineering student at texas a&m having made it through the weed out of freshman year i was looking for opportunities to challenge myself and grow in ways that werent necessarily academic or related to my studies enter the zachry leadership program (zlp)! what made the program so appealing to me was that it offered an avenue to learn about the role of business within engineering and (especially) that it allowed me a chance to connect with people outside of my major over a two-and-a-half-year time frame
38,q: looking back what are some of the most important lessons you learned from the program a: one of the most important lessons i learned in the program was how to be self-aware and how to empathize with others as it was reflected in zlps structure it all begins with yourself to this day i still journal and use tools (like time audits) we discussed in the program to help me continue learning about myself such that i can figure out what my strengths and weaknesses are and adjust course appropriately beyond that is the importance of human connection having learned how to stay out of judgment and align with others has helped me form deeper relationships both professionally and socially q: what makes the zachry leadership program so impactful a: zlp is impactful because of the holistic nature of it zlp focuses not just on creating great engineers but rather on creating great people there are already plenty of engineering organizations that sharpen coding skills networking grace and academic proficiency there is no program other than zlp that asks you to briefly set those things aside in order to focus on the intrinsic qualities that make for a truly remarkable person q: can you talk about your career where do you work and what do you do a: i am a petroleum engineer for apache corporation based in houston currently im a member of their engineering development program in which ill have the opportunity to rotate through six six-month rotations (three years in total) during this time ill get some hands-on experience in each of the major sub-disciplines of petroleum engineering and get to work in at least two geographic locations in the company right out of school i completed my field rotation in elk city oklahoma where i got to see and interact with the upstream extraction of oil and gas first-hand im currently in my second rotation now at the apache houston office where i am getting a high-level overview of strategic planning in the corporate reserves group q: how has zlp helped you now that you have graduated and started your career a: what has helped me most in life following graduation has been zlps focus on soft skills im not talking about communication how to dress professionally etc these items while important focus more on developing a good career rather im talking about the skills learned in the program related to the themes of each semester – self-awareness empathy beauty/creativity vocation and service as an 18-year-old kid going into college and picking a major i had no clue what i was meant to do in life as a 22-year-old zlp graduate and working engineer im still a bit lost! but its always the core fundamentals of the program i come back to during my evenings that are helping me find my greater purpose in my career and in life i once thought journaling or spending lengthy amounts of time staring at art were silly now i dont leave the house without my journal and make every effort i can to go spend time in nature its a good thing to be successful on paper have a stable job and know your way around a conversation but its a great thing when youre able to wake up every morning excited to go to work because you know in your heart that this was your purpose im on my way there thanks to zlp learn more about the zachry leadership program
39,deborah and stuart anderson will be the first to tell you that they are not officially former students but they became aggies as fast as they could now as an acknowledgment of stuarts 30 years of service to texas a&m his wife deborah has established the dr stuart d and deborah f anderson endowed fellowship in civil engineering the endowment will be used to support graduate students pursuing a civil engineering degree with a focus on construction engineering and management even though we are not former students we are die-hard aggies deborah said we love the aggie community and feel strongly about the values that texas a&m stands for this contribution was a great way to honor stu for his long years of service to texas a&m and both of us felt it was important that we also continue to impact the lives of future graduate students in his field stu is no stranger to impacting others coming to the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m in 1989 with more than a decade in the design and construction industry he was looking to get into an academic setting to give back to others through his practical experience stu was able to leverage his time in industry in both classroom and research applications but the most valuable component to him was the service aspect of teaching and the impact it made on future students it was with this mindset he served as a professor of civil engineering in the department under the construction engineering and management discipline for 27 years he later served as an assistant vice chancellor for facilities planning and management for the texas a&m college of engineering for last three years of his career the position allowed stu to be instrumental in assisting with the zachry engineering education complex and the center for infrastructure renewal as the andersons look forward they are hopeful that the endowment will make a positive impact on future engineers in the same way stus teaching legacy has had on civil engineering graduate students texas a&m as a university has made such an impact on both of us that we want that impact to continue stu said the camaraderie and everything that a&m represents to us is how we feel about this university and we are very proud to be a part of the aggie family
40,han co-leads $15m darpa grant to create rapid ways to test dangerous bacteria bacteria are microscopic organisms that thrive in diverse environments they can live within soil in the ocean or other water environments and even inside the human body bacteria can be helpful like recycling nutrients in the environment or helping with our digestion but many other times they are harmful causing diseases like pneumonia and staph infections that are difficult to treat because of lack of proper therapeutics or resistance to some antibiotics the functions and properties of the vast number of bacteria in the environment are unknown to us the risk posed by these unknown bacteria is increasing as the global environment changes populations expand and tools for genetic engineering increase which puts the general population and especially members of the military in danger to combat this potential threat the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) created the friend or foe program which tasks researchers to find new ways to detect these potential unknown bacterial pathogens both natural and human-introduced in the environment before people become ill
41,possible target environments are soil and water because they typically have millions of bacterial cells already in them and again no one can determine easily which ones are safe or not dr arum han and a texas a&m university-led research team received a grant from the darpa program totaling more than $15 million to develop a way to quickly detect and determine which bacterial pathogens are present in a soil or water sample han professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and co-principal investigator (pi) on the project is working with a team to create a microdevice to rapidly and efficiently characterize the harmfulness of bacteria in the environment they will do this by screening each microorganism in the sample one cell at a time but very rapidly to see if it has the properties of a pathogen since no one can screen millions of cells by hand the team is working on building a microfluidic device or microchip to do so automatically while han is developing the microchip dr james samuel (pi) and dr paul de figueiredo (co-pi) from the department of microbial pathogenesis and immunology in the texas a&m college of medicine will look at the microbial pathogens to determine what aspects of their harmfulness to humans or animals can be tested rapidly using about five to 10 different criteria han and de figueiredo have been working together for the past several years on developing microfluidic devices that can measure a variety of different properties of microorganisms so this request from darpa was right up their alley according to han the problem with the current method is it takes too long to determine if bacteria are pathogenic or not because there are a variety of different mechanisms in which bacteria can harm a human and it can typically only detect pathogenic bacteria that are already known but not the unknowns it is their expectation that their new method will for the first time be able to detect unknown pathogens and also be much more time and cost-efficient we came up with a microchip that allows two things: one is to first grow the unculturable cells (cells that cant be grown using traditional means which occupies most microbes in the environment) as much as possible and second we are trying to measure whether a cell is pathogenic or not without any molecular analysis han said in other words you directly measure whether a toxin is produced by bacteria you directly measure whether bacteria under antibiotic treatment can survive you test whether bacteria go inside a host cell and still survive (when they normally should die) and so on you're measuring directly the property of these bacteria cells in five to 10 different criteria and then combining this information to quickly determine whether a particular bacterial cell has the potential to be pathogenic or not han is also collaborating with dr arul jayaraman the ray b nesbitt professor of chemical engineering on analyzing the metabolites produced by environmental microbial consortia to come up with strategies to improve the chance of culturing the so-called unculturable environmental microbes so that those unculturable environmental microbes can also be tested for their pathogenic potential han said the ultimate goal would be to have a chip that is compact small enough to bring into a field take an environmental sample and within a relatively short period of time determine whether there are pathogenic microbes in that sample this would work for natural and engineered pathogens a task that currently cant be done without the microchip there's no current technology that can measure so many different traits of a bacterium and do that for millions of bacterial cells han said we are the first ones trying to develop this new technology that will enable such analysis and detection this is not improving on something that exists but rather developing something that does not exist the hardest kind of discovery and development to help with different aspects of this project the team also includes investigators from the university of oklahoma university of california san francisco the university of virginia and the argonne national lab while its still in its early stages han believes the final product will not only benefit military personnel who are often deployed in a variety of domestic and foreign environments where their safety is a concern but will also benefit the general population against various existing and emerging infectious diseases such threats also include engineered pathogens that may be introduced by adverse entities if someone has engineered a strain it's not on our list of harmful substances because it's unknown han said the technology we are developing ultimately has the potential to provide an answer to an unknown microbe to determine whether they can cause harm to a human or not the full team includes han samuel de figueiredo provin jayaraman erin van schaik and jon mogford from texas a&m; adam abate from the university of california san francisco; rebecca wattam allan dickerman and andrew warren from the university of virginia; james davis from argonne national lab; and jizhong zhou from the university of oklahoma
42,the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university hosted a pitch up! competition giving undergraduate aerospace students the opportunity to showcase their technical work and receive feedback on their presentation skills based on the three minute thesis (3mt) competition pitch up! challenged the students to describe a technical project or research in which they were involved in three minutes the students presented their work to a panel of judges that included individuals with technical and nontechnical backgrounds sophomore brady allen won first place and $250 with his presentation on the thermodynamics of a pratt and whitney turbojet second place and the $150 prize went to senior jacob collins for his presentation on building a combustion ignition wind tunnel for hypersonic propulsion research junior kevin lieb took third place and $100 with a talk on acoustic analysis of a leading-edge slat cove filler freshmen collin invie and joseph heimerl were honorable mentions for their presentations on configurable origami antennae and model rocketry respectively
43,"sherri and todd elder 84 have established the sherri and todd elder 84 scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university when it came time to choose a college to attend the answer was an easy one for todd elder i knew i wanted to be an engineer after going through the curriculum book i was drawn to industrial engineering because i liked the automation and manufacturing process he said the curriculum and prestige of the program drew me in and the description was the perfect match for what i wanted to do the couple has found a passion working with students in the west texas community specifically encouraging them to get involved in stem my wife has her phd in chemistry and i of course have a background in engineering todd said together we mentor intermittently counsel students and work with local associations to encourage students to get into construction engineering and chemistry when asked about establishing a scholarship in the department todd said he was encouraged by hunter slaton assistant director of development for the college of engineering to give at a larger level he expressed a true need for support in the department and we saw it as a perfect opportunity to leave a lasting impact on the department with the goal of helping students complete their degrees at texas a&m "" he said"
44,the department of industrial and systems engineering is celebrating its 80th anniversary in the coming years the department's goal for this celebration is to have 80 scholarships for the 80 years that the department has existed endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the department or would like more information on how you can give please contact hunter slaton assistant director of development
45,alicia 82 and jeff collins 80 have established the alicia 82 and jeff collins 80 scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from texas a&m university jeff graduated with a bachelors degree in civil engineering and currently serves on the board of directors and as the executive vice president of public infrastructure in houston at lja engineering inc alicia graduated with a bachelors degree in biomedical science and went on to work in medical research before later finding her true calling as a secondary science teacher after earning her masters in secondary education both alicia and jeff come from aggie families but it was the traditions and atmosphere of family and service that led both of them to attend texas a&m the aggie experience and valued education they received encouraged the collins to establish a scholarship to honor jeffs father tye collins 50 to provide scholarship opportunities to students from small rural areas
46,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
47,melissa h 85 and joe c schneider 83 have established the melissa h 85 and joe c schneider 83 scholarship to be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from texas a&m university the schneiders long-time supporters of the university hope to decrease the financial burden associated with pursuing a quality education the professors staff and my peers greatly impacted my education and equipped me with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in a professional career schneider said melissa and i want to give students who are struggling for whatever reason a shot at receiving aid in addition to the top-tier education provided at texas a&m the schneiders believe the connections made while attending the university are just as valuable i have never been somewhere and my aggie ring not be recognized schneider said its proof of the brotherhood that is the aggie network and its truly something special joe graduated from texas a&m in 1984 with his bachelors degree in civil engineering and received his master of business administration from our lady of the lake in 1992 he is currently the vice president of hillwood properties in fort worth melissa graduated in 1985 with her bachelors degree in agricultural economics and in 1986 with her masters in agricultural economics and is the owner of select sales and hoola hoops (a retail store in keller) the schneiders have three children: cole who graduated from tarleton state university trevor 15 and zoe schneider 21
48,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
49,dr shinjiro sueda assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university recently received the faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) one of the most prestigious awards for up-and-coming researchers the award provides funding to support promising integrated research and education sueda will use the funds primarily for student support
50,q: what are you researchinga: i am researching new computational models for the biomechanical simulation of humans suitable for a wide range of applications including anatomy training/education computer animation virtual reality and medicine
51,q: when did you start studying this what sparked your interesta: i have been working on musculoskeletal simulation since my phd years i was fascinated by how humans move i was particularly interested in the complex interaction of muscles tendons and the skeleton during movement muscles and tendons form branches wrap around bones and other anatomical obstacles and apply forces to the skeleton in interesting ways making us capable of both intricate and forceful movements for example by delicately controlling our muscles we are able to change a babys diaper without hurting the baby using the same muscles we are also able to throw a ball half way across a field i find this range of functions truly amazing and i want to understand it better using new computer models
52,q: how do you integrate your teaching and research a: in my classes i cover many concepts related to my research such as motion capture forward/inverse kinematics various skinning methods and finite element modeling one of the most popular course modules is physically-based animation where we combine physics concepts and numerical techniques to model real-world phenomena virtually
53,q: how will this research impact the worlda: this research will lead to novel applications in many areas including: medicine for surgical training and stroke rehabilitation; ergonomics for better understanding of energy use; bio-paleontology for discovering the movement of extinct animals; robotics for bio-inspired tendon-driven actuators; and neuroscience for reverse engineering the brain by providing a computational testbed for understanding motor control beside these one obvious area of impact is computer graphics and virtual/augmented reality with recent advances computer-generated imagery of human characters often looks indistinguishable from photographs but when these characters start moving it becomes easy to tell that they are not real theres something uncanny about them the proposed research will help us generate digital characters that move more naturally by modeling the underlying muscles tendons and bones from first principles although the main focus is on humans the proposed research can also be applied to other animals including extinct animals or even imaginary characters
54,q: what is the expected outcome of the projecta: this research will build on existing musculoskeletal simulations in biomechanics and graphics in recent decades two contrasting methods for musculoskeletal simulation have been developed: line-based methods and volume-based methods unfortunately there is currently no way to get the best of both worlds because these methods are built on fundamentally different principles: line-based methods are built on rigid body dynamics whereas volume-based methods are built on continuum mechanics this project will bridge the gap between these two approaches for more information read his nsf abstract
55,seven student teams from around the world sat in anxious anticipation last wednesday afternoon as a group of judges determined their fate in the invent for the planet final competition in the end it was a team of six students from brazil who took home first place for their innovative idea that could benefit millions of people with a vision impairment
56,the sun never sets on innovation when we started invent for the planet last year we wanted to create an opportunity for students around the world to ignore borders and connect all in the name of innovation said rodney boehm director of the engineering entrepreneurship program this time around the competition doubled in size and it was amazing to see the collaboration and creativity that resulted boehm said he enjoyed watching all of the winning teams mingle and get to know each other in person friendships were formed and the students were inspired to continue collaborating with each other in the future
57,how the competition works invent for the planet hosted by the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m university began in february with local competitions at 26 universities around the world more than 600 students participated in the 48-hour challenge to solve some of the worlds biggest problems first-place winners were selected at each university and those teams then entered the next round of judging to determine the top five teams those teams traveled to texas a&m for the final competition this past week they were as follows: team supersocial from swansea university in wales united kingdom; team haildom from aristotle university of thessaloniki in greece; team sips from james madison university in virginia; team tupa from universidade federal do rio de janeiro and centro federal de educação tecnológica celso suckow da fonseca in brazil; and team hail no from texas a&m all other first- second- and third-place teams were invited to compete in a peoples choice category held on tuesday two teams from arizona state university team why and team daaeh and one team from texas a&m team hydrowhirl competed in this category when the results were tallied there was a tie allowing team daaeh and team hydrowhirl to compete the following day during the final competition
58,first place: team tupa team tupa from brazil was inspired to design a solution that would benefit students at a school for the visually impaired across the street from their university in brazil there is a shortage of guide dogs and assistive technology for people who are blind they said when they entered this competition and saw a need statement about visual impairments they knew this was a challenge they wanted to tackle their design uses sensors inside a wand or hat which would send a vibrating sensation to the user when an obstacle is in the way they brought their working prototype to the competition and allowed people to try it out im so excited said giovanni seiji conzzolino enokibara a masters student in mechanical engineering it was so much work and we got so far its incredible to be here and to have won this competition the students said their families were watching the livestream of the final pitches and their phones started ringing as soon as they were announced the winners my mom just called me crying and said shes so proud said breno ferreira an electronic engineering student from brazil other members of the team were caio de lima barboza felipe macedo moura dos santos luã guedes costa and victor hugo benicio pint these students really embodied what this competition is all about said boehm they saw a need and they worked together to come up with a solution they have people in their home community who are excited to use the product and i think theyll be very successful if they move forward with their design
59,second place: team hydrowhirl the second-place team was team hydrowhirl from texas a&m they designed a water filtration and transportation system that could be used in developing countries where clean water is not available this is the greatest experience ive had at a&m said nick justice mechanical engineering student i recommend it to everyone i talk to
60,third place: supersocials third-place team was team supersocial from swansea university they designed an app to reduce loneliness by incentivizing face-to-face interaction between users offering discounts at participating businesses what drew me to this challenge was precisely because it was as much a social problem as an engineering problem said tofazzal rashid quite often as engineering students we are presented with problems simply as an engineering problem and asked to deliver a simple engineering solution however often times this isnt effective and isnt sustainable if you dont consider socioecological considerations in any solution its not sustainable because people wont use your device invent for the planet 2020 invent for the planet will be held again next year feb 14-16 2020 boehm is excited to see the competition continue to grow its amazing what can happen when you take away borders differences and language barriers and give young people around the world one common goal making a difference he said i cant wait to see what happens next year
61,mechanical engineering department namesake j mike walker and incoming texas a&m university system regent michael plank were recently honored with the outstanding alumni award by the college of engineering walker who died in december received the award posthumously his wife donna walker was present at the banquet in his place a class of 1966 graduate walker earned his bachelors degree and doctoral degree from texas a&m he went on to co-found dril-quip one of the worlds leading manufacturers of offshore drilling and production equipment when he retired in 2011 as chairman president and ceo the company had a market cap in excess of $4 billion and more than 2 200 employees worldwide walkers generous support of mechanical engineering at texas a&m was acknowledged in october 2018 when the department announced it would be renamed in his honor plank who graduated from the department in 1983 said he was honored by the recognition its so lovely to be recognized by the university and my peers plank said its a combination of a lot of years of hard work and effort its wonderful knowing that the efforts you put forth have come to fruition plank serves as chairman and ceo of the plank companies inc and three affiliated companies: national property holdings rail logix and speed shore corporation he is a member and past chairman of the young presidents organization and past president of the trench shoring & shielding association of america and the houston equipment distributors he has also served as a gubernatorial appointee to the texas higher education coordinating board and the governor's university research initiative board earlier this year texas governor greg abbott announced plank would be one of three incoming members to serve on the texas a&m university system board of regents he will be sworn in later this year
62,ten members of the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering were honored at the departments 2019 awards and recognition banquet the recipients included four staff members five faculty and one graduate student
63,in addition to the award recipients the department also celebrated the induction of two former students to its academy of distinguished graduates holly ridings 96 and jay still 84 were both in attendance to accept the honor ridings is the first woman to serve as chief flight director at nasa directing human spaceflight missions from the mission control center at johnson space center in houston and still serves as president ceo and chairman of the board at guidon energy
64,the awards and their recipients are as follows: james j cain 51 staff excellence award sandra havens program specialist ii adrienne krenek administrative associate iv j mike walker 66 staff excellence award nicole latham administrative coordinator i jennifer bloom academic advisor iii james j cain 51 graduate student teaching award namita anil kumar phd student j mike walker 66 faculty graduate teaching award dr jonathan felts assistant professor peggy l & charles brittan 65 outstanding undergraduate teaching award dr matt pharr assistant professor american society of mechanical engineers best teacher award heather lewis lecturer mechanical engineering industry advisory council faculty contributions award dr srikanth saripalli associate professor and gulf oil/thomas a dietz career development professor ii mechanical engineering industry advisory council faculty mentoring award dr m cynthia hipwell tees eminent professor & national academy of engineering member
65,tuberculosis is a highly contagious and deadly disease that has recently surpassed the human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) in number of worldwide deaths current methods of diagnosing and treating tuberculosis take time and are not always successful leading to wider proliferation of the disease researchers at texas a&m are working to create more efficient and effective diagnostic tools dr kristen maitland associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering is working with dr jeffrey cirillo director of the center for airborne pathogen research and tuberculosis imaging and professor in the department of microbial pathogenesis and immunology on the project funded by the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases and the national science foundation using optical imaging technology cirillo and his team developed a method of observing bacteria in a living animals lungs without harming them the scan lights up the bacteria in the lung through fluorescence-based technology when maitland joined the team she brought an innovation that would allow for an even more detailed result a micro-endoscope that could be inserted into the airway and detect smaller populations of bacteria in the lungs it is a much more sensitive approach maitland said using the micro-endoscope to light up the lungs from the inside has resulted in 100-1000 times improvement in the detection of pulmonary infection using this technology researchers can study airways in both animals and humans to detect and diagnosis tuberculosis much sooner than current methods which can lead to better treatments along with the probe maitland and her team have developed computer models of the lungs that enable them to test the fluorescence-based equipment on a variety of simulated species even young children they have also used 3d printing to develop a phantom tissue that looks like an airway to light and can be used to improve the effectiveness of the light-based probe
66,a conversation with dr lin shao an expert in nuclear energy and radiation materials science about the positives of nuclear energy shao is a professor of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university and the faculty undergraduate advisor
67,a: i started in particle physics but i wanted to have a greater impact on society i began to use accelerators to conduct radiation damage studies when i worked at los alamos national laboratory today i use accelerators to simulate neutron damage inside the reactor texas a&m university has the largest accelerator laboratory in the country we use it as a platform to benefit industry and national laboratories and to support innovative student research i always get excited to work with the students here when i mentor them i learn new things myself questions from students often open new insights i had never considered before
68,a: nuclear energy has many benefits the biggest one being it is a low-cost clean energy people may be surprised that a nuclear power plant is the lowest cost resource we have the main cost of a nuclear power plant isnt continued upkeep its the capital investment to construct a nuclear power plant the construction costs are high between $3 and $9 billion but the maintenance costs are very low at less than $10 per megawatt hour the maintenance costs for other energy sources can be close to $300 per megawatt hour a nuclear power plant will provide energy for 30 to 45 years based on current technology when you actually look at the data nuclear is clearly the best energy investment in the long term the second benefit is that its emissions free a nuclear power plant does not create carbon dioxide or pollution nuclear waste is very well regulated and because its contained does not affect the local environment coal on the other hand is known to have a negative impact on public health when you burn coal you release things like mercury metal particles nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide another benefit is the ability to build a nuclear power plant anywhere you have a water source such as a river lake or ocean therefore you can have a healthy distribution of nuclear plants across the world other forms of energy creation such as wind or solar have more limiting requirements wind and solar energy are dependent on locations solar energy cant be captured at night and wind energy fluctuates nuclear energy provides a near constant source of power the only time a nuclear power plant stops is when the nuclear fuel needs to be refueled
69,a: a carbon tax would apply to industry businesses that emit carbon dioxide pollution meaning a coal plant would have to pay an additional tax for contributing to climate change nuclear energy is emissions free so it would make the price for nuclear even more competitive than i stated earlier
70,a: i think it would be fantastic to have both nuclear energy is a form of clean energy because it is emissions free it does not add dangerous pollution to the atmosphere nuclear energy isnt renewable because uranium is a finite resource unlike sunlight or wind however we have a great deal of uranium spent fuel is recyclable in some countries and thorium could overtake uranium as a nuclear fuel source in the future thorium is an abundant resource on earth one problem with solar energy is the use of silicon-based substrates which contaminates the environment in their production and processing
71,a: a small modular reactor is not only small but also uses an advanced design the costs go down significantly with small modular reactors making it an attractive reactor for industry investors the reactor is extremely safe and can satisfy the needs for a small community for example a small modular reactor can support an island a town in alaska or water purification efforts in africa
72,a: my favorite reactor is the pebble bed reactor it has an impressive optimized system design when you focus on the small scale of refining engineering materials you can greatly impact reactor performance its fascinating advanced reactor design is also amazing because they physically cant melt down
73,a: yes i know a lot of people will hate my statement but as a nuclear physicist im not worried about nuclear storage in deep geological disposal areas at all even if they leach out in thousands of years they will not by their elemental composition be soluble in water
74,for senior clare lamers the texas a&m university experience has been all about taking steps in the right direction as a student ambassador for the department of electrical and computer engineering she has helped prospective students take their first steps toward higher education and has taken her own steps to improve her communication and leadership skills now as she prepares to step across the graduation stage and into her new position in product test validation for texas instruments she took a moment to look back at her academic journey when i first came to texas a&m as a freshman i really had no idea what i was doing i was always interested in radiology and biomedical imaging so i was originally considering going into nuclear engineering or radiological health said lamers but then i went to a presentation at my new student conference about electrical engineering and found out that they have all these different specializations including biomedical imaging and that was really attractive to me as an ambassador her relatable experience and love for texas a&m has helped lamers connect with prospective and current students alike whether she is presenting to a visiting family about the electrical and computer engineering department or aiding academic advisors to field questions during high traffic times throughout the semester lamers is happy to take the lead chat and help in any way that she can above all else lamers said that her favorite part of being an ambassador is talking to people with prior experience in speaking with high school and middle school students she works with various campus organizations on outreach to that age group and shares her experiences and stories about texas a&m in doing so she also takes the time to explain what electrical engineering is and what the department has to offer the invaluable communication and leadership skills that lamers honed as an ambassador have also bolstered her and helped her succeed in the undergraduate research scholars program where she took steps to shed light on potential blackout situations then had to present her research to an audience of technical and nontechnical judges working alongside fellow electrical engineering senior clay ozuna lamers investigated the potential utilization of electric vehicles (evs) as generators during blackouts to supply power to homes and businesses as well as help the power grid restart when a blackout happens and an entire power plant goes down generators undergo tremendous stress to reboot and reenergize all the components the longer a power plant is down the more difficult it is to revive it the more money utility companies lose and the more harmful it becomes for consumers it can be really dangerous for people to be without power if you have a critical customer who is on life support in their house and the power goes out thats a problem there are hospitals relying on power grids even something less life-threatening like a restaurant may have to throw all their food out so blackouts affect everyone said lamers as lamers explained while evs are currently designed to only draw power from a source finding a way to reverse that power flow would aid in cutting down the cost inconvenience and risk of blackouts while also fortifying the resiliency of the power grid additionally having another source of generation could help stabilize the grid and support it during the times of the year that electricity use is at its peak such as the middle of summer when air conditioners run around the clock this would diminish the need for utility companies to peak shave or schedule purposeful temporary power outages to lower the electricity load inflicted on the grid to lamers it was interesting to experience the differences between the undergraduate research scholars program and her senior capstone class namely having to learn to speak to a general audience and explain her research step-by-step rather than being able to work under the assumption that everyone present has a background in electrical engineering this shift in audience gave lamers a chance to practice the adaptability she learned over the course of her time in engineering she added that the challenging program work she encountered while at texas a&m has led to a degree that proves she knows how to learn a valuable skill for industry employers ive had to work very hard in electrical engineering said lamers coupled with my involvement with extracurricular organizations (that challenge) has really helped me grow as a person and as a leader and prepared me to continue learning and be able to adapt to new situations down the road
75,not all tumors are made alike a tumor may consist of different populations of cancer cells each having its own distinct genetic and metabolic profiles these differences create obstacles for effective cancer therapy because the drugs may suppress one group of cells but leave another intact a team of researchers from texas a&m university and the california institute of technology (caltech) are working together to develop a technique to help solve this problem dr jun zou professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and his phd student song xu worked with dr lihong v wang ben professor of medical engineering and electrical engineering and his students at caltech to develop a solution that would allow researchers to assess the level of difference in cancer cell metabolism inside a tumor their technique could facilitate the design of effective and personalized treatment strategies by providing useful information for predicting tumor growth invasion and drug resistance to assess the metabolic state of the cells the team looked at what fed them hemoglobin this natural oxygen carrier and supplier undergoes a significant color change when it adsorbs or desorbs oxygen this unique property makes hemoglobin an ideal biocompatible optical-absorption-based oxygen sensor the oxygen consumption rate (ocr) of a cell (the amount of oxygen consumed by a cell in a certain amount of time) is directly related to its metabolic state therefore measuring the ocrs of single cancer cells will provide a good picture of their metabolic profiles
76,the team then combined this process with photoacoustic microscopy an imaging technology where laser light produce ultrasonic vibrations in a sample researchers can use the vibrations to detect changes in optical absorption of cells blood vessels and tissues they were able to monitor tiny variations in oxygen saturation of hemoglobin from which the ocr of a single cell trapped and sealed inside an airtight microwell can be calculated they call this technique single-cell metabolic photoacoustic microscopy (scm-pam) combining with a unique microfabricated single-cell microwell array they developed scm-pam can be scaled up to measure a large population of single cells which would be needed for testing the variety of cell populations in a tumor with its unique capability for label-free high-throughput single-cell ocr measurement and the potential of providing multidimensional information about tumors we believe scm-pam will become a useful tool for both fundamental cancer research and clinical personalized cancer therapy zou said using their technique the team demonstrated in a recent paper published in nature biomedical engineering that their technology could review about 12 000 cells per hour 100 times higher than current techniques limited to about 120 cells per hour funding for the research was provided by the national science foundation and the national institutes of health
77,the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university had its annual gala on april 12 at the brazos county expo center the event recognized the achievements of faculty staff and students over the past year many students were recognized for receiving scholarships at the national university and departmental levels and for their dedication to scholarship and service yesenia zavala undergraduate academic advisor iii received the outstanding staff award and will also receive the college of engineerings outstanding staff award this semester
78,faculty in the department were recognized for winning national awards receiving promotions and leading winning capstone project teams dr rodger koppa associate professor emeritus received an award for 45 years of service to texas a&m which was commemorated with a pin koppa worked for nasa before joining texas a&m and is a registered professional engineer certified human factors professional and certified psychologist each year an award is presented to outstanding industry partners for their support of the department this year the united parcel service received the partner of excellence award for their support of the capstone program
79,the distinguished former student award recipient was brent lyon the departmental advisory council president who has given 19 years of service to the department and university lyon has a bachelors and a masters degree from texas a&m in industrial engineering and currently works for lockheed martin the gala also served as a start to the 80th anniversary celebrations taking place in the coming years the department will turn 80 in 2020 this event celebrates the outstanding achievements of our students staff and faculty and we thank them for their continued service to the department the college of engineering and texas a&m said dr mark lawley head of the department the department is thrilled to have numerous dedicated faculty and talented students to celebrate on this occasion and we are excited to kick off our 80th anniversary celebration
80,dr xia ben hu assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as a recipient of the jp morgan artificial intelligence faculty research award through this recognition and grant hu will be investigating how to enhance the widespread understanding impact and credibility of machine learning in industry by creating a system to explain the reasoning behind the decision-making process of a machine a leader in finance and one of the worlds most prominent technology banks jp morgan aims to advance the practical applications of artificial intelligence (ai) by supporting the cutting-edge innovations and investigations of researchers around the globe utilizing algorithms and statistical models machine learning enables a computer to perform specific tasks without the need for much human interaction relying on pattern recognition and inference this subset of ai can offer critical assistance in real-world problems with applications ranging from helping doctors detect cancer to directing autonomous vehicles to analyzing finance while carefully programmed the lack of a human touch and transparency in ai systems often leads to skepticism and the questioning of ethics regarding machines and their conclusions the underlying question becomes why why did a machine make a specific diagnosis or predict that the stocks would rise why should the results be trusted although machine learning especially deep learning has achieved great success it is criticized for its black box property meaning that it is successful but people don't know why its successful and why it achieved such a good performance similarly when it fails people cannot understand why it fails and that makes it hard to improve said hu this missing interpretability or the extent to which a researcher is able to predict what is going to happen given a change in input or parameters severely limits the systems explainability or the extent to which the internal mechanics of a machine system can be explained in human terms both interpretability and explainability are critical in the advancement and acceptance of machine learning in real-world applications with the help of four of his phd students hu is working to improve the widespread understanding of ai by taking a deeper look at machine learning models algorithms and various data perspectives and developing a way to translate them for the masses in doing so his team aims to gain vital insight into the reasoning behind the machines decision-making process and conclusions in turn this could help solve the mystery as to why machines think as they do giving both researchers and professionals a better understanding of the inner workings of the machine-brain in applications such as anomaly detection and network analytics while stepping into the world of finance to enhance machine learning may sound out of place at first hu explained that the significance of this partnership is twofold first with all the rich data patterns found in financial systems it is imperative for industry experts to have a means to quickly and accurately detect things such as fraud or financial anomalies something that machine learning can easily provide however it is equally as important for them to understand why a transaction is labeled as fraudulent or what made the stock predictions change hus research will bridge the knowledge gap between ai engineers and finance industry experts leveling the field and allowing everyone to interpret and understand the reasoning behind the system second through the development of interpretable machine learning algorithms and systems with jp morgan hu and his team will be able to apply their research to real-world problems and observe the direct effects of it in addition to giving them a means to see their research in action and track the results for future improvements this implementation will also help users have a better and more secure financial experience i am excited and honored to receive this research award and be among so many distinguished faculty members from renown universities said hu we have been conducting this research for a few years and are so excited to have the opportunity to work with jp morgan to see how machine learning research could directly contribute to their financial systems
81,billy g walton 51 and ned e walton 63 have established the walton endowed scholarship fund to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from texas a&m university the scholarship is the result of the walton brothers desire to give back to the university and specifically the departments they graduated from civil and petroleum i have wonderful memories as a student professor extension professional and assistant dean of academic affairs and programs said ned walton i dont regret a moment of my time spent on texas a&ms campus ned completed his bachelors masters and doctoral degrees at texas a&m while simultaneously working at the texas a&m transportation institute i thoroughly enjoyed my civil engineering classes and worked hard to gain a quality education over the course of my time at texas a&m he said after graduation ned held several positions within the texas a&m college of engineering including assistant dean of academic affairs and programs he also served as a sponsor for the engineering council and worked on research that directly impacts the infrastructure of our nation today after stepping away from his role at the university ned opened walton & associates consulting engineers inc and continued teaching engineering courses through the engineering extension program he has since sold the company and officially retired in 2010 he spends his free time supporting his children and grandchildren in their endeavors
82,the texas a&m university college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
83,nasa has selected two aerospace engineering graduate students as 2019 nasa space technology research fellows hunter johnston and carl leake are both doctoral students under the advisement of dr daniele mortari professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university being selected as a nasa space technology research fellow (nstrf) is a real mark of distinction the goal of the program is to sponsor graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to nasas goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our nations science exploration and economic future johnston submitted the proposal real-time optimal guidance via theory of connections with the next generation of space missions beyond earth orbit a new generation of algorithms must be developed to decrease the reliance on earth-based navigation techniques says johnston in fact the ability to execute orbital maneuvers rendezvous and landing procedures on board and in real time is of great importance for future missions the focus of my research is to apply a technique called the theory of connections (which has been applied to solve differential equations) in order to develop a solution for real-time optimal landing for leakes proposal improving the fidelity of general flexible multibody dynamic simulations his research will focus on improving the ability to simulate flexible multibody structures this simulation capability is a critical component in the design of a large variety of systems including extraterrestrial rotorcraft systems this fellowship will enable me to pursue full-time research that interests me and supports nasas mission says leake the nstrf award is worth a total of $80 000 for the initial year and may be renewed for up to three more years with satisfactory progress shown on the research in addition to their faculty advisor both students will be matched with a technically relevant and community-engaged nasa subject matter expert who will serve as the students research collaborator the research collaborator will serve as the conduit into the larger technical community corresponding to the students space technology research area
84,dr anthony guiseppi-elie has been appointed full affiliate member of the houston methodist research institute (hmri) recommended by the board of directors of the institute and appointed to the department of cardiovascular sciences guiseppi-elie assumed his appointment march 1 he was also appointed adjunct professor of biomedical engineering in the department of cardiovascular sciences within the houston methodist institute for academic medicine (iam) effective april 1 tony is a highly collaborative scientist/engineer who brings a wealth of experience in the design development and application of chemical and biological sensors to challenges in human health we welcome tonys participation with our department and within the hmri broadly said dr john p cooke chairman of cardiovascular science at hmri and the iam guiseppi-elie is associate dean of engineering medicine (enmed) at texas a&m university he is currently a tees research professor and professor in the department of biomedical engineering with a courtesy appointment in the department of electrical and computer engineering enmed is texas a&ms innovative engineering medicine school option at houston methodist hospital developed to educate a new kind of physician to create transformational technology for health care i am delighted to join my colleagues at hmri several with whom i have active collaborations said guiseppi-elie guiseppi-elie is world-renowned researcher whose interests are in engineered bioanalytical microsystems in the service of human health and medicine collaborations with houston methodist researchers include one with dr ennio tasciotti on the application of a dual-function 24-well electrical cell stimulation and recording system for the concomitant electrification of human inducible pluripotent stem cells to guide differentiation while monitoring and modeling cellular trans-membrane electrical impedance another is with dr philip horner on the development and application of electroconductive polymer interfaces for next-generation neurostimulation electrodes he also is working with cooke on the development and application of a biosensor-enabled dual-sensing microfluidic vasculature-on-a-chip system that measures nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species for studying the role of therapeutic agents on human inducible pluripotent stem cells derived endothelial cells from patients with hutchinson-gilford progeria syndrome guiseppi-elie has published more than 150 archival scientific papers 31 books or proceedings chapters holds eight us and foreign patents and has given over 200 invited lectures he is editor-in-chief of bioengineering associate editor of biomedical microdevices and a member of the editorial boards of the journal of bioactive and compatible polymers nanobiotechnology and applied biochemistry and biotechnology he has been a guest editor for the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) journal of biomedical and health informatics guiseppi-elie is a fulbright specialist award recipient in bioengineering at the university of tucumán in tucumán argentina and wrocław university of science and technology in poland and has been an ieee-engineering in medicine and biology society distinguished lecturer he is a fellow of the american institute of medical and biological engineering the royal society of chemistry and ieee a lifetime member of the american institute of chemical engineers and holds memberships in many other prominent organizations
85,for 48 hours college students from over 26 universities around the world joined texas a&m university virtually to tackle some of the most challenging issues facing the planet today the top five teams from the first round of invent for the planet have been selected by a team of external judges and will compete at texas a&m on april 23 and 24
86,hail no a team from texas a&m aims to minimize hail damage to aircraft wings operational delays costly repairs and accidents the team's design is similar to an airbag that would be installed over the leading and trailing edge of the aircraft wings using nylon straps to reduce the risk of it blowing off in a storm team member jacob azbell shares his insight on the competition
87,hail no team members include umang kantesaria computer science and engineering; azbell electrical engineering; bamidele fadayomi mechanical engineering; jobin george mathew industrial engineering; mazen ali mechanical engineering; and william smith manufacturing mechanical engineering technology
88,q: what has been the most memorable experiencea: the most memorable experience was proving that a team of engineers that are still in school can apply their knowledge to create a product that is feasible and marketable in the real world q: did anything surprise you or come out of the experience that was unexpecteda: i was surprised at how many diverse talents and skills as well as personal insight is necessary to piece together a design and bring it to fruition q: why did you pick your need statementa: the need statement stood out to me as something unique that could be approached from any angle because no one had ever attempted to create a solution to protect aircraft wings from hail
89,after the competition the team will develop a design that encompasses every process involved in the use of the product from deploying the system to retrieving and storing it they will also calculate the cost of labor and parts involved to fully understand if it will function as expected and be as cost-efficient as calculated
90,the invent for the planet final competition is wednesday april 24th at 2 pm in the zach chevron rooms for more information view our website
91,nasas management and development of spacesuits audit in 2017 noted that nasa continues to manage an array of design and health risks associated with the current suit worn in space the extravehicular mobility unit (emu) a new intelligent hybrid smartsuit design proposed by dr ana diaz artiles from texas a&m university has the potential to solve some of these issues the smartsuit a spacesuit designed in mind for planetary exploration of the moon and mars incorporates soft robotics technology lending better mobility and dexterity to the astronauts and allowing them to better interact with their surroundings during extravehicular activities (eva) the technology was recently selected for a nasa innovative advanced concepts (niac) phase i grant the suit will incorporate a soft and stretchable self-healing skin located in the outer layer that not only protects the astronaut but also collects data through integrated transparent sensors embedded in the membrane these sensors are capable of visually displaying environmental and membrane structural information providing visual feedback to the wearer about the surroundings the current suits worn when working outside of the international space station (the emu) are highly-pressurized with no robotic assistance requiring astronauts to work against the suit and use their strength to move the spacesuit is like a big balloon when you try to bend your leg it has this tendency to come back to the natural position so youre fighting against the suit every time you try to make a move says diaz artiles adding that this can lead to astronaut fatigue as well as musculoskeletal injuries and discomfort the soft robotic technology proposed can increase human performance during eva improving mobility within the suit and allowing for a full range of movements the sensors embedded in the skin of the suit will allow for an enhanced interaction with the environment during eva permitting astronauts to actually feel rocks when exploring the mars surface another benefit to the soft robotic layer when extended over the entire body surface is the generation of a continuous mechanical counterpressure decompression sickness (dcs) is an important consideration during eva operations to prevent dcs during exposure to spacesuit pressures astronauts pre-breathe pure oxygen prior to depressurization to wash out nitrogen from body tissue the duration of this pre-breathing can be as long as four hours with some pressure being provided by the soft robotic layer the gas-generated pressure in the suit could be lowered which in turn could result in a significant reduction in pre-breathing times necessary dropping from four hours to as little as 90 minutes in addition the self-healing membrane of the smartsuit has the potential to protect an astronaut in the event of a puncture during an eva on mars surface increasing astronaut safety during traverses the stretchable optoelectronics embedded in the membrane will provide a means of monitoring spacesuit stress helping to determine where failure in the suit is most likely to occur and notifying the astronaut if the self-healing membrane is severely damaged in the 2019 round niac selected 12 projects for the phase i awards valued around $125 000 the phase i studies are exploratory nine-month projects that allow researchers to further develop their ideas if the concept is awarded phase ii the project will move forward with up to $500 000 more in funding for two years to advance the technology even further diaz artiles assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering will lead the mission architecture work of this study including a comprehensive biomechanical and human performance analysis her co-investigator dr robert shepherd associate professor at cornell university will analyze material and mechanical metrics for manufacturing the smartsuit and will also perform preliminary experimental validation of its core concepts
92,q: why did you choose engineering at galveston a: i decided to attend texas a&m engineering at galveston because it was close to home a smaller campus and it would allow me to spend my first year in college building strong study habits q: what has been your most memorable experience in galveston a: the most memorable experience at texas a&m university at galveston was working on the engr 111 project we were tasked to build a rube goldberg machine throughout the semester with several other students that had never met before what made it memorable were the fun long nights we spent drafting the machine on autocad putting it together and testing it to make sure it worked properly for demonstration day q: did anything surprise you or come out of your experience at galveston that was unexpected a: i didn't expect to make so many great friends that i still keep in touch with to this day after transitioning to main campus i was surprised to learn that not only did i have a much more enjoyable experience in freshman engineering i also learned engineering skills like drafting by hand and calculating freak waves in matlab that i would have otherwise missed out on at main campus q: what do you want to do after you graduate a: pilot in the us air force q: is there anything else you'd like to share a: texas a&m university at galveston was a great freshman experience i would highly recommend to anyone i found i was more prepared transitioning to main campus academically and socially it allowed me to establish a strong foundation to continue thriving throughout college though the material was difficult the intimate classes made learning easy i would not be where i am today if i hadn't attended texas a&m university at galveston my freshman year
93,for 48 hours college students from over 26 universities around the world joined texas a&m university virtually to tackle some of the most challenging issues facing the planet today the top five teams from the first round of invent for the planet have been selected by a team of external judges and will compete at texas a&m on april 23 and 24
94,tupa a team from universidade federal do rio de janeiro and centro federal de educação tecnológica celso suckow da fonseca designed a two-part sensor system that could assist people with visual impairments or blindness their design uses a low-profile hat with sensors and a vibrating mechanism along with a lightweight wand that the user would move while walking the wand would send a signal to the head sensors which would vibrate with increasing frequency when the user approaches an obstacle tupa team members include breno ferreira caio de lima felipe macedo moura dos santos giovanni seiji cozzolino enokibara luã guedes costa and victor hugo benicio
95,q: what has been the most memorable experiencea: creating a technology that impacts an entire social branch and will help many needy people was incredible but the most memorable experience was to see a smile on the professors faces after using our prototype - breno christianes ferreira q: did anything surprise you or come out of the experience that was unexpecteda: building something great presenting our project and receiving so much positive feedback in such a short time was certainly unexpected - breno christianes ferreira a: actually everything was a surprise because developing a product in 48 hours dealing with difficulties and moreover solving problems quickly and efficiently is something very rewarding especially when working with what you like - felipe macedo moura dos santos q: why did you pick your need statementa: i chose this need statement because i believe that one of the best ways to improve the quality of life is engineering technical knowledge is powerful it is capable of changing the lives of thousands of people for the better if applied correctly - felipe macedo moura dos santos
96,their next of plan of action is to research further decrease the sensor size and improve accuracy tupa will strive to learn more about business from experienced professionals develop a business plan pursue grants and patent their idea tupa will conduct tests to improve the capacity of what was developed and increasingly improve the prototype all with the objective of being a low-cost product that can be accessible to everyone
97,the invent for the planet final competition is wednesday april 24th at 2 pm in the zach chevron rooms for more information view our website
98,for 48 hours college students from over 26 universities around the world joined texas a&m university virtually to tackle some of the most challenging issues facing the planet today the top five teams from the first round of invent for the planet have been selected by a team of external judges and will compete at texas a&m on april 23 and 24
99,supersocial a team from swansea university in wales created an app that promotes in-person social engagement and activities to prevent loneliness users can earn points by meeting new people creating and participating in events hanging out in communal areas or by participating in monthly scavenger hunts these points can later be redeemed for items at local businesses they will generate income through ads sponsored events and communal areas or through payment systems the supersocial team includes josephine leong mechanical engineering; tofazzal rashid civil engineering; sajal gurung medical engineering; and jekaterina macilevic chemical engineering
100,a: presenting in front of a large audience with industry leaders present from several multinational companies was a really rewarding experience as a team we learned how to work under pressure and draw on each others skills i feel like this event has made me a more well-rounded engineer - tofazzal rashid a: filming the video it was so different and funny and it worked out very well in the end - josephine leong
101,a: i used this experience and the skills i demonstrated and gained in a job interview it really impressed my interviewers - tofazzal rashid
102,a: i picked this need statement as i liked the social aspects and thinking that would be required in order to produce an effective solution as engineers i think we often overlook social considerations in our engineering interventions thinking about social implications to engineering solutions is critical for sustainability - tofazzal rashid a: i myself could relate to the need statement it is a problem i believe most people face sometime in their life especially with the growth of social media and technology i was interested in finding an innovative solution to it that can not only make a difference but is also achievable in a short amount of time - sajal gurung
103,their next plan of action is to present their product at the ‘big pitch a competition held at swansea university there they will have an opportunity to present in front of business leaders if they win they could receive funding office space and business advisers to help develop the product further
104,the invent for the planet final competition is wednesday april 24th at 2 pm in the zach chevron rooms for more information view our website
105,the texas a&m university college of engineering honored nine alumni during the 2019 outstanding alumni awards banquet receiving the outstanding alumni honor award were david d dunlap ‘83 james t hopper sr ‘68 peter d huddleston ‘80 william b hurd ‘99 michael j plank ‘83 aleida rios ‘91 ronald e smith ‘80 lee m tillman ‘84 and j mike walker 66 outstanding alumni honor awards david d dunlap ‘83petroleum engineeringpresident and chief executive officer of superior energy services david d dunlap is president and chief executive officer of superior energy services a position he has held since 2010 superior energy services supports the oil and gas industry worldwide through its drilling products and services subsea and intervention technologies and broad ranging marine services prior to joining superior dunlap was executive vice president and chief operating officer for bj services company during a 25-year career with the company he served in a variety of engineering operations and management positions including president of the companys international division and vice president of division sales he received the 2013 transformational ceo award for the united states gulf coast area presented by ernst & young as part of the organizations entrepreneur of the year awards program in 2017 he was named to the academy of distinguished graduates of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m and in 2018 was inducted into the texas a&m corps of cadets hall of honor dunlap earned his bachelor of science degree in petroleum engineering in 1983 from texas a&m he and his wife anne have six children: maggie 11 emily grace 18 john mary 22 and tess 22 james t hopper sr 68engineering technology & industrial distributionowner of megahertz technology inc james t hopper owns and operates megahertz technology inc which he founded in 1985 he has designed implemented and maintained radio systems for a variety of businesses that require quick radio communications hopper served in the us army and upon completion of his service he was offered a job as a logic design engineer at collins radio company which later became rockwell international he later worked for the xerox corporation where he spent 10 years as an inventory operations manager for the southern us the us secret service honored him with a certificate of appreciation for his help coordinating communications in dallas when five us presidents came to town to open the bush library in 2013 he is a member of the texas a&m legacy society and a member of the endowed century club for the past three years he has sponsored and mentored capstone teams within the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution texas a&m engineering technology group hopper earned his bachelor of science degree in industrial technology from texas a&m in 1969 and later received his master of business administration from texas a&m university-commerce in 1980 he and his wife kathleen have a son jamie peter d huddlestonpetroleum engineeringpresident and chairman of huddleston & co inc peter d huddleston is president and chairman of huddleston & co inc which provides petroleum engineering and evaluation services to public and private oil and gas entities financial institutions legal firms and individuals huddleston has worked his entire career within the huddleston organization he was also owner of the peter paul petroleum company until 2017 a founding member and chairman of continental operating company and founding member and director of cima energy ltd he is a member of the petroleum engineering advisory board petroleum ventures program advisory board bush school of government and public service advisory board and texas a&m at galveston board of visitors he has authored and presented various papers to the society of petroleum engineers department of petroleum engineering corps of cadets students at the bush school seminars for the petroleum industry and continuing education programs for bar association members huddleston earned his bachelor of science degree in petroleum engineering in 1980 from texas a&m he and his wife kathy 81 have two children will and katherine 16 will b hurd 99computer science and engineeringus house of representatives texas district 23 will b hurd is the first member to serve the 23rd district of texas in congress for three consecutive terms in a decade he serves on the house permanent select committee on intelligence where he serves as the top republican on the subcommittee on intelligence modernization and readiness he was also selected by republican leader kevin mccarthy this year to serve on the house appropriations committee where he is a member of the subcommittees on military construction and veterans affairs along with transportation housing and urban development upon graduating from texas a&m hurd joined the central intelligence agency where he was one of the first called in to fight the global war on terror following 9/11 he served in the middle east and south asia for nearly a decade collecting intelligence that influenced the national security agenda upon leaving the cia he became a senior advisor with a cybersecurity firm covering a wide range of complex challenges faced by manufacturers financial institutions retailers and critical infrastructure owners hurd earned his bachelor of science degree in computer science and engineering from texas a&m in 1999 michael j plank 83mechanical engineeringchairman and ceo of the plank companies inc michael j plank is chairman and ceo of the plank companies inc a diversified holding company with numerous investments and operating entities engaged in industrial real estate rail services and manufacturing in 2015 plank was appointed by gov greg abbott to serve on the board of the governors university research initiative he was appointed by lt gov dan patrick to the port authority advisory committee in 2017 and as chairman of the transportation and port advisory board in 2019 he was appointed in 2018 by abbott to serve on the texas higher education coordinating board and was appointed to the texas a&m university system board of regents in 2019 he is past president of the trench shoring & shielding association of america houston equipment distributors and childrens museum of houston he serves on the college of engineering advisory council and commandants advisory council for texas a&ms corps of cadets plank earned his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from texas a&m in 1983 and was inducted into the departments academy of distinguished graduates in 2000 he and his wife susan have two children kendall 19 and jared aleida rios 91chemical engineeringhead of upstream engineering-bp aleida rios is head of upstream engineering reporting to bps chief operating officer throughout her 27-year career at bp she has held a variety of leadership positions in operations and engineering her most recent role was vice president of operations for the gulf of mexico operated assets and prior to that she held the same role in bps north america gas she serves on the companys supplier diversity council is chair of bps women international networks globally and is active with the business resource groups to promote diversity and inclusion she was recognized by financial times as ranking fifth among its top ethnic minority executives in 2018 hispanic executive magazine for being a stem advocate and was recognized as the 10th most powerful latina by the association of latino professionals for america and fortune magazine in 2017 she earned a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering in 1991 from texas a&m and is a member of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering advisory board she and her husband eduardo have three sons anthony gabriel ‘22 and benjamin ronald e smith 80ocean engineeringpresident chief executive officer and director of deep down inc ronald e smith and his wife mary budrunas founded deep down inc in 1997 smith has served as chief executive officer president and director since december 2006 prior to that he was the companys president smith was the first recipient of the texas a&m university ocean engineering outstanding alumni award additionally he serves on the ocean engineering advisory board and is a mentor to the texas a&m aggie shell ocean discovery xprize team smith worked both onshore and offshore in management positions for ocean drilling and exploration company oceaneering multiflex mustang engineering and kvaerner before founding deep down smith is directly responsible for the invention or development of many innovative solutions for the offshore industry including the first steel-tube flying lead installation system he is also credited for the new patented loose steel-tube flying leads subsea deployment systems new subsea j-plates and the recently patented non-helical umbilical which is a mobile steel-tube umbilical production facility employing a new concept to build steel-tube umbilicals smith earned his bachelor of science degree in ocean engineering from texas a&m in 1981 lee m tillman 84chemical engineeringchairman president and chief executive officer of marathon oil corporation lee m tillman is president and ceo of marathon oil corporation and chairman of the marathon oil corporation board of directors he joined the company in august 2013 he previously served as vice president of engineering for exxonmobil development company where he was responsible for all global engineering staff engaged in major project concept selection front-end design and engineering he served as north sea production manager and lead country manager for subsidiaries of exxonmobil in stavanger norway from 2007-10 and as acting vice president of exxonmobil upstream research company from 2006-07 he is a board member of the american petroleum institute and the american exploration & production council a member of the university of houston energy advisory board and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering advisory board and college of engineering advisory council at texas a&m he is also a member of the national petroleum council business roundtable and society of petroleum engineers he serves as a member of the celebration of reading committee within the barbara bush houston literacy foundation and is a member of the advisory board of spindletop charities tillman earned a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m in 1984 and his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from auburn university in 1989 j mike walker 66mechanical engineeringco-founder chairman president and ceo dril-quip j mike walker co-founded dril-quip in april 1981 and served as chairman president and ceo until his retirement upon graduating from texas a&m with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering where he was number one in his class and earning a masters degree in mechanical engineering from the university of texas at austin he began working with exxon refining after four years at exxon walker returned to texas a&m and earned a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering in 1974 he then returned to exxon working at exxon production research company in the offshore department as a subsea engineer he subsequently worked for mcevoy and vetco offshore before partnering with two vetco vice presidents (larry e reimert and gary d smith) to form a private company dril-quip in april 1981 the three co-founders and co-ceos began developing innovative products grew the company and took it public on the new york stock exchange under the ticker symbol drq with an initial public offering on oct 23 1997 in 2011 walker retired from his role as chairman president and ceo as well as the largest shareholder of the publicly traded company which had a market cap in excess of $4 billion and some 2 200 employees at its various manufacturing sales and service centers around the world walker was inducted into the distinguished mechanical engineering academies at both texas a&m and ut austin as well as the huntington red devil basketball hall of fame before his passing in december 2018 walker contributed $20 million each to name the mechanical engineering departments at both texas a&m and ut austin he is survived by his wife donna and children lawrence tate amanda tate and melinda papp
106,carpe diem seize the day if there was a motto for electrical engineering undergraduate brittney nelsons time at texas a&m university and in the department of electrical and computer engineering it would be that from her freshman year experience studying abroad in san miguel de allende mexico to her ongoing involvement with the zachry leadership program she has seized every opportunity that has made itself available to her as she looks forward to her final year at texas a&m nelson took a moment to reflect on how she proved that where theres a whim theres a way
107,q: what inspired you to participate in a study abroad program a: honestly it was kind of on a whim when i was a freshman i was in the living learning community in mosher hall and the program leaders were talking about how to work with people around the globe when they offered this new opportunity to go to san miguel de allende i decided ‘why not it was really eye-opening to learn about the different aspects of engineering in mexico and was a good overall experience that allowed me to grow as an individual while furthering my professional development q: is there something that really stood out to you from your time in mexico a: i would say the culture we stayed in a hacienda instead of a hotel and got to meet with a lot of locals and university students it was nice because it wasnt something typical or something ive ever done before that made me realize there's a lot more that i need to explore about the world and there's a lot of different people that i still need to meet so that inspired me to just keep going q: what is your main takeaway from studying abroad a: that the possibilities are endless even though i didnt know that much about study abroad at that time just going changed my outlook on a lot of different things and made me realize that theres a lot of great opportunities that texas a&m can offer
108,q: how did that experience lead you to get involved in the zachry leadership program a: while on my study abroad trip i met a lot of people in the zachry leadership program and they inspired me to apply to the program because they were great bubbly people that were really charismatic i wanted to be like them its a great program that allows you to explore and do a lot of things that you most likely wouldnt learn in engineering like empathy and self-awareness or curiosity and creativity topics that arent readily explained in engineering so i was really excited about that q: how has the program helped you develop as a person and an engineer a: i get to delve into different things such as creativity and learn how to implement them into my daily lifestyle see how it helps me with academics and to just be an overall better person it has allowed me to learn about myself and figure out what my strengths and weaknesses are and how to cope with stress and work with people who are different than me while using empathy and self-awareness
109,and as an engineer its helped me be more creative and think outside of the box to find new solutions that most people wouldnt think of it overall made me into a really good leader q: do you have any plans or goals for after graduation a: since i'm an electrical engineering major i plan to go into the tech industry before getting my mba and possibly doing a start-up ultimately i want to get to a point in my life where i can give back to my community by starting a program to help inner-city and minority kids get acclimated and introduced to stem-related opportunities
110,during south by southwest (sxsw) 2019 the spacecraft exploration challenge offered teams this test: rescue an astronaut that has crashed on a planet in the trappist-1 system using artificial intelligence (ai) virtual reality (vr) robotics and machine learning the objective of the hackathon-style competition was to test a teams ability to program a robot to interact with its environment to successfully perform the rescue operation using pathfinding and terrain/object recognition teams across texas competed in the event including students from texas a&m university the university of texas the university of texas rio grande valley and texas a&m university-corpus christi the competition used python code that interfaced with the spacecraft vr platform built by the aerospace technology research & operations (astro) lab in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university
111,the first two days of competition were spent in intense coding and debugging each team acted as a crew charged with reprogramming a geology rovers navigation software to become faster and more autonomous than was needed for its original mission the teams had to code their own ai algorithms to improve the rovers navigation and path planning capabilities with knowledge of the terrain around them and the terrain theyd already explored their rover was required to search and find the astronauts crash site in the most efficient way possible while avoiding hazards using the algorithms designed by the team
112,for the final day of competition crews chose one person on their team to remotely operate the rover while inside vr in a simulated exoplanet habitat control room in this environment the contestants were given controls to set waypoints for the rover while the contestants algorithms considered maneuvers to avoid obstacles the area around the astronaut was deemed a dead zone where no human commands could reach the robot so it needed to rely on radio detection finding techniques to find the exact position of the astronauts beacon it was fascinating to hear each of the university teams talk about the different strategies they pursued during 48 hours of intense programming most teams did really well but only a few made it close to completing the rescue operation in time said professor greg chamitoff director of the astro lab and former nasa astronaut first place was awarded to team pathfinder v a joint team from texas a&m and the university of texas (ut) with tanner hoke mallory butt malachi mayfield and zach summers second place went to the matt damon retrieval team from ut with scott staniewicz rahul moghe tucker haydon lakshay narula and james bell and third place went to texas a&ms team ecentric with wesley myers maria dmitrievskaia paurushmani singh radhika soni and sean kersch-hamar
113,this event was sponsored by several companies including dell computers nvidia vive future tech live nvidia nasa texas space grant and firefly aerospace prizes for the event included a signed book by neil degrasse tyson steam gift cards vive focus vr headsets and dell mobile workstations during the sxsw competition the spacecraft team ran demos of their vr platform for the general public with several space mission scenarios such as bases on the moon and mars spacewalk simulations and exoplanet trappist-1d the setting for the competition
114,from the lovable astromech companions in star wars to the manipulative android ava in ex machina robotics has captured the hearts and minds of audiences around the world through works of science fiction harnessing these imaginative creations dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is bringing fact to fiction by using popular mechanical characters to explain real-world robotics her ongoing series of publications include multiple journal articles a book titled robotics through science fiction and a popular blog under the same name i developed the idea of teaching artificial intelligence and robotics through science fiction as part of my 2014 faculty fellow for innovation in high-impact learning experiences these works all reflect that style of teaching said murphy by using pop culture references to demonstrate highly technical concepts murphy is presenting the reality of robotics in a new fresh way that is inviting and understandable to a wide audience in doing so her fun and playful twist on computer engineering allows people to learn about science and technology through the fictional characters that they have come to know and love making the experience both relatable and educational for example murphys most recent publication in the academic journal science robotics titled robot learning in science fiction explores the presentation of machine learning in written and film media as well as how these adaptations compare to actuality my science robotics articles typically identify when a robotics-related topic of interest such as machine learning first appeared in science fiction what predictions and implications were made and what science fiction got right said murphy in the case of machine learning hollywood has been a little overzealous from humanoid characters such as ava or star treks commander data to more mechanical representations like johnny 5 from short circuit science fiction has operated under two erroneous assumptions murphy explained in her publication the first assumption is that learning is as simple and ubiquitous of a task for robots as it is for humans and the second is that robotic learning and intelligence leads to sentience robots have been learning by demonstration since the 1970s when companies discovered that manually programming industrial manipulators for a new task was difficult and expensive yet factory robots are not sentient it is hard to imagine that this type of learning could be extended into the autonomy and self-awareness of johnny 5 or ava murphy wrote however science fiction did seem to accurately depict how difficult it is to get a robot to learn the correct thing murphy wrote for example in the novellete callahan and the wheelies the robot characters who undergo reinforcement learning to be mobile and navigate their surroundings inadvertently learn to associate their designer with being powered off causing them to run away from and attack him while that may seem far-fetched the reality is that when given incomplete goals and boundaries in their programming robots have mistakenly learned to do anything between walk on their elbows and deliberately lie about finding food to deceive competitors what can we take away from nearly 70 years of science fiction and scientific research that learning may seem easy for humans but is really hard for robots murphy wrote progress in robot learning is accelerating in the areas of recognition skills and intent but we should discard the notions that a robot will become a virtuoso at a new task overnight and that learning means sentience discover more of murphys publications in science robotics
115,the national nuclear security administration (nnsa) partnered with texas a&m university to host nuclear security enterprise (nse) day on april 8 the event offered attendees the chance to learn about career opportunities and internships for all stem majors with the nnsa labs plants and sites dr donna mischell navarro chief human capital officer for the nnsa welcomed students in her keynote speech and encouraged them to consider a career with the nnsa she explained that the nse is made up of the nnsa and its labs plants and sites the nnsa maintains and enhances the safety security and effectiveness of the nations nuclear weapons stockpile; reduces global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the us navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the united states and abroad nse day also featured several undergraduate and graduate panel discussions aimed at answering any questions students might have about working within the nse a career with the nnsa is especially great for undergraduates to consider since the positions are structured in a way to help them build on skill sets they gained during their education said ben stallwitz 09 functional manager from the pantex plant in amarillo texas many companies will even support employees pursuing masters and phd degrees as well students also had the option to attend a career fair as a part of nse day to learn more about the critical work these entities perform to protect the nation the industry is literally looking to hire thousands of new employees from all kinds of backgrounds said benjamin grover division leader from lawrence livermore national laboratory the development of nuclear weapons isnt going away and theres no way we can control or predict what other countries will do with that technology its kind of like a pandoras box and we need to be aware of it all but that also means we will always need people in this line of work the nuclear industry recognizes the important role academia plays in workforce development which is why y12 and the los alamos national laboratory (lanl) have partnered with professors such as dr pavel tsvetkov associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering and dr sunil chirayath associate professor and director of tees center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives to support and fund specialized focused courses for students the focus of our nuclear criticality safety program is to prepare future generations of nuclear criticality safety experts for the national labs and industry tsvetkov said he is teaching a course about criticality safety fundamentals together with experts from lanl and y12 while chirayath is teaching a course on the use of monte carlo n-particle transport code a computational tool that is widely used in the nuclear community the program is currently in its second year and aims to establish a pipeline of nuclear criticality safety engineers to us national laboratories and industry texas a&m university is one of only a handful of prestigious universities selected to host an nse day event to engage stem students interested in a career with the nse
116,circumstance and chance play a huge role in invention and innovation in the case of the texas a&m university team behind lazarus ammunition that penetrates and neutralizes threats without loss of life so much of the products early conceptualization was serendipitous ben omonira a junior chemical engineering student and member of the zachry leadership program met elise hackney mechanical engineering junior outside of an elective engineering course they both arrived to early one day during their freshman year they began discussing omoniras idea for a bullet that could help avoid situations like 2016 ambush and shooting on dallas police officers and the current obstacles they would face hackney enjoyed product design and cad and offered to help create a model fast forward two work-filled years of trial error improvement competitions and the engineering incubator and you have an incredible student-creation that is shooting to the top in its field omonira is not your average student he was born in the uk raised in dallas and he had this quirky commitment to writing down 10 ideas a day in his book of bright ideas not the easiest hobby hell tell you but it seems to have paid off with lazarus
117,whenever the shooting happened we were just really shocked that this occurred where we were living said omonira i saw then that there is a problem with lethality in our nation i had just finished watching a ted talk about hydrogels they put in medicines while watching the news coverage of this ambush my brother changed the channel to agents of shield and was pointing out this gun that put people to sleep the idea triangulated then what if there was a way to create biocompatible ammunition that neutralizes the threat but could preserve life and buy time the goal of lazarus ammunition is to neutralize a threat but preserve life the innovation lies in the design and the materials used that stop blood loss hemostatic materials inside capable of clotting the wound cavity
118,why should we care lazarus is the opportunity the nation has been demanding for several situations that could have gone more favorably in situations where the guilty party is ambiguous a lazarus bullet could have helped clear that up by providing the opportunity to gain further information from an assailant by using normal ammunition as the neutralizing force the opportunity to gain further information may not be available another situation with regular rounds to consider is the cost from emotional trauma to time and resources after a member of law enforcement uses deadly force if the lazarus bullet were an option right now it would likely be much smaller the market for this innovation is vast beyond the obvious local law enforcement agencies there is even an application for the military and intelligence agencies not only could it be used to help in situations requiring further investigation for information but also for minimizing death on the battle field when someone is injured in battle this creates a liability two fellow soldiers support one injured soldier meaning three soldiers are now incapacitated nonlethally rather than simply killing one soldier
119,the journey to a winning invention where lazarus is today wasnt without help and guidance through multiple courses competitions and organizations on campus not to mention the efforts of the team through the engineering entrepreneurship program omonira and hackney took the product lean launch for engineers course where they went through a rough business plan learned competitive advantages and market analysis after that they enrolled in the engineering inc program and began doing customer interviews with local law enforcement participated (and won) in the engineering project showcase and developed and tested prototypes the thing that i love about this team is that they are very passionate about this said jim donnell professor of practice and program coordinator of engineering inc they are willing to be mentored tutored and taught and their success shows it ive pushed back hard on them presented them with many challenges and they never give up they arent afraid to scale the wall of challenges over their journey theyve hit some impressive milestones they won first place at the retailing summit conference in 2018 through the texas a&m mays business school and they presented to gen john murray who was visiting campus with the army futures command in order to produce a functioning prototype for testing they expanded their team to include nathan panak a full-time staff employee in the susu and mark a fischer '72 engineering design center and seth reine junior biomedical engineering student their venture was accepted to the 2019 launchpad lift cohort through the mcferrin center for entrepreneurship and more recently they placed third in the raymond ideas challenge and took fourth place in aggie pitch
120,the susu and mark a fischer 72 engineering design center was buzzing with creative energy this past weekend as 60 students participated in aggies invent for assistive technology the 48-hour intensive design competition gives students the opportunity to create a concept design a prototype and pitch their product to a panel of judges students were tasked with developing solutions to problems faced by people with disabilities in the end it was a team of six students who took home first place for their wheelchair design that would allow the user to climb stairs we worked with tees technology accessibility compliance to develop need statements that would benefit so many people who have disabilities said rodney boehm director of the engineering entrepreneurship program these students came prepared to tackle the challenges presented to them and they did so with enthusiasm and creativity
121,team hi rollers winning concept used a triple-wheel design that would vault wheelchair wheels up a standard-sized staircase they designed a working small-scale prototype that they demonstrated in their pitch video the team won $1 000 for their design
122,its the third time linda bustaman has participated in aggies invent and the second time shes won first place one of the reasons i came back is because no matter how many times youve done it its always going to be different she said boehm said there were many students at this aggies invent who have participated in the past it really showed he said good teams are comprised of students with a variety of skill sets and every team brought something unique to the table hi roller teammate carla bassil ‘22 agreed
123,i think the biggest thing about aggies invent is that it really teaches you about delegating she said not everybody has the same skill set while im good at one thing im not good at everything this helps you learn to work with people who have different skills and how to leverage that this was bassils second time participating in aggies invent last time i didnt win anything but it was the most impactful educational experience ive had she said rodney makes things happen he brought us actual wheelchairs and brought someone in who uses a wheelchair that we could talk to teammate jeriel jammullamudy ‘22 an aerospace engineering student participated in invent for the planet in february he said the most important thing he learned this time around is that youre often the strongest when youre going through a difficult time our video wasnt working our presentation wasnt ready on time and everything went wrong he said we got together and we were like ‘well handle these bumps and thats what they did rodney always says ‘if you can dream it we can make it jammullamudy said you literally can build anything here the team would like to pursue a patent for their design and theyre considering moving their concept forward through the engineering incubator at texas a&m
124,the second-place team safe walk designed a white cane attachment that would help a person with blindness walk in a straight line and avoid obstacles third-place team stablegrip developed a tremor-reducing product that would allow people with neurodegenerative diseases to complete simple tasks like brushing their teeth or using utensils
125,the judges requested that an honorable mention category be added because the competition was so strong a fourth team soundception won this category for their accessible music production technology that would allow a person who is blind to create digital music more easily this aggies invent was made possible by amazon web services and mediasite the brazos valley center for independent living provided wheelchairs to assist students in their design process for more information about aggies invent visit the website
126,"farid saemi a graduate student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university was named international runner-up in the prestigious 2019 robert l lichten award competition of the vertical flight society (vfs) formerly known as the american helicopter society saemi who received his undergraduate degree in 2017 from the department has worked with assistant professor dr moble benedict in the advanced vertical flight laboratory (avfl) since his sophomore year and has interned at nasa johnson space center in houston texas nasa langley research center in hampton roads virginia and boeing commercial airplanes in seattle washington saemi has been researching the electric powertrains of small unmanned aerial systems (suas) in graduate school and his first publication ""semi-empirical modeling of group 1 uas electric powertrains"" won the vfs southwest region's best paper award last semester his paper placed second at the international stage ahead of papers from engineers at sikorsky aircraft corporation and nasa ames research center his research is funded by a journeyman fellowship from the army research laboratory and his research has helped the texas a&m team competing in the boeing gofly prize competition their phase i and phase ii winning design relies on an electric powertrain designed by saemi the robert l lichten award was established in 1975 to honor the memory of robert l lichten an outstanding rotary-wing engineer and the societys 22nd president it recognizes new and innovative research in the area of vertical flight and encourages vfs members who have not previously presented to begin making public the results of their work through presentations at the local level each of the vfs regions around the world is eligible to select a regional winner from which an overall international winner and runner-up are selected students from the advanced vertical flight laboratory have placed first or second at the international level since 2015"
127,q: do you have a favorite memory of engineering or the universitya: i've loved engineering and physics long before i attended texas a&m so it was a good fit for me what i remember most are the crazy long study hours although i did enjoy what i was studying and still do even though my masters program was only a year i was shocked at all the things i learned that i didn't know coming out as an undergraduate it was amazing i enjoyed the cultures and traditions and i fully immersed myself in all of them i believe you get out what you put into it ill never forget being a fish camp counselor or living in puryear hall for three years which didn't have any air conditioning my grandfather was the class of 1919 and my daughter is the class of 2019 his brother was the class of 23 and my dad uncle cousins my sisters my wife my daughters and several of my nieces and nephews have attended texas a&m
128,q: how did you end up at nasaa: i was getting my masters in health physics and there was a huge demand for that degree a lot of national labs and clean-up sites were hiring i was interviewing with power plants universities and facilities and was close to deciding where i would go then we had a phd student join our department and he was being funded by nasa i had never thought of working for nasa dr poston had a couple of contacts down at the johnson space center so i started making cold calls people politely told me ‘sorry we don't have anything for you a few times then one call i got lucky i was talking to the (johnson space center) space radiation health officer we ended up talking on the phone for about an hour and he invited me down for a face to face interview they made me an offer (which happened to be the lowest offer i had received) i took it and i've been here ever since i started out with nasa contractors kelsey seybold then rockwell international then lockheed martin and finally switched to the government side with nasa
129,q: what motivated you to pursue nasa instead of a higher paying career and what motivates you in generala: i grew up in houston i think part of it was growing up in the 70s so i remembered the moon missions skylab and nasa was a big part of houston i played neil armstrong in my sixth-grade play so for me working at nasa was a dream job when they offered me that position even though it was the lowest offer i'd received from anyone i jumped at it i would say what motivates me is teamwork i love what can be accomplished when a team comes together and works toward a common goal i've been fortunate to be a member of and lead great teams i remember i was leading a hardware development team we were designing and building the extra vehicular charged particle directional spectrometer which is still on the international space station i came to work and my guys were so motivated i hadn't realized that a couple of them had been there for two straight days without going home or sleeping they were trying to make sure we met a deadline i had to put them in my car and drive them to their houses i love that team dedication
130,q: why do you support space travela: i'm an engineer i'm an optimist and i love adventure if you were to put all those together and create a job it would probably come back as space exploration i also think our message is good we're inclusive of all across nationalities and countries we're learning for all of mankind and the benefits are for all of mankind space travel also has some intangibles which i believe can lift the human spirit i think it can make people reach for things that maybe they didn't believe they could accomplish if we look back at some of the greatest moments of our country the moon landing is one of them it was very inspirational i think it's hard to measure the impact of that sort of accomplishment
131,q: what are some examples of nuclear engineering in the space industrya: we have radioisotope thermoelectric generators to generate electricity using the heat released by decay of pu-238 sr-90 and other suitable isotopes we are also working on different propulsion ideas and looking to nuclear energy to generate heat nuclear energy is our best bet for long-term space probes people living on the moon or mars at this point would likely use small reactors
132,q: what advice do you have for nuclear engineering studentsa: don't be afraid to take risks i see people come out of school and they'll get stuck if you will in a certain job or discipline if thats all you want to do thats fine but if you want to move into leadership positions or even a different discipline i would encourage people to take steps and move in those directions you don't know what you're going to think 15 years from now i've watched people who are scared to leave the comfort zone that they've probably known since they were an undergrad i would encourage anyone to move away from their comfort zone that's how you grow and learn and become more of a benefit to the organization as well as a happier version of yourself
133,q: do you have any ethical concerns about future space travela: its always possible that corporations could take things in the wrong direction but thats true of a lot of technology hopefully nobody goes in those directions but i think just because a nefarious option is always out there doesn't mean you should halt innovation and stop pursuing the technology altogether i guess i just don't look at it that way at nasa we interact with people from many different countries and they're all great people one of the best parts that i've had working on the international space station program is being able to travel to europe japan and russia to work with those scientists the people are all amazing we're much more similar than we are different
134,for 48 hours college students from over 26 universities around the world joined texas a&m university virtually to tackle some of the most challenging issues facing the planet today the top five teams from the first round of invent for the planet have been selected by a team of external judges and will compete at texas a&m on april 23 and 24
135,sips a team from james madison university in virginia developed a solution for hail damage to airplane wings the team drew inspiration from puffer fish a species that can inflate itself into the shape of a ball very quickly in order to evade predators using compressible foam like that found in a camping mattress the students designed a prototype that would quickly inflate to protect the most vulnerable parts of an airplane wing sips was able to present their design to airbus and receive industry feedback the sips team includes charles seaver dean woodwell and mark livingston
136,q: what has been the most memorable experiencea: the most memorable experience was watching the live stream of all the universities working simultaneously on important issues it influenced me to work hard during the event - charles seaver
137,q: did anything surprise you or come out of the experience that was unexpecteda: my most surprising experience was making our final prototype on the last day and realizing our idea actually worked and worked well the most exciting part for me though was learning on monday that we had placed in the top 5 and will get to go to texas i knew we had a strong idea but i never thought we would make it to texas i am amazed and excited - dean woodwell
138,q: why did you pick your need statementa: it was a subject i thought was intriguing and could allow for physical prototyping to be done once i saw others were interested i knew it was the one to pursue - mark livingston
139,their next plan of action is to listen to feedback after the competition to further evaluate their idea pursue product testing and research ways to seal the package and maintain the vacuum
140,when i was first thinking of going to college i had already made up my mind that i was going to texas a&m university said cathy sliva 80 i loved the spirit and the camaraderie and even though it was a big university it didnt feel big sliva an associate professor of engineering practice in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m not only loves the aggie spirit she lives it she teaches advises and contributes in many ways to help students currently pursuing a petroleum engineering degree developing that engineering passion my father asked me what i was going to study and i said ‘well i dont know my favorite things are math and physics said sliva and he said ‘maybe you should consider engineering which is the application of math and physics in solving problems my father was an engineer and luckily he gave me that guidance sliva was unsure what facet of engineering to pursue and there was no introduction to a major program in the college of engineering to help her at that time her brother suggested petroleum engineering the same degree he was pursuing since the department was small and she could easily make friends basic classes she took during her first two semesters could transfer to other engineering studies should she wish to switch majors that very first summer in my freshman year i got an internship working in the oil field had a blast and fell in love with petroleum engineering said sliva after graduation she became a registered professional engineer and had a successful career for 33 years in the petroleum industry initially sliva worked for four companies in the positions of senior petroleum engineer director and senior or executive vice president in 2002 she founded her own company bluerock energy capital which won an aggie 100 award she worked as chief executive officer and president there until her retirement in 2013 i cant say anything about success without going back to my family said sliva my husband and three kids are all petroleum engineers it sounds nerdy but we all love talking about it a parent doesnt usually have the kind of relationship that glenn and i have with our kids they call for advice and it feels so good to be able to share my professional experience with them
141,heeding the call to serve in 2012 the university contacted sliva about becoming a professor of practice she has served the petroleum engineering department in that role since 2013 engineering students often gain insight from instructors like sliva on how what they are learning will be applied in real-world situations which is why the program is so popular in fall 2018 the petroleum department offered her the job of director for the undergraduate program while she counseled students informally when asked for advice as a professor this advisor position took her to a new level of service sliva a certified steven minister trained to provide care and advice now uses those skills and others to help petroleum engineering students prepare for the ups and downs of academic life and the futures that await them after they graduate its not all fun and games but im where i need to be for both the students and me said sliva ive always enjoyed working with young people i think ive made a difference in many students lives just in the short time ive been here that makes me happy
142,in addition to teaching and academic advising within the department she also directs the petroleum ventures program which is something she lists as one of her greatest accomplishments the program funded by former students jay graham and anthony bahr is a collaboration between the petroleum engineering department and the finance department at mays business school it is tailored for undergraduate petroleum engineering and finance students who desire to work in energy finance or petroleum investment management have the goal to attain senior management at an oil and gas company or create and manage their own energy company we are developing engineers with skills i needed when i started my own company skills that i needed even before that but had to learn on my own said sliva these kids are interested in becoming leaders in our industry whether its a leader within a company or the leader of their own company it doesnt matter sliva stated that students in the program expand their opportunities for employment because their knowledge base is different than an engineer without a business and finance background graduates with a petroleum ventures certificate are gaining a reputation within the industry other universities are taking notice and calling sliva for information on how to set up a program of their own working with students continuously reminds sliva what it was like to start on a path in engineering at texas a&m this is why she and her husband glenn 81 who is also an associate professor of engineering practice in the department set up a scholarship to aid students with the cost of an education as an engineer you fall in love with solving problems and usually thats using math and science said sliva as a teacher and an advisor youre solving problems for human beings im still solving problems the problems are just different and im using different skills every day is a fun day because of that
143,on april 4 eight faculty members from texas a&m university gave presentations about their research during the inaugural presidents excellence fund symposium at the walter and leonore annenberg presidential conference center each speaker is a leader or a member of an interdisciplinary research team that earned project funding from the first round of texas a&ms x-grants program an initiative of the 10-year $100 million presidents excellence fund three researchers represented the texas a&m college of engineering for his project point-of-care diagnosis and monitoring of respiratory disease through exhaled breath analysis dr ricardo gutierrez-osuna a professor in the department of computer science and engineering and his research team are developing a new technology to help individuals who suffer from respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma to monitor their conditions through exhaled breath analyses called breath-on-a-chip spectrometers (bocs) unlike current devices that cost up to $3 000 the bocs will be a fraction of the cost of existing sensor-based monitors easy to operate and able to monitor multiple biomarkers with the planning grant they received for their project autonomous material discovery and manufacturing via artificial intelligence dr satish bukkapatnam professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) institute for manufacturing systems and his team are investigating the creation of new materials using artificial intelligence to build an autonomous materials discovery framework autonomous materials scientist (ams) that will be able to explore complex materials spaces as part of the grant the ams will drive the discovery of a new class of functional alloy materials the overall goal of the project is to have the ams serve as a platform facility to speed up the process materials and manufacturing process discovery for various applications dr john tracy professor in the zachry department of civil engineering and director of the texas water resources institute is part of a team led by dr wendy jepson professor in the department of geography that is working on a three-year project to examine desalination and water reuse in urban areas jepson was not able to attend symposium due to another engagement but tracy presented a video that she put together that explained how the team will examine the various pathways cities are taking to transform their urban water systems all the researchers and their respective teams shared $7 million in funding during the first round of texas a&ms x-grants program they represent 81 faculty members and other researchers from eight colleges four schools and two state agencies agriculture and life sciences architecture education and human development engineering geosciences liberal arts medicine and science mays business school the school of law the school of public health and the bush school of government and public service as well as tees and texas a&m agrilife research
144,during a meeting on march 30 dr jeff spath department head of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university signed a memorandum of understanding with the research institute of shannxi yanchang petroleum group this memorandum will pave the way for joint activities between the department and the institute by allowing: joint educational and research activities exchanges of technical materials and scientific data technical information and publications (where legally and practically possible) short-term exchanges of staff members for research lectures and discussions the meeting took place in xian china where yanchang invited spath and texas a&m to be a partner in researching one of the most challenging gas field development environments in the world after signing the agreement spath shook hands with dr ruimin gao president of the research institute and expressed his thanks and appreciation to the team at yanchang for hosting texas a&m and for making the research collaboration a reality we are currently looking into possible joint research projects involving tight gas and oil as well as unconventional oil and gas said spath were confident that working together we can improve the recovery and increase efficiencies in yanchangs fields which have some of the most difficult challenges in the petroleum industry shannxi yanchang petroleum group is the fourth-largest state-owned oil and gas enterprise in china and ranked 288 in fortune global 500 in 2018 headquartered in xian its major business units include upstream exploration and production refinery and processing pipeline petrochemical retail gas stations and coal chemicals it employs 120 000 people established in 1905 yanchang drilled the first onshore oil well of china in 1907 last year it reached a yearly oil and gas production of 12 million metric tons and 34 billion cubic meters respectively yanchang has carried out a large number of theoretical and technological innovations in the development of tight gas fields with complex reservoir structures under lacustrine sedimentary environments it has also obtained creative theory and industry-leading technologies in well pattern development and reservoir stimulation which can be a reference for other lacustrine tight gas fields development around the world
145,more than 1 400 of the brightest students in texas travelled to college station to compete for prizes at the texas science and engineering fair (txsef) on march 29-30 co-sponsored by the texas workforce commission (twc) and exxonmobil the fair is one of the largest and most prestigious competitions that brings together top science and engineering fair winners from across the state the event was hosted by texas a&m university at the ford hall of champions and the all-american club in kyle field the occasion began with a night at the zach hosted by the college of engineering on friday and culminated with an awards presentation on saturday at the gilliam indoor track stadium texas a&m is the third to host the competition in its 18-year history this event is a tremendous celebration of innovation and we are proud to welcome these bright young students to texas a&m university to showcase their creativity said dr m katherine banks texas a&m engineering vice chancellor and dean participation at the state-level competition is a significant accomplishment and speaks volumes about the support these students have received from their teachers schools families and volunteer mentors along with our partners the texas workforce commission and exxonmobil we are excited to encourage the states future scientists and engineers in the senior division ashna and ashay shah from plano east senior high school in plano received the grand prize for physical sciences and jack delli-santi from lake travis high school in austin received the grand prize for life sciences in the junior division otto beall from otto middle school in plano received the grand prize in physical sciences and ganesh venu from friendswood junior high school in friendswood received the grand prize for life sciences the 2019 texas science and engineering fair once again showcased the wonderful creativity and invention of our students said twc chair ruth r hughs the critical stem skills the participants are developing will help build the future of texas economic development i applaud the innovation dedication and hard work displayed by all of the participants and congratulate the division winners students competed in two divisions junior (grades six through eight) and senior (grades nine through twelve) in one of 22 categories nine seniors were awarded best of fair honors and will advance to the intel international science and engineering fair this may in phoenix arizona in addition to the grand prize and best of fair winners awards were presented to first- through third-place honorees in each category first- and second-place winners from the fairs senior division were also awarded a scholarship to attend the texas governors science and technology champions academy a week-long residential summer camp also sponsored by twc which will be held this summer at southern methodist university for a full list of all txsef winners by category visit the txsef website visit our gallery to view photos from the fair
146,dr andreas polycarpou department head in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is the latest recipient of the prestigious edwin f church medal awarded by the american society of mechanical engineers polycarpou also serves as meinhard h kotzebue '14 professor and james j cain chair in mechanical engineering he was selected for his contributions in reforming mechanical engineering curricula to reflect changing industry demands and technological advances with an emphasis on experiential learning for large cohorts
147,"dr polycarpou continues to lead the curriculum innovation and development in mechanical engineering "" said dr nk anand executive associate dean of engineering and james m and ada sutton forsyth professor in the mechanical engineering department ""his leadership has placed texas a&m mechanical engineering as the vanguard in curriculum innovation established in 1972 the award honors individuals who have rendered eminent service in increasing the value importance and attractiveness of mechanical engineering education only one honoree is selected each year for their efforts that go above and beyond their regular duties"
148,two teams of from the texas a&m university college of engineering placed in the top three of the 2019 raymond ideas challenge a competition that encourages undergraduate and graduate students to dream up the next great product or service and enter their big idea in this campus-wide competition offered through the mcferrin center for entrepreneurship in the mays business school the program offers a number of unique features and benefits including: real-world experience: students receive valuable experience developing business concepts writing skills and presentation abilities networking opportunities: students have the opportunity to network with the judges and gain invaluable contacts
149,tokunbo tj falohun biomedical engineering graduation student took second place with his pitch for biocompass an idea focused on a user-friendly approach to diabetes management using biosensors and connected electronics the idea was inspired by the work done in the biosensing systems and materials lab where we develop implantable hydrogel biosensors for chronic disease management falohun said the idea was also shaped by my experience in the nsf (national science foundation) i-corps site fellows program which i participated in last semester falohun said entrepreneurship excites him and saw the challenge as a perfect chance to test his ability to present an idea rooted in biomedical engineering to an external audience in my view the prospect of turning an idea that previously didnt exist into a product or service that can improve the lives of people is a challenge worth undertaking falohun said falohun said his experience in the challenge would not have been possible without the supportive environment provided by his supervisor dr mike mcshane his research group and the department of biomedical engineering he said the challenge reminded him of the importance of extending past the boundaries of his field by doing so we learn more about our ourselves our interests strengths and weaknesses falohun said stepping out of our comfort zone is also a catalyst to new ideas and a means to form new relationships
150,third place went to biocompatible projectile a mixed team of engineering students that aimed to bridge the gap between lethal and nonlethal weapons by providing neutralization power of a lethal round while preserving life through hemostatic or blood clotting material its been an amazing experience working with other engineering majors said elise hackney mechanical engineering junior one branch of engineering isnt enough when working to find a solution to a major problem you need people who are versed in a variety of subject areas which often brings different perspectives and approaches that lead groups toward a more effective solution other members of biocompatible projectile were ben omonira chemical engineering junior and seth reine biomedical engineering junior omonira said the challenge provided the team with insight and allowed them to grow their network of technical and business expertise members of the business and academic worlds judged each submission and the top 40 were named finalists finalists presented their concept to judges from the business community who challenged them with questions i was blown away by the judges intentional feedback omonira said the single factor that made this experience meaningful was the fact that the judges wanted to become mentors and maintain a relationship that goes beyond the raymond ideas challenge for omonira he anticipated a high-caliber group of innovative students would participate and the tough competition would make the reward much more meaningful i want students to know that an idea is worth fighting for here at texas a&m and through the raymond ideas challenge experience we had key moments to recognize a need to pivot or persist and forge a better vision omonira said
151,for 48 hours college students from over 26 universities around the world joined texas a&m university virtually to tackle some of the most challenging issues facing the planet today the top five teams from the first round of invent for the planet have been selected by a team of external judges and will compete at texas a&m on april 23 and 24
152,haildom a team from aristotle university of thessaloniki in greece designed a two-part system to protect airplane wings from hail damage their design uses a c-shaped motorized vehicle with integrated electric motors on each wheel the vehicle would move over a wing and secure a blanket made of nylon with flexible polymer tubes inside to decrease the impact of hail on the wing their design would cover airplane wings much faster than the current industry standard and would use fewer operators thus reducing the risk of injury to people tasked with covering the wings team member georgiadou aikaterini a mechanical engineering construction and material science student shares his insight on the competition
153,q: what has been the most memorable experience a: my most memorable experience was establishing our team name that happened after we proposed our first solutions so the name helped the team bond and triggered our excitement for the project
154,q: did anything surprise you or come out of the experience that was unexpected a: i was surprised with our first win in greece i personally knew that my team tried really hard but so did the other teams when i realized they believed in us and found us innovative that really pumped my heart with joy
155,additional team members include apostolidis george koualiarella alnto and theodoridou theodora the team said they will never forget the intensity and dedication the 48-hour challenge required and the power of cooperation a shared interest in aircraft and technical work drew them together to tackle the challenge their next plan of action is to test the impact of hail on the material and create a working model of the c-shaped vehicle then solve every small technical issue that arises until the design is perfect
156,despite advances in early detection and treatment 25 percent of the deaths in the united states occur as a result of cancer antibody-drug conjugates or adcs represent a promising treatment for cancer an adc is as its name suggests an antibody linked to a potent drug that can kill cells the antibody is designed to bind to receptors on the outside of target cells and then carries the attached drug into the cell adcs usually work well when the antibody attaches to receptors that are especially common on tumor cells that way the drug will primarily enter the cancerous cells leaving the healthy cells alone however despite improvements in adc technology over the past 15 years or so many adcs have faced problems with toxicity towards normal tissue during their use in clinical trials this prompted texas a&m college of medicine and college of engineering researchers to collaborate to engineer an adc that will be more effective against tumor cells while not being as toxic to healthy cells their work which has been funded by the cancer prevention and research institute of texas(cprit) and the national institutes of health was published in the journal nature biotechnology there is such a thing as a therapeutic window said dr e sally ward research professor at the college of medicine and joint corresponding author of the paper with dr raimund ober this is the difference between the amount of drug that is needed to kill the tumor cells and the amount that results in off-target toxicity towards normal cells for effective adcs we want this window to be as large as possible to accomplish that ward and her team created an adc that is sensitive to ph levels so that it separates from its target receptor after it enters the cell this allows for the reloading of the receptor with additional adc and more effective delivery of the drug to target cells
157,dr yang shen assistant professor and mostafa karimi his phd student in the electrical and computer engineering department and corresponding authors are developing computational methods for modeling biological molecules networks and data in response to the challenges in modeling ph-dependent protein interactions they expanded a multi-state protein design algorithm to model adc-engineering effects the computational study reported in the paper reflecting the first stage of our collaboration was mainly on reverse engineering ph-selective adcs in other words generating mechanistic hypotheses and designing experiments to test the hypotheses shen said what we have been working on since then is to translate the learned molecular mechanisms into rational design principles and forward engineer even more powerful adcs this truly was an interdisciplinary project ward said it has involved (bio)engineers and biologists using a combination of antibody engineering microscopy molecular modeling and studies in preclinical cancer models in our collaboration experiments and models have been feeding each other iteratively while making scientific discoveries shen said i am truly blessed and deeply thankful for the impactful interdisciplinary collaboration with drs ward and ober the researchers have tested their adc on both cell lines and in preclinical models in our models there was three-fold more drug delivery than with the parent adc that had not been engineered ward said that means that we could use lower doses and still obtain therapeutic effects which is expected to result in reductions in the toxicity towards normal cells the adc used in this study targets the receptor her2 commonly present in breast cancers importantly this approach to generate adcs is a platform technology that is expected to work for many different types of tumors and tumor markers from prostate cancer to cancers of the blood we hope this will be able to move into clinical trials and eventually help people with many different types of cancer ward said the other authors of the study are jeffrey c kang who at the time of the research was a phd student department of molecular and cellular medicine; wei sun phd postdoctoral research associate department of molecular and cellular medicine; priyanka khare phd postdoctoral research associate department of molecular and cellular medicine; and xiaoli wang phd postdoctoral research associate department of molecular and cellular medicine
158,in honor of international womens day the panamanian association for the advancement of science recognized eight women with an inaugural award celebrating their valuable contributions to science technology and engineering in panama among them were dr yessica sáez 15 and dr guadalupe gonzález 10 two former students from the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university since its foundation in 1985 the panamanian association for the advancement of science has strived to promote science and technology as the foundation of national development it actively participates in projects and research that shape policies and development strategies in panama i consider celebrating women important for many reasons said sáez a researcher at the technological university of panama as a woman and an engineer i believe that this kind of award not only promotes fantastic young female engineers and their achievements but also vitally raises awareness of the shortage of female engineers in the world enhancing mobility the leader of her telecommunications engineering research team sáez is investigating how intelligent systems can be applied to society among her various projects funded by the panamanian government is the development of a radio frequency-based assistive program for visually impaired people called movidis (mobility for visually disabled people) proposing a means of providing autonomous mobility in public transport and indoor environments movidis uses radio frequency communication and embedded systems to help the visually impaired navigate their day-to-day lives in addition to being easy to use the prototyped movidis is inexpensive modular and does not use audio cues which keeps it from being burdensome or distracting to those who need it most with the implementation of the proposed system the lives of visually impaired people in panama will change it gives them the opportunity to reach their destination and to contribute positively to our society by overcoming the obstacles related to their ability to move freely and without the help of a tutor said sáez expanding collaboration gonzález an associate professor at the technological university of panama has directed the smarts-e research group for nearly eight years smarts-e provides a successful example to panama as to how innovation can be enhanced through collaboration since 2013 gonzález has collaborated with health science experts in the prestigious institute for scientific research and high technology services (indicasat-aip) in panama to investigate how to eradicate malaria these collaborations have allowed us to create an interdisciplinary group with students and young professionals from both electromechanical engineering and biology in a country where this type of multidisciplinary collaboration is new said gonzález and thats critical bringing together experts from various backgrounds to solve societal problems offers a diverse set of skills perspectives and knowledge in turn this allows researchers to not only gain a better understanding of an issue but also helps to shape practical solutions and experiments relying on one anothers expertise and strengths the researchers from smarts-e and indicasat-aip have been studying the behavior of malaria and how it reacts to being exposed to various physical excitations in doing so they are not only cataloguing the unique characteristics of the disease but also exploring how to engineer a means of exterminating it once and for all looking forward by looking back as shining examples of aggie engineers sáez and gonzález are impacting society and the world at large with their research and leadership through their dedication and paramount work they are forging forward into the future bolstered by their time education and experience at texas a&m i want to thank dr mark ehsani my advisor at texas a&m for teaching me how to develop and manage research projects like he does said gonzález i am conducting my research group to the best of my ability the same way that he manages his research team because i truly believe it works i would tell the female student body in the department of electrical and computer engineering to not give up and to trust in themselves and their capabilities always bearing in mind that engineering is capable of transforming the world said sáez
159,dr daniele mortari professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2017 mathematics best paper second award from mathematics an international open-access journal that provides an advanced forum for studies related to mathematical sciences the paper titled least-squares solution of linear differential equations presents a new approach to provide least-squares solutions of linear nonhomogeneous differential equations of any order with nonconstant coefficients both continuous and nonsinglular in the integration range six research articles were selected by the journal award committee based on their originality and significance as well as citation and download rates in 2018 the award recipients will receive a certificate and an invitation to publish a paper free of charge in mathematics each paper will additionally receive a bonus based on the award class mortari's paper can be read here
160,from the introduction of new perspectives to groundbreaking innovations diversity is changing the face of engineering this year the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university celebrated womens history month by showcasing students staff and faculty and sharing their thoughts about embracing differences and offering advice to fellow women in stem heres what they had to say:
161,"""your uniqueness your diversity and the adversity you go through are essential to progress these are not things that make you 'other ' but make you necessary"" phd student shawanee patrick"
162,just because a subject is hard for you and seems easy for everyone else doesnt mean it isnt for you the hard stuff is often the most interesting and rewarding its hard work not talent that creates success dr astrid layton assistant professor
163,"""college is such a unique time of endless possibilities and opportunities take the time to get involved learn from those around you and challenge yourself its also just as important to seek help when you need it while sometimes it seems never-ending four years will fly by in the blink of an eye"" jen bloom academic advisor iii"
164,dont let stereotypes stop you from setting your own life goals if someone else chooses a certain path you arent obligated to follow them allow yourself to be bold ava robicheaux administrative assistant iv
165,"""as engineers we are constantly working to improve the world around us and in order to do so we must effect change we often focus on change in the form of discovery and technology development the journey along this path is accelerated with the inclusion of diverse ideas therefore we must continue to embrace change within the engineering workforce we have the opportunity today to encourage young women to pursue careers in engineering where they can have a direct impact on the lives of people around the world"" dr lesley wright associate professor and jana and quentin a baker '78 faculty fellow"
166,"""we are fortunate to have among us experienced and wise human beings it is our privilege and duty to acknowledge them accept their teachings and build upon their achievements"" phd student namita anil kumar"
167,the association of asphalt paving technologists (aapt) elected dr amy epps martin a professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university to the board of directors as a director-at-large she has been a part of the organization for her entire 21-year career i am honored to be elected by my peers as director-at-large said epps martin aapt is by far the most rewarding and relevant professional group that i am associated with she has previously been co-chair of aapts newer member committee and a member of the scholarship task force the nominating committee for officers and directors and the jw emmons award committee she received runner-up for the emmons paper award in 2016 and aapts award of recognition in 2012 epps martin conducts research on safe sustainable asphalt technologies through the texas a&m transportation institute she recently completed a national research project on increasing the amount of reclaimed asphalt pavement in asphalt pavements to provide economic and environmental benefits while maintaining good engineering performance
168,cancer research much like the disease itself starts with living cells while we know that the chemical makeup of cancerous cells can differ in the past decade variations in their mechanical properties have stolen the spotlight however collecting information about the mechanical properties of cancer cells has proven to be a challenge for researchers due to the complex design and operation of current cellular measurement technology especially when such measurements have to be done one tiny cell at a time in order to simplify and cut the cost of such devices a team of researchers at texas a&m university has created an acoustofluidic cytometer that uses sound waves to measure the stiffness and compressibility of cancer cells this not only will aid in the classification of cancer types but will also make diagnosis more efficient and observable the team is led by dr arum han professor and presidential impact fellow in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m and dr han wang professor at tsinghua university their recent publication in the journal lab on a chip was featured in an article on physicsworld so why is it important to understand the biophysical properties of cancer cells characteristics that set these cells apart from their healthy counterparts offer insight into the disease that is invaluable to the future of cancer research for example if you're trying to figure out if a biopsy contains cancer cells or not you might be able to look at the mechanical properties of the cells to determine if cancer is present in the sample said han
169,he went on to explain another scenario: how the biophysical properties of cancerous cells change as they advance through stages and metastasize one hypothesis is that as cancer cells progress they become softer which makes it easier for them to circulate and spread inside a human body said han so if a late stage cancer has an identifiably different biophysical property than earlier stages it could be possible to tell what stage a cancer is in by simply measuring the mechanical property of cell types this could be used to quantify the stages of cancer while many microfluid devices use pushing mechanisms and microstructures to measure the compressibility and stiffness of cancer cells hans acoustofluidic cytometer utilizes soundwaves acoustic waves traveling in a rectangular microfluidic channel form a standing wave which creates zones called acoustic pressure nodes cells flowing inside the channel will move toward and gather near these pressure nodes the speed at which the cells move varies depending on how soft or firm they are revealing their compressibility and stiffness without the need for any complex mechanisms by observing how cancer cells react under the influence of acoustic soundwaves researchers can gain insight about the cells mechanical properties which can then be correlated to different stages of cancer the simplicity of our device and its operation is what makes this particular work very exciting compared to previous methods of measurement which require very expensive equipment or very complicated microstructures to work said han
170,ryan burns an information technology (it) manager at texas a&m university leads a support team of 60 student workers and six full-time professionals dedicated to supporting technology at the zachry engineering education complex (zach) here he shares ten ways tech at the zach is evolving to increase collaboration and innovation for students faculty and staff
171,large buildings can kill cell reception so small cone-shaped cell-signal amplifiers are being installed throughout the building burns and his team are currently working with each provider to make sure digital natives can stay in touch through their devices
172,open office plans can increase collaboration but they can also increase noise offices in the zach have little boxes that create a seamless white noise similar to a gentle fan blowing that reduces noise overflow facilities professionals access and adjust the boxes remotely throughout the day to ensure theyre helpful and unobtrusive
173,the beaconing system is connected to the wireless network to support wayfinding in the building and may one day help guide drone tours for visitors there are over 600 beacons in the zach
174,autonomous occupancy sensors control the lights air conditioning and even outlets even though the zachry building is the size of two boeing 747s end to end the sensors help save on energy and reduce the overall carbon footprint
175,thirteen new kiosks in the hallways are helping students and visitors navigate the building the kiosks help users find an event or a specific advisor by providing a list of directions and a digital walkthrough illustrating how to get there if you get lost along the way just check another kiosk or try the buildings app enginearme! additional kiosks in the interdisciplinary common labs use keyware software to check out equipment efficiently
176,each classroom has their own independent network and audio-visual closet to power the extensive collaborative environment it also means that if the building network goes down class will still continue as planned
177,digital signage broadcasts engineering news on screens throughout the building allowing students to have a more interactive media experience and increase involvement the learning studios have technology worktables with wireless connectivity and multidevice sharing screens digital screens can come out of the worktable and can go down allowing the student to customize their learning experience the college is using t1vs thinkhub connect solution using wall-mounted large-format touch screens thinkhub allows the instructor to operate on an effective work space that is 20 times the size of the actual screen content can be created and moved off screen to be brought back later in the class as needed eliminating the need to constantly erase material to free up space on the live display the system allows content to be added from multiple sources like laptops document cameras web-based video sources and content from the student worktable displays wireless connections keep it informed of each tables technology status reducing possible downtime
178,in huddle rooms students use wepresent to share their screens with the rest of the group they can also split the screen in four ways making it easier to collaborate advanced video conferencing equipment with microphones hanging from the ceiling mean students can practice their skype interview skills outside each room is a tablet that shows the rooms reservations which students can reserve through the enginearme app
179,the digital alcove inspires wonder about engineering to visitors it features an interactive large table touch screen that displays information about the art collection former students engineering majors and building donors
180,texas a&m engineering students carry on average three devices each 4 000 devices are connected to the zachry building during peak usage thats why the zach has so many chargers throughout the building including outlets on the furniture and stairs theres even phone charging boxes in the rooftop garden if you come here at 10 pm said burns theres tons of students studying between work and school and studying students need a place to recharge their devices and themselves
181,beam smoke detectors that utilize light obstruction technology to detect smoke are located in multiple places over the zach learning stairs to provide a layered grid of smoke detection one of these is the fireray® 5000 a motorized reflective auto-aligning infrared optical beam smoke detector the second is the open-area smoke imaging detection which uses a complementary metal oxide semiconductor sensor with wired or battery-powered emitter(s) aligned on the opposite wall within the protected area that sends both infrared and ultraviolet coded light signals to the imager all of these devices are monitored and controlled by the siemens firefinder xls systems fire alarm panel when a fire is detected anywhere in the building the panel is instantly alerted in less time than it takes to draw a single breath alarms are activated and emergency control operations are engaged including fire door closure elevator capture and air handler shut-off
182,the zach tech team is currently working on further developing the mobile app and supporting augmented reality research for faculty developing tech at the zach is a blast said burns the students are very curious they investigate everything we see them following the wires and a lot come by the service desk and ask us how the classroom works the student response has been exceptional
183,the zachry building is the largest academic building on campus and is accessible 24 hours a day seven days a week to engineering students interested in learning more about the zach or taking a tour check out the zachry website the zachry technology service desk is located at zach 383 and is open monday-friday 8 am to 8 pm
184,dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as the 2019 creativeness in ergonomics practitioner of the year by the institute of industrial and systems engineers the award is presented to researchers who have shown achievements in the creative application of ergonomics for a specific project or series of projects in her research mehta studies neuroergonomics which focuses on how the brain and body interact during work the award recognizes her creative approach on employing neuroergonomic tools to help understand assess and improve worker performance health and safety as an academic you always wonder if your research is translational and if it is really impacting worker well-being and safety mehta said receiving this award makes me feel great because our industry is telling me that not only is my work translational but also creative i am honored to receive this valuable feedback as it encourages me to push the boundaries of traditional research the field of neuroergonomics is growing and research like mehtas helps increase understanding and fill in the gaps in the field by understanding and assessing how the mind and brain influences human behavior ‘in the wild using neuroergonomics researchers and practitioners can develop intelligent systems to help people interact safely and successfully with their environments ranging from predictable modern office to unstructured disaster environments mehta said the award was presented at the 22nd annual applied ergonomics conference which took place in new orleans this march
185,inspired by her love to make new experiences and the desire to challenge herself in ways beyond the norm freshman engineering student jainita chauhan and her team competed in the global grand challenges summit competition in california in april
186,the top five teams from this competition in which students are asked to create business plans and models that tackle grand challenges of the 21st century gained the opportunity to represent the united states at the international competition held in london although chauhans team did not move on to this next competition the experience itself was enough for the team this entire project was so unexpected for me said chauhan i wasnt even planning on joining the team because i was scared of the fact that i was a freshman and everyone else on the team would be much more competent than myself fears aside chauhan was chosen as team lead though she regards junior civil engineering student justin nguyen as her co-lead as a female and one of the youngest members chauhan said that there were many opportunities to break down stereotypes when i've told someone about this project and my role on the team i cant say how many times i have gotten raised eyebrows or doubt in my capabilities said chauhan it was in these stereotypes that chauhan found her purpose: to represent texas a&m engineering in the best way she could by never giving anything less than her best however like anyone chauhan said that it took immense support from her friends and family to not give up in my horrible habit of stressing over everything sometimes it took them trusting in my work ethic and capabilities to keep me going said chauhan in her time there and with her teammates she was able to visit the national academy of engineering and receive valuable in-depth training in business and engineering entrepreneurship her teams project the disaster city digital twin system was an aggie_challenge research project focused on the restoration and improvement of urban infrastructure inspired by flooding disasters in areas like houston chauhan said that her teams nonprofit business model gathers crowdsourced data and processes it through artificial intelligence software where it is then taken to a web-based application map where humanitarian agencies can view data in near real time solving a communication and coordination problem though my team didn't advance to the global summit in london i was extremely proud of the accomplishments we achieved this semester and i know that the digital twin system is many steps closer to commercialization than it was in january said chauhan overall chauhan said that this experience proved invaluable to her in more ways than she could count this project was definitely a highlight of my semester and my freshman year she said i enjoyed it much more than i was expecting to and i learned a lot in the future she hopes that more students join the team and take their successes even further specifically freshman and sophomore students these competitions are possible for anyone and you shouldn't be scared to participate or underestimate your capabilities well-rounded teams arent composed of the same types of individuals for a team to be strong it needs that ambitious freshman or sophomore who isn't scared to step out of their comfort zone to try something new said chauhan aggie_challenge is designed to engage engineering undergraduate students with multidisciplinary team research projects related to engineering challenges facing our society the grand challenges include the 14 grand challenges for engineering (national academy of engineering) the 14 grand challenges for global health (bill and melinda gates foundation) and engineering world health: projects that matter
187,the texas a&m university college of engineering is proud to celebrate with jim carman 00 (bachelors and masters in civil engineering) as he accepts a promotion to senior vice president of commercial development with the howard hughes corporation in the woodlands carman has worked with howard hughes since 2012 and has led the team developing the award-winning hughes landing a mixed-use urban center on lake woodlands the office of alumni relations spoke with carman to discuss his career and accomplishments
188,q: why did you choose civil engineering and why did you choose to pursue a masters degree a: i took a drafting class in my freshman year of high school and fell in love with the art of engineering drawings i ended up taking four years of drafting and working with a local civil engineering firm as a draftsman i knew i wanted to be somewhere in the process of creating buildings and civil engineering seemed like a great option to provide maximum flexibility on a future careerin order to complete my undergraduate degree i received a scholarship that required that i take a minimum of 18 credit hours per semester by the time i finished i had accumulated quite a few more credit hours than was required i was told i could apply some classes toward my masters degree and get it completed in one year admittedly i wasnt ready to enter the real world yet so it turned out to be a great opportunity q: what is the best part of your job a: to bring a project to life in our industry from concept to reality it takes hundreds of professionals giving their blood sweat and tears (ive been there) to make it happen to be able to lead these teams and to see the impact the projects have on the end users is something that is tremendously rewarding the true value of a project is not in the brick and mortar it takes to build it but how it brings people together and impacts their lives for the better my role allows me to be a part of that and to see the end result q: what will being a senior vice president of commercial development look like a: our team is amazing and we have such a unique responsibility and opportunity to create the places where people live work and play my role is to assist the team with strategic direction and to give them the tools they need to succeed q: you are on the executive committee for the leukemia and lymphoma society why did you get involved with this charity and how does it relate to your field a: i believe as leaders we have an incredible opportunity and expectation to be involved in charitable and community activities outside of the workplace and to engage our team members in giving back there are a lot of great organizations to be involved in but the leukemia and lymphoma society is one that really inspired me when i saw the amount of people impacted by blood cancers including several of our team members i was honored to be the co-chair with my colleague heath melton last year for the montgomery county light the night here in the woodlands the event brought in over 5 000 people and set a record with $13 million raised to fight cancer through the help of our partners and team members i was able to finish sixth in the nation out of nearly 2 000 executives taking part in the executive challenge q: do you have any advice for graduating engineers or undergraduate students in general a: you will have to take some risks in life and in your career and the best time to do it is in your 20s take calculated risks and trust your gut at work i always wanted to fill every vacuum i could see if something wasnt getting done or someone needed a volunteer i wanted everyone to always look to me i cant ever recall saying that isnt my job or i dont have time for that i still feel that way today nothing is too insignificant to be involved in and if someone asks me for help you can bet i will be there also i will say that a huge part of my success has been having a supportive spouse i met my beautiful wife leigh ann at the rec center at texas a&m my senior year and through the long hours changing jobs and moving to different states and countries having someone to share my daily stories and challenges with has been invaluable to me q: what else are you up to these days we have a 5-year-old daughter grace who is amazing and bleeds maroon our family loves to travel and to enjoy our getaway place located in leon county its a rural property that allows me to disconnect for a short time and recharge as well as teach my daughter about nature and self-sufficiency we also make time to indoctrinate her with all things aggie
189,the texas a&m college of engineering is proud of our former students like jim carman who display aggie core values such as loyalty selfless service and leadership if you know an aggie who is celebrating an accomplishment and would like them to be recognized by the college please contact the office of alumni relations
190,donation will fund tees hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) a member of the texas a&m university system announced the creation of the new hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research made possible with a donation from hewlett packard enterprise r stanley williams former hpe senior fellow and nanotechnology pioneer will lead the tees hpe center as well as serve as the hewlett packard enterprise chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university the ongoing rise of big data and the development of powerful analytical techniques that can efficiently evaluate the data will dramatically transform the way we live and work unlocking the value of this data will require computer architectures that are flexible and not bound by traditional designs the centers mission is to lead the way into this new world of data-driven computing architectures through academic-industry collaboration hpe donated research equipment valued at $105 million hpe also funded a $1 million endowed chair position that texas a&m will match with a $500 000 contribution these gifts will establish a leading-edge research capability and partnership with tees dedicated to the study of advanced materials and photonics for innovative computer architectures this is an extremely significant gift of equipment and the hiring of stan williams places us at the forefront of next generation discovery in computation nonlinear dynamical electronics and materials said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp there is no other cleanroom in the state of texas that has all five of the high-end instruments hpe is donating and we plan to become a regional hub for next-generation nano- and micro-engineering we owe tremendous appreciation to hpe cto (chief technology officer) mark potter whose vision for leveraging our joint assets will build a world class laboratory and attract preeminent talent in the broad area of materials initially the center will focus on advanced materials fabrication and characterization future electronic devices advanced photonics and novel computer architectures research will aim to achieve results that both expand knowledge and motivate the next generation of computer scientists and architects for the benefit of society looking ahead the ability to make sense of the massive amounts of data generated in academic public and private sector settings will change not only how we do business but also how we live said potter also director of hewlett packard labs our success at evaluating the world around us and making breakthroughs we never thought possible hinges on our ability to apply technology texas a&m university has great traditions coupled with visionary leadership said williams tees hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research director there are already world-class faculty in place who are contributing to the advancement of neuromorphic materials and new computing paradigms the students who come here are inspired by generations of successful aggie alumni and expect to work hard this is the ideal environment to do something completely new in computing untethered from legacy notions and i am excited by the opportunities that i see the center occupies 25 000 square feet of space in the giesecke engineering research building (gerb) tees also has contributed approximately $2 million for renovations to gerb to support the new equipment and will hire three faculty in this area among the equipment donated is a clustex used to deposit material layers on a wafer a titan cubed themis tem microscope helios sem/fib dual beam system an asm atomic layer deposition tool and a nanolab 460f1 electron microscope researchers can now develop next-generation computer chips for more powerful but energy-efficient computing integrated photonic devices and microsensors for biosensing/medical applications or better autonomous vehicles or flexible electronic devices and micro/nanofluidic systems for continuous health monitoring or point of care diagnosis in remote settings said dr arum han director of the aggiefab nanofabrication facility at texas a&m and professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering it typically takes three to four years of intensive effort and institutional support to acquire even one instrument that hpe just donated han said having five such high-end instruments coming to our cleanroom facility simultaneously is just absolutely amazing and is unheard of for any university cleanroom
191,a team of researchers at texas a&m university has developed an innovative way to print therapeutics in 3d for regenerative medicine 3d bioprinting is emerging as a promising method for rapidly fabricating cell-containing constructs for designing new healthy functional tissues however one of the major challenges in 3d bioprinting is lack of control over cellular functions growth factors which are a special class of proteins can direct cellular fate and functions however these growth factors cannot be easily incorporated within a 3d-printed structure for a prolonged duration in a recent study conducted at texas a&m researchers in dr akhilesh k gaharwars lab in the department of biomedical engineering formulated a bioink consisting of 2d mineral nanoparticles to sequester and 3d print therapeutics at precise locations their findings were published in advanced healthcare materials the team has designed a new class of hydrogel bioinks 3d structures that can absorb and retain considerable amounts of water loaded with therapeutic proteins this bioink is made from an inert polymer polyethylene glycol (peg) and is advantageous for tissue engineering because it does not provoke the immune system however due to low viscosity of the peg polymer solution it is difficult to 3d print this type of polymer to overcome this limitation the team has found that combining peg polymers with nanoparticles leads to an interesting class of bioink hydrogels that can support cell growth and may have enhanced printability compared to polymer hydrogels by themselves this new technology based on a nanoclay platform developed by gaharwar assistant professor can be used for precise deposition of protein therapeutics this bioink formulation has unique shear-thinning properties that allow the material to be injected quickly stop flowing and then cure to stay in place which is highly desirable for 3d bioprinting applications this formulation using nanoclay sequesters the therapeutic of interest for increased cell activity and proliferation said dr charles w peak senior author on the study in addition the prolonged delivery of the bioactive therapeutic could improve cell migration within 3d printed scaffolds and can help in rapid vascularization of scaffolds gaharwar said the prolonged delivery of the therapeutic could also reduce overall costs by decreasing the therapeutic concentration as well as minimizing the negative side effects associated with supraphysiological doses overall this study provides proof of principle to print protein therapeutics in 3d that can be used to control and direct cell functions he said the research was supported by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering of the national institutes of health and the national science foundation
192,kevin berto knew a graduate degree in ocean engineering would well equip him to contribute to the offshore energy industry this quickly proved to be true as his advisor dr jeffrey falzarano pointed him to a joint industry/academic research panel that was the perfect opportunity to draw upon his previous work experiences and further his educational pursuits organized by the society of naval architects and marine engineers (sname) offshore committee for wind technologies (oc-8) the panel focused on assessing how well the industry estimated wind-induced forces and associated overturning or capsizing moments on floating offshore installations using the currently available methods the studys focus resonated with me because wind is the only environmental factor explicitly considered in the us coast guard safety regulations for the stability of offshore units berto said therefore it is important that the industry designers get their estimates correct and that the us coast guard regulations afford these units an accurate safety margin to survive the worst-case storm conditions i felt i could play a role the study itself marked history as one of the largest collaborative efforts of a panel with over 25 diverse industry stakeholders contributing in-kind data to the sname oc-8 wind load comparative study berto served as the objective voice in receiving analyzing and drawing conclusions from the raw data the findings were published in an offshore technology conference paper titled a detailed look into the 2017 sname oc-8 comparative wind load study which was a sname otc best paper award winner the study provides an avenue to better protect lives the environment and the economic vitality of the offshore energy industry berto said in order to do this we must be able to accurately and consistently estimate the environmental forces imposed on the vessel
193,the most exciting finding of the sname comparative study was the low variability and consistency of test results from the five contributing wind tunnels in further significance was that the results from the numerical computer-based equivalent of wind tunnel testing known as computational fluid dynamics (cfd) were largely indistinguishable from the wind tunnel results the findings highlight the potential of cfd as an important engineering tool to design safer vessels kevin and texas a&m university's role as an honest broker in comparing the various predictions from the society of naval architects and marine engineers (oc-8) wind loads on offshore platforms maintains its leadership position in this area falzarano said the industry has been using wind tunnels since the 1960s and the identified method is the present de-facto industry standard for accurately estimating the wind forces and moments on floating offshore units historically however one of the major holdbacks to regulatory acceptance has been the absence of a validated governing industry standard in an effort to close this gap this study successfully validated a drafted industry wind tunnel testing guideline which is a huge step forward picking up from a 1988 sname organized and texas a&m involved effort berto said the validated guideline facilitates transparency and improves the reliability of wind tunnel tests along with falzarano berto worked with co-authors david p hodapp from the chevron energy technology company; dr edward white a professor in the department of aerospace engineering and director of the texas a&m oran w nicks low-speed aeronautical wind tunnel; lisa brown a graduate student and test engineer at oran w nicks wind tunnel; and more than 25 world-wide industry stakeholders that participated in-kind to this pioneering comprehensive study
194,the spacex falcon 9 rocket with the dragon cargo module lifted off from the florida space launch complex 40 at cape canaveral air force station on may 4 the commercial resupply services mission (crs-17) launched over 5 550 pounds of nasa cargo into orbit and successfully delivered it to the international space station (iss) on may 6 included in this cargo was a texas a&m university undergraduate capstone teams final project an experiment facility known as hermes which will be used to conduct experiments on asteroid particles in space the team made up of multidisciplinary engineering technology (mxet) mechatronics students luis orozco (embedded software) dustin tish (hardware systems) and jeremy coffelt (python software security and communications) celebrated the culmination of over a years work as they watched their project be launched into space
195,the students took over the hermes prototype that was developed by an electronic systems engineering technology capstone team and moved their design to the three production systems that underwent testing validation and acceptance by t star nasa engineers and scientists at the johnson space center the first of its kind hermes is a class-1e experiment facility that will host and support four microgravity experiment tubes that will be changed out every three to six months by an iss mission specialist through 2024 the first set of four hermes experiments will investigate microgravity effects on regolith (moon dust) simulants this is the type of project that clearly demands the broad-based experiential education available to students pursuing the new mxet mechatronics focus area at texas a&m stated matthew leonard president of t star
196,hermes is a self-contained system that is responsible for the monitoring and control of all aspects of the facility the system is composed of seven embedded intelligence devices six of them use a real-time operating system environment to monitor and control particular aspects of the facility or an individual experiment one of the devices is a beaglebone black which is the overall system and communications manager providing near real-time data and control capabilities for the scientists and engineers on earth hermes provides lighting imagery and vacuum resources to each experiment while transferring all data collected to both the solid-state storage that is part of the experiment cassette and the iss network drive to enable downloading on earth in addition hermes supports the addition of an external accelerometer that provides microgravity data to the scientists
197,the public-private-academic model of applied research developed by t star has made the design and development of hermes an unprecedented success using a capstone project to undertake the initial prototype design before moving that project to an applied research effort for product delivery is a unique approach to developing space-worthy systems within budget and schedule requirements t star has implemented this work model in two other texas a&m capstone projects helikite and cardinal helikite has produced a working prototype capable of measuring small fluctuations in magnetic fields this system will be tested in late june when it is attached to an ultralight aircraft and then towed by a ground-based vehicle the system will allow nasa scientists to evaluate whether or not it could one day be used on mars
198,the cardinal project implements a new approach to collecting asteroid particles at high altitudes it is intended to be an experimental facility attached to a high-altitude weather balloon once launched it will monitor several environmental parameters including barometric pressure when a preset altitude is reached the cardinal will automatically open its collection chamber and begin rotating the dust collection arm at a fixed rate once the system determines that the balloon is in position the rotating arm will be stowed and the chamber closed this new concept of collecting particles will provide a longer mission time with less contamination from the collection system itself from the hermes project to helikite and cardinal aggie students are changing the future of space experimentation and exploration
199,natural gas hydrates are an abundant energy resource found in small permafrost areas in northern latitudes and vast subsea sediment deposits off the coasts of every continent these subsea reservoirs could be a future resource for the world but there are many technical and operational challenges involved in extracting methane from the hydrates dr i yucel akkutlu rob l adams 40 professor in petroleum engineering is participating in the gas hydrate research efforts at texas a&m university his work centers on the technical challenges precisely why and how quickly hydrates melt and recrystallize and under what conditions his newfound discoveries are the key to developing better models of hydrate behavior a critical step toward producing hydrates in a safe economical and environmentally responsible way gas hydrates occur in nature when small gas molecules such as biogenic methane are trapped in the cavities among the water molecules and create solid ice-like crystals explains akkutlu in appearance its like ice but if you put a match on it it would flame hydrate crystals are scattered among the rocks and sand particles present in vast subsea sediment deposits making them difficult to mine the most economical way to harvest the crystals is to melt them in place allowing the methane gas and water to flow through the sediment toward a production well unfortunately altering the chilled temperatures or high pressures in these locations can lead to unexpected hydrate recrystallization which could halt their production when hydrates melt the process of melting leads to a local temperature drop said akkutlu this will lead to a reformation of the ice or hydrates and this will create a blockage to the fluids when we are trying to produce the fluid to the well my role is to understand the crystallization melting and recrystallization phenomena in a repetitive way
200,akkutlu used a large refrigeration unit outfitted with high-pressure walls instrumentation and a unique internal chamber to drop the temperature and build up the pressure so that water and methane molecules formed hydrate crystals in the sand under controlled conditions by performing the freezing and re-freezing experiments repeatedly and comparing them with previous results he was able to reveal critical patterns in the refreezing phenomena and find out why they occurred if the temperature was low when the hydrate crystals melted microscopic residues of hydrates were left behind in the water phase the remains consisted of clusters of hydrate cages called clathrates these residual amounts of crystal pieces in the water then became the nucleus during hydrate recrystallization and accelerated the process when the temperature dropped again this is known as the memory effect of water said akkutlu each time water melts crystals melt and the water is keeping a certain number of clusters randomly distributed in the water phase they become the memory of the water during recrystallization the memory effect influences the secondary hydrate formation significantly and in an unpredicted way that we call hysteresis akkutlu's research is part of a larger project led by assistant professor dr jihoon kim and funded by the us department of energy (doe) within the project akkutlu is leading and managing his own work on recrystallization and the experiments conducted at the lawrence berkeley national laboratory in california akkutlu is using measured patterns in the memory effect of water to develop a new thermodynamic model for implementation in the flow simulators that predict methane production from the wells the last stage of the project involves comparing the simulation results to data gathered in field tests done in south korea by the korean institute of geoscience and mineral resources and field tests already performed in alaska by conoco phillips and the doe off the shore of the gulf of mexico we have hydrate deposits holding methane molecules sufficient to supply the energy of this country for the next several hundred years said akkutlu unlocking this energy resource will require first unlocking new physics and chemistry phenomena such as the memory of water leading to hysteresis in recrystallization this makes hydrate research extremely challenging as well as exciting
201,stretchable electronics are where engineering meets hollywood special effects with a wide range of healthcare energy and military applications stretchable electronics are revered for their ability to be compressed twisted and conformed to uneven surfaces without losing functionality by using the elasticity of polymers such as silicone these emerging technologies are made to move in ways that mimic skin this sheds light on why smooth-on ecoflex a substance most commercially used to create molds and movie masks and prosthetics is the most prominent silicone elastomer (a rubber-like substance) found in research while handling a sample of the material dr matt pharr assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and graduate student seunghyun lee recently discovered a new type of fracture i have done some work in the area of stretchable electronics so i have a lot of materials from when i was a postdoc we had to store samples in our office and likewise i had some here because we were going to use them in a project that we ended up not doing im a nervous fidgeter and while i was playing with it i noticed something weird said pharr this oddity is what pharr and lee refer to in their recent publication sideways and stable crack propagation in a silicone elastomer as sideways cracking this phenomenon is when a fracture branches from a crack tip and extends perpendicular to the original tear
202,their findings not only provide a fresh new perspective on the formation of factures and how to increase stretchability in elastomers but also lay the foundation for more tear- and fracture-resistant materials initially this material is isotopic meaning it has the same properties in all directions but once you start to stretch it you cause some microstructural changes in the material that makes it anisotropic different properties in all different directions said pharr usually when people think about fracture of a given material they're not thinking about fracture resistance being different based on direction this conceptualization however is critical to innovation and advancement in stretchable electronics as pharr explained upon loading polymers with incisions tend to be ripped apart from one end to another however materials that exhibit sideways cracking stop the fracture from deepening instead the incision simply expands alongside the rest of the elastomer and eventually once stretched enough looks like nothing more than a small dent in the surface of the material negating further threat from the original crack this allows the unharmed section of an elastomer to retain its load-bearing and functional properties all while increasing stretchability going forward by investigating how to reverse engineer microstructures that lead to sideways cracking researchers can harness the benefits associated with it and develop application methods to materials that do not normally exhibit such fractures this would lead to better fracture resistance in the very thin layers of elastomers used in stretchable electronics as well as greater stretchability both of which are key to the advancement and future usability of such technologies to me this is scientifically intriguing said pharr its not expected and seeing something that i dont expect always sparks curiosity (the material) is literally sitting in a drawer in my desk and this was all inspired by playing around
203,five aggies kicked off their summer with a trip to mars a simulation program of extraterrestrial operations and research offered through mars academy usa (mau) engineering and science students from texas a&ms students for the exploration and development of space (tamu seds) lived in confinement and isolation in a habitat situated in soledad canyon california to conduct research that will aid in propelling our species toward life on the red planet mau missions are fully immersive in-person real-time simulations crew teams live work and collaborate together during the mission participants engage in various training activities work together on scientific projects and engage in experiential learning with technologies such as 3d printing telemedicine uavs and robotics space is the final frontier and as the human spirit of exploration leads us to pursue the unknown the next big step will be onto the surface of mars martian exploration presents an entirely new set of obstacles to overcome in various domains; propulsion landing construction in-situ resource utilization human physiology psychology and more opportunities to test mars concepts in space can be extremely limited and costly and with challenges so multifaceted and complex ahead of us industry government and academia are in need of an alternative proving ground studying groups living in extreme conditions on earth has been providing insights for over 60 years as to how humans will behave in challenging environments such as mars scientists have examined ‘real scenarios - arctic expeditions submarines and antarctic habitats - as well as controlled chamber studies there has been a recent push for hybrid analogs that join the investigation of actual environmental threat and physical hardship with intensive isolation confinement and experimental control mau facilitates analog mars missions such as this where a portable habitat can be deployed in harsh environments that replicate mars conditions in some key aspects mau crew 1123 is comprised of texas a&m students and graduates of varied backgrounds and career interests makiah eustice a graduated senior in aerospace engineering and brooke owens fellowship alumna lead the crew as commander she was president of tamu seds this past year developed aggie astronaut corps and spearheaded the partnership with mau i always wanted to find ways to contribute and get involved in the industry when i didnt find the opportunities i made them myself eustice said she has previous experience with analog missions from her participation at mars desert research station in 2018 she was assisted by executive officer/biomedical officer matthew edge a sophomore engineering student who was thrilled to get a taste of the red planet his crewmates shared this enthusiasm all kids from a young age dream of becoming an astronaut one day for me this analog mission is the closest thing to my adventurous dream every second is filled with excitement said ryunosuke fujii fujii is a sophomore focused on aerospace engineering and an astrophysics minor who served as crew engineer he applied the knowledge he gained in his engineering classes and past experiences in engineering teams to interact with and manipulate professional equipment such as facial recognition drones and modular 3d printers lindsay stapleton a sophomore engineering student interested in aerospace acted as health safety officer and crew journalist space physiology is my passion and this mission is an amazing opportunity to investigate the psychological effects of confinement and isolation said stapleton i am so thrilled to be experiencing life on mars and to be directing aggie astronaut corps in the upcoming school year neha baskar a second-year biochemistry student with a minor in geology served as crew scientist and geologist baskar is currently an undergraduate researcher in dr ryan ewings aeolian lab with hopes of becoming an astrobiologist one day since i was a young girl ive dreamed of becoming an astrobiologist and eventually going to mars she said this analog mission provides me with the opportunity to do geological field work and i truly believe that this analog mission will be the first step to fulfilling my dream of becoming an astrobiologist/astronaut
204,the crew was supported by ksenia benifand mdesign a canadian mau alumni and analog astronaut trainer she is a human-centered designer futurist and social researcher passionate about building resilient communities and authentic human networks to create a healthy equitable empathy-driven and sustainable future she is interested in developing virtual reality/augmented reality astronaut trainings and is currently on an xprize team developing modular robotic network systems that incorporate artificial intelligence dr susan ip-jewell founder of mars academy usa provided remote support and oversaw the mission on mission the crew engaged in geological and medical extravehicular activities drone operations telesurgery virtual reality conflict resolution 3d printing and more baskar and eustice conducted their own studies on geological samples and nonverbal communication external studies were performed on the crew; their nutrition biometrics mental health and task completion were monitored daily the aggies were ecstatic to join the ranks of analog astronauts who have made a concrete contribution to mars science and to share their experiences with the texas a&m community tamu seds seeks to connect students from varied backgrounds interested in space with industry opportunities and their like-minded peers in alignment with its mission tamu seds has developed a program called aggie astronaut corps (aac) to make human spaceflight education and experiences such as mau available to and affordable for texas a&m students aggie astronaut corps is a program open to all texas a&m students anyone interested in participating in the program during the upcoming school year can contact stapleton visit here for more information on mars academy usa
205,the power grid is one of those things that most of us take for granted but it's time to acknowledge that it's vulnerable to power outages due to age variability of distributed renewable generation resources and attacks the annual cost of short power interruptions (ie five minutes or less) in the us is $60 billion and in canada momentary outages (one minute or less) cost $8 billion annually while sustained outages cost $4 billion to help avoid such outages the national energy technology laboratory (netl) of the department of energy (doe) announced the award of nearly $7 million to explore the use of big data artificial intelligence and machine learning technology and tools to derive more value from the vast amounts of sensor data already being gathered and used to monitor the health of the grid and support system operations a texas a&m university team led by dr mladen kezunovic director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center received a $1 million netl grant to use big data analytics (bda) to automate monitoring of synchrophasor recordings the doe projects are expected to inform and shape the future development and application of faster grid analytics and modeling better grid asset management and sub-second automatic control actions that will help system operators avoid grid outages improve operations and reduce costs
206,kezunovic regents professor and the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering will lead the project big data synchrophasor monitoring and analytics for resiliency tracking (bdsmart) with most of the research being conducted at the smart grids control center at the center for infrastructure renewal the project will use bda to automate the monitoring of synchrophasor recordings which will improve assessing events that may affect power system resilience the proposed bda will be used to automatically extract knowledge leading to event analysis classification and prediction all used at different stages of the grid resilience assessment: operations operations planning and planning the research is aimed at developing data analytics algorithms to automatically analyze power system disturbances based on the measurements from the synchrophasor monitoring systems said kezunovic such analysis enables prediction of major disturbances that may cause a blackout as a result the use of such algorithms in the control centers will enable the electricity grid operators to maintain normal power system conditions and avoid outages kezunovic said the project will last 15 years and should benefit the utility industry by helping prevent future outages since current practices are very time consuming and quite often ineffective such algorithms do not exist today so the operators have to interpret the recordings using manual inspection which is tedious quite often inconsistent and most importantly overwhelming when a large number of recordings is available he said in the long run manual inspection and analysis is not effective and requires automation the projects techniques are based on past work performed at tees on automated classification of faults location of faults and instability detection using neural network and machine learning classifiers and predictors and the latest innovations in bda techniques developed by temple university kezunovic said they will develop the algorithms then test them using actual recordings from utility companies the team will engage experts from quanta technology (a prominent consulting firm in the area of power systems) experienced in the utility interaction to interpret the phasor measurement unit (pmu) data files to be utilized in the process they will facilitate industry feedback leading to the development of metrics for evaluation of the proposed solution additionally the project proposes a novel solution for predicting future events based on historical pmu data by extracting the sets of precursors and analyzing the development of pmu observed disturbances over time the co-principal investigators on the project are dr zoran obradovic professor at temple university (obradovic leads a center on data sciences and analytics ); dr yi hu executive advisor at quanta technology; and rachna handa innovation project leader at osissoft a major supplier of data management software for control centers this partnership makes a strong interdisciplinary team that assures the required expertise and a path to commercialization said kezunovic
207,three students from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university applied their creativity experience and interdisciplinary classroom education toward developing a self-playing glockenspiel in their microcomputer systems course students were given $100 each and challenged to create a group project that successfully merged software and hardware in anticipation of this course computer engineering senior jonathan westerfield had already orchestrated a project idea i cant play piano but i like to listen to piano music said westerfield i thought what if i made an automatic piano player so i can listen to the songs that i want to hear with a total budget of $300 and only a month to develop their project westerfield and fellow senior computer engineering undergraduate students alejandra sandoval and kenneth obkirchner scaled back their ambitions and applied their idea to the smaller more cost-effective glockenspiel
208,turning an idea into innovation taking lead on the hardware aspects of the project westerfield used solenoids as the physical mechanisms for playing the autospiel the name they gave their project a solenoid is basically a small coil of copper wire with a rod in the middle of it explained westerfield when you apply electricity through it it shoots then a spring puts it back into place
209,in his design he aligned a solenoid above each of the 32 keys on the glockenspiel so that when activated a solenoid would strike the key below it and play a note putting this physical component into action required westerfield to draw upon his classroom education in electrical engineering courses as a texas a&m engineering student westerfield utilized resources in the new susu and mark a fischer 72 engineering design center to design and fabricate a circuit board he then added a socket to the board that holds the projects microcontroller (a compact circuit) and created a platform out of an old ping pong table to station the raspberry pi (a credit-card sized barebones computer) and display
210,converting chords to code focusing on the first phase of the projects software creation sandoval developed user-friendly programs for the autospiel which would allow anyone to insert a usb loaded with songs and press play to do so required knowledge of programming and familiarity of the raspberry pi the raspberry pi is the (mini) computer that controls everything explained sandoval being skilled in python a programming language sandoval programmed the raspberry pi to achieve two tasks functional controls and music conversion
211,her coding allowed the raspberry pi to register when the play pause previous and next buttons were pressed act on that command and display the corresponding song title on the small lcd her programming also initiated the process of playing a song by converting the songs notes and times to data (think ones and zeros) and sending that data over a wire to the microcontroller
212,making sounds with software heading phase two of the software for the project obkirchners job was to blend the software with the hardware to automate the music working with the microcontroller the brain of the circuit board obkirchner wrote a complex c program that allowed the microcontroller to read the data like sheet music by reading his embedded code the microcontroller coordinated what notes were played and when to play them
213,when its time for a note to be played obkirchners code allowed the microcontrollers electric current to pass through a transistor flow through westerfields circuit board design and activate the appropriate solenoid to strike the key below it
214,to hear how their work came together listen to songs from the teams demo video: aggie war hymn | silent night | sandstorm by darude
215,kenneth obkirchner embedded programming what i really liked about the course was that since were all computer engineering majors this is the course where we actually combined all of our electrical engineering classes and software from our computer science classes into a very unique project alejandra sandoval music conversion and functionality i learned that after three years i can do stuff like hardware and software at the same time working as a team to build a project without any instructions jonathan westerfield hardware design and project manager i enjoyed watching the project go from just an idea in my head to something that not only worked but was also such high quality and then the people aspect this project would not have worked without my team
216,nathan hite a senior in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and member of the track and field team at texas a&m university has been named the 2018-19 southeastern conference h boyd mcwhorter scholar-athlete of the year this accolade presented by the southeastern conference since 1986 annually recognizes the nations top male and female student athletes in addition to a $20 000 scholarship to go toward his masters degree courtesy of at&t hite will be honored at the annual conference awards dinner in florida during the last week of may this is the culmination of all the work (nathan) has put in over the past five years said chris barttelbort assistant athletics director for academic services in a related kags press release his resume is impressive and his attitude and work ethic are first class he will be an exemplary representative of the southeastern conference texas a&m university and the mcwhorter scholarship in pursuit of his graduate degree and in all his future accomplishments read more about hites accomplishments in his article on kags
217,james jim hopper a former student in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has been honored with an outstanding alumni award from the college of engineering hopper is a model aggie engineering graduate said dr reza langari jr thompson department head chair and professor in his nomination letter his entrepreneurship hands-on technical ability support for education and selfless service makes him the embodiment of texas a&m ideals and a fitting candidate for this honor graduating with his bachelor of science in engineering technology in 1968 hopper walked across the stage and into the army where he served as a lieutenant in the us army corp of engineers before entering industry his dreams of becoming an entrepreneur were realized in 1972 when he founded megahertz technologies inc a leader in the development of wireless communication services to the public and private sectors in the dallas area hoppers firm presently offers first responders commercial freight operators and many others with push-to-talk wireless radio connectivity said langari these services are critical to the operation of these entities particularly when and where cellular connectivity may not be available or reliable in addition to his successful career hopper is passionate about education and going back to his roots to support the next generation of engineers and industry leaders his various gifts to scholarship programs and capstone projects including his recent gift of $500 000 to the capstone development fund for the electronics program in the department empower students to focus their efforts on the betterment of themselves and their community hopper spends time here at texas a&m throughout the year talking to students and doing guest lectures across a number of different courses in the curriculum said dr joseph morgan professor emeritus and program coordinator for the multidisciplinary engineering technology program he has become an outspoken advocate of the department and has been actively involved in all aspects of the program he has distinguished himself as an entrepreneur and technology leader in wireless communications he has been an inspiration and mentor to numerous students he takes time to meet and interact with faculty and finds ways to help them be more successful in their academic scholarship and service activities likewise his invaluable mentorship to senior capstone groups and involvement with the external advisory council for the department has bridged the gap between the classroom and real world many alumni want to leave a legacy of their contribution jims service to the texas a&m community and the department will extend far into the future his continued efforts represent the characteristics of an outstanding alumni said kelly bell an external advisory council member and president of m3 distribution inc
218,who: prabhasa kalkur a graduate student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university what: kalkur serves as an external officer for the electrical and computer engineering graduate student association (ece-gsa) and as vice president of the editorial team for the indian graduate student association (igsa) he is also the founder of tales at tamu a social media initiative which was created to provide indian aggies with a platform for expression why its so cool: engineering and creativity go hand in hand new innovations are born from imaginative ideas which are brought to life through research application and teamwork harnessing and combining the lessons learned from both ingenuity and engineering is integral not only for the development of expert leaders but also for the advancement and implementation of novel technology however finding a way to balance academia and creative freedom can prove to be a daunting challenge for new students especially those who are traveling to a new country for the first time when kalkur arrived at texas a&m from india to begin his graduate studies in electrical engineering he knew that he wanted to get involved with the campus community backed by prior experience in technical organizations during undergraduate studies he joined both ece-gsa and igsa ece-gsa was founded in 2017 to provide graduate students with a means to voice their opinions and come together as a community of scholars to promote professional growth and development as an external officer kalkur regularly attends general assemblies hosted by the graduate and professional student council and reports back information that is directly relevant to the department helping his fellow graduate students stay informed and up to date in addition to supporting the department his involvement with ece-gsa has provided him with an opportunity to sharpen his research skills in a non-lab setting a vital aspect of research is being able to draw upon a cacophony of information and extract only that which is relevant to an experiment or investigation like what he is doing in the general assemblies this allows a researcher to hone in on a specific issue in order to solve it efficiently and promptly
219,while ece-gsa highlights academic opportunities and promotes professional development as a leader and an engineer igsa has given him an avenue to explore creativity and build a community with fellow international students from all over india departments rarely host any kind of cultural event so (the hundreds of indian engineering students at texas a&m) barely get the chance to interact with each other on a social scale except in instances of assignments or technical discussions related to the department that can be very isolating for new students said kalkur enter igsa a student organization dedicated to bringing together current former and future indian graduate students at texas a&m in order to help them network share experiences and acclimate to their new home away from home as he explained meeting people through igsa has given kalkur an opportunity to interact and befriend students outside of engineering it has expanded his horizons in terms of self-expression while also providing a welcoming platform for students to express their voice through his content creation role membership with the editorial team and involvement with igsas social media campaign tales at tamu inspired by the humans of new york photoblog series tales at tamu encourages students to share their experiences overcome shyness and break down cultural and behavioral walls creating a network of diverse role models for others to look up to relate to and be empowered by by portraying how many of us go through similar troubles and that none of us face our struggles and obstacles alone we are bridging the wide gap that exists among the graduate student community he said in doing so he has also learned how to coordinate communicate and present various perspectives and ideas tools that are all invaluable to success as a leader and in industry igsa is a very diverse group when youre a member of the organization or volunteer at an event you forget that youre an engineer or a science student and you become part of a community said kalkur you get to share your thoughts opinions and ideas thats when you realize that there are a lot of people with inclinations for both creativity and their respective stem disciplines and that feels good
220,born in san diego california but raised in san antonio texas patricia (itzel) rodriguez has always tackled each challenge in her life head on going to texas was a big move for my family since my father was a pilot in the marine corps and leaving california meant he had to give up flying rodriguez said we moved because my health condition had gotten too out of hand to be traveling between the two cities every six months and my surgeon practiced in san antonio as a first-generation american she was taught to speak spanish from the moment she said her first word however when she entered school she was greeted with yet another obstacle when i entered kindergarten i had the biggest shock in my life when everyone spoke a different language than i did but i adapted and picked up the english language in a month rodriguez said honored as this years distinguished student in the department of ocean engineering she originally had her heart set on studying mechanical engineering when she first stepped foot on campus that all changed when she met lisa bratton through a mentoring program in the college of engineering during her freshman year i was assigned a mentor who just so happened to be an ocean engineering student rodriguez said lisa was one of my mentors and it was through her that i learned that there was such a thing as ocean engineering
221,"water makes up 70% of the earth and many questions still remain about the ocean environment and processes after major hurricanes like katrina and harvey we have been at the mercy of the seas and will continue to be until we figure out how to work with the natural world rodriguez said this natural world is what makes ocean engineering so interesting to me since its one of the few engineering majors that can take you away from the comfort of an office chair and put you in the environment you are studying the sea is mans last frontier "" she said ""weve discovered more about the surface of the moon than the ocean drawn to the small-town nature of the department she learned more about the department while meeting other current students professors and advisors were small its true but its one of the gems of this major she said when an organization like this is small you can sense the closeness of everyone whether they be a professor or student theres no competition here and we all get to know our professors and are able to learn a lot from them inside and outside of the classroom which in turn highlights the wisdom they impart on the younger generation while on the surface rodriguez may seem determined and strong-willed its her experiences that have shaped her into the resilient person she is today i was born with a lot of medical problems that have left me physically disabled but because of that part of my life ive had to learn to adapt to my environment she said through it all i was involved in a lot of physical activities that i had to make into my own today she is working toward earning her scuba diving certification but can never truly shut out everything she has overcome to get to this point i know how blessed i am compared to the vast majority of the people who have suffered what ive been through and i can never truly forget what it was like living in a hospital for a lot of my childhood she said ive had 29 surgeries and im done with that chapter in my life for now the fact that i can live and breathe on my own without the help of a chair or an oxygen tank is enough of an accomplishment for me i thank god every day for my mind; for a strong mind can get you through even the hardest challenges but also to remind oneself that anything is possible with a bit of craftiness and patience"
222,distribution and systems management are key for industry success companies rely on optimization techniques and analytics to streamline their operations and keep their business efficient productive and cost-effective bridging the gap between industry and academia dr malini natarajarathinam associate professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university and a team of students partnered with brenntag north america to do just that the main goal of our project was to maximize the companys distribution asset utilization and distribution network performance said natarajarathinam the research team identified opportunities to improve network configuration in order to reduce cost provided recommendations on hub locations and required inventory levels to align with the companys focus on transportation efficiency and to support current and higher customer service levels a leader in chemical and ingredient solution product distribution brenntag has more than 530 locations in 74 countries – creating a network of innovation and distribution around the world brenntag north america the branch of the company that operates in canada and the united states consists of 190 distribution locations offering more than 10 000 products needless to say finding ways to optimize and coordinate distribution and shipment sites is critical for such a company the special characteristic of chemical distribution to transport back empty containers of various sizes for refills poses a challenge to transportation efficiency said natarajarathinam armed with a plethora of data the team focused on brenntag mid-south which handles kentucky indiana illinois missouri tennessee alabama ohio west virginia virginia north carolina south carolina georgia and florida considering the location and number of distribution hubs suppliers and customers as well as the demand for various products the team created multiple computational models to compare the cost of distribution services and enhance operations within the nation brenntag was interested in reducing the logistics cost from vendor to servicing point said tom fidler director of supply chain at brenntag mid-south brenntag was utilizing a tool that selected the landing location for vendor material but were not able to understand the cost of choosing a different decision natarajarathinam said her teams investigations and models led them to create two user-friendly and vital tools for brenntag north america to utilize now and into the future the first is a strategic tool that incorporated the results from every optimization model the team tested and demonstrated the benefits of each allowing the company to better understand their current system of distribution by identifying the vendor that provides the minimum transportation cost and the most optimal distribution network for transfers within brenntag facilities our strategic tool enabled them to compare options to reduce their transportation cost said natarajarathinam the second tool which improved upon an already available system performed a real-time analysis for shipments and orders and identified which location would be most cost-effective for them to use especially for transferring products between company warehouses by being able to compare the costs associated with shipments the material management team is able to make an informed choice as to where distributions should be made from and to thereby reducing the cost of transportation said natarajarathinam david garner senior vice president for brenntag north america said the texas a&m research team worked through many iterations of brenntags logistics tools in conjunction with their purchasing team and dealing with their proprietary computer system and found the ideal solution for their organization the final product totally exceeded our expectations and will be a springboard for us to take these learnings and tools into other parts of our company he said the texas a&m team helped us build the system to properly evaluate cost in landing locations along with a tool enabling better strategic decisions on vendor material fidler said brenntag has implemented the tools and are starting to capture financial rewards
223,several members of the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university were honored for their contributions at the college of engineering's 2019 faculty and staff awards banquet the awards were presented by texas a&m engineering vice chancellor and dean dr m katherine banks who recognized more than 40 faculty and staff members from throughout the college the mechanical engineering honorees were:
224,staff excellence award - sandra havens program specialist ii
225,association of former students college level teaching award - harry hogan professor and associate dean for graduate programs
226,charles crawford distinguished teaching award - bryan rasmussen professor
227,william keeler memorial award for service - david staack associate professor sallie and don davis '61 career development professor and director of engineering laboratory instruction
228,dean of engineering excellence award (professor) - eric petersen nelson-jackson professor and director of the turbomachinery laboratory
229,five faculty and one staff member from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university were recognized at the college of engineerings faculty and staff awards banquet for their outstanding achievements and excellence for the past year the recipients are as follows: james boyd association of former students college level teacher award darren hartl tees young faculty fellow vikram kinra william keeler memorial award for service wayne lutz instructional faculty teaching award helen reed college of engineering excellence in teaching award colleen leatherman key contributor award
230,dr elaine oran has joined the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university as a tees eminent professor oran is a physical scientist and is considered a world authority on numerical methods for large-scale simulation of physical systems oran pioneered computational technology for the solution of complex reactive flow problems unifying concepts from science mathematics engineering and computer science in a new methodology her techniques for numerical simulation of fluid flows have brought better understanding to a diverse range of phenomena from the tightly-grouped movements of fish in the earths oceans to the explosions of far-flung supernovae in space her work has contributed significantly to the advancement of the engineering profession orans research interests include work on chemically reactive flows turbulence numerical analysis high-performance computing and parallel architectures shocks and shock interactions rarefied gases and microfluidics with applications to combustion propulsion astrophysical explosions and micro-sensor design she is the author of over 300 refereed journal articles and many conference papers and presentations as well as co-author of the book numerical simulation of reactive flow (2nd edition cambridge press 2001) oran received her bachelors degrees in physics and chemistry from bryn mawr college and her masters degree in physics and doctoral degree in engineering and applied sciences from yale university she is a fellow and an honorary fellow of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences a member of the national academy of engineering and a fellow of the combustion institute the american physical society and the society of industrial and applied mathematics among many awards given to oran are the fluid dynamics prize from the american physical society in 2013 the presidential rank award for distinguished senior professionals from the united states government in 2007 the zeldovich gold medal of the combustion institute in 2000 and the dryden lectureship in research from the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics in 2002
231,in 2017 it was estimated that there were nearly 42 million veterans with service-connected disabilities many of whom required housing assistance in one form another to be able to live independently among these are about 42 000 veterans with severe spinal cord injuries and disorders researchers at texas a&m university are working on new technology that could help these veterans achieve even more independence the department of veterans affairs (va) oversees a program offered to veterans and service members with certain service-connected disabilities called specially adapted housing (sah) which provides funds to modify or construct an adapted home to meet their needs typical adaptations include ramps wider halls and doors or wheelchair-accessible bathrooms but there are many other emerging technologies that could improve home adaptions or enhance a veteran or service member's ability to live independently such as voice-recognition and voice-command operations living environment controls and adaptive feeding equipment the va has defined this as new assistive technology (at) an advancement that could aid or enhance the ability of a veteran or service member to live in an adapted home
232,to help improve this new assistive technology the va is awarding specially adapted housing assistive technology (sahat) grants dr hangue park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering along with dr jeonghee kim assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution have received a $200 000 sahat grant to work on their own assistive technology device park said he and kim had been working on types of assistive technology since their doctoral studies 10 years ago but it wasnt enough we were not satisfied with what we did and we think there is still a long way to go for ats for severely disabled individuals he said park said most people with quadriplegia still depend on old assistive technologies such as the sipnpuff head-switch and mouth-stick in spite of their limited functionality and accessibility it is mainly because they are intuitive robust easy-to-use and price competitive he said however those basic ats do not support multiple commands and cannot handle multiple devices such as computers powered wheelchairs and smartphones indeed a considerable effort has been put out to develop advanced ats for people with quadriplegia however one of the main reasons that advanced ats fail in the market is because theyre difficult to operate or learn as advanced ats have versatile functionalities with a more complex operating principle command intuitiveness becomes more and more important to reduce the cognitive burden to address this issue and make the advanced and intuitive at available the researchers proposed a new multifunctional intraoral assistive technology (mora) mora employs intuitive intraoral (occurring within the mouth) commands and motion-dependent sensory feedback to make the advanced ats more convenient and easier to use park said the intraoral function is intact for most people even after a high-level spinal cord injury because intraoral organs are designed to perform sophisticated and repetitive motor tasks and motion-dependent sensory feedback is crucial for the new motor learning mora will be easily accepted by people with quadriplegia and promote their sustained functional independence as a one-stop shop to control multiple devices and intuitive interface to the environment with minimal cognitive burden he said park is excited about working on mora and credits much of their ability to pursue this research to the environment at texas a&m texas a&m university provides a great research environment for me and (kim) our department heads dr miroslav begovic and dr reza langari are extremely supportive to assistant professors which truly helps us to pursue our research park said also texas a&m provides a great research environment to pursue spinal cord injury research under the leadership of dr james grau faculty in the texas a&m spinal cord initiative help each other with the same objective of improving the quality of life for people with a spinal cord injury i feel privileged to work as a part of texas a&m spinal cord initiative it is really a family-like environment and makes a great synergy among faculty in multiple disciplines park was pleased to receive the grant and do his part to help veterans and adds that their new device will not be limited to veterans with spinal cord injuries because the same technology can be generally applied to veterans with other severe disabilities veterans should be taken care of with special attention as a way to appreciate their sacrifice for the nation and other people park said (kim) and i very much appreciate this opportunity from the united states department of veterans affairs and are looking forward to contributing to improve the quality of life for veterans
233,dr rodney bowersox professor and department head of the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been appointed to the united states air force scientific advisory board (sab) the sab is a federal advisory committee that provides independent advice on matters of science and technology relating to the air force mission reporting directly to the secretary and chief of staff of the air force the board consists of approximately 50 members appointed by the secretary of defense from among the nations leading experts in science technology engineering and technical program leadership across national laboratories industry and academia members offer their time to benefit the air force and the nation by identifying applications of technology that can improve air force capabilities or that could enable entirely new capabilities and advising on the air force science and technology portfolio to maximize its value in supporting the air force mission bowersox is the holder of the ford motor co design professorship i and was named a department of defense vannevar bush faculty fellow in 2017 he founded and directs the texas a&m national aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory his research interests include gasdynamics hypersonics aerothermochestry high-speed aerodynamics aero-propulsion turbulence modeling and numerical simulations bowersox received his doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from virginia polytechnic institute & state university in 1992 he is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers associate fellow of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) member of the american chemical society american physical society and the optical society he is also an associate editor for the aiaa journal of propulsion and power
234,dr richard miles tees eminent professor in the department of aerospace engineering has been named a distinguished professor by texas a&m university the highest faculty honor the designation identifies faculty members who are preeminent in their fields and their accomplishments are exemplified by outstanding teaching mentoring discovery and service they demonstrate to the world the high quality of scholarship at texas a&m miles joined the department in 2017 his research focuses on the use of lasers electron beams microwaves and magnetic devices these devices observe control accelerate extract power and precondition gas flows for supersonic and hypersonic fluid dynamics combustion propulsion and homeland defense applications his research group is widely recognized for inventing new linear and nonlinear optical diagnostics developing a new understanding of plasma aerodynamic interactions and exploring new concepts for hypersonic ground test facilities past recipients of the lifetime title participate in the selection process growing the ranks of distinguished professors by just a handful of scholars each year
235,texas a&m engineering vice chancellor and dean dr m katherine banks recognized faculty and staff award winners during the 2019 faculty and staff awards banquet for faculty banks presented teaching awards faculty fellow awards service awards dean of engineering excellence awards and contribution awards for staff she presented staff excellence awards a new employee award a key contributor award and the engineering team award staff awards key contributor award colleen leatherman (aerospace engineering) new employee award neal ellis (human resources) staff excellence award andrea burks (nuclear engineering); sandra havens (mechanical engineering); andrea kishne (electrical and computer engineering); kelley mcdermott (tees fiscal office); kassandra sims (civil engineering); paul white (tees information technology); yesenia zavala (industrial and systems engineering) engineering team award jennifer ligon alexander wood and susan woodard (national center for therapeutics manufacturing) faculty awards association of former students college level teaching award daniel alge (biomedical engineering); james boyd (aerospace engineering); harry hogan (mechanical engineering); colonel (ret) mark johnson (engineering technology and industrial distribution) charles crawford distinguished teaching award bryan rasmussen (mechanical engineering) college of engineering excellence in teaching award helen reed (aerospace engineering); ding zhu (petroleum engineering) instructional faculty teaching award ibere alves (petroleum engineering); wayne lutz (aerospace engineering); ciriaco valdez-flores (industrial and systems engineering) george armistead jr ‘23 faculty excellence teaching award pavel tsvetkov (nuclear engineering) college of engineering outstanding contribution awards william o and montine p head memorial award for contributions roozbeh jafari (biomedical engineering) williams brothers construction engineering award for contributions dominique lord (civil engineering) college of engineering service awards william keeler memorial award for service vikram kinra (aerospace engineering); zivko nikolov (biological and agricultural engineering); david staack (mechanical engineering) college of engineering faculty fellows eugene webb faculty fellow peng li (electrical and computer engineering) josey family foundation faculty fellow kristen maitland (biomedical engineering) william o and montine p head faculty fellow scott socolofsky (civil engineering) tees fellow awards tees young faculty fellows akhilesh gaharwar (biomedical engineering); darren hartl (aerospace engineering) tees faculty fellows james caverlee (computer science and engineering); guofei gu (computer science and engineering); vladislav yakovlev (biomedical engineering) tees senior faculty fellow lin shao (nuclear engineering) dean of engineering excellence award assistant professor alaa elwany (industrial and systems engineering); xia (ben) hu (computer science and engineering) associate professor hae-kwon jeong (chemical engineering) professor eric petersen (mechanical engineering) tees research impact awards akhilesh gaharwar (biomedical engineering); yassin hassan (nuclear engineering); robin murphy (computer science and engineering); scott schaefer (computer science and engineering)
236,holly ridings nasa chief flight director and jay still president ceo and chairman of the board of guidon energy were inducted into the texas a&m university j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering academy of distinguished graduates established in 1992 the academy of distinguished graduates recognizes the extraordinary impact and significant professional accomplishments of outstanding former students in industry government or academia it also encourages these leaders to act as role models for current students in the department there are currently 56 members representing less than 1% of living former students the 2019 inductees were honored at the departments spring awards and recognition banquet ridings and still shared their thoughts on how their education in the department impacted them as well as gave advice to current students preparing to begin their careers q: what does being named a distinguished graduate of the department mean to you ridings: being named a distinguished graduate is truly an honor i am humbled to be included in such a small and amazing group of accomplished aggie mechanical engineers each of the distinguished graduates have affected their specific fields and industries in a meaningful and unique way supplying leadership and vision for the texas a&m department of mechanical engineering to look at nasa and my role as the chief flight director and determine that it meets that criteria is something i never expected and will strive to represent with integrity as i continue my career still: it is a tremendous honor and something very much not expected there are thousands of texas a&m mechanical engineering graduates that have gone on to have productive careers and to be selected as one of the most successful or ‘most distinguished is really special to me q: how did your education prepare you for your career ridings: my education at texas a&m was top notch and i have always felt prepared with a solid foundation of engineering skills along with the subject matter my education at texas a&m also prepared me how to approach and solve problems and to be excited about solving them i was also fortunate to have many many teachers that served as mentors the opportunity to dialogue with them about academic pursuits and interests or simply about life is one of the most enduring benefits of my education my time at texas a&m gave me the many skills required to be successful at nasa such as technical excellence communication and teamwork still: since i was not blessed with brilliance i had to work hard to get my degree as i watched my friends in less challenging majors have a lot more fun than i was having this is no different outside of school where you have to put in the effort to be successful the corps of cadets offered me leadership and time management skills that have been invaluable q: what advice would you give current students ridings: become a student of learning not one degree or one industry but everything you can learn something from anyone anywhere if you keep your mind open and curious seek out the hard tasks even if they are not the most glamorous you will learn the most because they are hard and you will also learn that the accomplishment is not all about you learn how to take and give feedback good and bad find someone a teacher or a friend and practice this skill will serve you well in everything you do still: your academic career is serious work that will prepare you for your next career take it seriously and work hard however your time at the texas a&m is a once in a lifetime opportunity that should not be squandered on just academics or wasting away the hours get involved in other meaningful and value-adding activities where you can take leadership roles internships are really valuable and you have to make the effort to secure those opportunities make new friends but be selective about who you want to be associated with as they will be friends for a lifetime have fun along the way q: is there anything either of you would like to add ridings: attending texas a&m means much more than getting a degree it means you are part of a family any time you are able to represent aggieland or give back in some small way it is an opportunity to hold your head high as part of the unbroken chain of duty and excellence thank you again for the tremendous honor still: i have always lived by the simple principle of if you keep doing good things good things will happen it may not be on your time schedule but they will happen this recognition is a validation of this principle
237,for the second year in a row the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) has recognized the texas a&m university gamma mu chapter of the eta kappa nu honor society with the outstanding chapter award this distinguished award recognizes excellence in chapter administration activities and programs an international society of scholars associated with the prestigious ieee eta kappa nu has over 200 chapters at universities around the globe originally founded in 1904 to help electrical engineering students find and succeed in their careers the society has dedicated over 100 years to encouraging developing and awarding excellence in ieee-related fields im very happy to see that our chapter has been recognized said dr miroslav begovic department head and carolyn s & tommie e lohman ‘59 professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering im proud of the dedication of our students and that we have been selected for the outstanding chapter award for two years in a row i hope that we will continue the tradition and live up to the expectations that come with this measure of recognition the gamma mu chapter officers include computer engineering senior ayaz abdullah electrical engineering senior chad crosby electrical engineering junior pulakit mishra electrical engineering senior andres trujillo electrical engineering senior razan ghabin electrical engineering senior jaime avila and electrical engineering junior javier mirabal this award validates all of the effort that we as officers put into the organization in order to help our fellow electrical and computer engineering students out a lot of times we dont directly see the fruits of our labor but something like this really just brings it to life said crosby vice president of the gamma mu chapter abdullah president of the gamma mu chapter added onto the sentiment saying that the current and previous awards have already impacted the organization if you just compare last year to this year we've probably had double the amount of candidates join our organization said abdullah going forward (the award) will definitely help us especially with marketing and getting more company partnerships we can confidently say that we are not just a distinguished organization but we also have excellent students it lets us know that we should keep going and pushing toward future success
238,j melinda 96 and gregory lyman hall 96 have established the melinda 96 and greg hall 96 scholarship to benefit one or more students pursuing a degree in the zachry department of civil engineering j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering or artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university greg chose texas a&m for its premier engineering program and existing family ties along with many other relatives who attended the university my grandfather was class of 1940 and my uncle was class of 1969 greg said knowing i wanted to be an engineer texas a&m was the overwhelming choice for me due to the quality of education and of course the aggie network melinda does not have family ties to the university but felt at home from the moment she stepped foot on campus i love tradition so texas a&m was the obvious choice in that aspect melinda said plus i wanted to be an engineer and stay in texas so there was really no question of where i was going to go to school melinda and greg believe their time at texas a&m greatly impacted their careers in engineering during my time as an undergraduate student in civil engineering and graduate student in the mays school of business i learned to work with a multitude of personality types on all sorts of projects melinda said i have worked in engineering project management financial analysis and contract administration throughout my career and my time at texas a&m prepared me to excel in these fields greg currently serves as the executive vice president of bcck engineering inc specializing in full engineering procurement and construction projects this includes concept engineering design fabrication manufacturing and complete construction services a mark of a good engineering program is its ability to teach students to be better problem solvers greg said texas a&m prepared me for the workplace and to be a productive employee and we need both of these things in our company and engineering industry as business owners in west texas the halls understand the importance of hiring quality individuals to fill the engineering roles available in the community and business we see the need for all disciplines of engineers especially those willing to work in the permian basin melinda said we have been fortunate to get to know high school students in the area all of which have tremendous academic potential and if given the opportunity they would be a great fit in engineering the halls are ecstatic to see the impact their endowment has and look forward to connecting with the students they help support and who have the potential to return the areas theyre needed most we look forward to doing a small part to better the lives of some of these deserving students who may in turn return to the permian basin or the panhandle and make those places better as well melinda said
239,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
240,ivan g mieth iii 18 has established a planned gift to create the ivan g mieth iii 18 scholarship in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering from texas a&m university mieth knew he wanted to pursue petroleum engineering since his sophomore year of high school but it was something more that drew him to texas a&m i knew texas a&m was the place for me because of the rigor and prestige of the program mieth said my grandfather who passed away in 2012 graduated in 1955 from texas a&m which established a family tie to the university mieth also noted the aggie network as a factor in his decision to attend texas a&m there have been numerous times where i have walked into a room seen an aggie ring and struck up a conversation with the person wearing it meith said relationships become deeper quicker because of the connection to texas a&m mieth was supported by scholarships during his time at texas a&m and believes the last thing a student should be focused on is how to pay for their education worrying about how youre going to pay for school should not be a major concern for students mieth said mieth believes there should be scholarships to simply reward students for a job well done its nice to be recognized for the good work you do as a student even if its not need-based mieth said as a recent graduate mieth did not think he would be in a position to establish a scholarship so soon professors and students ive interacted with at texas a&m have made it a life priority to continue educating students by giving their time and providing monetary support so it was never a question of if i would give back to the university but when mieth said i was able to take advantage of my employers match program to establish a scholarship a few months ago and am looking forward to continuing to give to texas a&m
241,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact thadd hargett senior director of development
242,the student engineers council (sec) at texas a&m university is creating five new scholarship opportunities three of which are in conjunction with private donors were here to serve said reed hampton the 2018-19 sec president by endowing scholarships we can impact the lives of students at texas a&m in perpetuity
243,previously the sec donated the first million dollars to the construction of the new zachry building sparking a giving campaign that led to the zachry engineering education complex opening in 2018 when the councils executive board started last april they were inspired to give back to students in a way that could impact the lives of individuals their funding comes from companies who pay to be a part of the career fair corporate donations and decades of fiscally conservative financial planning
244,these scholarships will help make texas a&m more accessible to a variety of students by decreasing the financial burden of pursuing a degree said philip venesky the 2018-19 sec vice president of development we also wanted to recognize the specific pursuits of students in the college of engineering who reflect the values of our college the sec utilized the diverse perspectives of their members to help create the scholarship criteria
245,the first two endowed scholarships are the student engineers council deans scholar award and the student engineers council ambassador of engineering scholarship the former will be a scholarship made in conjunction with the deans scholars program rewarding one outstanding incoming freshman engineering student every year with a scholarship the latter rewards students who represent what the college of engineering stands for outside of the classroom the sec has provided the principal investment for the next three scholarships with the hope that another donor will match the principal investment to capitalize on the amount of scholarship disbursements to students the matching investment could come from one private donor or multiple donors the sec has contributed $100 000 in matching funds for the student engineers council endowed fellowship and $50 000 in matching funds respectively for the student engineers council impact scholarship and student engineers council delta scholarship the student engineers council endowed fellowship will reward graduate students who are continuing their education at texas a&m the student engineers council impact scholarship identifies and rewards students who have made a positive impact on the college of engineering through their work in academics or philanthropic pursuits finally the student engineers council delta scholarship acknowledges that sometimes failure really is the best teacher and rewards students for significant improvement in their pursuit of professional engineering a story that resonates with hampton and his journey toward a computer science degree the scholarship is unique in that it identifies the rate of change or the growth of a student as the criteria for selection instead of merely evaluating their grades at that point in time none of these scholarships would be possible without the hard work and dedication of hundreds of sec members over many years and for that we are extremely grateful said hampton
246,from 3d printers to nuclear reactors engineers have designed the modern world investing in texas a&m engineering students is an investment in the next generation of innovators on an individual level an engineering degree not only leads to excellent career prospects but it also has a lifelong personal impact pursuing an engineering education will challenge you every day and make you realize new things about yourself said hampton the group hopes the direct annual impact of the scholarships will inspire future sec members and former students to continue to invest in students and pursue new avenues of giving back aggies have created a network that is world renowned for helping each other said venesky we give back to each other thats what makes us aggies
247,are you interested in supporting the college of engineering through a matching donation contact kevin westerman for more information
248,six students from the college of engineering have been named distinguished graduate students for 2019 by the office of graduate and professional studies and the association of former students they were among a group of 15 graduate students from texas a&m university who were recognized for their exemplary accomplishments in one of two categories: research and teaching the students were recognized for their exemplary accomplishments during a ceremony on april 29 at rudder forum on the texas a&m campus the 2019 recipients from the college of engineering are: james k carrow department of biomedical engineering faculty advisor: dr akhilesh gaharwar lauren m cross department of biomedical engineering faculty advisor: dr kristen maitland madeleine s durkee department of biomedical engineering faculty advisor: dr kristen maitland mahdi imani department of electrical engineering faculty advisor: dr ulisses braga-neto minxiang zeng department of chemical engineering faculty advisor: dr zhengdong cheng varun gejji department of biological & agricultural engineering college of agriculture & life sciences faculty advisor: dr sandun fernando
249,every year roughly 40 nuclear engineering students register for the much anticipated nuen 479 an innovative real-world capstone experience for undergraduates completing a radiological health minor the course has an entrepreneurial focus said dr john ford associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university students collaborate in teams to find a problem in the nuclear industry and use the knowledge theyve gained in the last four years to form companies and design solutions this experiential learning experience helps them take that leap from college to industry students work in campus nuclear laboratories classrooms and the new susu and mark a fischer '72 engineering design center in the zachry engineering education complex to create their prototypes
250,erin allen brendan d'souza and kiana dunaway the illumination group was founded after noticing a large turnover of lab technicians in hospitals working with radiation and radiation equipment this turnover was due to the lack of confidence in working with radiation due to lackluster radiation safety education that was not standardized across hospitals and first responder groups the lack of adequate radiation safety education could lead to high exposure and dose rates for personnel the illumination group would be the first private consulting firm to offer large corporations hospitals laboratories and first responders a radiation safety course that standardizes radiation education and practices across all levels of the workforce their proprietary course would cover radiation safety basics and information targeted toward a company's specific needs along with the courses provided a proprietary mobile application would be included to give immediate access to radiation safety information and knowledge regarding certain situations and equipment the application would use targeted questions based on profession and situation to lead the user to the correct up-to-date information they need by offering optimal radiation safety courses the confidence of workers would increase leading to safer practices and fewer radiation accidents
251,ryan stolt christian sanchez carlos graybill and mark mengel the federal atomic committee aims to decrease the threat of nuclear terrorism by detecting highly enriched nuclear material into improvised nuclear devices or weaponized radiological material into radiological dispersal devices the committees solution is to place a detector on the bottom of traffic lights in order to detect cars that are radioactive and alert law enforcement the detectors would be placed in rings around the city from the outer core to the inner core to help law enforcement locate terrorists and take action
252,andrew smiley dinyar kadkhodaian and josen chan its difficult for medical professionals to accurately and consistently aim x-ray machines doctors also have trouble calibrating machines without overexposing patients radyne aims to create affordable practice phantoms for radiological health and veterinary training these phantoms are realistic human and animal models that would replicate the same levels of radiation exposure and have an increased range of motion for positioning over current nonstandardized models they would be standardized durable and resistant providing a valuable extended lifetime use to the industry
253,sydney land kay yee liat even and nathan caldwell currently surgeons are at risk of being over exposed to radiation and possibly developing brain cancer during fluoroscopic operation procedures fluoroscopy is the study of moving body structures using a continuous x-ray beam that is passed through the body part being examined the beam is transmitted to a tv-like monitor so that the body part and its motion can be seen in detail lead caps are currently worn by doctors to shield radiation and protect their brains but the caps are heavy and unsafe the shield a doc solution would eliminate the weight and lead danger presented by lead caps they will have a more flexible design and adjustable drawstring and their product would be offered in several sizes fabrics and lead equivalency thicknesses the new material would be a thin lightweight alternative combination of tin tungsten and alimony meaning it would be lead and latex free while still ensuring adequate x-ray protection their tagline is radiation protection done right and light
254,are you interested in partnering with our department to solve problems and provide a career defining experience to the next generation of nuclear engineers contact dr karen kirkland for more information
255,texas a&m university senior design students are doing their part to move automobile energy efficiency into the future alongside their peers from around the world a team of 10 graduating mechanical engineering seniors from texas a&m won the prize for off-track safety at the annual shell eco-marathon energy efficiency competition in sonoma california it was the first time a team from texas a&m has competed the global competition which began in 1939 as an informal competition between shell scientists to see who could get a car to run furthest on one gallon of fuel aims to give high school and university students the opportunity to participate in a collaborative hands-on experience pursuing the development of highly energy-efficient vehicles
256,the texas a&m team led by project manager vishal modi competed in the urban concept and internal combustion engine categories at the competition with a goal of developing a vehicle that could average hundreds of miles per gallon and featured four wheels space for a driver a luggage compartment and other common car components such as headlights brake lights turn indicators hazards a horn and a windshield team member jacob hartzer said he and his peers were inspired by the competitions goal of directing the brightest young minds from around the planet toward making an impact on some of the challenges facing the future of energy consumption among vehicles this project serves to propel technology and innovation in the automobile industry technology that could impact the daily lives of billions of people hartzer said on a much smaller scale this project introduces students to an extremely complex and comprehensive project the experience gained by members of the team far exceeded the standard senior design project and will likely be built off of in our careers
257,in addition to modi and hartzer the team included grayson aldrich larsen dempsey colin michels connor michels stephen lara-ramirez vikas rao christian rivera and ziad wardeh ultimately the teams win for the off-track safety award was a testament to their dedication to the project with no previous car to improve on like many of their peers at the competition we were able to build a car from scratch in less than seven months and clear technical inspection a feat many first-year teams are not able to accomplish modi said the judges were overwhelmed with the quality of the team's safety report submission and display of safety concern at the competition itself modi said he and his senior design teammates were proud of what they accomplished as a first-year team and looked forward to seeing where their successors will take the design moving forward everyone from this years team will be graduating however we do intend on having a team compete next year with new students modi said this will ideally turn into an annual senior design project with students making improvements to the car each year to make the team more competitive as a team this year we were hoping to lay the foundation for future teams to compete for many years and soon become a major competitor in the shell eco-marathon
258,more than $10 000 was awarded at the 2019 engineering project showcase which featured more than 230 team projects showcasing the work of over 1 200 engineering students these projects include departmental capstone design projects from engineering departments across the texas a&m university college of engineering and multidisciplinary team projects such as the aggie_challenge program and student design competitions over 150 industry judges came to the event held in the zachry engineering education complex many of them aggie engineers themselves several made a point to praise the programs rigor in order to have inspired that level of innovation and diversity in projects in the showcase
259,"we have one of the largest engineering project showcases in the nation said magda lagoudas executive director for industry and nonprofit partnerships every year the showcase grows larger as students see the benefit of these project experiences industry judges are continually impressed with their dedication and skills they demonstrate here john cavolowsky nasa director in the transformative aeronautics concepts program has judged two years in a row he said he was glad an exception was made for a non-aggie because he so enjoys getting to meet the students and see their projects for me a recovering engineer this is just a blast seeing the passionate students challenging work and tasks they are taking on and the progress theyre making "" said cavolowsky its been a kick we always take ourselves back and ask ‘what would we have done were we in this position 30 or 40 years ago boy the capability skills and talent that the students bring today are just phenomenal i couldnt compete with the talent that is here the size effort and quality of the work coming out of here is just great"
260,check out our photos from that day! see what kind of projects were there or just snag a photo of yourself or a friend!2019 photo gallery link
261,industry judges praised the inter- and multi-disciplinary aspects of the team projects they saw acknowledging that this is how engineering works in the real world an aggie-challenge team made up of students from five different majors was working on a solution for energy efficient water desalination only 1% of the earths water is available for drinking said ammarah junaid a chemical engineering student the rest is frozen in ice caps or present in salt water we want a solution thats cost time and energy efficient were making graphite films to be used as a filter separating salt molecules in water to clean the water and make it suitable for drinking
262,the showcase gives many seniors the opportunity to display the culmination of what theyve learned and applied in their senior design class students like nathan fulbright a mechanical engineering senior were provided with a challenge by a company for a senior capstone project his team was asked to automate the hydraulic function used in changing out the front-end implement of a tractor for kubota tractor corporation kubota was an overall satisfied sponsor said fulbright we showed its possible to do even though we experienced a setback with a mechanism failure and it doesnt look as smooth as wed hoped it to we showed a proof-of-concept and that it can be done another capstone design team presented their rehabilitation solution for lynntech inc that allowed the people suffering from muscular atrophy functionality of their hands while providing rehabilitation of the fingers people who suffer from muscular atrophy the nerves in their fingers are damaged said biomedical engineering student amran kang they have minimal function in their fingers weve created an exoskeleton that also acts as a rehabilitation device as they get stronger we can increase the threshold allowing them to recover functions we believe this will impact in the millions said cynthia rojas fellow team member and biomedical engineering student there are already devices on the market that help with day-to-day function but our device improves on those using low-cost materials that will be lightweight not cause discomfort and be easy to use this is the seventh year for the showcase each year it grows as more students challenge themselves to create innovate and apply the knowledge they gain in the classroom sponsors of the event were: emerson daikin shell baker hughes - a ge company houston airports boeing bell peak nano phillips 66 and national instruments click here for a full list of winners
263,mahdi imani doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was recently named one of seven graduate students in the texas a&m college of engineering to receive the association of former students distinguished graduate student award for excellence in research-doctoral imani recently defended his dissertation and will graduate in may afterward he has an assistant professor position lined up in the department of electrical and computer engineering at george washington university during his time at texas a&m imani has worked in dr ulisses m braga-netos lab his research has focused on machine learning control theory and signal processing he has developed sets of optimal and efficient tools for modeling diagnosis and treatment of cancers were looking for scalable and efficient mathematical tools for modeling and understanding the complex underlying cell process imani said if you understand that then we have taken a big step toward effective diagnosis and prognosis of cancer
264,cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world and imani said developing effective tools for accurate diagnosis and treatment of cancers at an early stage can significantly reduce the amount of pain people experience and reduce medical costs the advancements in technology have enabled acquiring informative data from these biological processes imani said how to model the complex dynamical behavior of these systems and move toward personalized treatment of various types of cancers seem more and more reachable imani studied at the university of tehran iran for his undergraduate and masters degrees switching from mechanical engineering to electrical engineering engineering has been greatly impacted by advancements in computational power and mathematical modeling imani said we are trying to address some critical problems that can significantly impact our society in addition to the award from the association of former students imani received the best junior phd student award from the electrical and computer engineering department in 2015 at texas a&m in 2018 he was the single finalist nominee of the electrical and computer engineering department for the outstanding graduate student award in the college of engineering at texas a&m he also received the best paper finalist award at the 49th asilomar conference on signals systems and computers in 2015
265,scott kolodziej and a team of undergraduate students wanted to go back to basics and study something that everyone took for granted what is the best way to document your computer code everyone agrees that good documentation is important but everyone seems to have a slightly different opinion on what exactly that means i led a team of undergraduates in designing and executing an experiment to help determine exactly that said kolodziej a graduate student in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university we recruited students to participate in the study which involved reading some code and answering questions to determine how well they understood what the code did the team used code samples that were functionally the same but with different documentation allowing them to be able to correlate higher scores and faster performance with which documentation styles were better than others this research is exciting to me because even with a relatively small amount of data we had statistically significant results that really help to inform how we should document the code we write kolodziej said ultimately weve helped to answer the question of what constitutes good documentation: first good naming and second good comments they also uncovered an interesting correlation poor documentation seems to lead to a more correct understanding of the code at the cost of time while were not advocating that you document your code poorly it may imply that too much documentation distracts the reader from what the code actually does or lulls them into a false sense of understanding even when the documentation is not meant to mislead kolodziej said opinions vary about what makes documentation good clear and understandable but hard evidence in support of these opinions can be hard to come by kolodziej and his team want to remove the anecdote and opinion and replace them with objective data about what makes quality software ultimately we would like to add to a statistically and methodologically sound foundation to software engineering kolodziej said in this case what does good documentation look like the project started as part of the aggie research leadership/scholars program an on-campus program to bridge the gap between undergraduates interested in research and graduate students looking for mentoring opportunities kolodziej built his team of seven undergraduates and met weekly to plan and design the details of the study once the experiment was designed another 24 undergraduate students were recruited to participate in the study i first became interested in empirical software engineering after reading some papers by dr andreas stefik from the university of nevada las vegas kolodziej said i wanted to help contribute to the body of empirical evidence underpinning software engineering by conducting my own experimental study
266,kolodziejs work resulted in a recent first place finish in the graduate category of the special interest group on computer science education (sigcse) association for computing machinery (acm) student research competition the results of his findings also included that better variable and function naming was much more effective than only using comments to code this was very surprising especially given the traditional importance given to commenting code kolodziej said it implies that a software engineer should spend at least as much time coming up with descriptive and clear names for their variables and functions than simply commenting their code and hoping that makes up for names like ‘x and ‘y kolodziej collaborated with dr elizabeth kolodziej from the department of statistics and dr jeff huang and dr tim davis from the department of computer science and engineering his undergraduate team included spencer anderson polina golikova yara mohamed sager patel sahil patel akash ramesh all from computer science and engineering; and raghav tankasala in the department of industrial and systems engineering
267,isabela lozano and fred henry spent their spring break adventuring and engineering in san miguel de allende mexico with their global entrepreneurship class they explored mexican farms mesoamerican pyramids and industrial parks among other places during a mini-aggies invent an entrepreneurship competition that lasted 14 hours they worked in teams with mexican students from multiple universities to solve grand engineering challenges such as helping subsistence farmers and extending access to medical care the group stayed at the hacienda santa clara education and research center
268,i enjoy entrepreneurship because it boosts myself other people and products said lozano its amazing to be able to combine my technical engineering background with entrepreneurship and to be able to learn from professors of practice who have actually been in the industry lozano is pursuing a degree in electrical engineering with a certificate in concept creation and commercialization after her uncle was electrocuted while working at a substation she knew she had to dive in and help change the field to make it safer for everyone henry is majoring in industrial distribution and is interested in the intersection of engineering and business
269,lozano: i knew i wanted to study abroad i followed all the engineering pages on instagram and this trip really stood out to me because of its global entrepreneurship focus i realized just because i had been to mexico before didnt mean i had experienced all of mexico its a diverse country with different states henry: i visited the study abroad office as an it student worker to help them print something out we started talking about studying abroad and when i found out there was a trip i could take even as a graduating senior i decided to do it i thought visiting mexico would be perfect because i could explore my half-hispanic heritage and it would be useful to know more about mexico given our numerous business collaborations
270,lozano: the best part of the trip for me was seeing how diverse the people within mexico are it was fascinating to see all the diverse perspectives come together to find a solution and make a prototype during aggies invent henry: aggies invent was a great experience to work as both a manager and team player everyone had different skills they brought to the table and we were able to use those to our advantage by making the most of everyones strengths
271,lozano: for me the trip emphasized the importance of engineering to build up infrastructure and lift up communities henry: i gained a newfound appreciation of mexico i realized how important it is to understand mexico because of our proximity and our shared history as the tech business is moving faster and faster it seems like one on one human relationships are becoming less important i really appreciated the relational aspect of business in mexico
272,lozano: absolutely! the week i got back from our trip to mexico i applied to study abroad at texas a&m university at qatar ill be leaving in may taking three engineering classes and coming back in july my new goal is to study abroad every semester i think being able to recognize respect and celebrate different points of view will be an asset in my future job
273,if you could study abroad anywhere where would you go explore our global programs website to find your next trip
274,tell us a little about yourself a: i was actually a geophysics major when i first came to texas a&m university i have always loved earth science but i took a class that related geoscience to the petroleum industry and thats how i found my path i followed my passion toward the energy industry and being able to help solve problems what fascinates you about petroleum engineering a: what fascinates me and this relates to geoscience is the ability to extract something from the ground in an environmentally friendly and safe way thats important to me because i care about the earth when did you first do undergraduate research a: i started doing research as a freshman in the geosciences department they were really big about us getting into research to see what everythings about and learning to apply our coursework in a different fashion i was taking a class called ten ways to be wrong and my professor talked about how different things happen in research that make people dispute you and how you have to overcome those disputes because of the nature of science and research he mentioned to us that he was looking for people to help him on his team so at the end of the semester i started working on the coastal geomorphology project he had what did you learn a: we were trying to come up with a method that accurately and efficiently determined what dunes are both above and below the surface at the end of the project we established five methods that we thought would always work for identifying dunes how did you get involved in petroleum research a: i had just come to the petroleum department and was looking for something to do because i didnt have enough experience to get an internship yet companies were like youre on the right path but we need you to take some more classes i talked to my advisor and we went through a list of different professors doing research in our department and how i might fit into what they were working on i spoke with some of them and found a place with dr david schechters research on working with co2 gas injection and surfactants to see how they impact enhanced oil recovery
275,are there advantages to doing both coursework and research a: what im learning in the lab relates to my coursework its a bit better than having a traditional course lab on the subject because a lot of those are formulated to give students a result that we then interpret with dr schechters research we have to figure out how our results relate to what we expecteddid we do something wrong or did we learn something new this gives me a better understanding of what im doing in class because i know how the research really applies ive seen the results of the things we talk about theoretically i think its pretty exciting did you go to the career fair and did you have any companies interested in you because of your research experience a: i did go to the career fair some companies were very excited to see that i had done research it gave me something to talk about with them because i didnt have any other prior experience like an internship i got to talk about the project in detail since they understood so we could talk on the same level about it i also got to show them that something i am doing in-house is being used and affecting the industry in a positive way being able to talk about research at the career fair opened a lot of doors for me to have the opportunity to interview with companies and even get job offers what would you tell a friend who doesnt think they should be interested in research a: i would tell them if they are looking for something to enrich themselves and they didnt have an opportunity to get an internship they should find something that they like about the energy industry or maybe something they dont know that they like yet and explore that path thats what i did and its helped me find out what i want to do when i graduate what kind of petroleum engineer i want to be i want to do a hybrid of reservoir and production because my research has taught me how they tie together i think a lot of people underestimate what research can do for them and what they can do for research i encourage people to get involved in it
276,from maintaining a desired temperature in a home to keeping an unmanned aircraft on a steady course proportional-integral-derivative (pid) controllers play a critical role in the operation regulation and stability of control systems for more than 20 years dr shankar bhattacharyya the robert m kennedy '26 professor ii in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has dedicated his time to the research and advancement of pid controllers a pioneer in the field he recently published his ninth book titled analytical design of pid controllers in collaboration with phd student sangjin han and former phd student ivan díaz-rodríguez all nine books have been written while i've been at texas a&m and all are in collaboration with colleagues here or my phd students said bhattacharyya i feel privileged to have had phd students with whom i can do this kind of research that can get into a monograph it's good for them it's good for me it's good for texas a&m with a myriad of real-world applications pid controllers make it possible for desired parameters to be maintained in a feedback-control system bhattacharyya used a household thermostat as an example he said when a person wants the temperature in their room to be 70 degrees he or she goes to the thermostat and sets it regardless of how many people are in that room or the weather outdoors the system keeps the temperature at 70 degrees this is because of the pid controller – a mechanism that calculates the temperature difference between the room and entered parameters and sends a signal to either kick on the heater or air conditioner to correct it
277,the same thing works whether you're trying to control the flow of fluid level in a tank control the pressure in a chemical reactor or keep an airplane flying at a fixed angle despite wind and disturbances said bhattacharyya (pid controllers are) really the bread and butter of control engineering since 1997 bhattacharyya has been investigating how to best design such technology in order to achieve the desired specifications based on two key measurements: robustness and resiliency robustness and resilience in a control system means that regardless of changes in parameters and uncertainties in the environment the pid controller will still carry out its programmed orders driven by these two key concepts bhattacharyya and his team have taken groundbreaking steps in applying a multi-objective design to pid controllers this allows a simplistic three-option controller to successfully satisfy multiple system requirements simultaneously it was our group that showed that a lot of the prevailing designs were fragile because they were high-order controllers said bhattacharyya instead of three parameters they had 20 or 25 and you might think that would do better because there are more things to play with but actually (the controller) becomes nonresilient because when controllers are too complicated there are too many ways it can fail with that in mind bhattacharyya and his team have focused on bolstering and enhancing simpler controllers developing them through the use of rational computer-aided design and mathematically rigorous models and theories that are both elegant and practical in doing so they have not only optimized the original designs but created a novel controller model to be implemented into the standard control systems utilized in all aspects of engineering and industry pid controllers are so widely used that if we make any progress it impacts things like chemical electrical mechanical and aerospace engineering driverless cars unmanned aerial vehicles smart grids and more a few years down the road it could be everywhere its exciting that it impacts so many fields said bhattacharyya
278,astronauts undergo physiological changes while in space due to the weightless environment including bone loss muscle atrophy and cardiovascular deconditioning dr ana diaz artiles runs the bioastronautics and human performance lab at texas a&m university which is focused on investigating human performance in these environments and developing technologies to improve human health and performance combining aerospace engineering and biomedical sciences with human factors diaz artiles assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering seeks to improve different aspects of human performance in extreme environments using human-in-the-loop experiments as well as computational models and virtual/augmented reality currently there are several countermeasures in place on the international space station that seek to lessen the detrimental effects of weightlessness including extensive exercise protocols unfortunately about two-thirds of returning shuttle astronauts still experience some degree of orthostatic intolerance upon return to earth new approaches are needed for future longer missions such as a trip to mars where astronauts will not have the usual ground support and resources provided on earth after landing artificial gravity (ag) generated by the use of a centrifuge combined with exercise is a promising countermeasure to diminish these effects the combination challenges multiple physiological systems at once maintaining overall health during extended weightlessness diaz artiles focused on the potential effects on the cardiovascular system using a short-radius centrifuge at the massachusetts institute of technology paired with lower-body bicycle ergometer for the exercise component the centrifuge creates a gravitational force in the subjects similar to what is experienced on earth
279,twelve subjects ranging in age from 23 to 29 were positioned in the centrifuge laying on their right side with their head located at the center of rotation and their feet strapped to the ergometer device a position that minimized motion sickness as the centrifuge spun the subjects were asked to pedal the bicycle ergometer maintaining a constant rpm of 60 each exercise period lasted 15 minutes where subjects were exposed to three different gravity levels (0g or no rotation 1g and 14g) measured at the subjects feet and three different exercise intensities (25 50 and 100 watts) the results of the study indicated that the cardiovascular responses were more prominent at higher levels of ag and exercise intensity suggesting that the addition of ag to exercise during long-duration spaceflight could lead to greater cardiovascular benefits and potentially prevent multiple aspects of human deconditioning from occurring since centrifuges have not been tested in space diaz artiles hopes to answer various questions regarding its implementation including configuration of the centrifuge exposure time the gravity level and gradient required for optimal levels as well as the necessary intensity of exercise required in addition to human experiments using ground-based centrifuges diaz artiles is using computational models to simulate the responses to ag exposure when coupled with exercise the benefit to the model is that it allows for the exploration of more than 120 parameters for example conducting a comprehensive sensitivity analysis highlighting the varying differences among astronauts
280,with the help of former astronaut and tees eminent professor dr bonnie j dunbar they are working on bringing a short-radius centrifuge from nasa to the texas a&m campus which will be a great tool in continuing her research on the effect gravity has on human performance
281,an interdisciplinary team of texas a&m university researchers has been awarded a $1 million national science foundation grant to research data mining to optimize decision making in the software brain of the autonomous experimentation platform for accelerating manufacturing of advanced materials dr yu ding professor in the industrial and systems engineering department is the principal investigator of the team while the co-principal investigators are drs satish bukkapatnam professor in the industrial and systems engineering department and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations institute for manufacturing systems; raymundo arroyave a materials science and engineering professor; and xia (ben) hu assistant professor in the computer science and engineering department the project introduces artificial intelligence and autonomy modules into an autonomous experimentation platform to mimic a human scientist's ability to handle surprising observations synthesize diverse bodies of knowledge and explore a large complex design space the key research components in this platform are organized around three capability themes: exploitation to efficiently determine the most promising regions of a design space exploration to recognize and reason about surprises arising from unusual designs and the expansion of newly discovered design spaces based on mining new knowledge from literature and databases while preferentially gaining knowledge in regions likely to contain superior material design solutions the proposed system is cognizant adaptive knowledge-rich and taskable interacting with human scientists by way of simple commands and executing an autonomous discovery process with a minimal and appropriate degree of human intervention once the machine is able to data mine past literature of the design space its knowledge base will surpass that of a group of industry experts said hu this will enhance the artificial intelligence decision making function of the software brain his work in data mining began four years ago when he began researching automated machine learning to replicate human efforts in a task the autonomous experimental testbed could have significant impacts on engineering practice and revolutionize the material discovery and advanced manufacturing landscape
282,this interdisciplinary effort is a result of the presidents excellence fund program commonly known as the x-grants which are designed to bring faculty together across disciplines and emphasize sustainable research excellence
283,"texas a&m university freshman general engineering student shane duckett always liked learning about physics in high school he also enjoyed participating in musicals in the bryan/college station area he has found a way to explore both passions duckett from deer park texas is interested in pursuing mechanical engineering or computer science and engineering while he is still exploring his major options he also was introduced to the theater scene in the area after his first audition at the theatre company in bryan duckett is now performing as the title role in joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat which opened two weeks ago he had considered auditioning for an earlier show in the season but was too busy while he said hes still really busy he said he was tired of not doing shows i definitely plan on doing much more next year now that i have a little bit of a taste of it duckett said balancing his time has been a challenge not only has he been going to rehearsal every day for the musical duckett is also a member of the singing cadets a premier mens chorus now in its 114th touring season at texas a&m ""it's been very difficult mainly because the singing cadets alone is more time consuming than all of my classes combined duckett said those two plus joseph which is at least three hours of rehearsal a day it's just a lot of time management but it's something that i really enjoy doing singing and acting so to me it's all worth it even if i don't have much free time duckett said including extracurricular activities has made his college experience much more enjoyable because meeting people is easier i havent really made any friends in my classes at least close friends but the organizations im in because im around them so much i have made close friends duckett said duckett said being involved in an extracurricular activity that meets regularly can be a good way for students to learn how to cooperate with other people theres engineering classes that make you do that with our labs but with the singing cadets you meet everyone and you get to know everyone in the group within two weeks he said you have to cooperate with everyone i think its really necessary that you dont just do school work and maybe one tiny organization its necessary to get to know people because you never know what kind of connections you can make for your future"
284,eleven outstanding faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering received one of the highest honors in academia at the investiture ceremony held tuesday april 16 the faculty members who were awarded the designation of a chair or professorship were invested during the ceremony and presented with bronze medallions the medallions are engraved with the name of their chair or professorship and symbolize the honorees commitment to teaching research and service the 2019 recipients include: mahmoud el-halwagibryan research & engineering llc chair yassin hassanroyce e wisenbaker 39 ii chair jeff spathstephen a holditch 69 department head chair in petroleum engineering perla balbuenatees eminent professor elaine orantees eminent professor yucel akkutlurob l adams 40 professor amine benzergageneral dynamics professor rodney boehmartie mcferrin 65 associate professor of practice stefan hurlebauspeter c forster professor scott socolofskyap & florence wiley professor ii nicholas duffieldtees research professor
285,four faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering were selected to receive a 2019 distinguished achievement award from texas a&m and the association of former students they were among a group of 24 outstanding texas a&m faculty and staff members who were honored first presented in 1955 the university-level distinguished achievement awards have been awarded to more than 1 000 professionals who have exhibited the highest standards of excellence at texas a&m each year the association of former students generously makes funds available to provide faculty and staff at texas a&m with a number of awards recognizing achievement in teaching research individual student relationships continuing education/extension graduate mentoring staff and administration receipt of an association of former students distinguished achievement award is one of the highest university honors that can be bestowed upon a faculty or staff member the 2019 distinguished achievement awards were formally presented on april 29 during ceremonies in rudder theatre the 2019 recipients from the college of engineering were: for teaching: dr erick moreno-centeno department of industrial and systems engineering dr scott schaefer department of computer science and engineering for research: dr yassin a hassan department of nuclear engineering dr pr kumar department of electrical and computer engineering
286,high school sweethearts marilyn and jack hopper '59 have established the marilyn and jack hopper '59 endowed scholarship to provide support to first-generation undergraduate students in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering who are pursuing a career in the oil and gas industry texas a&m university provided me with the education that led me to work for an exceptionally well-respected company humble oil & refining company (now exxon mobil) said jack this became the stepping stone for the rest of my career from success in industry to dedication to furthering education jack has made a lasting impact on the field of chemical engineering over his career he has acted as a mentor an instructor and a leader to students and peers alike in academia in such roles as distinguished professor and dean emeritus in the chemical engineering department at lamar university he has served as a member of the chemical engineering advisory council at texas a&m and the american chemical society an advisor to the chemical engineering department at louisiana state university and a fellow of the american institute of chemical engineers now as he looks forward the helping the next generation of leaders achieve their academic goals jack took a moment to look back at his own aggie experience what stood out the most to him the strong values – integrity responsibility loyalty leadership and commitment – and technical skills that members of the aggie family always strive to uphold the hoppers endowment will bolster first-generation students as they break barriers and dedicate themselves to making a difference in the chemical engineering department living out the core values and paving the way for a better future in oil and gas
287,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
288,dr sung ii park and his collaborators have developed a wireless surgical lighting device that is actually a light within a surgical patty which allows illumination in the exact spot where the surgeon is working
289,we know that no matter how much experience your surgeon has or how low-risk the surgery is there are always risks associated with the process additionally surgeries are expensive due to labor and time dr sung ii park is working to lower the risks and cost of surgeries by providing a unique way to create a well-lit environment in the operating room park and his collaborators have developed a wireless surgical lighting device that is actually a light within a surgical patty which is a pad used during most operations to protect tissues and manage fluid instead of being an external overhead light or even a light on another type of surgical tool the patty design allows for illumination in the exact spot where the surgeon is working
290,this directly combats the lack of efficiency of most surgical lighting devices that cannot provide high-light intensity in a particular area and leaves general surgical procedures susceptible to low-light conditions which can potentially lead to complications in addition it not only illuminates the surgical field it also absorbs biofluids or blood in a surgical spot the lighted surgical patty is a multilayer patty wherein one of the layers includes a lighting apparatus said park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university two outer layers of the lighted surgical patty include nonabsorptive fibers woven near their borders to form a uniform surface that sandwiches together a center lighted layer the center lighted layer has an led light encapsulated in a biocompatible layer the center lighted layer may also contain a number of led lights arranged in various formations so as to provide a unique lighted environment for various surgical settings park has a close collaboration with barrow neurological institute in arizona and has been working with them on several projects since 2016 for this project he is working closely with dr clinton morgan neurosurgery resident
291,park who took the lead on technology development said [our device] could eliminate the need for extra surgical patties and/or lighting devices and will allow easy access to surgical fields this could reduce surgery time and costs related to surgery
292,gretchen w '90 and alan k hilyard '90 have established the gretchen w '90 and alan k hilyard '90 scholarship in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a degree in industrial distribution from texas a&m university gretchen graduated with a degree in recreation park and tourism sciences in 1990 and later received her teaching certificate alan graduated with a degree in industrial education in 1990 and then obtained a degree in industrial distribution in 1996 the aggie spirit culture and family atmosphere drew us to texas a&m hilyard said even though its a large university it still felt like a family and that was important to us the hilyards decided to establish a scholarship for students pursuing an industrial distribution degree because of the practicality of the degree we love the industrial distribution department because its a unique degree in the sense that it combines multiple aspects of the business and engineering disciplines into one degree hilyard said passionate about giving back to texas a&m the hilyards' specifications for their scholarship recipients differ from others we set a lower gpa requirement for our scholarship to give students who have the drive to achieve but struggle in their classes an opportunity to receive a scholarship hilyard said we want to share the experience of having a degree from texas a&m with as many students as possible
293,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact hunter slaton assistant director of development
294,dr jean louis-briaud is a self-described family man who places value on his work-life balance that balance keeps briaud grounded while he serves as a distinguished professor spencer j buchanan chair professor and regents fellow in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university as well as the director of the national geotechnical experimentation site understanding the importance of family he plans to strengthen the sense of community within the american society of civil engineers (asce) during his future tenure as president the overarching impact i would like to have on (the) asce during my tenure is to create a deep sense of family among all the members briaud said i want to help that family progress and have some ideas and changes that may make a difference once i am in office briaud will not take office as president of the asce until october 2020 but he is already at work building a vision for the future some components of his vision include voting rights for asce student chapter members to increasing communication between members and the organizations leadership and more when his term begins briaud will be responsible for representing the asce on the world stage promoting the civil engineering profession and serving the organizations members something i am passionate is involving young members in to the affairs of the society briaud said this is also a part of my focus on family i plan to promote cooperation between asce regions and institutes so that we foster these professional relationships and we can think of our professional colleagues like family members briaud said briauds election as future president of the asce is another chapter in a long career of service to the civil engineering profession briaud has taught civil engineering for more than 40 years and views his teaching and mentoring of students as his greatest contribution my greatest joy has been helping my students briaud said i never quite realized how big of an impact you can have as a professor briauds teaching career began during his time as a teaching assistant in canada when he came to texas a&m in march 1978 briaud stepped off the plane in a suit and tie ready for a professional job interview only to be greeted by dr harry coyle in a cowboy hat with an open shirt and an old pickup truck after his initial surprise briaud discovered the people behind the cowboy culture and fell in love with the university i remember wondering: what kind of a place is this then i met the people said briaud people with a fantastic can-do enthusiastic attitude that kind of attitude and enthusiasm just convinced me that this was the place for me briaud maintains that this same attitude was crucial to his election success and that the support from others has made him feel fortunate now he plans to do his best to serve as a standard bearer for the asce community during his tenure im certainly happy to be in this position but there is more to it than that briaud said i am so happy for all those that were a part of this effort with me i am thankful for them and am looking forward to showing them their efforts were not in vain and that their work has paid off through my service to asce
295,outbreaks of infectious diseases are occurring more frequently around the world in the democratic republic of the congo the worlds second-largest ebola outbreak has been going on for the past 10 months with no end in sight dr ceyhun eksin lead author and assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university and his colleagues at the university of california santa barbara and the georgia institute of technology have published an article in the journal epidemics that focuses on incorporating behavior change criteria into disease outbreak models adding these criteria will allow professionals and communities to mobilize adequate resources during epidemic outbreaks and reduce public mistrust caused by the overallocation of resources
296,the research team hypothesized that individuals would take action during an outbreak to reduce their exposure by avoiding infected individuals this behavior would change the number of individuals infected during the outbreak researchers use models to estimate the number of individuals who are at risk for being infected are likely to become infected and of those infected how many will recover during an outbreak these estimates help communities mobilize resources during an outbreak the models used to predict the impact of an outbreak called simple susceptible-infected-recovered (sir) models do not take the changes in an individuals behavior into account and can overpredict the number of infected individuals during an outbreak this can lead to an overuse of resources adding this knowledge to prediction models can help researchers more accurately predict the resources needed during an outbreak the research team created a modified sir model that included the ability to pick up change in an individuals behavior by testing the modified model against the simple sir model eksin and his colleagues were able to show that the modified model more accurately predicted outbreak numbers by inputting past outbreak data into the modified models they were able to predict the number of infected individuals more accurately our goal was to adapt these findings to forecast the disease trajectory even if the initial information the model received was inaccurate the findings show there is value to incorporating a behavior aspect into forecast models eksin said predicting the number of individuals who will become infected during an outbreak is valuable to determine how to use limited resources and interdisciplinary research can help understand the link between a public health response and behavior change if a community is better able to plan for an outbreak without over-preparing they can save resources and reduce the possibility of losing public support during future outbreaks
297,in work that could open a floodgate of future applications for a new class of nanomaterials known as mxenes (pronounced maxines) researchers from texas a&m university have discovered a simple inexpensive way to prevent the materials rapid degradation two-dimensional mxene nanosheets have promise in applications ranging from energy storage to water purification however mxenes have an achilles heel: they rapidly degrade when kept in the open according to the texas a&m team the solution to this problem involves exposing mxenes to anything in a family of compounds best represented by a natural dietary supplement such as vitamin c with these findings shelf-stable mxenes become possible and engineering-grade mxene-based materials can become a practical reality the researchers wrote in a paper for the upcoming issue of the online journal matter
298,interesting properties discovered in 2011 by a team at drexel university mxenes are sheets of materials only a few atoms thick that are mostly composed of layers of metals like titanium interleaved by carbon and/or nitrogen due to their nanothickness and the variety of elements they can be composed of (other nanomaterials like graphene contain only carbon) these materials tend to have really interesting properties like high electrical conductivity and high catalytic activity said dr micah green an associate professor who led the work and has joint appointments in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m as a result of those properties mxenes have generated a great deal of interest and enthusiasm in the research community with potential applications in everything from batteries to electronic sensors but there has been one problem lurking in the background said green mxenes degrade or oxidize quickly they fall apart and stop being nanosheets this happens in a matter of days although other researchers have found that techniques like drying or freezing mxenes can delay their degradation theyre still not going to last for years he said and no one wants a material that doesnt have a long shelf life texas a&m tackled the problem through an interdisciplinary team of experts in nanomaterials ceramics and polymers the other faculty members involved in the work are dr miladin radovic professor in the department of materials science and engineering and dr jodie lutkenhaus associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering and the department of chemical engineering
299,toward a solution the team ultimately found that exposing a typical mxene to a solution of sodium l-ascorbate stopped the nanosheet from degrading plus several related compounds including vitamin c also worked according to green the effect lasts he also noted that the team made the discovery about a year ago and the treated mxenes are still stable to further investigate the phenomenon leading to the improved stability the team completed molecular dynamics simulations of the interactions between the mxenes and the antioxidants they found that the ascorbate molecules appear to associate with the mxene nanosheet preventing it from interacting with water molecules and as a result shielding it from oxidation the team is excited because their method appears to work with a variety of different mxenes green said the matter paper focuses on the most common mxene (ti3c2tx) but other types of mxenes are even more unstable so much so that people have doubted whether those materials could ever find applications with this technique that could change the researchers are currently exploring the stability of these additional mxenes using the same approach our hope is that everybody who works on mxenes including people in industry will use our technique to protect their materials said green the co-authors on the matter paper are xiaofei zhao aniruddh vashisth wanmei sun smit a shah and touseef habib from the department of chemical engineering; and evan prehn yexiao chen and zeyi tan from the department of materials science and engineering this work was supported by the national science foundation
300,plant leaves have a natural superpower theyre designed with water repelling characteristics called a superhydrophobic surface this trait allows leaves to cleanse themselves from dust particles inspired by such natural designs a team of researchers at texas a&m university has developed an innovative way to control the hydrophobicity of a surface to benefit to the biomedical field researchers in dr akhilesh k gaharwars lab in the department of biomedical engineering have developed a lotus effect by incorporating atomic defects in nanomaterials which could have widespread applications in the biomedical field including biosensing lab-on-a-chip blood-repellent anti-fouling and self-cleaning applications superhydrophobic materials are used extensively for self-cleaning characteristic of devices however current materials require alteration to the chemistry or topography of the surface to work this limits the use of superhydrophobic materials designing hydrophobic surfaces and controlling the wetting behavior has long been of great interest as it plays a crucial role in accomplishing self-cleaning ability gaharwar said however there are limited biocompatible approaches to control the wetting behavior of the surface as desired in several biomedical and biotechnological applications
301,the texas a&m design adopts a ‘nanoflower-like assembly of two-dimensional (2d) atomic layers to protect the surface from wetting the team recently released a study published in chemical communications 2d nanomaterials are an ultrathin class of nanomaterials and have received considerable attention in research gaharwars lab used 2d molybdenum disulfide (mos2) a new class of 2d nanomaterials that has shown enormous potential in nanoelectronics optical sensors renewable energy sources catalysis and lubrication but has not been investigated for biomedical applications this innovative approach demonstrates applications of this unique class of materials to the biomedical industry
302,these 2d nanomaterials with their hexagonal packed layer repel water adherence however a missing atom from the top layer can allow easy access to water molecules by the next layer of atoms underneath making it transit from hydrophobic to hydrophilic said lead author of the study dr manish jaiswal a senior research associate in gaharwars lab this innovative technique opens many doors for expanded applications in several scientific and technological areas the superhydrophobic coating can be easily applied over various substrates such as glass tissue paper rubber or silica using the solvent evaporation method these superhydrophobic coatings have wide-spread applications not only in developing self-cleaning surfaces in nanoelectronics devices but also for biomedical applications specifically the study demonstrated that blood and cell culture media containing proteins do not adhere to the surface which is very promising in addition the team is currently exploring the potential applications of controlled hydrophobicity in stem cell fate the research was supported by the national institutes of health director's new innovator award by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering
303,since 2015 the data-enabled discovery and design of energy materials (d3em) training program at texas a&m university has been developing interdisciplinary leaders across the college of science and college of engineering d3em is led by dr raymundo arroyave presidential impact fellow and professor in the department of materials science and engineering one of the most rewarding aspects of the program is the fact that we have such a diverse group of students with all kinds of life experiences said arroyave funded by the national science foundation the program focuses on empowering graduate students with the skills needed to create and apply data-driven approaches to the development design and application of advanced materials and machine learning for energy-related technologies through both fellowship research and networking opportunities it bolsters the students of today as they work toward a more sustainable tomorrow
304,levi mcclenny a doctoral candidate in the department of electrical and computer engineering who holds a d3em fellowship and was recently appointed student regent has utilized the program to gain insight as to what happens at the microstructure level in materials in doing so he is working under the mentorship of dr ulisses braga-neto associate professor in the electrical and computer engineering department to investigate how to develop and manufacture better materials designed to accomplish specific tasks for the future
305,the d3em group has been using data to learn a substantial amount about materials compositions and processing methods and has derived methods that are currently being fielded by entities such as nasa to create materials with specific properties that are useful for very specific applications said mcclenny the d3em research is a test bed for proof of concept that we can learn real practical and pragmatic methods of utilizing materials data to our advantage in addition to creating he is also looking into how materials break down in a collaborative project between the d3em and the army research lab mcclenny is investigating how machine learning can be applied to the fracturing process of materials in order to predict when breakage or deterioration will occur in military vehicles and ultimately prevent it from happening in the first place for example a military aircraft is comprised of a myriad of components – each in different stages of wear and tear by building smart vehicles that can begin to detect their own deterioration pilots and engineers will be able to better determine the overall state of their vehicle which will help with maintenance and operational requirements
306,through his experience with d3em mcclenny has been given the opportunity to pursue his research passions while also honing his professional and technical skills to be able to effectively communicate within collaborate and lead an interdisciplinary team now and into his future career better material implies better structures and probably cheaper to manufacture as well said mcclenny as we learn more about how to manufacture materials to the exact specifications we desire we can remove the design constraints that exist with some materials used in modern structures machines and medicine doing so would allow us to manufacture the exact material required for a task and can have significant implications in improving the designs of the future and optimizing the designs of the past levi is a perfect example of the students we aspire to train as he not only brings his expertise in computer science and machine learning into a materials science program but his military perspective brings a sense of purpose to some of the problems we study as part of the program said arroyave harnessing his diverse experiences and dedication to a better future mcclenny is now taking steps toward his new appointment as student regent needless to say i was ecstatic (to learn about the appointment) this is an opportunity i have had my eyes on for years and it's incredibly exciting to see years of work pay off said mcclenny learn more about the data-enabled discovery and design of energy materials (d3em) training program
307,kendrick lim completed his undergraduate education at texas a&m university in may during which he learned about biomedical engineering both in college station and overseas lim came to texas a&m knowing he wanted to pursue engineering but was unsure where to focus he began to research each major and stumbled upon biomedical engineering medicine hadn't been something i'd thought about as a high schooler but once i learned more about biomedical engineering and the large impact it can have on the world from a medical perspective i knew that was exactly what i wanted to pursue lim said throughout his studies in the program he said the amount of interdisciplinary learning in the department surprised him as did the close-knit atmosphere at both the faculty and staff levels freshman year all of the students are in 300-person classes and everyone is there for class time and then goes off to their own organizations friends and so forth lim said but in biomedical engineering everyone really knows each other and a lot of peoples best friends are in the department lim did not consider studying abroad when he started college after hearing about various programs and what he could gain from them lim signed up for a four-month faculty-led study abroad program in bonn germany the spring of his sophomore year he said it was an amazing experience he would never forget as it gave him a chance to learn about new cultures and immerse himself in a foreign environment its life changing to travel to another country with other students lim said its just a different kind of experience you can travel later on but i think its different if you travel as a student i dont know when youre going to get so much time to explore new frontiers learn about yourself and grow as a person while overseas lim took biomedical engineering classes to stay on track for graduation and worked with a german medical device company to innovate oxygenators and improve their efficiency working with the company that was a more involved experience where were trying to do device design and its actually applicable to real life versus traditional classroom practice lim said learning how to navigate in a new country was an experience in itself between work and class lim took advantage of free time to explore and travel we recognized that we werent going to be there after a couple of months and honestly i dont see when i would be able to travel for such a prolonged period of time lim said we ended up going to 12 countries seeing all the different countries foods cultures and architecture was an unforgettable experience for students looking into study abroad lim encouraged them to research programs and funding options the experience was so much more than just traveling abroad and you cant get that back once youre out of college lim said its very different to study abroad than travel abroad if you can find a study abroad program where you dont fall behind in your graduation degree plan or if youre okay with delaying graduation i would do it lim starts his graduate studies in biomedical engineering at texas a&m in the fall
308,dr steven m wright royce e wisenbaker ii professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was elected fellow of the international academy of medical and biological engineering in recognition of his leadership and contributions to the field of medical and biological engineering at an international level wright is one of 24 fellows who will be inducted to the academy this year during the carnegie mellon forum on biomedical engineering in pittsburgh this september wright received his bachelors masters and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the university of illinois urbana-champaign he joined texas a&m in 1988 where he established the magnetic resonance systems lab the focus of his research group has been in the application of electromagnetics and new technology to the development of low-cost and high-speed magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy using this technology to explore real-time magnetic resonance imaging at submillisecond frame rates wright is also a fellow of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers the international society of magnetic resonance in medicine and the american institute for medical and biological engineering
309,artificial intelligence is making headlines from autonomous cars military and healthcare projects advancements and mishaps it has captured the hearts and minds of researchers science fiction writers and the general public alike to spur creativity encourage ingenuity and excite the leaders of tomorrow dr dileep kalathil discussed the reality of artificial intelligence (ai) and reinforcement learning to an audience of middle and high school students at the annual texas a&m university physics and engineering festival kalathil serves as an assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m i would definitely do it again said kalathil i like teaching and interacting with kids especially when they ask questions its a rewarding experience for me ironically taking place in stephen w hawking auditorium named after the late theoretical physicist who warned that such technology could be the end of mankind the presentation started at the very beginning: what is ai the current goal of artificial intelligence is to create an intelligent machine that can act rationally said kalathil and rationality is essentially only concerned with what decisions are made not the decision-making process
310,to demonstrate this concept kalathil described two situations first a machine that is designed to clean a room second a machine that is designed to throw things around and make a mess while these two ais might seem counterproductive to one another they are both functioning within their programmed parameters thus they are both acting rationally although ai has been expanded to be able to play table tennis assist in surgery and translate spoken language in real time kalathil explained that actually emulating the human brain and creating a computer consciousness has been deemed unadvisable by researchers this is mostly due to the fact that the brain is not modular like a computer system similarly the human brain learns from reasonable understanding and a constantly changing memory of sensation stimuli topics and emotion ai programs learn from a controlled input of datasets and coding parameters which led the conversation to the role of reinforcement learning like a child learning through experience that jumping from heights can hurt and correcting their behavior to avoid pain kalathil said that ai systems can be programmed to function and grow through reinforcement learning at its core reinforcement learning (rl) revolves around the concept that optimal action and task completion is reinforced by a positive feedback reward rl relies upon machine software and algorithmic components to determine what the ideal action is based on feedback received from the environment
311,however despite careful programming rl does not guarantee success on the first try an ai system will often try many different ways to accomplish its objective gathering and interpreting positive and negative feedback from each attempt to understand how successful it was and adjusting its method until the ideal outcome is achieved through this trial and error and feedback loop optimal actions are reinforced so like a child determining whether or not to jump from a certain height the system weighs its options against information gathered from previous attempts is the distance to the ground too far has a similar jump been taken before what was the outcome was there pain in that jump perhaps then another method should be used to get to the ground while rl is still in the early stages of application the industry is already finding uses for it from piloting autonomous aircrafts to predictive maintenance to smart gaming the future of ai is filled with endless opportunity and discovery we are developing artificial intelligence in order to create systems to gain a better understanding of human intelligence said kalathil like i told (the audience of students) we are living in a very very exciting era
312,the texas a&m university college of engineering announced friday the death of dr m nazmul karim holder of the t michael o'connor chair ii and head of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering a position he held since 2012 karim died friday june 21 over the course of an impressive 30-plus year career karim authored more than 250 refereed publications and gave over 400 technical invited and contributed presentations at national and international conferences he was the co-author of the textbook chemical and bioprocess control which is used in over 50 universities worldwide he graduated more than 25 doctoral students and was an american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) fellow karims research interests were in model-based control nonlinear control data-based control and optimization and bioprocess analysis and control last year the fuels & petrochemicals division of aiche named an award after him the professor m nazmul karim award in process control and automation naz was an esteemed researcher and an asset to the college of engineering said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering under his leadership the department was among the top chemical engineering programs in the country and he continuously worked to find ways to improve the program and attract top faculty and students karim earned his bachelors degree in chemical engineering from the bangladesh university of engineering and technology and his masters in control engineering and doctorate in chemical engineering from the university of manchester institute of science and technology funeral arrangements are pending
313,a deeply personal motivation is helping to drive a texas a&m university researcher in her pursuit of better therapeutic technologies that could provide earlier diagnosis and more detailed progression tracking for neurodegenerative diseases such as parkinson's and alzheimers dr ya wang associate professor and morris e foster faculty fellow ii in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is working to bridge the gap between science engineering and applications in health technologies through her research into the neurodegenerative diseases her research is supported through the national science foundation faculty early career development program (career) awarded in 2018
314,"it was wang's relationship with a close family member who has lived with parkinson's disease for more than 20 years that sparked an interest for her in investigating potential technologies that could one day contribute to the discovery of a cure ""i am hoping to develop therapeutic technologies that might ultimately lead to the cure of neurodegenerative diseases such as parkinson's disease "" wang said ""this involves an understanding of how the robot-like magnetic nanoparticles transport in the brain environment and can utilize proximity sensing and machine learning"" with no current cure or reliable early diagnosis methods the objectives for wang's research are two-fold: to develop advanced proximity sensors for early diagnosis by monitoring cognitive and activity evolutions of high potential subjects and develop innovative non-invasive therapeutic strategies for targeting and regenerating brain cells using biodegradable gold-coated magnetic nanorobots the nanobots wang's lab is working with are small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier yet large enough to be accurately controlled by external magnetic fields this technique could be used on a range of neurodegenerative diseases that inflict a progressive loss of neurons in the brain"
315,"""technologies for early detection and non-invasive stimulations of specific inhibitory neurons deep in the brain have long been desired for clinical treatment of neurological diseases "" she said ""however to date neuroscientists have largely focused on biological phenomena with little engineered tools available for qualifying the disease progression -- mild cognitive/activity impairment neuron-degeneration -- in an accurate manner thus limiting the translation to clinical practice"" nearly 58 million americans are living with alzheimer's disease and just under 1 million suffer from parkinson's disease with both disorders projected to see an increase in the coming years wang is hopeful her research helps generate progress toward the development of a successful treatment for these fast-spreading diseases ""i hope the research conducted by my team can overcome intrinsic trial-and-error approaches usher biotechnology into a new era of early diagnosis precision medicine and can move closer to clinical success "" wang said ""combined with recent advances in artificial intelligence our work also holds a high potential for contributing to the development of nanorobotics lab-on-the chip and personalized medicine"""
316,texas a&m agrilife research and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) were recently awarded a grant from the us department of agricultures national institute of food and agriculture to study and develop super-repellent and anti-fouling surfaces for foods the grant will be used in their collaboration to help ensure the safety of fresh food products benefiting both consumers and the produce industry there is a need to reduce those outbreaks associated with microbial contamination that may take place in different operations along the fresh produce chain said dr luis cisneros-zevallos agrilife research food scientist and co-principal investigator for the project the surfaces we are designing avoid cross-contamination and reduce the risk of biofilm formation in recent years we have developed various types of nanotechnology-based coating with an intriguing combination of surface texture and chemistry to inhibit and prevent the attachment of microorganisms on plastics metals ceramic and glass at the laboratory scale said dr mustafa akbulut associate professor in the department of chemical engineering and principal investigator for the project with this project we will design novel coatings which are specifically tailored for the food industry and also suitable for large-scale production and application to achieve a broad impact on relevant stakeholders akbulut said food safety outbreaks in recent years have caused illnesses and deaths among consumers negatively affecting the fresh produce industry on a large scale after observing the natural morphology and chemistry of rice leaves which have hydrophobic super-repellent characteristics the team was inspired to create novel surfaces that mimicked leaves ability to reduce the attachment of microorganisms bioinspiration is key when it comes to using nanotechnology strategies specifically when you want to provide surfaces with unique characteristics of polarity and morphology akbulut said the interdisciplinary research team also includes texas a&m university food microbiologists drs matt taylor and alejandro castillo our team is a pioneer in this area in the us and worldwide cisneros-zevallos said we certainly believe that it will transform the way the fresh produce industry operates and we hope the industry will adopt many of the products our project will develop in the next few years of the grant for more information on the project read articles from the american chemical society's website or the journal food control view a clip demonstrating how to use dipping/spraying solution to create a nanotextured coating on youtube
317,"when a natural disaster strikes not all buildings will weather the storm even the smallest crack can cause the structural integrity and resiliency of a building to suffer making it unsafe for people to live and take shelter in basing his work on hurricane scenarios samuel leach a phd student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university is developing computational models that can relate building damage and structural characteristics to the overall state of a building post-disaster under the guidance of dr stephanie paal assistant professor in the department he is also developing a method to detect damage using drone footage this data-driven approach to evaluating structural resilience could not only make buildings more able to withstand catastrophic events but also streamline the repair process to allow people to return to their homes quicker once we have these models we can use them to understand what features of a building affect its structural resiliency the most if we can figure that out from this model then we can include that information in building codes and try to make suggestions about what should be implemented in future construction to make these buildings more resilient said leach his project is funded by the 2019 national science foundations graduate research fellowship program (grfp) which leach was recently inducted into founded in 1952 the grfp recognizes outstanding graduate students in stem across the nation each year this prestigious organization evaluates proposed research projects based on intellectual merit and broader impacts my (project) goal is to be able to use structural evaluations from hurricane damaged areas as well as pictures and video footage to develop a framework and algorithm to try and relate what factors affect structural resiliency said leach it is currently the responsibility of structural inspectors to go out and evaluate the damage and resiliency of effected buildings while this traditional approach works it takes time they can only walk through so many buildings in a day due to being limited by both the proximity between buildings the size of each structure and the roadway conditions connecting each however by combining the potential analytical and damage-detecting abilities of leachs computational model with the agility and usability of a drone inspections could be completed in a fraction of the time if i can give (the model) drone footage of a building it can identify the damage on that structure and then incorporate that with structural evaluations done by human inspectors "" said leach ""this can be used to develop other models that can classify these structures on a scale of livability hopefully we can implement this model into communities as a faster and more efficient way to handle post-disaster response knowing that i could actually make a difference in building safety and seeing the results of things like harvey its definitely something near and dear to my heart and i have a passion for national disaster recovery this wont only help structural engineering as a general field but it also may help families not lose their house or if they do it will allow communities help them get on their feet more quickly"
318,dr nancy m amato former regents professor and unocal professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named professor emeritus by the texas a&m university system board of regents amato joined the faculty at texas a&m in 1995 as an assistant professor in the department and in 1998 began co-directing the parasol lab it was really (dr amatos) passion and enthusiasm for course material and research that grabbed my attention said shawna thomas postdoctoral research associate in the parasol lab she has had a huge impact not just on me but on future generations of researchers amato served as interim department head for one year and since 2014 held the positions of senior director of the engineering honors program in the texas a&m college of engineering and co-coordinator of the computer science and engineering track of engineering honors (dr amatos) inspired vision and dedication to constant improvement allowed engineering honors to become what it is today said jacob brown 21 consistently amato has been recognized for her teaching and mentoring she is the recipient of the association for computing machinery (acm) award for teaching excellence texas a&m association of former students distinguished achievement award for teaching and the betty m unterberger award for outstanding service to honors education amato has graduated 23 doctoral students with most going on to careers in academia (10) or government or industry research labs (8) and the remaining going to industry (3) or postdoctoral research (2) amato has also worked with more than 100 undergraduate students in research her areas of focus include motion planning and robotics computational biology and geometry and parallel and distributed computing i was one of the first guinea pigs to try out some of her new research ideas im so glad that i did and a large part of that was due to her vision and passion for students and for learning said kevin kmetz 19 over the years amato has made significant research contributions and has been established as an authority figure in each of these areas she has received the texas a&m association of former students distinguished achievement award for research the national center for women & information in technologys harrold and notkin research and graduate mentoring award and the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) harriet b rigas award among others dr amatos dedication to texas a&m over the past 24 years is awe-inspiring said dr dilma da silva department head and professor her consistent pursuit of excellence impacted all aspects of our department with the emeritus title she remains part of our community and i will continue to reach out to her as a source of innovative ideas sound advice and energetic support amato received undergraduate degrees in mathematical sciences and economics from stanford university a masters degree in computer science from the university of california at berkeley and a doctoral degree in computer science from the university of illinois at urbana-champaign she is an association for the advancement of artificial intelligence american association for the advancement of science acm and ieee fellow and continues to hold leadership positions within these professional societies and organizations amato is now head of the department of computer science and abel bliss professor of engineering at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign
319,dr bjorn birgisson a tees eminent professor and faculty member within the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been elected as a foreign member of the royal swedish academy of engineering sciences (iva) the iva was founded in 1919 and is the first engineering science academy to be established in the world the membership of the academy includes 1 300 swedish and foreign elected fellows whose goal is to influence societal development and policymaking through scientific endeavors the academy strives to build bridges between business government academic and political entities across the areas of engineering research birgisson is one of nine new members joining the iva contributing both his professional academic and industry experience with a combined 10 years in academic leadership he has held several high-level positions including research and development he received a phd in civil engineering from the university of minnesota and an ms in civil engineering from cornell university his research interests include transportation pavements nondestructive testing and materials science engineering this honor is much more than a personal recognition for me birgisson said this recognition is not for only myself but for all my fellow collaborators from the past teams i have worked on to my current home at texas a&m this honor is reflective of the world-class achievements in infrastructure engineering that we have achieved together
320,ashley holt biomedical engineering senior discovered soon after starting at texas a&m university that research was her calling holt said she started looking into engineering in high school when she realized how much she enjoyed math and science her older sister was pursuing biomedical engineering at the university of illinois and after learning more holt decided to study engineering as well my senior year of high school i took advanced placement biology and that was probably one of my favorite classes it was really fun holt said coming into college i knew i wanted to pursue engineering and i had a feeling that i wanted to work in the life sciences holt joined the texas a&m chapter of the biomedical engineering society her freshman year which she said solidified her desire to be in biomedical engineering as it allowed her to fulfill her vision to work with tools to help people she was accepted into the national beckman scholars program her freshman year which started her path in research she began working in the department of biochemistry and biophysics with dr ry young where she has experimented with viruses that attack bacteria specifically e coli we study how they kill the bacteria what proteins they use to kill it holt said its been really exciting work
321,the beckman scholars program is sponsored by the arnold and mabel beckman foundation which annually selects institutions across the country that demonstrate a significant commitment to undergraduate research in chemistry the biological sciences and/or interdisciplinary combinations selected students from each college are required to have 10 hours a week of research during the fall and spring semesters as well as summer hours its like a part-time job holt said my freshman year i dont think i really knew i wanted to do research starting in the beckman scholars program really changed my college career holt found one advantage of working with bacteria is they grow quickly taking two hours compared to the several days it takes to grow human and other eukaryotic cells i think its been really good for learning how to set up experiments and run tests because if you make mistakes you can grow another batch in a couple hours holt said during her time at the lab she has seen all sides of research ranging from seeing a project hit a dead end to discovering the function of a protein in a new virus we wanted to learn more about this particular protein that we found so weve been doing lots of different experiments to really understand the process that it uses to do this function holt said this particular protein disrupts the outer membrane of e coli its different than all the other outer membrane disrupting proteins that have been found holt believes the discovery and further research could lead to new potential antibiotic drugs the protein that we found has some similarities to antibiotic proteins that we have in our bodies its more similar than the other outer membrane disrupting proteins that have been found before holt said its really interesting for potential therapeutic applications if we can test these proteins by producing them within the bacteria it gives us new things that we can test and new tools to test antibiotic proteins
322,dr jeffrey bullard a materials research engineer at the national institute of standards and technology within the us department of commerce will be joining the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering in fall 2019 as a professor bullard will be contributing his experience in materials science a branch of engineering that seeks to develop or improve materials including structural materials like concrete by studying the relationships among their composition structure and performance he will be conducting research at the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) an $80 million 138 000-square-foot multidisciplinary research center that boasts state-of-the-art facilities aimed at making infrastructure smarter more resilient and longer lasting what attracted me initially about the cir was the size and modernity of it said bullard it seems like there is a lot of potential for new capabilities to be installed there and that there is a strong emphasis on the intersection between infrastructure and the materials engineering disciplines his research is focused on understanding and ultimately predicting how chemistry and physics govern the performance of a material over the span of its service life models that accurately predict the time-dependence of a materials performance can be a powerful aid to the challenge of managing civil infrastructure components such as bridges buildings and pavements that people use every day in my research i focus on how to predict properties with time bullard said for example if were pouring concrete i want to know the structure-property relationships of the mixture so that the time of setting and the rate of hardening can be predicted in advance his area of research also has other implications such as gaining an improved understanding of how long a material will last before it will need repair or replacement potentially saving taxpayer dollars and limiting the risk associated with periodic manual inspections bullard is currently working on an experimental program for characterizing the material properties that determine how fast cement components react with water in a given environment he is also focused on creating a more generalized model that can simulate these reactions for a variety of materials that are used in civil engineering geochemistry applications and materials science ive had a good relationship and productive research collaborations with zach grasley (the director of the cir and a professor within the department) for the last five or six years and he has been instrumental in helping me understand the potential of the cir and all of the other resources on campus for conducting world-class research bullard said im looking forward to working with the department and my continued collaboration with him at the cir
323,"five students from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have been awarded 2019 national graduate fellowships christine greve was awarded the national defense science and engineering graduate (ndseg) fellowship she currently works at the plasma dynamics modeling laboratory the goal of greves ndseg research proposal titled data-driven calibration model of hall effect thruster dynamics is to improve predictive modeling capabilities for in-space electric propulsion (ep) systems while physics-based models have been developed and used to investigate ep devices validation of the simulation with experimental data could be time consuming the research focuses on developing data-driven methods that employ experimental data to advance our understanding of the plasma flows enabling more rapid development of new space propulsion technologies greve worked as a summer intern at the air force research laboratory and received the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics 20 twenties award in 2018 during her bachelors studies at the university of oklahoma she worked three summers at the nasa marshall space flight center and was named an astronaut foundation scholar in 2016 greve is advised dr kentaro hara logan kunka was awarded the department of energy computational science graduate fellowship (csgf) the fellowship includes four years of support (2018-2022) and summer practicum at a department of energy national lab kunkas current research focus is on the numerical simulation of high-speed reacting flows specifically he is looking at the use of detonation waves for aerospace propulsion systems kunka graduated from oklahoma state university (osu) in 2018 with degrees in both aerospace and mechanical engineering while an undergraduate he was extensively involved in undergraduate research at osu and interned at the sandia national laboratory combustion research facility which sparked his interest in combustion simulation kunka began graduate studies at texas a&m in the fall of 2018 he is advised by dr alexei poludnenko joseph carlson was awarded the ndseg carlsons research focuses on hypersonic morphing control surfaces utilizing a combination of hypersonic aerothermodynamic investigation controls development and conceptual design to perform in-depth examinations of control surfaces for high-speed aerospace vehicles a new understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms of curved control surfaces will lead to new control concepts that lower drag reduce heat loads and increase performance this work will be conducted at the national aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory carlson is co-advised by dr rodney bowersox and dr nathan tichenor carl leake was awarded the nasa space technology research fellowship (nstrf) leake is researching the n-dimensional k-vector and theory of connections his fellowship proposal is titled ""improving the fidelity of general flexible multibody dynamic simulations "" and will focus on improving the ability to simulate flexible multibody structures this simulation capability is a critical component in the design of a large variety of systems including extraterrestrial rotorcraft systems leake is advised by dr daniele mortari hunter johnston was awarded the nstrf johnston submitted the proposal real-time optimal guidance via theory of connections with the next generation of space missions beyond earth orbit a new generation of algorithms must be developed to decrease the reliance on earth-based navigation techniques in fact the ability to execute orbital maneuvers rendezvous and landing procedures on board and in real time is of great importance for future missions the focus of my research is to apply a technique called the theory of connections (which has been applied to solve differential equations) in order to develop a solution for real-time optimal landing johnston is advised by mortari"
324,rigorous in their pursuits and aspirations a team of former mechanical engineering students has catapulted a small project they started at texas a&m university in fall 2017 called swing sleeve into a marketable product that has found a home in the golfing industry swing sleeve enables golfers to see their arms in virtual reality allowing them to capture their arm motions as they swing the objective of this product is to give golfers the ability to analyze their swings and in turn improve their game; however this products market was not always evident this project is as real as it gets chief executive officer ian cash '17 said i first got involved in this project because my friend and computer science engineer alex hansen approached me with the idea to develop a device to track arm motion in virtual reality this idea then transitioned into a personal project for cashs senior design class where he picked up six more team members who saw value in this undertaking eventually they decided to see how the product would test out in the market through the national science foundation (nsf) i-corps site program at texas a&m that allows students a chance to hold interviews with potential customers to see observe the market potential in their products after some difficulties and doubts the team learned perseverance and the true strength behind their team
325,eventually the group developed trust in their aspirations as well as faith in their goals i firmly believe in the product that we are creating and i want to be part of something revolutionary from the very beginning chief product officer cesar fuentes '18 said the project attracted many students at first many who left other opportunities behind to become a part of it i went to see ian and his teammate alex present their first prototype at the texas a&m engineering project showcase advisor sara van kalker '18 said my mind was blown and i knew i had to try to be part of the team so i asked to join then proceeded to leave my summer internship with general electric after graduation and successful customer reviews they built their company alba technologies as the first step of their startup cash said that the name alba comes from the word albatross: one of the rarest scores a golfer can achieve that requires a person to get the ball in the hole with just two strokes instead of the five expected for it i am absolutely obsessed with the company and i eat breathe and live alba cash said
326,the team largely credits their successes thus far to texas a&m and their mentors weve been working nonstop making sacrifices working crazy hours and learning new skills at a rapid-fire pace and texas a&m has been so generous cash said after all a wise man learns from his mistakes but an even wiser man also learns from others among the teams mentors at texas a&m was dr waqar mohiuddin a research assistant professor in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering who said cash and his team serve as a great example for the potential students have to pursue their ideas while in school the ultimate pleasure i can receive as a mentor is to see students take an idea continue to shape it and bring it out into the world with passion mohiuddin said when i talk about ian cash and his team my students are motivated by their story mohiuddin said having the opportunity to help guide cash in the early stages of his idea through the formation of his team in the meen 210 and meen 402 courses respectively was a rewarding experience while few students pursue their own ideas to the same extent as cash and his team mohiuddin said he encourages them all to explore their potential as early as possible i think we should continue to nurture this excitement in our students and give them the resources and encouragement to pursue their ideas ideally as early as their freshman or sophomore year before they get too busy with their studies and internships he said at the end of my first lecture i always tell my sophomore students this is an opportunity for them to take control in their hands looking forward mohiuddin said he is excited to see where cash and his team take their company as they continue to move their work forward into the market alba technologys swing sleeve product will launch in the market soon which has caused a range of emotions for the team its a nerve-racking experience for us because you have investors that have put big money into us teammates that have made big sacrifices and youd like to see all of that pay off cash said but im very excited for the team because theyre here through thick and thin ultimately cash said that its important to take risks when one has as big dreams as he and his company did as cliché as it is thats the attitude you have to take to succeed because you dont get to go the entrepreneurial route without taking major risks cash said overall my teams chemistry willingness to push through ability to come up with creative solutions learn from mistakes collaborate and take ownership are beyond anything ive ever seen and i owe it all to that
327,the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was well-represented at the annual physics and engineering festival hosted by the department of physics and astronomy at texas a&m on april 6 the event boasted over 200 interactive demonstrations and lectures and over 7 000 visitors attended dr dileep kalathil assistant professor and david gent former student represented the electrical and computer engineering department during the festival and their presentations resonated with the community drawing interest to the field of electrical engineering cultivating the engineering minds of the future kalathil presented his research in artificial intelligence and reinforcement learning to an audience of middle and high school students his talk which spurred interaction and post-presentation interest covered the current state of artificial intelligence research what possibilities it holds how it can be applied and where it is going in the future we are developing artificial intelligence in order to create systems to gain a better understanding of human intelligence kalathil said like i told the students we are living in a very very exciting era
328,gent showcased several demonstrations including a morse code telegraph which seemed to draw the largest crowd of onlookers as he decoded visitors names by ear another popular display was the wireless spark gap transmitter replica built by gent and similar to the transmitter that saved passengers on the rms titanic in 1912 i explained how these two basic devices turned electric signals on and off to represent information gent said this is a concept electrical engineers developed into countless applications and products in our current digital age both kalathil and gent said that there was no shortage of interest in their demonstrations with both parents and children excited and engaged by what they saw the department of electrical and computer engineering actively participates in the physics and engineering festival and uses this opportunity to highlight and share the exciting work being conducted
329,a team of students in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university recently took first place at the sick tim$10k robotics competition for their solution to foreign object detection on airport tarmacs the team included godofredo freddy sanchez daniel hodapp madison bruns and emily stuart they were advised by dr stavros kalafatis professor of practice and associate department head dr kevin nowka professor of practice and dr john lusher ii associate professor of practice in addition to a $5 000 grand prize the team also won a trip to sick incs headquarters in germany founded in 1946 by dr eh erwin sick sick inc is a global leader in the manufacturing of industry sensors safety systems machine vision encoders and automatic identification products their cutting-edge technologies provide solutions for controlling processes securely and efficiently protecting individuals from accidents and preventing damage to the environment at the inaugural sick tim$10k the company challenged teams across the nation to innovate a robotic prototype that incorporated a 270° sick lidar sensor to solve a real-world problem faced by industry as part of their two-semester senior design capstone class the team identified needs of aircrafts and airports and developed an automated guided vehicle that detects foreign object debris (fod) such as screws or metal strips from planes on airport tarmacs as their robot drives around the runway it utilizes the 270° sick lidar sensor to scan and locate anything that could affect the tarmac surface and the takeoff and landing of aircrafts now with the semester over they took a moment to reminisce about their successful project and lessons learned along the way
330,q: what problem does your project address sanchez: fod on airport runways are problematic for airports boeing has reported that fod costs the company about $4 billion a year in airplane repairs our lidar fod detection system solves this problem by autonomously scanning the runway and reporting the presence of fod to a web application database within seconds q: where did the idea for this design come from hodapp: the sick tim$10k challenge was very open-ended we actually spent a good one to two weeks just brainstorming ideas of what we could do i had remembered watching a video a couple years ago about fod walks done by people and thought that using a robotic system to find and create a log of fod would be a great idea for our project i pitched it to the team and all of us really liked it madison and emily both have parents in the military and madison had done a fod walk before which added a bit of personal connection to the project
331,q: what factors influenced the design bruns: there were many factors we needed to take into account while designing our prototype for example one of the first decisions we needed to make was whether to proceed with a rover or a drone we decided on a rover because of the capabilities of our lidar sensor the sensor needed to be stable enough and at a constant distance from the ground in order to accurately detect fod and we felt like a drone would be too unpredictable for that purpose other design aspects such as the distance between the sensor and camera were decided based on the speed and timing of the overall system our rover was generously provided to us by the electrical and computer engineering department and we built every other aspect around that q: how does this design differ from other solutions to this problem bruns: according to current airport inspection practices regarding fod (2011) most airports detect fod visually and just over one quarter of airports use an electronic database for documenting fod our system allows for an autonomous sweep of runways to check for fod minimizing human interaction and reducing the risk of human error we also provide an electronic database that can be accessed by airport personnel on any device with an internet connection making it so that records of fod can be efficiently kept and the fod itself can be efficiently taken care of q: what impact could this project have stuart: the goal for our project was to minimize human error in the detection of fod on airport runways and save the aviation industry money by preventing accidents caused by fod the current methods of detection include human fod walks where airport personnel stand shoulder to shoulder and pick up any debris they see by using the lidar sensor our rover will be able to detect objects that may potentially be overlooked by humans the industry can save millions of dollars by improving the accuracy of their detection methods q: what were your takeaways from the experience sanchez: perseverance and team collaboration are the two words that first come to my mind these were some of the key ingredients necessary to successfully implement a functional prototype that met all the requirements given by sick hodapp: i really enjoy doing projects like this creating designing programming and building around constraints and specifications this competition was right up my ally and i think that what i came away with is the importance of teamwork communication and putting forth the best effort into our work i was very fortunate to have teammates that i got along with so well and was able to be in close communication with this allowed us to efficiently and seamlessly integrate the parts of the project we each worked on something that wouldnt have been possible without communication we put our very best efforts into this project and it paid off bruns: i am so humbled to have been part of this team and i am so proud of what we were able to accomplish everyone brought something unique to the team and taught me something (or a lot of things) along the way one of my main takeaways has been the value of personal growth looking back to where i was and what i knew a year ago i am so grateful for all that i have learned throughout this process it is an incredible feeling to have taken a real-world problem and worked to create a solution that can help save money and lives in the future stuart: one of the big takeaways i got from participating in sick tim$10k is how to view a project from a customer solutions viewpoint it was rewarding to start with nothing but a sensor and create a working prototype of our own idea at the end of the year i enjoyed working with my team and am grateful for the skills i gained through working alongside them
332,"clean drinking water is necessary for sustaining life as natural freshwater sources such as springs lakes and rivers become contaminated because populations and pollution continue to increase finding innovative solutions to enhance the purification process of water is becoming more imperative each day funded by the national science foundation dr shankar chellam j walter ""deak"" porter '22 & james w ""bud"" porter '51 professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university is leading collaborative efforts to investigate how to enhance water filters that turn wastewater to drinking water the collaborators include dr nick cogan a professor in the mathematics department at florida state university and field collaborators from orange county california and el paso texas municipalities their research and filter-protection plans will not only help improve the process of transforming wastewater into a clean recyclable source of drinking water but will also aid purification companies in cutting down on the cost of water filtration"
333,we are now forced to identify other sources for drinking water by definition this means we are going to exploit waters with a higher level of pollution one such supply is our own municipal wastewater said chellam my group is working on the advanced purification of this water and in some sense increasing the reliability of the treatment so that you will get safe drinking water regardless of the source chellam said that wastewater treatment for potable water production has to be much more meticulous than traditional drinking water treatments due to the impaired quality of the source to compensate for this water resource facilities will add multiple points of redundancy to the process to be absolutely sure that the final product is pure safe and ready to drink an integral part of this process involves running water through a series of water filters that catch debris and other contaminants similar to a water filter in a refrigerator or pitcher we are trying to improve the life and performance of these filters said chellam municipalities benefit from collaborations with universities like texas a&m which can provide them advanced instrumentation to analyze these filters as well as the support of skillful and dedicated researchers by breaking open both a new and a used filter and comparing the two chellam and his team have been able to discover how much and what materials are clogging up the filter making it unusable and causing the need for repair what my student found is that when you scrape the gunk off of the filter you will find a significant amount of bacteria said chellam this is what messes up the water filtration during wastewater reclamation or potable reuse of municipal wastewater in order to unclog these filters and extend their lives effectiveness and functionality chellam and his team have a two-fold plan they will first fortify and protect the high-grade filter by utilizing coagulation technologies and pre-filtering the water through a coarse wall of material that will catch aggregated contaminants before they can reach the filter while this material will not collect all of the debris in the water and will eventually collect too much debris to allow water through it will reduce the amount of debris that the current filters are subjected to then once the wall and filter become clogged the water will be diverted down another waterway and the filter will be taken offline to be cleaned with a chemical mixture that combats the type of contaminants that are causing the clogging one of the advantages we have is that because we are able to cut open the filter and do these analyses we can to some extent tailor the cleaning agent to what we find said chellam so if we find a certain kind of foulant that is clogging up the filter we can try to match it to the kind of acid or cleaner that will remove that particular substance through this process the filter and coarse material will be cleansed unclogged and reintroduced into the flow transforming wastewater into safe drinking water we all want to work on meaningful projects and thats why i became an environmental engineer said chellam i got my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and worked for a manufacturing plant where i was responsible for the maintenance of the machines including their waste that was when i realized i could either make money and put my philosophy aside or try and follow a different path and look at water/wastewater treatment thats what i did
334,during a boring summer vacation last year duke university undergraduate student joshua farahzad came up with the idea to build an unmanned rocket and send it into outer space knowing he couldnt do it alone he sent out an email to various collegiate rocketry teams across the country gerardo barillas an undergraduate student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university answered the call and joined operation space operation space is made up of about 50 talented students from more than 25 universities across the united states and canada their goal was to successfully launch a rocket built and designed remotely by college students across the country after completion operation space took their final project to the federally licensed 18 000 acre-launch complex next to the us armys white sands missile range in new mexico in may
335,a: i got involved because i wanted to learn more about rockets in general i knew i was going to take the senior capstone design rocket class the upcoming school year so i thought this would be beneficial i thought this goal was achievable because i had seen what the texas a&m sounding rocketry team could do as well as other college teams across the us
336,a: i was part of the structures sub team and was in charge of the vast majority of computer-aided design (cad) work done for the rocket as well as the lead for the nose cone design and shape i was also one of the nine team members that met up for build week at nashville tennessee in august of 2018
337,a: in order for the team to get together for a build period we had at least two if not more meetings per week including weekends since we were all mostly in different time zones and doing different things during the summer we used the app slack to communicate with our respective sub teams and the rest of the team google hangouts as our video chat email and phone calls whenever things were urgent for the build week we decided to only have the necessary people attend since space would be limited and we did not want teammates to have nothing to do while others worked
338,a: we had two launches because we had two identical rockets one launched on may 31 and the other on june 1 the first rocket cleared the tower ignited its second stage but came apart at around 100 000 ft because we lost a fin for the second launch we also cleared the tower and ignited the second stage but this time we kept going up straight as an arrow from watching the livestream i heard we had reached at least an 85 km altitude or 85% of the way to space but the official numbers have not been disclosed yet
339,a: the big picture goal was to show everyone around the world that such a technically challenging project can be successful if determined individuals come together and work hard we also wanted to prove that working remotely and through the internet is a viable way to come together and build something complex
340,a: my biggest takeaway from being on this team is that you dont have to be working in industry or have a lot of money in order to take on daunting engineering challenges all it takes is a group of people to really dive into/commit to the project
341,a: as of right now i am working for nasa at the johnson space center in houston as a payload systems engineer intern i am hoping at the end of the internship i will be offered a full-time position i also recently received notice that i have been admitted to texas a&ms aerospace masters program i would really love to stay here and learn but i also want a masters degree so im still in the process of deciding what my next step will be
342,intrigued by the thought of creating an online space for people to connect through common interests a team of senior computer science and engineering students enrolled in a capstone design course pursued this passion to develop an app dedicated to just this purpose we saw that a large part of the a&m student culture is formed around communities said muin momin previous research and our initial findings showed that humans have a strong desire to belong in a community and this is especially important in a university setting where mental health should be a priority studies have also shown that people are happier when they have more offline social interaction
343,momin and his team members alishah dholasaniya and zackary christie hit the drawing board and came up with an idea to create a mobile application groupup to allow users to quickly find create and join events around them and chat with fellow attendees once a user logs in they are presented with a map that shows them all events that are happening around them momin said they can then very easily filter through those events based on the category they are interested in like sports social food and education once a user joins an event they have the ability to chat with other members of the same event christie said the chat can be useful for anything from asking about logistics of the event to just socializing with other members the team built the application with simplicity in mind and focused on fast user experience and the ability to quickly find something the user is interested in and can jump into what excites me most about groupup is its unique ability to cater to spontaneous informal events that can be created by anyone dholasaniya said these types of events are often overlooked by other event management systems but are the focus of groupup the application will be available via the app store at the end of the spring semester
344,once our application has been widely adopted beyond texas a&m we want to conduct a study that will hopefully validate our work and show that people are happier when they are part of a community and have more offline social interactions momin said we think groupup can help people with this the team was advised by dr tracy hammond professor in the department as members of her senior capstone design course they were recently awarded first place for their undergraduate oral presentation in the engineering category during the university-wide student research week in march in april they also earned first place in the computer science and engineering capstone design competition at the annual engineering project showcase groupup will have an enormous impact on helping people find their place in a community and help them to connect with others through similar interests dholasaniya said
345,more minority students at texas a&m university have been given the chance to explore opportunities that benefit them thanks to a grant offered by the national action council for minorities in engineering (nacme) with the intention to create a larger proportion of african american american indian and hispanic students in stem careers the nacme scholars program issues $4 million between partner institutions and individual awards annually in 2014 the college of engineering received a block grant for over $600 000 in scholarships to support 14 nacme scholars we are beyond thrilled to have had nacme select us to carry on this block grant to present opportunities to our minority students and we have shown that it has worked based on our retention and the gpas of our students said dr sonia garcia senior director of access and inclusion the grant offers $3 000 annually to a recipient until graduation and since its inception the program has maintained 100% retention several students in the first cohort have graduated and gone on to pursue a graduate degree or work in industry the scholarship continues to support a new cohort each year and recipients have continuously maintained a high gpa during the last academic year the cumulative gpa was 33
346,the nacme scholarship program has benefitted me by enabling me to pay for my college education with less time spent as a student worker civil engineering graduate jose emanuel quiros said as an undergraduate i was thus able to spend more time on my studies and getting involved with organizations on campus not only is this scholarship program able to help students financial needs but it gives them the chance to make connections that in turn expand their professional networks representatives from the programs corporate sponsors meet with nacme scholars giving the students a chance to network and improve their soft skills coming into college i was a bit intimidated by the idea of going to an enormous career fair with hundreds of companies and thousands of representatives quiros said however having a chance to interact with these professionals in a smaller setting helped me gain confidence in myself and my speaking abilities as a result of this partnership with industry many nacme scholars have also found internships within these companies nacme helped me acquire internships at bp as a subsea operations engineer and microsoft electromechanical sourcing engineer by fostering a community that allowed me to network and build relationships with practicing engineers senior mechanical engineering student maricarmen del toro said this scholarship program pushes students to branch out further cement their passions in engineering and ultimately gives students a window to expand their abilities receiving financial support from nacme has helped me identify early in my college career the need to diversify my set of skills polish those i had already acquired and continuously challenge myself to reach new heights del toro said i cannot express enough my gratitude toward nacme and everyone else that has made this possible kim foli ikpo contributed to this article
347,chiranjivi botre a phd student in dr m nazmul karims research group has been awarded an f&pd (fuels & petrochemicals division) outstanding presentation award for a talk entitled detection and isolation of abnormal event in nonlinear industrial processes by a novel data-based method the award was announced at the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) 2019 spring meeting one of the most important aspects in chemical plant operation is the detection and isolation of faults and/or abnormalities throughout the normal operation of a plant any number of things can go wrong from contamination to loss of pressure or equipment failure the most common approaches to fault detection are based in data collection and monitoring the majority of the research in this area has focused on linear data-based monitoring techniques botre and the karim group as a whole have developed a novel approach to detecting abnormalities and faults in industrial processes that dramatically improve the performance over existing techniques the new approach combines three main components: the use of a nonlinear data-based model the use of optimization tools and the use of advanced statistical techniques botre and the karim group previously won an f&pd outstanding presentation award in 2017 for a presentation focused specifically on the development of the nonlinear data-based model the winner of the 2019 professor m nazmul karim award in process control and automation was also announced james beall iv of emerson automation solutions in bryan texas won the award for his paper entitled specifying control valve performance to achieve desired process performance beall is the second winner of the award which is named after dr m nazmul karim holder of the t michael o'connor chair ii and head of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university
348,"the association for computing machinery's special interest group on design automation (sigda) has recognized dr jeyavijayan ""jv"" rajendran assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university with the sigda outstanding new faculty award this prestigious accolade honors a faculty member who is early in their career and demonstrates outstanding potential as an educator and/or researcher in the field of electronic design automation id like to thank texas a&m for providing me the right set of resources and mentors and also the students and my fellow faculty my students have been amazing they push me and challenge me they give me the bandwidth and motivation to explore more said rajendran im grateful for them and for the invaluable mentorship ive received from my fellow faculty members when considering how to keep digital information safe many people think about cybersecurity hacking or various malware programs that protect the software of a computer however it is just as critical for the hardware – computer chips integrated circuits etc – to be secure hardware has become the weakest link in the security system of computers and while there are a lot of good techniques that exist for software security attackers will always target the weakest link for better or worse hardware has become that said rajendran this is largely due to the globalization of manufacturing materials with technology advancing and the increasing reliance on computers for everyday life companies often outsource the creation and testing of computer hardware components to various countries across the world while this allows businesses to cut costs and keep up with product demands it also opens the doors to security risks stemming from untrustworthy foundries test facilities and users whether a culprit pirates a design reverse engineers an integrated circuit to gain access to a computer system inserts trojans into the hardware or simply recycles a used information system into the construction of a new computer hardware has become a predominant security risk"
349,to combat this rajendran and a team of researchers have created a provably-secure logic locking technique – the first of its kind – that can prevent attacks from untrusted manufacturers and distributers like a key to a safe logic locking provides a means to protect the original design of a circuit and keep it from being tampered with by outside forces including piracy counterfeiting hardware trojans reverse engineering and overbuilding attacks while logic locking has been used for many years in many ways to fortify hardware the team was the first to create a method that shows the quantifiable and provable resilience trade-off between all known and anticipated attacks learn more about their findings in provably-secure logic locking: from theory to practice his work and algorithmic studies have additionally led to the fabrication of the worlds inaugural piracy-resilient processor design in partnership with global foundries in a project that stands to impact labs companies and government agencies alike however along with making a mark on industry rajendran is dedicated to supporting his students along with integrating interactive discussions and projects into his coursework he has provided mentorship to both graduate and undergraduate researchers he has acted as a guide in projects presenting research opportunities as fun and exciting rather than intimidating and tedious this devotion to enhancing education prompted rajendran to co-found hack@dac a global student hardware security competition that bridges the gap between industry government agencies and academia by challenging student teams to solve real-world electronic design automation problems held for the first time in 2017 hack@dac attracted 50 researchers in 2018 that number grew to 54 student teams worldwide through this several security vulnerabilities were found in open-source processer designs which were then relayed to designers so that they could be fixed young faculty members are always pushing themselves to stand out am i solving the right problems am i solving them correctly how can i do better said rajendran accolades like the sigda outstanding new faculty award show that the community values young faculty and their contributions its a confidence boost to keep going a branch of the association for computing machinery sigda strives to advance the knowledge and skills of electronic design automation around the globe through grants recognitions and conferences sigda connects expert professionals and students in order to expand and enhance the research and application of electronic design automation technologies
350,three interdisciplinary student teams led by their faculty advisor dr wayne hung won top prizes at two student competitions that were held earlier this year the society of manufacturing engineers (sme) organizes manufacturing events at major manufacturing hubs across the united states on feb 23-25 they hosted a 3d printing student competition during the houstex manufacturing exhibition event at the george r brown convention center in houston this competition encouraged students to be familiar with engineering design and ideation by: creation of 3d concepts innovative ideas applied to products that reduce energy and waste recycling wasted products to conserve resources understanding additive manufacturing processes and limitations being energy conscious enhancing manufacturing knowledge with a guided tour at the houstex exhibition
351,two teams won first and second place while competing against 13 other teams from across the country the teams came up with environmentally friendly solutions by using recycled biomaterials such as coffee powder and saw dust for 3d printing useful objects each team won a cash prize new 3d printers of their choices and plaques from sme in april manufacturing and mechanical engineering technology program students kenny adams benjamin siperek jimmy jaraczewski and matthew retault competed against more than 90 international teams at the aluminum extrusion competition and placed second the competition challenged designers and engineers to think about aluminum extrusions as a holistic solution to a design problem by creating a product or system that includes at least one extruded aluminum component
352,solutions that have already been created include high-impact glass plywood and installing exterior shutters however these designs can be expensive or have a very cumbersome installation process as well as being permanent or requiring nails to be driven into the walls of the structure the design the team came up with is a compression system that holds plywood or other material securely in front of the area it is protecting the team received a scholarship prize and certificate
353,harsh juneja a former student of the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has been honored with exxonmobils pinnacle award for 2018 he was recognized for his outstanding work and dedication as a member of the engineering services team at the baton rouge refinery this distinguished accolade recognizes engineering innovation that fundamentally changes the way that work is done at exxonmobil it is such an honor to receive the pinnacle award which came as a pleasant surprise i feel humbled and extremely grateful for being accorded this award by exxonmobil said juneja receiving this award came as a vindication of my efforts and a symbol of recognition by exxonmobil for the hard work put in by all its employees in their quest for excellence it reignites the motivation in me to keep putting my best effort into my work each day while striving to stay positive and focused on growth and improvement opportunities harsh was always very curious on a wide range of technical subject matters and also hardworking said dr prasad enjeti ti professor iii in analog engineering and associate dean for academic affairs its an incredible and perhaps the most rewarding feeling to see your students whom you mentored and worked with closely succeed in their profession currently a section supervisor in the operations support department juneja oversees a team of 13 chemical engineers that support exxonmobils fluid catalytic cracking sulfur recovery alkylation and various distillation technologies at their baton rouge refinery since my education and core competency is in electrical engineering this role keeps me challenged and provides new opportunities to expand my knowledge of chemical engineering while developing strong management and leadership skills in order to best serve my team and the company said juneja in addition to his education at texas a&m juneja felt the core values he learned there left a significant impact on him and have set the foundation on which he has built his career by merging these values with those of exxonmobil juneja said he is continuously reminded to take a moment for self-reflection and live with a strong sense of purpose i would like to thank my graduate advisor dr enjeti for being instrumental in always motivating me to strive for excellence he instilled in me a desire to challenge the status quo in efforts to seek improvement and advancement said juneja dr enjeti inspired me to always look for ways to innovate innovation is what will keep a company in business help that company evolve with the world around it and help us all achieve more than we may imagine possible
354,"a team of researchers from texas a&m university and texas a&m university at qatar were awarded the best conference paper award from the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) communications society technical committee on green communications and computing the award was given to postdoctoral fellow dr han-bae kong; assistant research scientist dr muhammad ismail; and professor dr khalid qaraqe from texas a&m at qatar; and dr erchin serpedin from texas a&m for the outstanding scientific contributions reported in their paper titled ""energy efficient optimization of base station density for vlc networks"" this paper was presented at the ieee international conference on communications (icc) that was hosted by the city of shanghai china may 20-24 icc is one of the flagship conferences of the ieee communications society and is dedicated to promoting innovation in all aspects of communications serpedin is a professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m university in college station his research interests lie in the fields of signal processing machine learning and big data analytics and their applications in bioinformatics wireless communications cybersecurity and smart grids qaraqe is a professor in the electrical and computer engineering program at texas a&m university at qatar his research interests lie in the fields of wireless communications and remote health technologies"
355,petroleum engineering former student janeen judah 81 was recently appointed to the board of directors for jagged peak energy she is also a director for patterson-uti energy crestwood equity holdings and aethon energy judah was named to the top 25 influential women in energy by hart energy/oil & gas investor magazine was the president of chevron environmental management company general manager of chevrons southern african unit and president of the society of petroleum engineers (spe) she is a longtime member of both the texas a&m university college of engineering and petroleum engineering advisory boards and in 2015 was named outstanding alumni of the college of engineering judah discusses her recent accomplishment as well as the rest of her illustrious career and how her story could encourage young engineers entering the field
356,q: why did you choose petroleum engineering as a degree a: my dad is an engineer and many of the women engineers in that very first wave in the 1970s and 80s that studied engineering were daughters of engineers it was still a pretty unusual career choice for a girl at the time i grew up in houston around the oil business and it always fascinated me i knew i was either going to study chemical or petroleum engineering and i have no regrets im one of the few people who never actually changed their major while in school i came in to study petroleum engineering and i left with not one but two degrees in it the oil and gas industry is always fascinating – but the up/down business cycle frightens people its high stakes technology-intensive and constantly reinventing itself i am still learning in my new role as a corporate director q: jagged peak energy will be your fourth company for whom you are on the board of directors what does being a director for a public company look like a: being a director is a different role than management the board hires the ceo and he/she runs the company we provide advice and oversight especially on financial and compliance issues overall we represent the investor community
357,q: you have a total of four degrees two of which are in business and law why did you choose to study these things a: i did my mba and law degree at night while working during a downtime in the oil industry i think that an mba is an excellent complement to an engineering degree as you move up the management ladder both have come in handy during various points in my career they were good insurance policies! q: do you have any advice for graduating engineers or undergraduate students in general a: the three es – excellence endurance and empowerment be good at your job and solve your bosss problems be resilient and creative in the face of setbacks and help those around you especially those who come behind you q: as someone whos climbed every rung of the corporate ladder what are some things that people have done earned accreditation for or developed within themselves professionally that impressed you a: well as a collector of college degrees im a little biased really though i think that extra degrees are good to have people say ill get a certificate in x but the problem with certificates is that they arent universally recognized and quality can vary widely everyone knows what a masters degree or an mba is i think if you can go through the trouble get a degree that you can take with you wherever you go there are so many options now with online and executive programs from quality universities and most large employers will pay for most of the degree also i would say its important to keep learning because technology is constantly changing for engineers i recommend learning more about data science as an alternative to an mba and there are many universities offering quality data science/data analytics ms programs i have been very involved in spe for 40 years -- since i was a student at texas a&m professional organizations like spe are a great way to stay in the know about current trends and upcoming tech breakthroughs also it extends your network beyond your own employer its easy to stay in your bubble at a big corporation keeping my antennae up and getting out of my office once a week was a goal i had and it greatly helped my professional development
358,q: what else are you up to these days a: i retired from chevron a little more than a year ago and joined my first corporate board the next day board work is periodic with a busy month followed by two months of mostly quiet giving me time to do things i wasnt able to do while working full time and managing a large team my husband dave and i are taking some longer fun trips we just returned from a trip to the utah national parks and the grand canyon and will go to iceland and china later this year and have two trips planned for 2020 with the traveling aggies i am also on some nonprofit boards as well i am a certified instructor for both scuba and yoga so much of my time is spent pursuing those things also i enjoy cooking and playing pickleball or very bad golf q: how often are you on campus and do you enjoy coming back a: we have homes in houston and at traditions so we stay pretty involved with campus events i am on campus often for sporting events and usually have the honor to speak for different classes or organizations once or twice a year we are season ticket holders for football and both mens and womens basketball still waiting on those baseball tickets q: you have a lot of accomplishments what are you most proud of a: i was just thinking about this and i think its being spe president its a big deal in our world and ive been involved with spe my whole career ever since i was a student officer at texas a&m as its international president i was able to travel to 40 countries and speak to about 15 000 people it was a lot of work and made me perpetually jetlagged for two years but how many people can say theyve been to kazakhstan or kalimantan its something that ill look back on in my 80s and think yep that was a highlight
359,the texas a&m college of engineering is proud of our former students such as janeen judah who demonstrate aggie core values like leadership and are committed to empowering young engineers to fulfill their potential if you know an aggie who is celebrating an accomplishment and would like them to be recognized by the college please contact the office of alumni relations
360,rishita das and komal kumari two doctoral students from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have been named 2019 amelia earhart fellows by the zonta international foundation the $10 000 fellowship is awarded annually to up to 30 women pursuing doctoral degrees in aerospace-applied sciences or aerospace-applied engineering das is pursuing research in turbulence under the supervision of dr sharath girimaji while kumari is focused on research in turbulence and advanced computations under dr diego donzis both hold bachelor of technology and master of technology degrees in aerospace engineering from the indian institute of technology kharagpur india das research focuses on understanding velocity gradients and local flow topology of incompressible turbulent flows she is studying the distribution and time evolution of small-scale turbulent structures in an isotropic turbulent flow and the occurrence of extreme events in these structures her research will help understand the physical processes that govern turbulent flow phenomena like mixing and fluid-element deformation finally she aims at developing a physics-based stochastic model for velocity gradient dynamics to capture small-scale turbulence statistics this would provide a physical understanding of complex turbulent flows of interest for which simulation of the entire turbulent flow field is prohibitively expensive the model will be specifically useful in developing efficient design and enhancing controlling capabilities of aerospace fluid systems where proper understanding is lacking due to computational limitations i am most honored and grateful to the zonta international foundation for awarding me the amelia earhart fellowship said das who aspires to develop expertise in the wide-ranging physics underlying turbulence and further enhance the simulation capabilities for turbulence in engineering flows the prime focus of kumaris research is the development analysis and implementation of a novel asynchronous and optimal mathematical framework that will effectively leverage the largest computational resources this asynchronous paradigm significantly improves the scalability of numerical solvers and facilitates the use of billions of processors or more an impossible task for virtually all current solvers she will use this framework for simulations of turbulent flows at unprecedented levels of physical realism and accelerate the development and understanding of the physics of turbulence at scales and conditions unachievable on current supercomputers these new insights will help improve the turbulence models used for industrial scale simulations and facilitate the design of more efficient airplanes rockets and jet-engines being selected as an amelia earhart fellow is an honor that i'll forever treasure said kulmari it reminds me of how much i have learned and grown during my time here at texas a&m and for this i am truly grateful to my advisor dr donzis for his support guidance and all his pep talks this award is a recognition of the hard work and effort that we put in it is a boost to my confidence and encourages me to continue doing what i love to the best of my abilities and contribute to the advancement of my field the prestigious fellowship established in 1938 in honor of famed pilot amelia earhart aims to carry out zontas mission that women have access to all resources and are represented in decision-making positions on an equal basis with men
361,imagine going out to the garage jumping into your flying vehicle and heading off to work sounds a little like the jetsons right now saturday morning cartoons are closer to reality thanks to the gofly prize competition sponsored by boeing to make human flight a reality and a team from texas a&m university has accepted the challenge gofly issued a $2 million three-phase challenge in 2017 to inventors to design and build a safe ultra-quiet and easy-to-fly personal flying vehicle for anyone anywhere after winning phase i for their written report team harmony from texas a&m stepped up their game and built a beautifully-flying third-scale prototype named aria to win phase ii and the prize of $50 000 now the team sets their sights on building a full-scale technology demonstrator for the phase iii final fly-off in 2020 the team led by dr moble benedict assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering along with eight texas a&m aerospace engineering graduate students and three researchers from nasa and the university of maryland is the only united states university team out of the five phase ii winners to date more than 600 teams from 110 countries have competed in the gofly challenge
362,"""winning both phases i and ii of the gofly prize especially with such fierce competition has brought lot of excitement and confidence to the team we hope to keep this momentum going and win the $1 million grand prize in phase iii "" said benedict the goal of the gofly prize is to foster the development of a near-vertical-takeoff-and-landing personal flying device quieter than 87 decibels and capable of flying 20 miles while carrying a single person imagine a vehicle someone could pull out of their garage and take off in to go to work without even blowing the trash can into the street gofly is unique because we're working on a problem that people have been dreaming of solving for a long time said team member carl runco everyone wants to fly to work and we are going to make that possible"
363,in phase i the team spent a semester brainstorming different vehicle configurations before developing a unique personal air vehicle concept that simulations showed made less noise at 20 yards than a hair dryer next to your ear they built a 1/8 scale prototype to demonstrate their vehicle design in phase ii the team spent another semester refining and building a 1/3 scale prototype to successfully verify their full-scale aerodynamic and acoustic predictions through hundreds of hours of lab testing including wind tunnel tests of their novel rotor system the team then partnered with faa-licensed unmanned air systems (uas) pilot scott mcharg to conduct more than 50 flight tests of the prototype and demonstrate vertical takeoff followed by steady flight aborted landings and vertical landings all required maneuvers for phase ii in addition to the required maneuvers and the noise limitations the final vehicle can be no larger than 8 1/2 feet capable of carrying a payload of 200 pounds and must travel at a speed of at least 30 knots the team believes the full-scale rendition of aria will meet these requirements and win phase iii despite the countless hours the team has put in to developing aria they have never lost their positive energy or focus on the end goal although the hours have been long and exhausting i'm very excited about gofly said team member farid saemi i would not have enjoyed such a hands-on opportunity to develop a new field of aviation even if i had gone straight to industry as a recent graduate in addition to the long hours the team still faces many challenges to bring their project to fruition including raising the necessary funds to finish building the project and getting it commercialized after completion the texas a&m engineering experiment stations office of commercialization and entrepreneurship is helping the team lay the groundwork to commercialize and develop the teams promising concept into a viable product after the gofly competition another hurdle will be to get federal aviation administration (faa) approval to fly the full-size vehicle the team is responsible for ensuring their device is allowed to fly and is not in conflict with any faa or other regulations both during flight testing and at the final fly-off the team is working with mcharg and the lone star uas center of excellence at texas a&m-corpus christi to secure flight test authorization from the faa just as in the first two phases anyone can compete in phase iii teams dont have to have a win in a previous phase to compete in the final fly-off but participation will be by invitation only the fly-off which will be in early 2020 will consist of two phases: tech inspection and flight demonstration with scored parameters for size noise and speed team harmony is ready for these challenges the team members from texas a&m include benedict runco saemi atanu halder david coleman bochan lee hunter denton and vishaal subramanian
364,dr jn reddy is the latest recipient of the timoshenko medal a prestigious honor awarded by the applied mechanics division of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) the award recognizes the distinguished contributions of its honorees in the field of applied mechanics reddy is receiving the award for lifetime contributions to research and education in applied mechanics through the authorship of creative and highly cited papers on variational principles refined theories of plates and shells computational methods and nonlocal theories which have impacted generations of engineers reddy oscar s wyatt jr chair professor university distinguished professor and regents professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university will accept the award on nov 12 during the 2019 international mechanical engineering congress & exposition in salt lake city utah asme founded the award in 1957 in honor of world-renowned applied mechanics authority stephen p timoshenko and his contributions as both an author and teacher
365,infrastructure is the backbone of society to better understand each segment of it – such as energy water telecommunications and transportation – engineers and governments must understand all of it like a tangled web each sector is heavily influenced and affected by changes in others for example say we need energy resources to produce water infrastructure but we also need water infrastructure to produce energy they are both dependent on each other and you cant have one without the other so if you benefit the water sector you also benefit the energy sector said venancio mendez levy a senior in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university as part of the texas a&m grand challenge scholars program (gcsp) mendez levy is developing a way to quantify and model the interconnectivity of infrastructure systems in order to map and analyze the intricate relationships between each in doing so he is creating an integral tool for state and national entities to use to decide how best to invest in infrastructure and improve infrastructural resilience to natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes mendez levy conducted this research under the guidance of alireza talebpour an assistant professor in the department at the end of the day countries that have better infrastructure systems have better economies and commercial frontiers he said so we are trying to generate a computational model that any state organization can use to run the numbers to decide whether to invest in this sector rather than another one to achieve the most overall benefit this is particularly critical for budgeting like a company preparing for their fiscal year and dividing up available funding across their key departments governing bodies have to carefully plan how to use their limited resources to fund their infrastructure whether it is a city governance wanting to fix roads or national legislation to support a new method of clean energy finding the best budgeting strategy is as imperative as it is difficult mendez levys computational model would give such entities a visualization of how their investments directly affect each sector of infrastructure and those related to it this would not only give authorities a better understanding of how state and national infrastructure systems work together but also provide them with unbiased data about their funding options additionally a better understanding of infrastructure systems and how they are interconnected could lead to a new way to improve infrastructural resilience to natural disasters but interconnectivity is a double-edged sword when one sector benefits others are also inadvertently boosted however it also means that when one sector is damaged by a natural disaster it damages all other related sectors as well as mendez levy explained based on data pulled from past natural disasters his model and research have the potential to identify what sector is being most negatively affected and disconnect it from the rest of the infrastructure network until post-catastrophe by mapping the system and highlighting where damaged segments can be shut down temporarily his research could therefore save a government money and resources that could be allocated to another branch of infrastructure that would balance and bolster those in peril this shows how important programs such as the texas a&m gcsp are undergraduate research at texas a&m allows students to expand their frontiers and knowledge so that they can answer problems the world is dealing with right now he said i am doing a little bit and trying to give what i can by investing in the research i am investing in myself
366,"the national science foundation (nsf) recently awarded the texas a&m university system louis stokes stem pathways and research alliance (lsamp) $4 million to implement programmatic initiatives to increase engagement and enhance the success of underrepresented minority students in stem and conduct research to explore the impact of research mentoring grit and persistence on underrepresented minority student success in stem according to dr angela duckworth grit is the ability to persist and persevere because of your motivation for a long-term goal duckworth is the christopher h browne distinguished professor of psychology at the university of pennsylvania where she studies grit and self-control its important to research what leads to student success so we can transform engineering education and the stem career landscape and allocate resources to support the transformation said dr karen butler-purry principal investigator (pi) for the project professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate provost for graduate and professional studies at texas a&m university lsamp is comprised of original members texas a&m prairie view a&m university and texas a&m university-corpus christi plus a new member texas a&m international university the team is including two new texas a&m researchers: dr reuben may presidential professor of sociology and dr christine stanley professor of higher education and co-pi on the grant she is an expert in the area of diversity and social justice in higher education faculty development and college teaching i am excited to be involved in the louis stokes alliance for minority participation grant with my colleagues in the college of engineering this nsf-sponsored grant has the potential to impact recruitment and retention of current and future students in stem "" stanley said"
367,programmatic initiatives will include a robust academic year undergraduate research program international research experiences and a multipronged mentoring strategy for their high-impact research abroad experience students will be visiting the yucatán and belize i am motivated to provide these different types of experiences to students because it broadens their image of themselves as a stem scholar said butler-purry having a high-impact experience where an undergraduate can apply their skills in a realistic setting such as in a laboratory or on a study abroad trip greatly impacts their matriculation to graduate school because they can see themselves there and have an idea of what they would be doing
368,the group will analyze mentoring relationships between faculty and students to assess the growth of grit after they gather the data they hope to be able to train educators on how to best mentor students to foster success mentorship is about finding out what that person really aspires for and helping them decode what they need to do to meet their own goals said dr karan watson the pi for the project from 1993-2017 and regents professor for the college of engineering sometimes people think theyre mentoring when really theyre advising a student on how to be like them or how to get over one hurdle grit will take a student through hard times to success said watson often its not the student with the highest gpa that will succeed in life but the student with the most motivation work ethic and resilience we want our students to know how they're going to contribute their uniqueness to society through their field part of their research analyzes the effect undergraduate research and mentors have on grit when students engage in research they see that a difference can be made in their field and it can spark a long-term goal that transcends simply completing another semester said watson
369,the project builds on a 26-year track record of success by texas a&m university system lsamp working with lsamp schools from across the nation allows texas a&m to have a broader perspective on issues and collaborate on concrete solutions that will help students thrive their combined findings led to the discovery that social capital is key to the success of individuals social capital is about ensuring support systems are in place to make somebody feel like they are welcome like they belong and their success is important to the institution although the idea of social capital existed even before the 90s lsamp studies have contributed to increased support for first-generation students and the creation of living learning communities our evidence-based research has led to many best practices for universities said butler-purry we now know that undergraduate research develops a sense of self efficacy for students that can inspire them to pursue graduate studies once the study is complete a broad dissemination of results will inform evidence-based practices in the design and implementation of strong mentoring of underrepresented minorities in undergraduate research experiences from the student perspective when we dont support underrepresented minority students in stem they are missing out on the opportunity to achieve at their fullest capability said butler-purry its also important for other students to be able to experience and learn in a diverse environment for their long-term success plus its just the right thing to do we have to make sure potential engineers arent accidentally or systemically cut out from the field said watson greater diversity in the workforce means a greater diversity of ideas people who come from different backgrounds will look at a problem differently leading to better engineering solutions for the world
370,if theres one thing dr sonia garcia wants you to know its this underrepresented minority students thrive when given the opportunity and resources to succeed as senior director of the access and inclusion program in the college of engineering at texas a&m university garcia works tirelessly to make sure that underrepresented minority engineering students have a community and a place to grow academically and individually her efforts were recently recognized by the department of multicultural services at the annual accountability climate and equity awards ceremony where she was given the diversity service staff award garcias story is similar to that of many of the students she helps daily born in the dominican republic and later moving to puerto rico and finally the mainland united states she understands what it feels like to be different than others around you she also understands how integral the people who came before her were to her own success in so many ways my career in higher education is my way of paying it forward she said
371,finding her purpose a first-generation college student garcia admits that she was apprehensive when she first arrived at the university of massachusetts in 1990 but she leaned in and listened to the advice of those around her and she carved out her own path there were advisors faculty members and deans who encouraged her and helped her see her own potential one such opportunity was a summer program designed to help underrepresented minorities gain admission to graduate school she had just completed bachelor of science degrees in political science international relations and french when she earned a fellowship at the university of rhode island in the student affairs masters program it wasnt something she initially planned to pursue but a mentor encouraged her and helped her realize that this was something she could really excel at after graduating she worked at michigan state university as an advisor it was a difficult job but it ignited her passion for helping students even more after a couple years working with minority students in high-risk situations i realized how difficult it was for them she said i really wanted to know more about this so i decided to go for a phd garcias dissertation was on the ethnic identity development of latina women in college something with which she was acutely familiar i saw a lot of minority students struggle she said that struggle plays a role in how well students do academically and that struggle became the driving force behind her passion to create a space for minority students to feel empowered
372,establishing access and inclusion in 2014 garcia was hired to lead a brand-new initiative at the college of engineering at texas a&m the access and inclusion program the program provides opportunities for high school students to visit the college and learn about engineering it also helps facilitate a transitional program for first-generation college students called the engineering summer bridge program another component is a high-impact professional development course to help undergraduate students sharpen their soft skills that will help them become successful outside the classroom garcia who once served as a peer mentor herself developed a peer mentor program so that undergraduates have access to knowledgeable upperclassmen she also worked with halliburton engineering global programs to create an opportunity for first-generation students to do research and study abroad in mexico when asked why she works so hard for students her answer is simple because she cares students give me life and energy she said they give me motivation to go on and continue helping them to show them all the potential that they have garcias office is located in the equity and inclusion suite inside the zachry engineering education complex the women in engineering program is also housed in the suite and the two programs often collaborate on events and initiatives its not just saying ‘we care about you we actually do care she said her hard work has paid off the college of engineering has seen an increase in the enrollment and retention of hispanic and african-american students in the last couple of years creating opportunities for these populations means creating opportunity for the future she said once we open the access and include minorities in innovation and education thats when were going to make a difference in society garcia said it isnt just about paying it forward its about being in a position where youre meeting with a student who feels they have no opportunities and then you show them that they do she said its just an amazing feeling this is about making a permanent contribution to these students
373,engineering students put their pitching skills to the test during aggie pitch 2019 except they werent playing ball the mcferrin center for entrepreneurship hosted its second annual aggie pitch this year aggie pitch is open to all currently enrolled students and seeks to identify the best student business pitch at texas a&m ten student teams were selected as finalists to compete for $50 000 in prize money the finalist team members represented six colleges and over 15 majors each group was allotted 10 minutes to give a pitch on their business and field questions from a panel of expert judges two engineering teams placed in the top five team polylabs made up of biomedical engineering students won third place for their novel polybubble technology which serves as a protective layer surrounding life-saving vaccines exposed to extreme temperatures during transport to developing countries cutting the costs associated with constant refrigeration
374,junior jacob good said the team has been working to develop the idea under assistant professor dr corey bishop now that the team had a successful proof-of-concept pitching their idea and raising awareness was the next step competing in aggie pitch helped us understand how to bridge the knowledge gap between engineers such as ourselves and people in business good said we learned how to get away from the science and connect with the judges so they would believe in our idea the same way we do biomedical engineering graduate student shree arun kumar said the team wanted to participate in the competition to fine tune their business model and seek funding to commercialize the product aggie pitch encouraged us to critically think about initial investment and revenue strategies that will lead to the successful deployment of our polybubbles kumar said winning third place in this competition provided us with financial resources to kickstart our commercialization effort
375,team lazarus which included mechanical engineering senior elise hackney chemical engineering senior ben omonira and biomedical engineering senior seth reine placed fourth in the competition the teams project works to develop a form of ammunition that would provide neutralization power of a lethal round while preserving life through hemostatic material omonira said aggie pitch exceeded the teams expectations for helping them hone their pitching skills and gain more feedback aggie pitch shed light on the things we can do to answer questions raised in the minds of an investor omonira saidmost importantly we were given feedback that set us up for an opportunity to show real investment potential moving forward and we had a great opportunity to show off our teams hard work other engineering students were in the top 10 finalists for the challenge alex ramponi computer engineering senior worked with two veterinary medicine students on vetchip a way to track a pets complete medical history for easier access by veterinarians when it matters most he said he learned about the project from an online post when i heard their idea i thought it was really cool since i personally have two dogs one of which has a handful of medical issues ramponi said when they explained the idea to me and how it could really change how the vet industry works i was fascinated since i could easily see it not only helping my dogs but other dogs and vets nationwide ramponi said the aggie pitch process and the vetchip project helped him expand his knowledge beyond software and coding to include business skills other finalists included electrical and computer engineering student graduate student alfredo costilla-reyes and team interna which included industrial engineering seniors christian aycinena and francisco donoso interdisciplinary engineering senior luke oaks and general engineering sophomore nathan reddy
376,a successful life by definition includes service to others george hw bush nuclear policy and a shared commitment to serve tie together the department of nuclear engineering and the bush school of government and public service at texas a&m university creating cross-disciplinary interactions that connect the opposite sides of campus the classes seminars and organization relationships are advantageous to both students and washington
377,good nuclear policy is essential for maintaining peace and making sure countries have a diverse energy portfolio said dr sunil chirayath associate professor and director of the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) nsspi is a multidisciplinary organization at texas a&m the first us academic institution focused on technical graduate education research and service related to the safeguarding of nuclear materials and the reduction of nuclear threats in 2006 nsspi was formed as a joint center between texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station
378,nsspi combines the talent of internationally recognized researchers from the uss largest nuclear engineering department with renowned policy expertise from the bush school the team brings unique capabilities to face complex nuclear threats and proliferation challenges involving both policy and technology nsspi students participate in foreign field experiences present their research results in national and international forums and have premier internship opportunities at national laboratories said chirayath our students recently participated in the domestic nuclear facilities experience where they visited los alamos national laboratory sandia national laboratory urenco and the waste isolation pilot plant next month our students will be touring facilities in europe focused on nonproliferation
379,dr evans kitcher an assistant research engineer for nsspi teaches nuclear technology for policy makers a class that informs bush school students studying international affairs with an interest in nuclear security or energy on the technical aspects of nuclear engineering effective policies achieve goals said kitcher in turn professors from the bush school also teach classes for both nuclear engineering and government graduate students having a strong technical background in nuclear engineering and supplementing it with lectures and seminars from policy experts in the bush school enhances your worldview said athena sagadevan a nuclear engineering doctoral student i enjoyed the international security class i took with dr william mayborn at the bush school we analyzed previous wars that have happened around the world and how they influence policies today nuclear policy in the us is governed by its history so knowing the past is essential
380,policies tend to allow countries to have guidelines on how they act with one another said sagadevan from an energy perspective policy allows you to make sure that a certain quota of your energy comes from nuclear meaning that it's clean for example pollution is a significant challenge in china currently mainland china has about 45 nuclear power reactors in operation roughly 15 under construction and more about to start their policies are helping make them a more green country i was really encouraged to see the interaction between the nuclear engineering students and the bush school students as the former would often help us understand the complexity of nuclear weapons production and the enormous costs involved in a weapons program said dr william mayborn a visiting assistant professor to the bush school sagadevan completed an internship at oak ridge national laboratory where she used a code developed at texas a&m to provide a score for reactors indicating how much they would need to be monitored this score can communicate the probability of misuse of a reactor to a policy maker she said
381,the institute of nuclear materials management (inmm) is a nonprofit technical organization dedicated to the safe secure and effective stewardship of nuclear materials and related technologies inmm unites engineers technicians managers policymakers analysts commercial vendors educators and students across the globe texas a&m was the first university to start a student chapter as a student organization inmm connects texas a&m students to professionals from all over the world if youre interested in international relations making a concrete impact in the world and reducing nuclear weapons through nonproliferation join inmm this fall said mario mendoza a senior nuclear engineering student and the 2018-19 texas a&m chapter president of inmm mendoza had the opportunity to visit the national inmm conference which included ambassadors and representatives from the united nations
382,benefits for a student include meetings every other week with food and events that put you in contact with people from industry academia and national labs said sagadevan the 2018-19 texas a&m chapter vice president at texas a&m inmm is a great platform to connect with undergraduate students graduate students students from the bush school and our organization advisors every year there is an inmm liaison to connect the department of nuclear engineering and the bush school in 2018 audrey hopkins an international affairs graduate student served as the liaison in april inmm hosted an advanced reactor safeguards workshop the workshop gathered experts in safeguards and advanced reactor design from around the world and texas a&m students to discuss current and future safeguards implementations for these new reactors new challenges arise with the development of new reactor types so current safeguards in place must be modified or new methods must be created to keep the world secure
383,"students from around the state of texas and the world gathered on the campus of texas a&m university this summer for the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) tryengineering summer institute hosted by the department of electrical and computer engineering the camp is structured with two two-week camp sessions that allow students to experience life on a college campus and see what electrical and computer engineering and texas a&m engineering have to offer the camps focus on stem-related coursework and provide opportunities to experience hands-on design challenges and projects learn firsthand from experts in the field form friendships with other students and get a behind-the-scenes look at innovative engineering environments such as the zachry engineering education complex tryengineering summer institute students not only enjoy the impressive facilities on campus they are also near the heart of the united states space program and past students have enjoyed visits to nasas johnson space center fifty-two students attended both sessions hosted at texas a&m this summer one camper said ""i enjoyed the summer institute because it gave me a great experience and i enjoyed the lessons and activities provided throughout my time at camp it showed how college life was and really got me brainstorming about what i would like to do in the future"" it has been wonderful having the ieee tryengineering summer institute on campus this summer seeing the campers excitement and interest in working on completing projects and learning engineering concepts makes us excited for the future and for what these young people will contribute to the engineering community said windy lala electrical and computer engineering undergraduate advisor several ieee professionals attended the speaker and panel sessions in addition to current nasa engineers this is the second summer that the department of electrical and computer engineering has hosted tryengineering the university of california riverside hosts the california camp and vaughn college of aeronautics and technology hosts the new york camp the goal of the tryengineering summer institute is to spark enthusiasm in engineering and technology in the next generation of problem solvers and difference makers and position these innovators for long-term success in academics and in life tryengineering summer institute is a partnership between ieee and branded camp services"
384,many students come to texas a&m university without knowing what their future career will be dr brian craig can relate craig wanted to pursue a program that involved engineering yet was human-centered not solely focusing on math and design he found it at texas a&m receiving bachelors degrees in bioengineering (1990) and industrial engineering (1992) a masters degree in industrial engineering and a phd in interdisciplinary engineering while he may not have known what to study as a freshman craig has achieved great things over his career including recently becoming the dean of the college of engineering at lamar university craigs success has been built on hard work responsibility and practicing the aggie core values in his life and career before the fall semester begins craig spoke with us about how he joined the industrial engineering program and how texas a&m impacted his life
385,q why did you choose to attend texas a&m a i was in the first generation of aggies in my family preceded by my older brother david i had opportunities to visit aggieland and attend fightin texas aggie football games while i was in high school those visits along with the core values made the choice of which university to attend a simple one for me i did not apply anywhere else q why did you choose your majors a as is the case for many entering freshmen i didnt have a clear idea of what i wanted to study computer science was my initial selection due to the obvious trajectory of computer applications and technology but i switched to bioengineering after my freshman year knowing i wanted to pursue a combination of something engineering yet human-related when i graduated with my bachelors degree in bioengineering i wanted to go to grad school but the job market was down i remained in school and finished my degree in industrial engineering in 1992 it was around that time that i took a course in human factors engineering a field that at the time i did not even know existed as they say the rest is history after almost six years and two degrees i had finally found something that involved engineering yet was human-related afterward i earned a masters degree in industrial engineering and phd in interdisciplinary engineering specializing in human factors engineering ergonomics and safety most of these opportunities i owe to my graduate faculty particularly my masters and phd advisor dr jerome (jerry) congleton professor and director of the national science foundation industry/university cooperative research center in ergonomics and director emeritus of the texas a&m ergonomics center
386,q how has being an aggie engineer helped you in your career a the world-class education you receive by earning an engineering degree from texas a&m is immediately recognized and respected whether i am traveling or walking into a meeting for the first time i have an instant network i simply scan the meeting room or as i am waiting on a flight at the airport for aggie rings and more often than not i will see fellow aggies proudly wearing them particularly early in my career the engineering education that i earned from texas a&m provided an increased sense of confidence however even as respected as an engineering degree from texas a&m is my level of success would not have been possible without my graduate school faculty and a lot of hard work q what advice would you give to current engineering students a as my father told my brother and me growing up find something you love and hopefully you can also get paid to do it this is simple yet profound considering the impact your chosen career will have on your overall quality of life and family a career that you love allows you to wake up each morning and look forward to working believing in something greater than yourself can also lead to a worthwhile and fulfilling career texas a&m fosters an environment of collaboration and responsibility your classmates expect you to uphold a certain set of values and those values are important to remember and integrate into your life after you graduate and move into your career as you move up in your career you need to strive for a balance in life work hard but balance that with fun
387,students also shouldnt lose sight of the fact that they are responsible for their future level of success and shouldnt be afraid to pursue their dreams accept the difficult assignments in college and in your career when you work you should always have a sense of urgency and be driven so you never have people waiting on you balancing this drive with patience a skill that i still struggle with at times and having respect for your coworkers regardless of their title or rank will allow you to succeed in your school work and future career dont forget that faculty can be one of your best assets now and into the future ask one or more of them to be your mentor try to avoid student debt as much as possible a lesson that i learned the hard way as i am in my 19th year of repaying my student loans always remember that you really can change the world in some meaningful way with the education that you are currently working on the hard work and challenges that come with earning an engineering degree from texas a&m really are worth it be persistent
388,"texas a&m universitys engineering entrepreneurship program (eep) has created the concept creation and commercialization (c3) certificate program that allows both undergraduate and graduate students to gain insight into industry and sharpen their entrepreneurial skills this 13-hour credit program includes insight into startup business practices the chance for students to share their ideas with industry as well as become inspired by former texas a&m engineering students who have successfully commercialized their own products students can uncover what customers are looking for and in turn design a product that customers value rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship started designing this certificate program in 2016 his goal was to set students apart from their peers by instilling in them an entrepreneurial mindset this is what engineers do boehm said they have a concept they create the solution and then they commercialize it senior ben omonira said he is currently pursuing this certificate with the intention of becoming an individual with initiative who can think innovatively this opportunity met his goals for self-growth my experience with the c3 program has been insightful and ive learned to make assumptions and test them relentlessly omonira said working as a professor of practice in the engineering entrepreneurship program james donnell has seen numerous projects emerge from this certificate program from a pacifier with a built-in hygrometer for the early detection of dehydration in infants to a device that more effectively detects feline diabetes the ideas are all over the spectrum donnell said through the certificate program omonira came up with lazarus a project developing specialty ammunition that neutralizes threats while preserving life his project is centered around helping law enforcement disable threats with a lower chance of death from excessive bleeding in its sole aim to diversify students experiences in industry the certificate program offers opportunities for them to branch out and make connections that they otherwise could not have made roland block associate director of engineering and experiential education with the career center said he loves this program because it goes beyond basic instruction and gives students practical knowledge on how to take the next step ""so many students want to go into design but they dont necessarily have a good understanding of what it takes to design develop and produce a product and thats what this certificate so nicely offers "" block said this is just the very beginning of this program and im excited for what is to come boehm said learn more about the c3certificate program here"
389,a team of researchers from the texas a&m energy institute and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering led by dr mahmoud el-halwagi are developing novel technologies and integrated systems that could dramatically reduce the amount of water needed in the natural gas extraction process
390,researchers from the texas a&m energy institute and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering are leading a major initiative to reduce the amount of water needed in the natural gas extraction process and to treat wastewater so that it is safe for reuse since the early 2000s hydraulic fracturing has been the main natural gas extraction process in the united states the effectiveness of the process and the access to major reserves have led to substantial economic growth through the use of shale gas in generating electricity and in producing a wide variety of value-added chemicals while hydraulic fracturing is extremely effective the process requires large amounts of water which typically ranges from two to seven million gallons per well after this water is used in the extraction process it returns to the surface as wastewater containing naturally occurring contaminants like radium salts metals and various chemicals used in the process this wastewater is usually shipped offsite for treatment or injected into a deep well for disposal the potential impact on industry and everyday life is tremendous the project will enhance the quality of life for communities adjacent to shale gas production will provide a strategic roadmap for the cost-effective management of shale gas wastewater and will help gas producers operate in more sustainable manner said dr mahmoud el-halwagi el-halwagi is professor holder of the bryan research and engineering chair in chemical engineering and managing director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations gas and fuels research center (gfrc) is the principle investigator (pi) of a department of energy (doe) research project entitled deploying intensified automated mobile operable and novel designs (diamond) for treating shale gas wastewater focused on developing integrated design and operating approaches for modular systems that can be deployed in the treatment of hydraulic fracturing wastewater the team of texas a&m researchers is collaborating on this $53 million project with partners from the university of pittsburgh the university of texas at austin and us clean water technology the project is aimed at developing novel technologies and integrated systems that will lead to a paradigm shift in managing shale gas wastewater reducing cost conserving natural resources and enhancing environmental impact said el-halwagi while treatment of wastewater is currently used it is often prohibitively expensive and rarely used in addition the characteristics of the wastewater vary tremendously from one natural gas well to another however according to dr joseph sang-ii kwon assistant professor in the chemical engineering department and co-pi on the project the variable nature of each well presents a unique opportunity to utilize modular systems the modular nature of the proposed systems will take care of well-to-well variability such as geological conditions regional regulations proximity and capacity of treatment facilities etc kwon said first the team will examine and model the dynamic characteristics of the wastewater and develop computer-aided tools to streamline the modeling process once the wastewater is characterized the team will assess all of the conventional wastewater treatment options – pretreating the water reverse osmosis flotation among others – and carry out experimental testing and prototyping with novel modular technologies – membrane distillation counter-flow ro systems novel ionic liquids with a polymeric membrane contactor and electro-magnetic fields this experimentation and testing will determine the most effective approach to treating the different characteristics of wastewater from well to well the environmental impact of different approaches will be considered according to dr debalina sengupta associate director of the gfrc the life cycle of the options is critical for sustainability of the chosen options when technologies are considered we seldom are able to take account of all the sustainability aspects that make it truly feasible the diamond project will consider the true sustainability of the technology options and will provide the platform for predicting and testing future options the doe grant is being administered through the rapid advancement in process intensification deployment (rapid) institute led by the american institute of chemical engineers the texas a&m energy institute is leading the modeling and simulation efforts for the institute
391,"the texas a&m university college of engineering was named recipient of the cigre outstanding collective member award which previously had only been won by companies in industry cigre is an organization of 90 countries promoting electric power technology worldwide the outstanding collective member award is given for outstanding leadership and continuing managerial technical and financial support of the activities of the united states national committee (usnc) and cigre over an extended period of time the award was presented at the annual luncheon meeting of the cigre usnc which was held at the hilton in atlanta on aug 6 it is a distinct honor for texas a&m engineering to be the first university to be named by cigre to this award "" said dr b don russell engineering research chair professor regents professor and tees eminent professor at texas a&m and usnc vice president ""this is due to the long-standing relationship where texas a&m hosts the us secretariat for cigre the texas a&m college of engineering is one of the largest engineering colleges in the country with more than 20 000 engineering students and nearly 700 faculty including world-renowned scholars members of the national academies of engineering science and medicine and industry experts the college is consistently ranked among the top 10 public engineering programs in the country and ranks third in the nation in research expenditures texas a&m is first in the nation for most graduates serving as ceos of fortune 500 companies has had the largest female incoming freshman engineering class for the past two years and is among the top universities in the number of national merit scholars"
392,senior madeline loftin has taken her college education to the next level by starting a business developing her entrepreneurial skills alongside her engineering ones growing up loftin said she wanted to be a doctor but didnt feel medical school was a good fit when she realized biomedical engineering combined science and engineering she immediately made it her first choice in her first year loftin was a member of the engineering academies which meant for her freshman year she took her math and science classes at blinn college and general engineering courses at texas a&m when i first started i was so upset because it felt like i wasnt really an a&m student but i was wrong youre still part of the school loftin said once i got into it it really helped me transition from high school to college with smaller classes at blinn even if youre not an academies student or blinn team i would recommend blinn to anybody who has concerns about their transition for math and science loftin received her bachelor's degree in may 2019 and as part of the fast-track program will receive her masters degree by may 2020 from texas a&m afterward she plans to continue her cardiovascular and pulmonary bypass education to become a perfusionist during open heart surgery your heart cant beat while the surgeon is operating on it so they hook you up to a bypass machine that controls your respiration your blood gases your blood flow and other important vitals that ensure the patient remains stable loftin said theres an expert clinician controlling all of that and thats what id like to do along with school loftin also works for the texas a&m engineering experiment station as the student work for the new ventures competition an annual event aimed at promoting the commercialization of emerging technology becoming a business owner on top of school a job and extracurricular activities loftin has found time to found a business with the help of startup aggieland and a few fellow biomedical engineers the business focuses on regenerative medicine treatments while looking for resources to help the team loftin came across startup aggieland in the mcferrin center for entrepreneurship its been amazing they have so many resources that students can use there are mentors and experts available and its all free loftin said you can tell they care about working with us its been an immense help and really fascinating just to see the connections in industry science math and how they mix with the business loftin is on the materials track in biomedical engineering and two classes that stood out to her in her junior year where response to biomedical devices and drug delivery she said it was interesting to learn about how medical devices and chemicals mix with the body knowledge shes now able to apply to her business advice for students with an idea and looking for ways to get their own business launched loftin offered some advice she said they should not be afraid to put themselves out there of course be smart and research but dont be afraid to ask for help we werent going to sit there and stumble across a business plan on our own we asked around and did research to look for resources loftin said a lot of help so far has been from faculty resources are out there you might get some nos but youll also get a lot of yess
393,"biomedical engineering draws students from across the country including senior jacob good who had to learn to shift into college life while also moving from his home state of pennsylvania to live in college station good said texas a&m university offered the best opportunity academically and financially with the scholarships he was provided choosing to pursue biomedical engineering however took some time as good was drawn toward two majors in high school engineering and actuarial science both of goods parents are nurses and finding a video about prosthetics pushed him over the edge to study biomedical engineering because he was captivated by the impact the field can have in the world i looked into engineering and i decided that i wanted to impact the world as opposed to just impacting myself good said nothing against actuarial science i just wanted to have meaningful impact in the best way i could which i thought was through engineering goods interests within biomedical engineering have shifted over the years he is now pursuing pharmaceutics and enjoys the drug portion of the food and drug administration (fda) breaking the ice looking back on his time at texas a&m good said his first semester was difficult because he came in knowing no one and most students came in with already established friends refocusing myself on my reasons for coming to college to position myself with a biomedical engineering degree is when i started to find comfort good said good quickly began to meet people through organizations including the bmen ambassadors his junior year i work jobs do research and take a full course load but one of my favorite choices i made was to join bmen ambassadors good said this is where i can share my passion for biomedical engineering and texas a&m with prospective students and faculty he is also a peer teacher for a biomedical engineering coding class he took sophomore year thats something ive really enjoyed doing because its helping people good said i was in their situation last year and succeeded and i wanted to give people the formula to how they can succeed being able to help students work toward four-year graduation is really rewarding good is on the six-year track and expects to graduate with his bachelors degree in spring 2020 followed by his masters of engineering degree in winter 2020 future plans good said his long-term goal is to become part of upper level management in a pharmaceutical company my goal with biomedical engineering is to establish a strong background in the medical field and move up on the business side in the work place eventually going back for my mba good said to gain experience in industry good had a summer internship with phasebio pharmaceuticals a biopharmaceutical company based in pennsylvania there he worked under the companys chief medical officer where he was able to experience a variety of areas in the company i was doing market research bioanalytical statistics things along those lines that i really got to see the whole aspect of a company and in a small company that is really nice good said it was very helpful to see all of the different aspects of biomedical engineering in one place there's doctors there there's people doing research there's market research"" advice good encouraged students to recognize that the four years of college will change the rest of their lives for better or worse there are so many opportunities here research access to the incredible faculty the traditions those opportunities are not always captured good said people let them go and think ‘ok i'll just have fun here when texas a&m offers incredible opportunities with research and academics those should be cherished and utilized good said students should stay motivated on using their time to the best of their abilities in the end i believe motivation is really where people succeed or fail people typically do not run out of time in the day they run out of motivation and they drift into being unproductive good said if students can realize that every day is a day when they can impact their future and enjoy the process they will become a lot more successful"
394,tucked away in a quiet corner on the second floor of the chemistry building at texas a&m university dr abraham clearfield's office is blanketed with research papers old and new personal items naturally mingle with beakers scientific posters and the trove of professional accolades that line the walls the distinguished professor retired in spring 2019 from the department of chemistry after 43 years of service to the university it was a toy chemistry set he received as a child that catalyzed clearfields laser-focused journey to become a chemist he earned both his bachelors and masters degrees in chemistry from temple university with encouragement from his wife ruth clearfield completed his doctoral degree at rutgers university and began his career in crystallography investigating the structure and properties of crystals in 1976 clearfield accepted an opportunity to work at texas a&m with dr frank albert cotton an old classmate from temple university soon after he was able to build a major x-ray diffraction laboratory at texas a&m in 1986 clearfield and a group of like-minded colleagues formed the faculty of materials science and engineering to address a growing interest in materials research which served as the seed first for the interdisciplinary graduate program in materials science and engineering and then the department
395,i told them that youre making a big mistake if you dont have a materials science program at texas a&m because its the future said clearfield and apparently some people heard that and they were willing to start in a small way the university secured a grant from the national science foundation (nsf) and under the guidance of clearfield renovated parts of doherty hall and the chemistry building to support the new materials science and engineering activities additional nsf funding in 1994 made possible the purchase of a scanning tunneling microscope susceptometer-magnetometer and laser ablation system to further enhance the materials research in 2003 an interdisciplinary graduate program in materials science and engineering was approved and in the fall 2004 the first cohort of students entered the program ten years later the department of materials science and engineering was established
396,it was the seed that professor clearfield planted at that time and his continuous support that took us where we are today said dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and head of the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m in fall 2018 the department enrolled its first undergraduate cohort as the program continues to grow the legacy of dr abraham clearfield is widely apparent materials science is going to grow and how it grows is going to depend on the students we are training now clearfield said from the very beginning clearfield recognized the importance of materials research in the field of engineering with a very clear vision clearfield helped set in motion the very founding of the department though now retired this unwavering commitment to the university and field of materials science and engineering continues to inspire the next generation of engineers in spring 2018 the professor abraham clearfield materials science scholarship was established which honors clearfield for his role in starting materials science and engineering education and research efforts at texas a&m the scholarship supports outstanding undergraduate and graduate students pursuing a doctoral degree in the department of materials science and engineering something that is real and going to do something for the people in the program is what i was after said clearfield and i hope to see students that come out of materials science and do some great things this is my contribution to texas a&m
397,in addition complimenting his achievements at texas a&m clearfield also served on several boards and committees including: chairman of the synchrotron radiation special interest group (1995-96) secretary and treasurer of us national committee for crystallography (1995-97) vice president and president of the american ceramic society (1998-1999) and chairman of the x-ray powder special interest group (2004)
398,"a recently discovered geometric shape found in animal skin cells is providing texas a&m university researchers with a bio-inspired methodology for designing a wide array of engineered creations the interdisciplinary project to develop the shapes -- dubbed delaunay lofts by the researchers -- holds potential applications in a range of areas including architectural design additive manufacturing metamaterial design heat transfer air-flow control and education dr vinayak krishnamurthy an assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is leading the project alongside dr ergun akleman a professor in the departments of visualization and computer science and engineering delaunay lofts are inspired by a geometric shape called a scutoid which enables animal skin cells to be watertight by slotting together to form a unified shape the recently published research by krishnamurthy and akleman explores the theories and algorithms needed to generate the delaunay lofts as well as the geometric and topological principles that allow for the design of a potentially limitless variety of these types of shapes beyond what is known to occur in nature ""by simply assembling several of these new interlocking shapes several aesthetically pleasing and physically robust artifacts can be computationally designed and physically manufactured for mechanical structures architectural tilings and educational puzzle purposes "" said krishnamurthy akleman said he is particularly excited that the research enables fundamentals on how to better control the geometry of these shapes -- a breakthrough important to both theoretical and practical implementations ""we now have a theoretically sound and practically simple methodologyto search for desired shapes "" akleman said ""this is really useful since almost all engineering applications involve the identification of desired shapes"" krishnamurthy said the space-filling properties of the delaunay lofts open up great potential for sturdy designs that look to nature for inspiration and provide a new tool with applications ranging from structural design to a new kind of bio-inspired building block toys for children ""most works on interlocking shapes in the past were performed purely by geometric reasoning "" krishnamurthy said ""ours is the first to systematically apply geometric reasoning to create new classes of engineered products and systems based on biophysical phenomenon to this end our algorithm builds on the intuition for why scutoids occur in skin cells and shows that there many other shapes -- not just scutoids -- that can be constructed using our algorithm"" the team is continuing its research to explore the mechanical properties of these shapes and further investigate the physical properties of delaunay lofts and how structures using them might withstand stress torsion and fatigue their work is already making waves in engineering recently krishnamurthys graduate student was awarded the first place at the association of computing machinery (acm) student research competition organized by the acm-siggraph 2019 conference for his work on delaunay lofts siggraph is the premier research event in the area of geometric computing computer graphics animation and computational fabrication and was held in los angeles july 28-aug 1 2019 this research is now poised to compete in the acm student research competition grand finals across all acm conferences in the country"
399,nasa has a new directive to return humans to the moon by 2024 this directive generates a compelling need for a more comprehensive understanding of the lunar environment we find your rover to be fully acceptable said lee graham senior project engineer within the astromaterials research and exploration science (ares) division of the human exploration and operations mission directorate at nasas johnson space center
400,this statement was made after a final successful demonstration of the articulated suspension robot called louie (lunar observation utility and imaging explorer) was conducted by texas space technology applications and research (t star) atg mobile electric systems and undergraduate students from the mechatronics program at texas a&m university grahams statement further cemented the team as a valuable partner for nasa in meeting the united states vice presidents directive to return humans to the moon in response to nasas requirement to develop a small-form factor mobile platform to perform lunar regolith (soil) analysis and characterization as well as imaging for concurrent lunar operation t star and atg partnered with the mobile integrated solutions laboratory (misl) within the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution to adapt the articulate-leg suspension evaluation platform and digital systems teaching and research (asep/dstr-class) robots to meet nasas diverse set of requirements
401,on july 31 the industry-academic team successfully completed its demonstration of louie which was then accepted by graham mechatronics students shane blozis and daniyal ansari were the primary hardware and software engineers on the project atgs herbert baumgartner 09 led the major mechanical modifications and addition to the robot and t stars matt leonard 86 managed and directed the project other students from the department who played a role in bringing louie to fruition were shelby baron and dustin tish who worked closely with dr joseph morgan director of misl louies capabilities and adaptability has piqued nasa interests in meeting the lunar mission requirements including regolith sample imaging in addition louie will perform lunar trenching to support lunar roadbed preparation louies multifaceted mission while on the moon will include instrument deployment roadbed preparation video recording of the launch of the return vehicle and the distribution of radio-frequency identification sensors that will help nasa scientists collect information about lunar water ice and establish a geo-location infrastructure following the successful completion of strata-1 hermes helikite and cardinal louie is the latest example of the win-win proposition of the public-private-academic partnership which has been established by t star over the past three years
402,working with t star atg and the misl has allowed us to move forward from ideas to working prototypes in a timely and cost-effective manner stated graham it is great to have this type of functional turn-around in these projects but what may be far more important is the fantastic learning experience these undergraduate students receive by engaging in our projects through their capstone design experience or as a member of an applied research team the asep/dstr robot platform has supported not only applied research such as louie but has been used in a wide variety of stem outreach and recruiting efforts the dstr version of the articulated suspension robot has been used by blinn college in bryan and brenham in their introduction to engineering courses at brandeis high school in san antonio in their robotics course and in a number of stem workshops the newest use of the dstr robot is by the all nations community school in the woodlands as the primary project for their stem-based math and science class being offered for the first time this fall
403,this summer petroleum engineering student sriniketh sukumar 21 took part in the college of engineerings undergraduate summer research grant (usrg) program which funds an engineering student to participate in a project with a faculty mentor of the students choice sukumar took time to share his thoughts on his mentor dr john lee his project and his academic pursuits q: have you learned a lot from participating in the usrg a: absolutely! dr lee was very patient and helpful in explaining concepts and guiding the direction in which my project would progress i really benefited from his clarity of thought which helped my learning process he also encouraged me to be an independent thinker and bring all of the ideas i could to the table participating in the usrg program has been an excellent experience and i highly recommend it to any other students interested in pursuing research q: what does your usrg research entail a: our project features the development of multi-segmented decline curve models as a more efficient means of accounting for all of the flow regimes that are typically observed over the production life of an unconventional resource play our method is validated with history matches of both simulated and real field results which culminate in the development of a new type well workflow based on effective scaling principles and rooted in relevant fluid flow principles our workflow also models project economics and uncertainty our methodology creates more accurate type wells for the production forecasting of unconventional gas resources which are the hallmark of important legal activities like tax auditing reserves estimation and making the pivotal drill or no drill project decision all of which carry immense weight to the value of an operating company the most exciting part is its industry applicability if successful our results offer practical improvements to the reserves estimation and business development planning process that benefit the practicing reservoir engineer q: did you do research before usrg a: yes since my freshman year my most notable experience prior to the usrg program was with dr weijermars during my sophomore year our work culminated in the recent publication of my first research paper as engineering students at texas a&m we are granted some rare and valuable opportunities both within and outside the sphere of research i hope to continue to make the most out of them for the remainder of my time here q: why come to texas a&m university a: petroleum engineering at texas a&m offered opportunities i could find nowhere else in the world namely the opportunity to learn from some of the most accomplished professors in the field and take part in fascinating research and a broad spectrum of elective coursework i was especially interested in the petroleum ventures program (pvp) which offers excellent breadth in the areas of reservoir management and finance in conjunction with the mays business school i was recently accepted into the pvp and im excited to start this fall! i was also eager to learn the ropes of the oil and gas industry in a location close to houston the worlds energy capital and near various unconventional resource plays which are an exciting area of emerging prospects in oil and gas another feature that separates texas a&m from other schools is the scholarship opportunities i was able to obtain one even as an international student! q: why study petroleum engineering a: while finishing high school i was convinced i had an aptitude for engineering and wanted to pursue this exciting discipline i found petroleum to be an interesting choice as it integrated a broad variety of fields in engineering geosciences and even economics and finance i found it to be at the interface of the technical and business world which is especially important since oil and gas is responsible in no small part for meeting the worlds growing energy needs q: what do you hope to do when you graduate a: i would like to work in industry for a few years before pursuing graduate school this would allow my professional interests to mature with real-world industry experience before pursuing further technical specialization in graduate school which would shape my career long term
404,"spyridon tsolas a phd student in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering won a best poster award at the 2019 foundations of computer aided process design conference tsolas is a third-year student in a research group led by dr mm faruque hasan assistant professor and kim tompkins mcdivitt 88 and phillip mcdivitt 87 faculty fellow tsolas poster ""systematic design analysis and optimization of water-energy nexus "" was selected as one of the best from more than 100 posters that were presented at the conference the foundations of computer aided process design conference is the premier international conference focusing exclusively on the fundamentals and applications of computer-aided design for the process industries"
405,dr mladen kezunovic eugene e webb and regents professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was honored as the recipient of the cigre philip sporn award the award was presented at the annual luncheon meeting of the cigre united states national committee (usnc) which was held at the hilton in atlanta on aug 6 the philip sporn award is the usncs highest award and was established in 1989 to recognize recipients for cumulative career contributions to the advancement of the concept of system integration in the theory design and/or operation of large high-voltage electric systems in the united states recipients must be actively involved with cigre kezunovic who is director of the smart grid center and site director of the power systems engineering research center (pserc) consortium was also named a 2018 cigre distinguished member a 2014 cigre fellow and an honorary member other cigre recognitions include the atwood associate award in 2008 and a cigre study committee protection and automation award in 2012 he was also recently reappointed by the us secretary of energy to serve a second term on the department of energy electricity advisory committee his research expertise is in protective relaying automated power system disturbance analysis computational intelligence data analytics and smart grids he has contributed seminal work in the areas of automated fault analysis predictive outage management and life-cycle test approaches for synchrophasor systems he has also served as a consultant to over 50 companies worldwide kezunovic has been a principal investigator on over 150 research and development projects published more than 550 papers and has given over 120 invited lectures short courses and seminars around the world
406,meet brian welsh a senior civil engineering student who sat down with us to talk about his aggie civil engineering experience his love for engineering and how his time at texas a&m university has impacted his future for the better q why were you interested in pursuing civil engineering a the thing that drew me toward civil engineering the most was my admiration for the built environment we live in buildings bridges roads and water resource infrastructure all fascinated me and i wanted to be a part of its construction being able to impact people every day through civil services was another huge reason i decided to pursue civil engineering ive always been passionate about helping people and volunteering so this seemed like a natural route to serve the public and pursue my academic interests in structural engineering math and science q how has your passion for civil engineering grown over the years a my passion has primarily grown through applying the skills ive learned in my civil engineering courses to organizations im involved in such as engineers without borders by doing undergraduate research and through various internships by getting to apply my skills to these projects and real-world applications ive reinforced my knowledge base and gotten to see an actual impact from my work q what do you hope to do as a career or after graduation a after graduating with my bachelor of science i plan to attend graduate school to attain my master of science in structural engineering following that i hope to work for a structural engineering firm that works on large-scale projects in a global market getting to design and improve the built environment that our society operates in for the good of all people is something i greatly look forward to toward the end of my career im also looking at potentially becoming a professor of practice at a university to teach – an interest of mine ive discovered through peer mentoring as an undergraduate student q what type of projects have you encountered in your courses a aside from the standard freshman year engineering course projects ive had multiple design projects most of these projects have come in my upper level structural courses involving the reinforced concrete design of a structure the creation of a matlab program to perform structural analysis using matrix methods and my senior design project class where we designed an entire building over the course of the semester and presented our work to a structural engineering firm q what is valuable in a civil engineering degree at texas a&m a in addition to the already fantastic reputation of texas a&m as a university i believe there is special value in a civil engineering degree in particular part of the civil engineering creed that all licensed professional engineers must abide by is to hold paramount the safety health and welfare of the public this ethical code is very much in line with the aggie core values that students strive to represent and carries over into the civil engineering field quite seamlessly this likeness in my opinion gives the degree more value than pursuing it at other universities q what do you love most about being a civil engineering student at texas a&m a my favorite part of being a civil engineering student at texas a&m is the people ive met within the department everyone is extremely welcoming and friendly both inside and outside of the classroom ive made some lifelong friends within the department and all my most memorable experiences at texas a&m have involved my peers q what are four words youd use to describe getting your degree in civil and why a challenging – it may come as no surprise but getting a degree in engineering requires a lot of dedication and effort rewarding – getting to meet the people within the department and the opportunities to learn and apply my coursework have been extremely rewarding from both a professional and personal standpoint fun – ive honestly had a lot of fun both in and out of my classes being able to study and work within a field i have a passion for has been a very enjoyable experience eye-opening – one of the reasons i was interested in civil engineering is because i was so interested in the infrastructure we use daily so learning about how the things around me work has given me a new perspective on everything that goes into the design of our world
407,an accurate knowledge of the initial state of a petroleum reservoir is crucial to optimize its development and production plans such knowledge relies on correct descriptions of the spatial distribution of the fluid (hydrocarbon) components in the reservoirs dr keshawa shukla addresses these issues in a chapter he wrote for the book exploration of unconventional oil and gas resources hydraulic fracturing and other recovery and assessment techniques
408,shuklas book chapter thermodynamics of thermal diffusion factors in hydrocarbon mixtures deals with one of the key aspects of hydrocarbon production from the oil and gas reservoirs known as the thermal diffusion process this process plays an important role in separating isotopic mixtures and isobaric mixtures analyzing hydrodynamic instability in mixtures and studying the compositional variation and segregation in hydrocarbon reservoirs for the oil and gas productions shukla a professor of practice in subsea engineering at texas a&m university has over 35 years of professional experience in management engineering teaching research and development around the globe in the areas of subsea field development and operations
409,until recently research on automated vehicles (avs) and human driver interaction was not a well-studied subject in the realm of transportation a team of graduate students in the department of civil and environmental engineering has dedicated the last few years to looking deeper into this area these vehicles have fundamentally different decision-making logic compared to human drivers and the driving interactions between avs and humans can potentially change traffic flow dynamics said yalda rahmati doctoral student in the department utilizing field experiments conducted using texas a&m universitys automated vehicle we aim to provide an answer to the following question: ‘do humans' driving behavior change when they interact with an av answering this question is a critical step toward enhancing the realism of simulation frameworks and can facilitate the planning for the future of transportation systems rahmatis team began working on the project in 2018 and published a paper titled influence of autonomous vehicles on car-following behavior of human drivers in 2019 which was awarded the fred burggraf award from the transportation research board (trb) executive committee the award recognizes excellence in transportation research by individuals who are 35 years old and younger
410,this study was the first step toward characterizing the human-av interactions in the transportation system rahmati said the findings suggest there is a statistically significant difference between human drivers behavior when following an av and when following a human-driven car human drivers felt more comfortable following the av drove closer to them and put less weight on the crash risk essentially this study helps researchers to better understand and analyze traffic efficiency stability and safety in mixed driving environments with both avs and human-driven vehicles the team worked under dr alireza talebpour assistant professor in the department along with mohammadreza khajeh hosseini doctoral student and former teammates christopher nelson and benjamin swain we are an interdisciplinary research lab at texas a&m focused on developing smart transportation solutions such as autonomous and connected vehicles hosseini said our vision at the smart city lab is to develop efficient and safe interconnected transportation systems to enhance user experience and comfort we investigate the effects of connectivity and automation on congestion safety emissions and energy consumption through simulation and field tests with our autonomous vehicle the team will be recognized and accept the award at the 99th trb annual meeting in january 2020
411,dr arun srinivasa is the latest recipient of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) 2019 worcester reed warner medal the medal is awarded for outstanding contributions to the permanent literature of engineering through single papers treatises or books or a series of papers the contributions should be progressive ideas relating to engineering scientific and industrial research associated with mechanical engineering; the design and operation of mechanical and associated equipment; industrial engineering or management organization operation and the concomitants of each; or other subjects closely associated with those mentioned according to the asme srinivasa is the holdredge/paul professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he will accept the award on nov 12 during the 2019 international mechanical engineering congress & exposition in salt lake city utah the award was established in 1930 by worcester reed warner asme charter member and president
412,the texas a&m university college of engineering received a bronze level award for the inaugural american society for engineering education diversity recognition program (adrp) the highest level of achievement they can currently achieve the college also received exemplar status which was only bestowed on a select number of institutions exemplar status was given to programs that had initiatives or outcomes that were deemed by the reviewers as significant this allows them to resubmit for a higher classification in an upcoming submission the bronze level recognition means that a college is among the nations leaders in inclusive excellence this level demonstrates that the unit is committed to the following outcomes: 1) establishing baseline support for groups underrepresented in engineering; 2) quantifiably analyzing and assessing unit composition policies culture and climate related to all groups underrepresented in engineering; 3) implementing programs and initiatives that strengthen the k-12 or community college pipeline thereby reducing significant barriers related to long-term growth; and (4) developing an action plan focused on continuous improvement after spending time at the bronze level institutions can apply for silver and later the gold levels the academic business and social value of diversity and inclusive excellence has been well documented regardless of motivation industry reports the need for a more diverse mix of engineering professionals and these professionals need to be able to work effectively in a diverse multicultural and global environment with the support of over 200 engineering schools and colleges the adrp initiative is a national recognition encouraging institutional transformation in engineering and engineering technology schools and colleges around the issues of diversity equity and inclusion it is the first national effort to publicly recognize these institutions for their success in building a diverse workforce
413,two faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering were among 54 academic inventors named to the spring 2019 class of senior members by the national academy of inventors (nai) the new senior members include dr robert balog and dr balakrishna haridas balog is an associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and haridas is a professor of practice in the department of biomedical engineering and executive director for technology commercialization and entrepreneurship for the texas a&m engineering experiment station nai senior members are active faculty scientists and administrators from nai member institutions with success in patents licensing and commercialization they have produced technologies that have brought or aspire to bring real impact on the welfare of society we congratulate our outstanding faculty dr robert balog and dr balakrishna haridas for their election as senior members of the nai both are researchers at the top of their fields and leaders in engineering innovation said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering senior members also foster a spirit of innovation within their communities while educating and mentoring the next generation of inventors following a nomination for the nai senior member class individuals undergo a rigorous selection process by the nai senior member advisory committee comprised of elected nai members and other professionals considered pioneers in their respective field senior members are elected biannually and nominations are accepted on a rolling basis nominations are currently being accepted for the third senior member class on the nai website nai member institutions support some of the most elite innovators on the horizon with the nai senior member award distinction we are recognizing innovators that are rising stars in their fields said paul r sanberg nai president this new class is joining a prolific group of academic visionaries already defining tomorrow a full list of nai senior members is available on the nai website
414,dr stephen a holditch 69 who served on the faculty of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university since 1976 passed away on aug 9 2019 holditch was a perfect example of an outstanding aggie he was a member of the corps of cadets and ross volunteers as an undergraduate in petroleum engineering at texas a&m holditch rose to the rank of second battalion commander before he graduated and later attained his masters degree he always extolled the values he learned in the corps and proudly credited them as the basis of his success in the oil and gas industry while on leave from shell oil company to obtain his phd at texas a&m holditch accepted an offer from his alma mater to be an assistant professor he also started a consulting firm sa holditch and associates inc as he rose through the faculty ranks his business grew into a large company with a global reputation for solving the most challenging petroleum engineering problems holditch was elected to the national academy of engineering in 1995 which is the highest professional honor for an engineer two years later schlumberger acquired his company and with holditch retained as an advisor adopted all aspects of his reservoir analysis methods in 2002 holditch became president of the society of petroleum engineers (spe) a global organization with more than 70 000 members in total he spent six years on the spe board of directors: three years as vice president of finance and three years in the presidential rotation during that time he traveled the world discussing oil and gas technology in january 2004 holditch left schlumberger so he could focus on texas a&m as head of the petroleum engineering department a position he held until january 2012 during his tenure the number of students in the department more than doubled he revitalized the crisman institute of petroleum research to promote better research and industry relations and later served as director of the texas a&m energy institute holditch retired from texas a&m in january 2013 as a professor emeritus of petroleum engineering so he could spend more time with family especially his grandchildren he returned to the campus he loved in 2016 as a part-time professor all while continuing to put family first
415,over the years holditch earned a reputation as a world-renowned expert in the areas of tight gas reservoirs coalbed methane shale gas reservoirs and the design of hydraulic fracture treatments he received numerous technical awards and other high honors in his profession including honorary member of spe in recognition of his lifetime contributions as a devoted aggie he was inducted into the corps of cadets hall of honor and recognized as a distinguished alumni by the association of former students for his lifetime of service to texas a&m you will look back at your years at texas a&m as one of the best periods in your life said holditch your classmates will be lifelong friends so keep in touch with them and the university as your career takes you to various parts of the world always remember the aggie code of honor
416,in the soft lighting of the bethancourt grand ballroom in the memorial student center a throng of first-generation students chattered among themselves in anticipation as the opening speaker took the stage for the 2019 engineering summer bridge programs (esbp) closing ceremony a hush fell over the cohort of 75 incoming freshmen and their entourages cheers of their class year rang out proudly as presenters addressed the freshmen interwoven with grateful applause for sponsors and the movers and shakers involved in the program
417,then as each students name was called out and they walked across the stage graduating from esbp the room was illuminated with the delighted glow of smartphones as the surrounding crowd of family and friends recorded each moment of all of the programs that i am privileged to coordinate the engineering summer bridge program is my favorite said danisha stern program specialist for access and inclusion i am truly connected to this program and invested in the success of the students because i too am a first-generation college student and i participated in a similar program when i was starting at texas a&m this years cohort of students was unlike any other and im certain they have what it takes to be successful aggie engineers led by the college of engineering at texas a&m university and the women in engineering and access and inclusion programs the four-week long esbp acclimates incoming students to university life
418,students who attend esbp will be prepared for the upcoming year said shawna fletcher director of women in engineering these students are building connections to the college and our programs they now have a head start and know how to navigate the university in addition to meeting faculty and peer mentors the cohort was guided and tutored through the beginning of the mathematics course they will take in their first semester at texas a&m their preparation seminar readied them to take a final placement examination at the end of the program we are beyond thrilled with this years cohort performance said dr sonia j garcia senior director of access and inclusion early math placement exam results show that they scored higher after completing the program another round of cheers erupted when that achievement was announced at the ceremony – the gathering of new friends proclaiming their excitement for one another as they celebrated each and every one of them improving on their test scores
419,being an aggie engineer means everything to me said jorge hernandez an incoming freshman i mean ive been building up to this moment my entire life and (esbp) really helped me get started with that equipping first-generation students like hernandez with resources and campus know-how is a vital element to success – helping them overcome the barriers associated with being the first member of their family to pursue a higher education degree this year esbp was sponsored by the zachry corporation as well as the at&t foundation the lasting impact that esbp will have on the excited members of the class of 2023 will serve as the building blocks for their educations their careers and their better futures
420,watch what some of the students have to say to the next generation of aggie engineers as well as the generous sponsors for this year:
421,"bringing together man and machine a team of researchers is studying how machine learning could be used to better predict the probability of a patient bleeding during and after coronary procedures their findings have set the stage for providing doctors researchers and clinicians a vital data-driven tool to help them quickly determine whether a patient is at risk analyzing previously collected data from the american college of cardiologys national cardiovascular data registry which includes more than 3 million procedures conducted across the united states of america the researchers investigated how applicable and effective machine learning would be to identifying high- and low-risk patients we need to be able to really explain what's going on and understand what it means for somebody to be high risk or low risk (of bleeding) so that treatment decisions can be made off of that said dr bobak mortazavi from texas a&m university this could be the difference between life and death in the operating room and almost as important could mean the difference between being readmitted at a later date and staying on the road to recovery one of the reasons that the medical field has suddenly become very open to working with computer scientists is that under certain healthcare legislature there's a lot of clauses now regarding heart failure readmissions and quality of care improvements said mortazavi sometimes patients are even kept in the hospital longer post-procedure if it means that they dont come back later we are using the newest latest and greatest computer science artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to see how we improve patient care clinical decision making and the prediction of whats going to happen said mortazavi the challenge he explained is that many of these techniques were developed on the computer science side where decision-making parameters are easily defined and little mistakes – such as a fitbit miscounting a few steps – is not a big deal however for health care purposes results and conclusions must not only be highly accurate but also need to be interpretable by whomever is using them in order to achieve this interpretability the team looked at the categorization of high- and low-risk patients as a spectrum rather than a black-and-white decision – shifting away from traditional pattern recognition techniques that match a data set to a specific programmed conclusion as dr harlan krumholz a cardiologist and professor at yale university explained in a recent news story the team is discovering that machine learning has the potential to improve the ability to predict risk better than traditional approaches in the future such techniques could enable doctors and engineers to personalize risk estimates to a much greater extent and in near real time as mortazavi described risk decision models such as the ones used in the teams study are retrospective – reflecting on recorded data and drawing conclusions from that however the future of this research and the bridging of engineering and health care has set the stage and paved the way for the development of proactive decision tools that present real-time data in operating rooms this would allow medical professionals to view the current bleeding risk of their patients as concluded by machine learning programs theres a lot of people that want to integrate machine learning into health care but then they get challenged by what it really means to understand and interpret medical data said mortazavi so i think the exciting thing here is that weve found a way to get computer science to directly impact medicine the research team includes mortazavi assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m along with researchers and collaborators from yale university and the american college of cardiology the project is headed by krumholz the teams work was recently published in jama network open in a paper titled ""comparison of machine learning methods with national cardiovascular data registry models for prediction of risk of bleeding after percutaneous coronary intervention"""
422,the 15th international conference on polymers for advanced technologies (pat 2019) was hosted by texas a&m university aug 8-10 the three-day conference organized by faculty from the colleges of science pharmacy and engineering is associated with the journal polymers for advanced technologies pat 2019 was arranged into three different themes: life and health energy and electronics and synthesis and sustainability according to rigoberto advincula professor in the macromolecular science and engineering department at case western reserve university and invited speaker at pat 2019 meetings like this are important to highlight new research polymers are everywhere they touch nearly every aspect of society and technology meetings like this are a good way to bring together the different branches of engineering and sciences to share breakthroughs advincula also said that texas a&m was an excellent choice to host the conference there is a good polymer concentration here at a&m and really all of texas he said christopher bowman patten endowed chair of the department of chemical and biological engineering and the director of the materials science and engineering program at the university of colorado also praised the choice of texas a&m as host texas a&m is the perfect institution to organize this conference because of the deep and broad capabilities in polymer science going through science and engineering into the applications
423,the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university had an influential role in the institute of electrical and electronics engineers 33rd international parallel and distributed processing symposium (ipdps) held in may in brazil ipdps gathers engineers and scientists from around the world to present their research and engage in international cooperation in all aspects of parallel computation the symposium offers six different program areas dr dilma da silva department head chaired the system software track dr nancy amato professor emeritus chaired the multidisciplinary track dr lawrence rauchwerger eppright professor was one of the three keynote speakers for the event his talk titled two roads to parallelism: from serial code to programming with stapl presented the irrelevance of parallel computers without efficient parallel software
424,the texas a&m university system board of regents on thursday authorized the construction of a $130 million combat development complex at the texas a&m systems rellis campus in bryan the complex will include a one-of-a-kind kilometer-long tunnel that will make texas a&m engineering the hypersonics research capital of the country said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering at the rellis campus gen john mike murray commanding general for the us army futures command said the army futures command would develop test and evaluate next-generation technologies from the private sector and universities around the country the texas a&m system will build a $50 million facility with laboratories accelerator space and offices for the army futures command on the rellis campus plus invest another $30 million in infrastructure improvements to support the new facility the texas legislature also appropriated $50 million to establish an innovative proving ground which the texas a&m engineering experiment station will implement as an outdoor testing area at rellis for designing analyzing and validating new technologies in challenging environments gov greg abbott lt gov dan patrick and speaker dennis bonnen championed the $50 million to be included in the state appropriations bill for the proving ground this innovative new complex strengthens texas partnership with the united states military and further establishes our state as a hub for emerging technology said gov abbott i am proud to have worked with the lieutenant governor the speaker and the legislature to secure funding to move this project forward the state of texas will continue to work with the texas a&m system and the army futures command to modernize our defense and keep our armed forces at the forefront of technological advancement the army futures command headquartered in austin is drawing on research from universities around the country and the private sector to modernize the us army but the new facility at rellis will be the central hub where the newest and most innovative ideas are tested and evaluated – often by soldiers from nearby fort hood or members of the texas a&m university corps of cadets
425,the aim is to shorten the time it takes to get emerging technologies from the lab to the field and maximize technology capabilities through soldier feedback a team of army and texas a&m system researchers will quickly evaluate prototypes that can be tested by soldiers in a real-world environment using a vast array of sensors and instruments at rellis we are humbled and grateful to the people of texas texas elected leaders and the texas a&m university system for the opportunity to further develop our strategic partnership through the establishment of the combat development complex on the rellis campus said gen murray this effort will certainly prove vital as we work together to discover develop and test ideas and concepts that will help our soldiers and our future soldiers to protect americas tomorrows beginning today not only is the rellis campus close enough to the army futures command headquarters and fort hood for ideal oversight it is also near texas a&ms world-class college of engineering and texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city the worlds largest search and rescue training facility that can double as a training site for urban warfare although the combat development complex isnt expected to be completed until june 2021 banks said the hiring of additional engineers will begin immediately three years ago rellis didnt even exist in may 2016 chancellor john sharp announced the creation of rellis – named for texas a&ms core values of respect excellence leadership loyalty integrity and selfless service he began the building boom to redevelop the 2 000-acre property with an initial investment of $300 million today the campus is home to the texas a&m systems transportation and engineering agencies as well as an education complex served by blinn college and texas a&m system universities from around the state more growth is coming and more construction is planned including a state-of-the-art data center the arrival of the army futures command will bring the rellis campus full circle back to the locations june 6 1943 opening as the bryan army air field it also takes rellis to another level as companies interested in working with the army futures command are expected to locate on or near the campus we consider serving the military of our nation to be the highest of honors and responsibility said sharp also having the army futures command at rellis is a game changer for that campus and the brazos valley area; rellis was envisioned as a research dynamo and the armys arrival will speed that up
426,joan and michael mcgee together with maxine and michael mcmahan have established the wanda and jack e mcmahan 43 scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a degree in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university michael mcgee graduated from texas a&m university with a degree in bioengineering in 1978 before his recent retirement mcgee served as vice president of the texas heart institute he currently serves as a member of the biomedical engineering departments external advisory board i had been seeking ways to support the relatively young department mcgee said i was also looking to establish some momentum to increase support for the department in any way possible
427,in addition to his desire to help bolster the departments scholarship offerings to students mcgee shared that family played a large role in the decision to establish a scholarship my father-in-law jack mcmahan graduated from texas a&m with a degree in engineering and immediately went into the military where he had a long and distinguished career eventually retiring as a full colonel mcgee said jack was a lifelong enthusiastic supporter of the university especially football mcgee sought to honor his father-in-law and mother-in-law while helping future students in the biomedical engineering department through a scholarship endowment
428,wanda mcmahan was a nurse in the army during world war ii and she met jack mcmahan while they both were serving overseas mcgee said a unique aspect of their story is that jack served in the unit that liberated the first concentration camp discovered by us troops their dedication to our country spurred the idea of naming the scholarship after them their service to our country is also something worth honoring which is another intention of this scholarship mcgee said when i mentioned the plan to jacks eldest son michael he wanted to share equally in endowing the scholarship mcgee also credited the department head faculty staff and students with the inspiration to establish a scholarship ive been fortunate to work with multiple department heads over the years and the current department head dr (mike) mcshane has excited me about where the department is going mcgee said interacting with brilliant and highly motivated students over the past few years and having confidence that they will make significant advances in the medical field is another reason we chose to support the department
429,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact reagan chessher senior director of development
430,with a $300 000 grant from the national science foundation a team of researchers at texas a&m university is diving deep into the physics of plasma to question the fundamental theory of local thermodynamic equilibrium (lte) in arc discharges plasma often called the fourth state of matter is an ionized gas that is present in almost every aspect of everyday life while an electric arc discharge is one of the most basic plasma phenomena used in industry and observed in nature few things are fully understood about it because of this scientists usually use assumptions to explain the behavior of plasma including that of lte an arc discharge is the easiest way to generate plasma a method used for over 200 years one way an arc discharge can be created is by connecting two electrodes with two respective poles of a power supply placed a distance apart by increasing the voltage between them once breakdown of surrounding gas is reached an arc discharge is created accompanied by the emission of light much like lightning and spark plugs lte states that all temperatures (translational vibrational rotational and electronic) of the particles involved in the arc discharge have the exact same value the validity of this assumption has never been fully studied until now mainly due to lack of the experimental capabilities dr alexandros gerakis and dr ken hara assistant professors in the department of aerospace engineering will approach the problem from a theoretical/simulation side as well as an experimental one hara will develop a simulation model to explain what is going on in the plasma while gerakis will use an innovative laser diagnostic tool called coherent rayleigh-brillouin scattering (crbs) along with optical emission spectroscopy to experimentally study the arc discharge texas a&m is a world leading institution with active research on crbs and its applications through gerakis optical probing and manipulation lab the theoretical and experimental observations will be then compared against each other to gain complete understanding of the problem at hand successful outcome of this research will help gain a better understanding of the plasma operation and subsequent applicability understanding the nonequilibrium and equilibrium nature of the atmospheric arc discharge will provide better predictive modeling capabilities which could eventually be used to improve the controllability and selectivity of chemical processes such as for nanomaterial synthesis in conjunction with the research gerakis and hara will develop a dc plasma source for educational outreach activities in conjunction with the science education program at princeton plasma physics laboratory they hope to use this in participation with local science festivals to provide k-12 students hands-on learning experiences in plasma physics
431,paul burke and daniel varnum-lowry graduate students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university won the best poster award at the international space station (iss) research and development conference (issr&d 2019) held in atlanta undergraduate and graduate students were invited to compete in the poster competition burke and varnum-lowrys winning poster is titled microgravity and partial gravity fluid physics: bubble formation and movement in variable gravity environments experimentally verified two-phase fluid physics models for heat and mass transfer in partial gravity environments do not currently exist nor do experimental analogs that can accurately simulate steady-state partial gravity environments human habitation on the moon and mars requires research on two-phase fluid systems where the influence of gravity driven phenomena such as buoyancy is reduced fluid management in-situ resource utilization and life support systems all require innovation in fluid models that allow for the prediction and control of bubble detachment the students research objectives include visualizing and tracking motion of gas bubbles in a liquid in terrestrial gravity as well as using computational fluid dynamics to model the motion of gas bubbles in a liquid in 1 g-force of gravity they will also design a fluid experiment that will utilize a long-term partial gravity environment created by an artificial gravity centrifuge on board the iss burke and varnum-lowry are studying under dr bonnie j dunbar in the aerospace human systems lab the issr&d 2019 conference focused on discovering how the iss is creating momentum in space-based research and technology development to benefit humankind for years to come
432,each year the college of engineering at texas a&m university awards outstanding doctoral students with the prestigious engineering graduate merit fellowship – supporting them on their transformational academic journeys and research endeavors this year six students across multiple departments in the college were chosen as recipients for this competitive opportunity as they prepare for the fall semester to start ethan kamphaus who was unable to participate in the q&a at this time carson hanel and benjamin fennell took a moment to introduce themselves:
433,ethan kamphaus artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering
434,kamphaus a chemical engineering doctoral student is the sixth and final awardee of the 2019-20 engineering graduate merit fellowship he began his phd journey three years ago in the computational materials group directed by dr perla balbuena holder of the gpsa professorship and tees eminent professor having also received his bachelor of science in chemical engineering from texas a&m his research focuses on using computational techniques to model complex systems such as issues involving lithium-sulfur batteries
435,carson hanel department of computer science and engineering
436,q what inspired you to be in computer science and engineering a like many millennials i grew up with the internet – utilizing it as the technology transitioned from its relative infancy into being an integral part of everyday life through it ive built lifelong friendships with loved ones around the globe; fighting dragons together in massively multiplayer online role-playing games and solving problems in diverse expansive online forums this love has brought me to study the engineering magic that brings us all together in this modern world by pursuing a phd in computer science from texas a&m
437,q what are you passionate about how would you like to apply your area of study to that passion a i am passionate about discovering methods that ease accessibility to the bountiful information that the internet has to offer this pursuit of methods to provide end users with greatly enhanced experiences and throughput is at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution that is currently taking place in a changing technological landscape wherein applications are increasingly data hungry the research carried out by the texas a&m internet research lab directed by dr dmitri loguinov includes a multitude of projects all geared toward increasing the hardware efficiency of common big data analytics tools on both windows and linux operating systems q how does it feel to be selected for the engineering graduate merit fellowship a i received the notification in the mail around finals in the spring and was absolutely taken aback! it was such an amazing feeling to be selected for the tremendous honor of being an engineering graduate merit fellowship recipient that it felt and still feels a bit unreal i am endlessly grateful for the opportunity to pursue my phd and cannot wait to share the research conducted by the internet research lab with the world
438,benjamin fennell zachry department of civil and environmental engineering
439,"q what inspired you to be in civil and environmental engineering a my biggest inspiration for pursuing civil and environmental engineering is my father an electrical engineer by trade he cultivated within me a deep hunger for solving problems at a young age we would build things together take things apart and try to put them back together and even solve math problems after dinner my family also spent most of the summer hours in the water – both in the lake and at the pool – deepening my passion for water during my junior year of high school my interest in the field was piqued by job shadowing a civil engineer i haven't turn back since q what are you passionate about how would you like to apply your area of study to that passion a my vocational passions revolve around any and all things water my specific research passion centers around water treatment – providing clean water for all to enjoy solving water treatment issues has the potential to impact people regionally nationally and globally; supporting generations to come through each treated water drop q how does it feel to be selected for the engineering graduate merit fellowship a i received an email informing me that i was a recipient of the engineering graduate merit fellowship the heading immediately caught my eye with the words ""important"" from a texas a&m email address as i quickly read through the email the smile on my face became larger and larger i ventured to tell my wife after reading through the email several times to make sure it was real she started crying tears of joy upon hearing the news and we were both flabbergasted learn more about the engineering graduate merit fellowship and other graduate funding opportunities"
440,learn more about the remaining engineering graduate merit fellowship recipients in their q&a
441,david and denise senor have established the david 88 and denise 85 senor scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree from the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university david earned his bachelors masters and doctorate in nuclear engineering while denise earned her bachelors and masters in animal science this laid the foundation for their desire to stay involved in the university we both worked through college and understand the financial burden it places on students and their families david said our reason for establishing a scholarship in nuclear engineering is to facilitate helping students get their degree without having to worry so much about paying for it their experience at texas a&m served as the driving force behind their decision to establish a scholarship its a way of giving back david said the education we received between the combined five degrees my wife and i have has enabled us to live the lifestyle we do and we wanted to help position students for success in addition to their experience at texas a&m as a whole david shared that the mentorship of a professor changed the trajectory of his career dr lee peddicord gave me the opportunity to work in his research group as an undergraduate which inspired me to study nuclear materials in graduate school david said he also served as my advisor for my master's and doctorate degrees; this set the stage for a career in the nuclear materials field that ive been fortunate to enjoy over the past 27 years ultimately the senors involvement with undergraduate students over the years excited them about the idea of establishing a scholarship in the nuclear engineering department dr karen kirkland and dr yassin hassan allowed me to mentor design teams in nuen 406 and nuen 410 over the past seven years david said that involvement with undergraduate students provided motivation that ultimately led my wife and i to endow the scholarship
442,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson assistant director of development
443,lila fox and chad ermel 96 have established the lila fox and chad ermel 96 scholarship in engineering to provide one or more scholarships to full-time first-generation students in good standing pursuing a degree from the college of engineering at texas a&m university ermel graduated from texas a&m with a bachelors degree in civil engineering and is passionate about giving back to the department i grew up in a small town and was a first-generation college student ermel said when the opportunity arose to establish a scholarship that would help first-generation students i was excited about the impact it could make fox while not a texas a&m graduate shares her husbands passion for creating points of impact within their community as a first-generation student herself fox was equally excited by the idea of establishing a scholarship geared toward first-generation students we had been looking for ways to give back to different organizations she said this opportunity came at the right time and we felt like it was the right cause to support ermel added that texas a&m provided him with the environment to succeed while pursuing his degree i had such a good experience in the civil engineering department; it was a small department with an element of comradery that allowed for a greater impact to be made on me as a student ermel said i wouldnt be in the position i am today if it wasnt for texas a&m and my hope is that this scholarship alleviates some of the worry for students
444,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
445,in the early hours of july 17 international space station flight engineer christina koch received the command from nasa to activate hermes power with the flip of that switch the two-year development project became live online texas a&m university students dustin tish jeremy coffelt and luis orozco were on hand at the hermes command console at nasas johnson space center to assist the projects scientists engineers and project manager in developing and activating the hermes facility a first class-1e platform that provides scientists with a unique capability for ongoing microgravity research
446,the students were ecstatic as they witnessed the system begin its bootup configuration and initial operation tish and coffelt are seniors in the mechatronics program and orozco is a senior in the electronic systems engineering technology program within the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution i cant believe we are now able to command the hermes facility while its aboard the international space station from here at the johnson space center stated hermes project manager veronica saucedo with the help of our three students the system came up beautifully and appears to be completely operational the pictures and data we are receiving truly exceed our expectations
447,"the team of students were responsible for all facets of the command and control system within hermes tish was tasked with all of the mechanical aspects of the project orozco was responsible for all the real-time operating system-based code running on six different microcontrollers and coffelt was the software lead for all of the management communications and user interface code written in python for the beaglebone black device ""as one of my first projects i couldnt be more pleased with the systems performance "" said dr kristen john hermes project scientist and principle investigator ""dustin and luis were an integral part of our team and jeremy was hired as a summer intern to actually perform much of the system configuration and checkout from our command console here at johnson space center jeremys first task upon arrival at nasa was to author the hermes system commissioning plan we could not have done this without them!"""
448,the project which began as a capstone design two years ago was sponsored by texas space research applications and technologies (t star) a bryan-based startup company that was contracted to develop and deliver the prototype system once the prototype passed all of nasas testing and operational validation t star led an applied research project in partnership with the texas a&m mobile integrated solutions laboratory to deliver four operational systems nothing is more satisfying than to bring this type of real-world experiential learning back to texas a&m said matt leonard 86 retired nasa program manager and president of t star i look forward to continuing this type of space-based product development and helping nasa meet its mission objectives while creating the motivation for high-quality engineering students to go beyond their classroom/laboratory education
449,from snapchat photo filters to super bowl crowd surveillance to identity verification in airports facial analysis techniques have taken the industry by storm with a multitude of applications this branch of artificial intelligence is ever evolving – encompassing image tagging on social media expression recognition security marketing robotics and more bridging industry and education a team of researchers led by dr zhangyang atlas wang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is collaborating with moodme to improve the algorithms used in the companys facial analysis and recognition programs the team which includes graduate students ziyu jiang and jiayi shen as well as undergraduates daniel ajisafe and geeth tunuguntla will focus specifically on the techniques used to re-identify participants in video conferences to measure their emotions and attentiveness wangs group conducts state-of-the-art research in the fields of machine learning and computer vision their research achievements have generated international attention as demonstrated by their large number of top-tier publications international competition awards and partnerships with industry leaders this collaboration provides us with a unique opportunity to tackle a real-world challenge where a solution is highly demanded based on our existing strength in computer vision and machine learning said wang
450,as wang explained the texas a&m team will develop algorithms that can be used to recognize video conference participants across multiple sessions and dates despite changes in attire hairstyles lighting seating arrangement etc by adopting deep learning into their design the researchers are not only improving already state-of-the-art algorithms in human facial analysis but also advancing the ability for artificial intelligence to interpret the meaning behind facial expressions while artificial intelligence and computers cannot see faces like people can they are able to break images into pixels – comparing and contrasting each section to recognize key facial features such as eyes and mouth these pieces are then cross-referenced against a vast database of known image examples to determine what their expression might mean this gives companies the ability to measure emotional responses and attentiveness to a message and a presentation or product in real time during video conferences – giving them valuable insight into their client base staff and prospective customers we are excited by the chance to work with a leading company like moodme and to make broader impacts on the field of computer vision and deep learning said wang an international leader in facial recognition and insight moodme applies deep learning to create embedded software components that provide facial insights and augmented reality face filters moodme helps companies engage consumers and analyze their experiences while respecting their privacy moodme has previously worked with at&t fifa stanford university final four nina ricci body world and gucci applications made with moodme face software allow users to virtually try on different sunglasses or cosmetics as well as measure the emotional response of an audience the company is advancing the research and development of real-world artificial intelligence neural networks and facial recognition privacy is at the center of all our work both in research and in product engineering said chandra de keyser ceo of moodme all the insights we gather from faces fully respect peoples privacy – no faces are stored ever nor sent to the cloud with all the promises of internet giants there is still no one-click to delete all our pictures or data that they have accumulated about us the focus of our research and engineering is to reach the highest performances and precision on edge computing platforms like smartphones embedded/internet of things robots and desktop computers he went on to say that he was excited to work with texas a&m and wangs team for their top-notch academic and research talent friendly and open-minded attitudes and the dynamic startup like execution of the project we hope to learn a lot and bring our products to the next level (through this project) said de keyser while our biggest market is the united states our strategy is to innovate on both sides of the atlantic we were seeking a research and development partner in the us to accelerate our innovation and go to market cycles with a focus on algorithms which provide face insights such as emotion detection and identification our meeting with atlas was excellent a perfect match of interests and just as important a fast response time
451,dr garrett mckay postdoctoral researcher at the colorado school of mines will be joining the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering in fall 2019 as a member of the environmental engineering research group mckays research interests include aquatic photochemistry dissolved organic matter and treatment of water pollutants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances he is a member of the american chemical society international humic substances society and association of environmental engineering and science professors the work i do involves focusing on chemical processes happening in both natural and engineered systems mckay said environmental engineers investigate water quality drinking and wastewater treatment aquatic chemistry and a myriad of other factors related to interactions between society and the built world in his research mckay observes the transformations of organic pollutants caused by reactive oxygen species with a particular interest in how organic matter influences these processes one goal is to understand the role that dissolved organic matter plays in these systems he said organic matter is a complex mixture of molecules making this a challenge we apply tools to characterize organic matter from a variety of sources allowing us to predict its chemistry in these systems mckays postdoctoral research investigated novel remediation strategies for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances that are used in industrial processes fire-fighting foams and non-stick materials his strong dedication to environmental engineering research and a love of teaching ultimately drove him to texas a&m ive had a dream of becoming a processor for many years mckay said i really enjoy working with students and the research mentoring process i enjoy seeing students become independent and helping them get to the next stage of their career
452,dr bert sweetman and collaborators are working to develop a system to protect houston from hurricane-driven flood waters entering galveston bay his idea came to fruition as an improvement to a plan developed in a study funded by the state of texas
453,most texans will forever carry the memory of the widespread devastation left behind by hurricanes harvey and ike along the states coastal cities and communities the storms were two of the costliest tropical cyclones on record specifically in houston where catastrophic rainfall and wind-driven waters triggered major flooding events better protecting cities and communities from future weather-related events are at the forefront of researchers minds dr bert sweetman professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university is among the researchers working to develop a system to protect houston from hurricane-driven flood waters entering galveston bay his idea came to fruition as an improvement to a plan developed in a study funded by the state of texas the design the plan includes a very large flood gate across the entrance from the gulf of mexico to galveston bay that normally would be left open so large ships can pass through but would be closed before a hurricane to protect houston from flooding sweetman said the initial design of the gate required two large artificial islands in a deep area in the entrance to galveston bay on which the gates are stored when they are in the open position plus several smaller islands in shallower waters an assessment was conducted on the environmental impact of the changes with the existing water flow in and out of the bay during normal non-hurricane conditions when the gate would be left open challenges ahead preliminary results generated in 2017 showed that the reduction in flow caused by the islands would have an unacceptably large impact on salinity and on changing water levels within the bay sweetman said the project team immediately began investigating ways to reduce the size of the artificial islands but it was not clear that the islands could be made small enough for the environmental impact to be acceptable while still being able to use flood gates that are big enough to allow large ships to pass through
454,offering a solution this is where his solution came into play i suggested that we should investigate a different gate design objective he said i wondered if we could change the structural design of the gates to eliminate the islands entirely eliminating the islands would theoretically solve the issues of reduced salinity and water level changes in the bay i began with the specific design requirements that are unique to the galveston inlet including tides waves winds and the very challenging foundation soil conditions sweetman said some design objectives included effectively protecting houston from hurricane flooding while minimizing effects on the environment shipping and the overall viewscape of the galveston inlet his design concept utilizes a series of smaller floating gates that are stored below the inlets seafloor when a hurricane is projected to impact the area the gates would rise prior to the storm hitting defense ready when needed the gate structure is virtually invisible during non-hurricane conditions it has no impact on the tidal flows through the inlet virtually no impact in navigation or species migration and is virtually invisible from above the water surface sweetman said he led a team to flesh out the concept identify and resolve any fundamental technical feasibility problems and develop the concept to the point of having a budgetary cost estimate for putting flood gates across the full two-mile span of the galveston inlet the projected cost of the new gate system was found to be significantly less than the construction of the design that included building artificial islands
455,what now four competing gate concepts are still under active consideration by the project team sweetmans proposed concept has the least environmental impact with potentially the lowest cost but is the least proven of the competing concepts the key challenge is to develop the design to the point that the decision-makers become confident in sweetmans new gate concept as the best option to preserve the fragile ecosystem of galveston bay while still providing the greater houston area with robust protection against hurricane storm surge including the houston energy corridor and the port of houston the gate concept developed for galveston bay has the potential to be applied in many other parts of the world and could become increasingly important if the rise in sea level due to global climate change continues sweetman said each of the three other competing concepts have already been designed and built to protect other flood-prone coastal areas the design conditions at the entrance to galveston bay are unique and none of the existing concepts are a perfect fit for this application the port of houston is one of the largest in the country and the total oil refining capacity near houston provides about one third of the total gasoline in the united states and about 40% of the diesel and jet fuel the environmental impact of the initial configuration in the fall of 2017 was so severe that protecting houston from hurricane flooding was not feasible despite the national economic importance of this area sweetman said the new gate concept will enable the same level of flood protection as the competing concepts but have virtually no impact on the critical fisheries aviaries and other aspects of the fragile yet critical galveston bay habitat sweetmans study is partially funded by the us army corps of engineers and the original storm surge protection study was supported in part by the state of texas general land office
456,more than 1 000 miles span the distance between college station texas and yucatán mexico but a texas a&m university program is breaking down the boundaries between these two vastly different yet surprisingly similar locations in its fifth year the international research abroad program (irap) came full circle when 17 students from yucatán traveled to texas a&m to present their research proposal alongside the undergraduate engineering and geoscience students they had been collaborating with all summer since the creation of this program five years ago the idea was to have our students working jointly with mexican students on regional problems said dr maria alves director of halliburton engineering global programs our intention was to build a true partnership to positively impact our students while our partners in mexico would feel their students are also positively impacted
457,during the closing ceremony held recently in the zachry engineering education complex the secretary of research and higher education in the state of yucatán confirmed that this collaboration is yielding amazing results i want to say that today science and technology play a leading role in economic and social development and in this highly competitive world we need to make teams maestro bernado cisneros buenfil said i cant think of a better way to make teams than with texas and texas a&m university
458,how it began the irap program began five years ago when dr sonia garcia director of the access and inclusion program approached alves about a national science foundation grant with the louis stokes alliances for minority participation access and inclusion has been receiving funding from the organization for the last five years to help support first-generation engineering students with financial needs together they reached out to dr zenon medina-cetina who developed the yucatán initiative project to see if his project could be expanded to include undergraduate students the yucatán initiative project is a collaborative platform for research academics and service between texas and yucatán mexico medina-cetina readily agreed and irap was born in 2015 17 regents scholars traveled to mexico to tour research labs and learn about research at the universidad politecnica de yucatán as well as the instituto tecnológico del petróleo y energía since then the program has more than doubled with over 200 first-year students having participated from the college of engineering the engineering academies and the college of geosciences
459,each may a cohort of texas a&m students travel to yucatán for two weeks and are immersed in mexican culture they stay with host families and visit cultural sites such as uxmal chichen itza cenotes and other landmarks of yucatáns vast pre-and post-hispanic history students also visit more than a dozen research laboratories of yucatáns research consortium the system of research innovation and technological development of the state of yucatán they also take a class that introduces them to research alongside students from the partner institutions giving them the opportunity to make connections and friendships with mexican students after returning to the united states the students continue communicating and collaborating all summer on a research proposal that they then present in the fall during a poster session
460,this is the first year that the students from mexico also traveled to college station to present their proposal alongside aggies thanks to a grant provided by 100 000 strong in the americas innovation fund dr john walewski associate professor of practice in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering served as principal investigator with alves and medina-cetina serving as co-principals investigators continued growth in 2020 the irap program will continue expanding to include students from texas a&ms college of education and human development such growth is unprecedented but also encouraging because of the countless benefits we observe from the student participants said medina-cetina students who have participated in the program have become inspired to attend graduate school and pursue careers at national labs he said and while a major focus of the program is to introduce students to research another benefit is the cross-cultural connections that are made it has been incredible thats the only word to describe it said saulo acevedo universidad politecnica de yucatán student i think the biggest thing that i really like is that we can interact with people who are different as the president of acevedos university put it the students discovered what global engineering means you are doing exactly that gildardo sanchez ante said during the closing ceremony you are solving challenges and working with people from different cultures different languages … and that is the way the world is
461,the craig and galen brown engineering honors program recently held its annual fall industry night at texas a&m university the event allowed engineering honors students to hear from industry leaders about life after college former nuclear engineering student ray rothrock venture capitalist and redseal ceo gave the nights keynote speech followed by a panel of experts who answered students questions and provided real-world advice to the audience rothrock began by explaining the complex nature of the worlds current cyber war as a cybersecurity expert rothrock is privy to the resources and techniques available to todays hackers he uses that knowledge to help businesses and corporations proactively protect themselves from upcoming cyberattacks with his company redseal which works to bring digital resilience and confidence to organizations rothrock proved that an engineering degree can open up endless doors for students whether they decide to pursue a career in computer engineering or nuclear engineering
462,in addition to being an investor rothrock is also an advocate for nuclear energy climate change and education in his free time rothrock is a bassist in a cover band named up and to the right alongside his son and other investors (all of the best things in new york ie stocks increase up and to the right he explained) whats great about industry night is that we have the unique opportunity to hear from ceos directly said antoine joubran sophomore engineering honors student in the department of chemical engineering not only do we receive invaluable career advice but theres also a more human element to these nights that we tend to miss in the classroom such as the importance of having hobbies outside of engineering like playing the bass and spending time with your family as rothrock outlined the trajectory of his career for the audience he suggested unique ways to decide whether or not a company is worth working for since many of the students in attendance would soon begin attending career fairs and researching companies to internship with read the writing on the bathroom stalls said rothrock i mean that literally find out how employees feel about upper management because it will reveal a lot about how a business is operated
463,before opening up the floor to his fellow panelists john walsh of schlumberger and claire rubrecht-robertson of qorvo rothrock offered the best advice that he accumulated throughout the years such as the importance of being a lifelong learner never stop learning said rothrock ive learned more in my past year as a ceo than i did even when i was in college rothrock also encouraged students to take courses in sociology and psychology to better understand how people work and learn i havent always needed to integrate or differentiate equations in the workplace said rothrock but ive always managed people and its necessary to be able to communicate and work well with your colleagues like a true investor rothrock ended with a message to all of the aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience: and if youve already got a great idea ive got a check he said
464,dr rui tuo assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering has been awarded a national science foundation grant for his research on statistical and data science methodologies in computer experiments that will help improve computer simulation practices computer simulations are widely used in research yet many variables remain uncertain or could change during experiments these unknowns create uncertainty which can bring many challenges to researchers during experiments enhancing the accuracy of computer experiments requires new statistical and data science methodologies that can help determine how these experiments should be designed how data from the experiment should be analyzed and create more accurate simulations the research aims to establish a new uncertainty quantification (uq) method which is a method that seeks to minimize uncertainties in computational experiments through experimental design data analysis and model validation and calibration due to the variety and high use of simulations in research creating and enhancing computer simulations through the development of new models to measure their efficiency and cost will help improve simulations and impact many areas of research tuo will collaborate with dr jeff wu co-principal investigator and professor at the georgia institute of technology funding from the grant will also be used to support doctorate students who will develop new theories and implement and compare methods collaboration between uq researchers and data science researchers will help improve statistical models which will in turn improve simulations and the experiments that use this technology
465,dr kayleen helms former aerospace engineering student and member of the aerospace engineering advisory board was awarded the 2019 prism award from the society of women engineers the prism award recognizes an individual who has charted her own path throughout her career providing leadership in technology fields and professional organizations along the way helms earned a masters and a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from texas a&m university she continued at texas a&m as a post-doctoral research associate and lecturer in aerospace engineering where she helped establish the materials science and engineering graduate degree program she also taught several courses in mechanics and materials science and received the 2001 sec faculty of the year award helms also coordinated and taught six college of engineering study abroad programs and was very active in undergraduate curriculum recruitment and outreach including serving as a women in science and engineering board member helms joined intels technology and manufacturing group in the assembly technology and test development (attd) organization in chandler arizona where she has been in multiple groups supporting manufacturing design and quality and reliability (q&r) for 12 years externally she leads efforts interacting with customers industry consortia and tool and collateral suppliers internally she leads or supports efforts across attd business groups sales and marketing and q&r to address structural integrity challenges in manufacturing thermal-mechanical enabling and other q&r risks influencing business processes she has authored several technical publications and contributions to industry standards additionally helms is a member of several professional organizations across disciplines and active in various service roles she will be recognized at we19 the worlds largest conference and career fair for women engineers in anaheim california nov 7-9
466,texas a&m university is part of the national alliance for water innovation (nawi) consortium which was recently awarded a five-year $100 million energy-water desalination hub by the us department of energy (doe) that will address water security issues in the united states led by doe's lawrence berkeley national laboratory nawi is a research consortium with more than 35 members including three national research laboratories 19 university partners and 10 founding industry partners the hub will focus on early-stage research and development for energy-efficient and cost-competitive desalination technologies dr shankar chellam from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering is lead researcher for the texas a&m team which includes drs yossef elabd and jodie lutkenhaus from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering; dr ying li from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering; and dr karen wooley from the departments of chemistry chemical engineering and materials science and engineering this grant forces us to step out of our comfort zone working in individual labs i feel like i can actually do something to make a clear substantial difference in my lifetime at a large scale said chellam our efforts up until now have been roughly individual from one perspective the very fact that there are nearly 20 universities and scientists from national labs makes me believe that we will do something of clear value to not just the academic community but society at large chellam said the does goal is a four to five times energy reduction of desalination technologies they want us to not just come up with technological solutions but to come up with solutions for problems at a low energy consumption he said the nawi team will develop technologies that treat seawater brackish water and produced waters for use in municipal industrial agricultural utility oil and gas and other water supply needs these technology advancements will help domestic suppliers of water desalination systems to manufacture critical components and parts including the design and manufacture of small-modular and large-scale systems we also want to look at industrial needs said chellam i am doing what is called road mapping for the mining industry stakeholders come to the table saying these are our problems and we say ‘lets develop a pathway from problem to solution
467,betty and thomas randy bendall 69 have established the betty and thomas randy bendall 69 endowed scholarship which will provide one or more scholarships to full-time undergraduate students pursuing a degree in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering in the past few years i have realized that i want to help others by sharing the benefits of an education from texas a&m university said randy bendall randy transferred into the chemical engineering department at the start of his junior year and never looked back he had two summer jobs at dow chemical company a global leader in chemical engineering before accepting a full-time position there upon graduation he worked for the company for more than 30 years eventually retiring from his long and successful career as a project manager for both texas and louisiana later randy was reunited with texas a&m through his sons education returning to campus to spend time together and return to the place that had been his home away from home and left such a lasting impression on him i am proud to have chosen texas a&m and chemical engineering said randy my chemical engineering degree set me on a path of a career at dow chemical company because of the opportunities given to me i decided to establish an endowed scholarship in the department to help others to pursue their education in chemical engineering his generous gift made through the texas a&m foundation will support the students of today as they grow into the leaders of tomorrow
468,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
469,dr shima hajimirza has been awarded two grants from the national science foundation (nsf) for her research in radiation heat transfer in materials her first project eager: predictive surrogate modeling and analysis of radiative heat transfer in porous media aims to develop a more efficient and effective way of measuring the response that materials have to radiation we are using artificial intelligence to study the radiation effects in materials said hajimirza assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university to our knowledge this is the first time that these methods have been used for problems in this context and im very excited to be one of the pioneers of this area as hajimirza described radiative heat transfer in porous media is a complex and ambiguous phenomenon that is vital to the simulation and design of energy technologies such as pebble beds solar absorbers solar thermochemical reactors biological tissues and thermal barriers for jet engines and space vehicles as such the development of a reliable method of measurement and estimation of a materials radiative properties is integral to the continued advancement of clean renewable energy – both on a national and global scale by applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to the investigation of radiation transfer hajimirza aims to revolutionize how researchers and engineers approximate predict and understand the properties of porous materials undergoing radiative heat transfer her state-of-the-art computational models will be a vital tool to both industry and academia similarly her second project enhancing quantum efficiency of thin film solar cells via joint characterization of radiation and recombination focuses on conducting a fundamental investigation of nano-textured complex thin films used in harvesting solar energy the findings will lead to improved methods used to systematically enhance the efficiency of this emerging technology thin film solar cells are at the forefront of innovation in photovoltaics technology (they) are light weight and can be made flexible which makes them ideal for a lot of applications however the efficiency of thin film solar cells is significantly lower than bulk cells said hajimirza because the technology is still very new there have not been rigorous analytical models and studies that fully describe the operation of thin film solar cells – creating a gap in knowledge that makes it highly difficult to pinpoint how to best target and solve efficiency issues this project will provide an understanding and modeling of joint radiation and carrier transport effects – two critical elements used in thin film solar cells – that will lead to more efficient cost-effective solar cell devices both projects aim to study the fundamentals of radiation heat transfer in materials said hajimirza both projects are based on very novel scientific approaches and if successful will lead to breakthrough technologies hajimirza is looking forward to continuing her research with the help of the nsf grants because of the potential impact they can have i am excited that the nsf which is one of the most prestigious scientific organizations in the united states acknowledged my research efforts and decided to support me to continue my research in the area of heat transfer and renewable energy said hajimirza
470,the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has been awarded $7 million in federal grant funding from the us department of transportation to study automated driving systems us secretary of transportation elaine l chao made the announcement last week of $60 million in federal grant funding to eight projects in seven states to test the safe integration of automated driving systems on us roadways tees researchers will develop and test automated driving systems for rural roads without high-definition maps and with no or low-quality road signs or markings the principal investigator for the project is dr alireza talebpour assistant professor in texas a&m universitys zachry department of civil and environmental engineering co-principal investigators are dr reza langari department head professor and holder of the jr thompson chair in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution; dr dezhen song associate department head and professor and dr dilma da silva professor and holder of the ford motor company design professorship ii both from the department of computer science and engineering this award from the us department of transportation will help texas a&m advance its autonomous vehicle research by studying rural roadways said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system most autonomous research so far has focused on cities but texas a&m wants to broaden the scope and texas has plenty of rural roadways for testing which can help advance research in this area the department is awarding $60 million in grant funding to test the safe integration of automated vehicles into americas transportation system while ensuring that legitimate concerns about safety security and privacy are addressed said chao chao made the announcement at the federal highway administration research showcase an event promoting the importance of research and innovation in transportation the event featured exhibits and demonstrations of the ongoing research emerging technologies and capabilities of the turner-fairbank highway research center visit here for more information on the applications received
471,the texas a&m university college of engineering is proud to celebrate with bruce chinn 79 (bachelors in chemical engineering) as he accepts his election to vice president of the board of trustees at the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) foundation originally from edna texas chinns prestigious career has taken him all over the united states central america and europe since graduating chinn began working at dupont before joining chevron in 2006 he now serves as the president of chevron oronite company llc the office of alumni relations spoke with chinn to discuss his accomplishments and offer advice to young engineers q: you graduated with a degree in chemical engineering in 1979 what made you choose this degree a: i was fortunate to get early exposure to chemistry and physics one of my high school teachers took a group of us to a texas a&m career day my freshman year and i ended up going back the next three years after that i remember a liquid-liquid extraction column demonstration in the zachry engineering building that really piqued my interest in chemical engineering as a career q: what were some early struggles you faced in your career a: if theres a piece of advice i can give young engineers its to fully appreciate the importance of communicating your contributions and impact both orally and written i didnt necessarily see the value of that when i was beginning my professional career but i learned quickly that i need those skills to thrive in all of the positions ive held early in my career i was oftentimes the only african american engineer in the room those early experiences helped me to learn how to connect with many people and find role models and coaches in unexpected places q: what has been your favorite position to hold in your career a: its a close race between my current position as president of chevrons oronite organization and my previous role as general manager of chevrons pascagoula refinery in oronite i enable and lead a global business driven by 2 000 employees in 14 countries its a unique opportunity to work across the entire value chain: research and development manufacturing supply chain and sales and marketing the culmination of my varied career led to a role like this and i couldnt be happier q: could you tell me about your involvement with the aiche foundation and your upcoming role as vice-chair of their board of trustees a: years ago i belonged to a local aiche chapter and then became inactive for a while but i was invited to join the industry and corporate council about five years ago i learned about some of the initiatives that aiche supports around diversity and inclusion and recently was honored to join the board of trustees for the aiche foundation im still learning about my role on the board of trustees but im very excited about getting involved in the many areas that the foundation supports including the recognition and development of professionals in industry and in academia q: have you returned to campus if so do you enjoy visits back to college station a: yes i have returned to campus and i served on the advisory council for the chemical engineering department for several years im now in an emeritus role with the council my daughter earned her bachelors masters and doctoral degrees from texas a&m im a loyal aggie fan and ive attended lots of football games over the years since graduating when i cant be there in person im cheering the team on in front of my tv or ipad q: what advice do you have for engineering students or recent graduates a: i encourage them to continually pursue excellence in our field chemical engineering provides a solid foundation that enables an individual to contribute to society both professionally and personally look at your career as a journey of continuous learning and be open to sharing your insights with others aiche offers many opportunities for the exchange of knowledge and experiences among our fellow (chemical engineers) take advantage of that q: you have quite a few accomplishments what are you most proud of a: my wife sandra (class of 1980) and i raised three kids who have become responsible contributing adults thats what im most proud of in my life
472,the texas a&m college of engineering is proud of our former students like bruce chinn who display aggie core values such as excellence selfless service and loyalty if you know an aggie who is celebrating an accomplishment and would like them to be recognized by the college please contact the office of alumni relations
473,a team of researchers from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university have developed new a new glycoarray tool and a new computational tool leading to a breakthrough in the characterization of lectin-glycan interactions
474,dr hung-jen wu and dr joseph sang-ii kwon assistant professors in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university have developed a new theory to predict a pathogen infection pathway this new development which was featured on the cover of the may issue of the journal glycobiology is based on the complex interactions between glycans and lectins two biomolecules found in living systems lectin-glycan interactions play an important role in a wide variety of physiological and pathological processes but these interactions have several unique characteristics that make them difficult to characterize or analyze using traditional biomolecular analysis tools the research team has developed a new glycoarray tool along with a computational tool that allow for a deeper understanding and characterization of glycan-lectin interactions and bonds glycans are among the most diverse biomolecules forming dense and complex patches on the surface of cells lectin-glycan interactions are involved in a wide variety of organic processes including cell differentiation cell-cell communication viral infection and bacterial adhesion however lectin-glycan interactions are fundamentally different than other bimolecular interactions lectin-glycan interactions are not highly specific and lectins often bind to different glycan structures with different affinities further most lectins bind to glycans via multivalent binding in which a single lectin could bind to multiple glycan molecules finally because of the fluidic nature of the cell membranes glycans attached to lipids or membrane proteins can diffuse and rotate on the 2d cell surface and therefore the glycans can form multivalent interactions with lectins all of this is to say that the lectin-glycan recognition principle is fundamentally different from other established biomolecular binding models the existing methods of lectin analysis miss all of these unique characteristics and often fail to explain unexpected phenomena in order to better understand the nature of lectin-glycan interactions wu has developed a high-throughput nanocube sensor array that quantitatively measures lectin-glycan interactions in a cell membrane mimicking environment in addition to the sensor array kwon has also developed a computational tool a kinetic monte carlo simulation which models the process of lectins binding to glycans on cell surfaces using these new tools wu and kwon have been able to further characterize lectin-glycan interactions the results of the research suggest that hetero-multivalency has a complex impact on lectin binding behaviors and likely serves as a key mechanism in lectin-glycan recognition wu and kwon go on to hypothesize that cells utilize this mechanism to regulate the downstream lectin functions the research suggests that two factors – surface diffusion of glycan ligand and lectin binding kinetics – play a major role in glycobiology processes this research has been recently funded by the chemistry of life processes program at the national science foundation
475,"summers at texas a&m university are hot but that doesnt hinder faculty students and staff in the department of materials science and engineering from conducting important research the materials science and engineering department offered two summer research programs for undergraduate students between may 28 - aug 2 the research experience for undergraduates (reu) program was hosted at the department level and featured research opportunities that focused on multifunctional materials the reu program was sponsored by the national science foundation through their reu site grants program participating students got hands-on experience in various materials synthesis and characterization techniques different types of multifunctional materials and materials modeling methods they learned how research is conducted developed experimentation and modeling skills and learned how to conduct property characterization analysis testing and optimization of multifunctional materials and components the students were mentored by materials science and engineering faculty including those affiliated with the department and a trained graduate student overall this reu experience has been great particularly because the program coordinators have pushed us to improve our writing and presentation skills which are indispensable as researchers said gabriel vega-bellido an reu participant from the university of puerto rico mayaguez the new knowledge i learned this summer about machine learning will help me at my home institution where i do research with robotics and artificial intelligence said dana ronin undergraduate student at the university of maryland the undergraduate summer research grant program (usrg) was hosted at the college level and students were assigned faculty in departments including materials science and engineering to conduct research the usrg was hosted by graduate programs in the college of engineering the center for research excellence on dynamically deformed solids hosted eight usrg students and worked with materials science and engineering faculty on topics related to the processing structure and mechanical properties of advanced multiphase metals and composites projects varied in focus on experiments computer modeling or theory during the usrg program i not only learned valuable laboratory skills but also about teamwork and communication skills said gregory wong a materials science and engineering undergraduate student at texas a&m this experience has also given me great insight in the process of continuing my education in a post-graduate program"" both programs are not major specific and students can find and apply for research opportunities based on their interest regardless of major this program provides opportunities for the brightest kids in their classes to learn how to conduct scientific research and help them decide if they want to continue their careers in pushing the boundaries of science said dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and head of the department the fact that many of the students are from other states demonstrates the success of these programs that we have been running for the last four years both programs had 22 participants and students from numerous institutions took part including the following universities: virginia tech university; university of tennessee at knoxville; university of utah; north carolina state university; university of alabama at huntsville; university of idaho; university of north texas; university of maryland; university of puerto rico at mayaguez; university of mississippi; rio hondo college; university of arkansas at fayetteville; and university of connecticut at the end of the program students presented their research results in a poster symposium consisting of three sessions participants were evaluated by both mentors and peers alike a materials science and engineering summer program student placed within each session rowan baird university of mississippi placed first in session a gregory wong materials science and engineering undergraduate at texas a&m placed second in session b and andrew falkowski university of utah placed first in session c"
476,the master of engineering technical management (metm) program at texas a&m university is a 21-month part-time online program designed specifically for working professionals in engineering and technology the program is currently ranked 15th on collegechoicenets best online masters in engineering management degree list and equips participants with the business and leadership background needed to excel such as leadership project management data-driven decision making financial engineering contracting value asset management and technology commercialization the metm curriculum is uniquely crafted and delivered by industry leaders who emphasize current industry applications and solutions in august nearly 100 current metm students from around the world traveled to the zachry engineering education complex in college station to attend the annual metm residency week a residency week allows a distinctive online program to excel by creating an immersive learning environment and allowing students to connect in a traditional classroom environment and build an inclusive bond between classmates during the residency week first-year students attended an engineering personal leadership class taught by dr ben zoghi director of the metm program and victor h thompson professor this course addressed emotional intelligence (eq) and developing cognitive emotional and behavioral capabilities so students will become effective leaders students explored the area of emotional intelligence identified personal eq competencies and other areas for improvement and built upon those competencies and skills
477,part of the time in the class was spent at the texas a&m challengeworks outdoor learning laboratory students were separated into small groups and completed a wide variety of ropes course activities that built teamwork and camaraderie students returning to residency week for their second and final year attended the capstone i class co-taught by anupam srivastava and dr steven thompson who have nearly 60 years of high-tech industry experience combined throughout the course students gained firsthand knowledge of the practices experiences and values of a successful technology management leader when facing volatile uncertain complex and ambiguous times both first- and second-year students spent a day at the george bush presidential library complexs annenberg presidential conference center listening to a variety of accomplished guest speakers talk about a multitude of leadership topics afterward guest speakers metm faculty and staff attended a networking social and were joined by the texas a&m yell leaders and university mascot reveille this years speakers and topics included: ahmed mahmoud | leadership in technology chief information officer global manufacturing and supply chain general motors gordon england | leadership & ethics former secretary of navy former president of general dynamics andrew nelson | servant leadership mayor of bryan texas ceo and co-founder of lisam america george anderson | leadership & executive coaching managing partner anderson & anderson dr jennifer reyes | leadership & diversity/inclusion director for assessment and diversity initiatives texas a&m
478,on the final day of residency week students received presentations from their future online professors and had the opportunity to engage with them and ask questions before returning home and beginning the semester second-year students were escorted to the clayton w williams jr alumni center to try on and select an aggie ring that they will be eligible to order in january 2020 metm is currently accepting applications for the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters information sessions for prospective students are being held throughout october and november in houston fort worth dallas austin and san antonio during the information sessions faculty staff and current students will discuss the program structure course content and the benefits the program can offer students and their employers to learn more about the program application requirements and information sessions visit the metm website
479,cecilia klauber a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the society of women engineers (swe) 2019 outstanding collegiate member award this prestigious award is only presented to 10 students annually being a graduate student recipient of this recognition is very meaningful to klauber who is actively involved in the organization klauber has been involved with swe since 2010 when she started her college career in electrical engineering at baylor university through each stage of her academic career she has stayed active in the organization and continued to devote her time and energy to the members she is now serving as graduate member coordinator klauber said this role allows her to interface with the swe board of directors and work with graduate swe groups around the country
480,i help lead a team of students that are providing programming and resources for grad students around the society so its especially exciting to get this award because only 10 people can get it and its been primarily won by undergrads in the past klauber said in my work at all these universities and even getting involved with the grad swe group here at texas a&m there are some graduate students doing amazing work to advocate for women getting advanced degrees in engineering and stem and to see us getting recognized for that in the society is so awesome klauber is also a national science foundation graduate research fellowship program recipient and she is currently working toward her phd in electrical engineering under dr tom overbye tees eminent professor her area of focus is studying how geomagnetic disturbances such as solar flares affect the power grid my research is creating a way that grid operators can have situational awareness when geomagnetic disturbances happen and how we can give grid operators the information they need to be able to make decisions to keep the lights on klauber said she is passionate about electrical engineering and helping other women in engineering have access to the resources they need to help them succeed and reach their goals in this field the award will be presented to klauber at the we19 conference in anaheim california in november
481,"for the past three years dr berna hascakir has been involved in a program funded by the national science foundation (nsf) that allowed her to teach the basics of research to three undergraduate students from schools other than texas a&m university the program research experiences for undergraduates (reu) lets students participate in projects provided by sites or researchers around the country that are interested in promoting student engagement hascakir flotek industries inc career development professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering works with students through the texas center for undergraduate research in energy and propulsion reu site this site is a collaboration between texas a&m and the university of texas at brownsville that focuses on alternative fuels energy conversions and storage and various propulsions all three students who participated in the program connor pope and john siu from the university of rochester and elizabeth seber from pennsylvania state university had no prior experience working in the field of petroleum engineering nor were all of them engineering majors as seber studies mechanical engineering siu studies physics and pope studies chemical engineering each student worked one summer with hascakir and her graduate student norasyikin ismail to investigate a project on enhancing oil recovery from unconventional heavy oils using thermal methods and the reactions of aromatic or resin properties present in reservoirs to those methods the collaborations proved beneficial for everyone including hascakir it was a very good experience to work with students with different backgrounds and from different universities said hascakir it enlarges the research vision pope the most recent student worked in the richardson building at texas a&m for 10 weeks over the 2019 summer he learned to use equipment and materials in labs under hascakir and ismails supervision and guidance to understand why many in-situ combustions are unsuccessful in enhancing oil recovery and how aromatic and resin reactions can be involved results from the procedures were modeled analytically to obtain reaction parameters at the end of the experience pope showcased the work he had done and won first place in his session during the poster presentations held in the zachry engineering education complex in august research is vastly different from classroom learning as what we learn in the classroom is theoretical said pope during research a lot can go wrong and its important to try and work through it it's a form of experimenting and working to understand why and how we get those results hascakir who is one of two petroleum engineering faculty members at texas a&m to receive nsf funding welcomed the opportunity to encourage the potential in these young researchers ""as we professors advance our knowledge we forget from time to time how to communicate in the right way with undergraduate students said hascakir this program reminded me where i came from taught me how to simplify my research area and showed me how an undergraduate student can help me progress in my research also reu proved to me again the power of interdisciplinary research the project resulted in six papers two were submitted to the 2020 society of petroleum engineers (spe) heavy oil conference in calgary canada and the 2020 spe improved oil recovery conference in tulsa oklahoma the other four papers are listed below: ismail n seber e hascakir b 2018 water and aromatics fraction interaction at elevated temperature and their impact on reaction kinetics of in-situ combustion journal of petroleum science and engineering volume 169 pages 24-32 october 2018 ismail n siu j hascakir b 2018 kinetics analysis validation for in-situ combustion by coupling experimental data with analytical and numerical methods paper spe-191745-ms presented at the spe annual technical conference and exhibition dallas texas usa september 2018 ismail nb seber e hascakir b 2018 role of aromatics fraction of crude oil on in-situ combustion performance paper spe-190307-ms presented at the spe improved oil recovery conference tulsa oklahoma usa april 2018 ng a seber e ovalles c benson ip hascakir b 2018 the use of asphaltenes precipitants and environmentally friendly solvents during solvent-steam processes paper presented at the spe/eage tar mats & heavy oil workshop: fluid characterization and development/operational challenges dubai uae january 2018"
482,nathan bliss sits on the porch swing of his parents houston home with his arm around his older brother charles its like a scene carved out of a norman rockwell painting theres an american flag waving in the distance and their golden retriever princess is playing in the yard as they rock nathan speaks calmly to charles convincing him to stay on the swing charles has a rare genetic condition called phalen-mcdermid syndrome and as a result has a severe developmental disability epilepsy limited mobility and speech among other symptoms
483,like many other families who have a loved one with a disability each member of the bliss family has learned to fill the role of caretaker and they do so seemingly with ease for nathan his brothers condition has inspired him to study biomedical engineering at texas a&m university where he is now a sophomore someday he hopes to also go to medical school with a goal of becoming a physician-scientist thats the field ive wanted to go into for a long time he said ive been immersed in this environment doctors researchers and family members who have been trying to help my brother thats what inspired me to want to pursue this career
484,a passion for research when nathan was in high school his mother met a neuroscience physician-scientist at a luncheon dr hsiao-tuan chao assistant professor in pediatrics molecular and human genetics and neuroscience at baylor college of medicine runs a lab located in the jan and dan duncan neurological research institute at texas childrens hospital where she and her team study neurodevelopmental disorders chao invited nathan to participate in some basic experimentation as a high school student and he readily agreed despite his youth nathan already exhibited an unparalleled level of maturity and scientific body of knowledge chao said in fact many people remarked on the superb ‘medical resident working with me as nathan readily impressed our colleagues with his professionalism poise and intellect three years later hes still working in her lab and this past summer he earned a grant from the autism science foundation one of only four awarded this year to continue the research in a more hands-on way by conducting research on fruit flies they hope to be able to help doctors diagnose rare diseases sooner so that patients can receive the treatment they need early in life nathan hopes to someday play a role in finding a cure for rare diseases like phalen-mcdermid syndrome
485,walking in his brother's shoes in many ways nathans childhood was different than that of his peers his brother was in and out of the hospital sometimes spending months away at a time it was challenging to see him struggle nathan said but its made me more responsible the biggest thing its done is its given me this sense of compassion nathan said his brother has taught him to always think of others needs
486,hes not verbal anymore nathan said you dont know what it is he wants or what hes thinking you have to put yourself in his shoes and think ‘does he need to use the restroom his personal experiences and compassion drive him in his research and thats something that chao finds very valuable in the lab nathans personal experiences and unique insights very much were integral in highlighting to our lab and colleagues how basic science endeavors can have the potential to positively impact the lives of those affected by rare diseases chao said i have no doubt that he will make a significant impact to the field of biomedical research and clinical medicine nathan is also motivated by his mother geraldine my mom served as chair of the research committee for the phelan-mcdermid syndromefoundation he said shes been my biggest inspiration she took this small foundation and made a big presence in the community of rare disease i hope to one day make an impact like her geraldine said shes very proud of nathan for working hard and applying his knowledge and creativity to help others in our family so much of his family life was defined by his big brothers disability and it really took everybody chipping in and rolling up their sleeves and always doing their best in order for us to survive as a family she said as a result nathan became a resilient man hes resourceful and hes compassionate she said and those are all traits that i think he actually has his brother to thank for
487,david cotten has established the andria n elkins 04 scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a degree in the industrial and systems engineering department at texas a&m university cotten is a graduate of the university of louisiana at lafayette and tulane university he currently serves as the vice president of western hemisphere operations sales and operations at scientific drilling international andria elkins 04 was the driving force behind cottens endowment and shared several causes that factored into her excitement for establishing a scholarship in the department texas a&m means a lot to me elkins said i truly experienced the aggie spirit during my time on campus in a way that helped shape me into who i am today it was elkins love for texas a&m recognition of the impact her time on campus had on her and desire to create meaningful impact that led to the endowment david and i attended the industrial & systems engineering awards gala held this april and were moved by the students efforts and related scholarship offerings elkins said after leaving the event i asked myself ''why arent my peers and i being better about reinvigorating scholarships for our current students which led to a conversation about endowing a scholarship cotten surprised elkins by establishing a scholarship in her name while she was away on a work trip something texas a&m instilled in me and is a testament to the aggie mentality in general is the idea of being optimistic with each new encounter elkins said david has always been supportive of this mentality and it translated to the endowment of this scholarship cotten and elkins both hope the scholarship will help students worry less about the financial stress of attending texas a&m and allow them to focus on their education we want to help students who for whatever reason need support through the means of a scholarship elkins said we need more people who believe in stem and we need employees who are excited and ready to fill the role that awaits them after graduation and this scholarship is a way to meet that need on both ends of the spectrum
488,the department of industrial and systems engineering is celebrating its 80th anniversary in the coming years the departments goal for this celebration is to have 80 scholarships for the 80 years the department has existed endowments supporting the students in the department have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the departments goal or would like more information on how you can give please contact thadd hargett senior director of development
489,a study conducted by stanford university recently recognized dr jn reddy as the most highly cited researcher in the college of engineering at texas a&m university and number six worldwide among engineers the study analyzed data collected during the period of 1996-2017 covering more than six million scientists in 22 major fields over that period reddy also ranked as the third-most cited faculty member in both science and engineering at texas a&m the study also showed that in 2017 reddy's citation ranked first in science and engineering at texas a&m and third in engineering worldwide as of 2018 reddy ranked 13th in engineering worldwide in addition to maintaining his top rank in the college of engineering at texas a&m reddy national academy of engineering member and the oscar s wyatt endowed chair professor in j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m is the author of 21 textbooks and nearly 700 journal papers and has been a leader in the applied mechanics field for more than 45 years he is widely known for his significant contributions to the field of applied mechanics through the authorship of widely used textbooks on the linear and nonlinear finite element analysis variational methods composite materials and structures and continuum mechanics and elasticity
490,natural disasters present unique challenges to civil engineers because they can damage infrastructure systems such as transportation power and communication services disruptions in any of these services could dramatically impact the livelihoods of an areas residents two students natalie coleman and brice sherer dedicated their summer to participate in the undergraduate summer research grant (usrg) program to learn more about the relationship between people and their environment to build sustainable and resilient communities coleman a senior in the department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university worked on a research team in dr ali mostafavis lab which develops interdisciplinary solutions to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters
491,her work focuses on the societal impacts of infrastructure service disruptions on different social subpopulations in a community it investigates whether the social characteristics of a community can influence the disaster experience one of my research projects has focused on how socially vulnerable populations (such as households classified as having low income minorities young children or medical conditions) were affected by the infrastructure service disruptions caused by hurricane harvey in 2017 said coleman i have analyzed data to determine which social groups or areas were more exposed and more sensitive to the service outages the teams work which included input from amir esmalian doctoral student in the department resulted in a system that integrates the physical and social vulnerabilities of a community into an equitable infrastructure resilience model since communities often space tight budgets and limited funding resources and time the model will guide community leaders in the process by helping them decide on issues regarding the restoration and investment of infrastructure systems there may be certain groups of people or areas within a community which are more vulnerable to disruptions in the power service coleman said this information would then allow community leaders to know which groups or areas to prioritize in the event of a power outage in doing so it will recognize the individual needs and expectations people have on infrastructure systems colemans goal as a civil engineering student has always been to build and maintain communities by applying the lessons shes learned in the classroom to real-world problems infrastructure systems are vitally important to those communities because the people constantly depend on the services from the systems i understand the devastating impact that natural disasters have on communities by disrupting their infrastructure systems and i want to be a part of the effort to mitigate those impacts she said i find it interesting that we are looking at the disaster impact from a holistic view and introducing the human element to civil engineering practices
492,sherer a senior construction science student at texas a&m also dedicated much of his summer to working in mostafavis lab with hamed farahmand a doctoral student in the civil and environmental engineering department i first started studying the subject of resiliency and had no prior knowledge on it or research experience before starting this program sherer said when i gained acceptance into the usrg program i got a head start by reading some relevant papers on the topic this area of research interested me because many of my immediate family members were either physically or economically harmed by the recent catastrophic floods in the houston area i wanted to learn more about what occurs during the recovery process and hopefully how to improve it with this personal drive he focused his efforts on the priorities attitudes and preferences of households during the recovery period after the flood the influencers we looked at consisted of a households demographic characteristics awareness factors and experienced economic losses he said we wanted to see how these factors interacted with each other and also how they influenced effective recovery planning the usrg program is dedicated to hosting students from around the world over the summer to become more familiar with the research process in a field that interests them students are paired with faculty members and graduate student mentors to aid in their efforts and participate in a poster session at the end of the summer
493,four faculty members have joined the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university with research expertise in areas such as cybersecurity human-computing interaction and motion-planning algorithms with the fierce competition for talent in both academic and industrial settings we are delighted to have such adept faculty joining the department said dr dilma da silva former department head the four new faculty members include:
494,dr martin carlisle professor of practice received his doctoral degree in computer science from princeton university and his bachelors degree in mathematics and computer science from the university of delaware carlisles research interests include computer security programming languages and computer science educationdr jeeeun kim assistant professor received her doctoral and masters degrees in computer science from the university of colorado boulder and her bachelors degree in computer engineering from korea aerospace university kims research interests include digital fabrication human-computer interaction human-artificial intelligence interaction and design researchdr shawna thomas instructional assistant professor received her doctoral degree in computer science and her bachelors degree in computer engineering from texas a&m university thomas research interests include algorithms for robotic motion planning motion planning applications to computational biology and computational geometrydr yupeng zhang assistant professor received his doctoral degree in electrical and computer engineering from the university of maryland and his masters and bachelors degrees in information engineering from the chinese university of hong kong zhangs research interests include applied cryptography and security zero-knowledge proofs blockchain and privacy-preserving machine learning
495,daniel toerner a senior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university participated in the international submarine races competition in bethesda maryland according to the competitions website the race provides a platform for teams at all grade levels to develop a one or two-person wet submarine crew members breathe scuba from the air supply carried aboard the submarine and propel the submarine over an underwater course each submarine is unique designed from scratch and relies upon novel techniques for propulsion and guidance the competition is a culmination of the teams work over the last year to race against students from around the world in an underwater course q: what is your role on the team and how did you get there a: my role is captain of the team i got this position by attending the meetings and adding worthwhile contributions to the design and integration of many parts in the submarine along with this i was able to effectively communicate why something was being done and what else needed to be done in order to complete the task
496,q: what does the team go through each year to reach the point of competition a: every year the team has to go through the process of designing procuring manufacturing and constructing everything that goes into the submarine this year there was a major focus on developing more efficient drive-train control and safety systems we start working in august during the second or third week of school and nearly every week after that until the competition in june this includes working during winter and summer breaks where even though we dont hold any official meetings there are team members that stay in college station to work on it and some who come to town when they can throughout the year we also test the submarine multiple times at the offshore technology research center to check the performance of our systems q: what is a challenge your team faced this year and how did you overcome it a: one of the biggest challenges we had this year was making the drive-train system more efficient and reliable than our previous system we tried two different types of drive-trains one using a differential system and the other using a solid shaft that ran through the main gearbox but allowed the pilots to pedal in the direction that was most comfortable to them making the pilots pedal at the same rate we decided to use the solid shaft due to the fact that it was more reliable underwater once we got that system working the next obstacle we ran into was the lift the submarine had once it got to speed we finally found the fix to this at the races after going through much troubleshooting we overcame both of these challenges by working together as a team to find what was causing our issues (material issues air trapping gear ratios and propeller pitch)
497,q: how has being on the submarine team impacted your experience as an ocean engineering student a: this organization has helped me learn that even though something may work in a design or simulation it may not work in real life it has given me the opportunity to have very valuable hands-on experience that encompasses some very important concepts used in naval architecture mechanical systems and ocean engineering it has also helped me network as many former students still ask about the submarine offer insight on how to make it better and look for students on the team when they are looking for potential employees
498,for dilipkumar patel 66 what started out as a surprise visit to his alma mater this past summer turned out to be a day he will never forget patels daughter bela jain had made plans to spend the day with her parents but wouldnt give them any details about where they were going accompanied by his wife devayani the family arrived at texas a&m university and made a stop at the association of former students where jain suggested they park to take pictures of the haynes aggie ring replica it was there that kathryn greenwade 88 a vice president at the association who had been in previous contact with jain greeted the family as they were taking photos on the haynes ring plaza greenwade invited them inside the clayton w williams jr alumni center under the guise of showing them around the exhibits inside but instead took them to the pitzer board room where a group made up of the association university staff friends and dr arul jayaraman head of the chemical engineering department awaited them to give patel his aggie ring the ring was a surprise gift for his 80th birthday and jain said the idea originally came to her about five years ago when he turned 75 and her first son graduated college jain and her brother both graduated from the university of texas at austin and their father bought them college rings each time mentioning he wished he would have bought his own when jains oldest son graduated from ut austin in 2014 her father mentioned again about how he couldnt afford the aggie ring when he graduated as she came to understand the importance of the aggie ring for him she decided she would make this happen for him when i ordered the ring in april (the aggie ring office at the association of former students) told me it wouldnt be ready until the summer jain said i thought ‘well ill just have it mailed to the house and then i changed my mind and thought it would be nice to bring him up here and just do a little campus tour visit family friends and pick up the ring at the same time after reaching out to the aggie ring office and family friend and aggie shanubh desai 88 her idea quickly transformed from a small surprise into a larger event that involved family friends and a private tour of campus and the zachry engineering education complex home away from home the texas a&m campus which served as patels first home in the united states has changed quite a bit since he first moved to college station from india in 1963 i was admitted to schools in new york california and oklahoma but i chose texas a&m because it had the quality for engineering and i really enjoyed it it was wonderful patel said we all said ‘howdy everywhere and everyone including the professors were very nice and friendly they helped me a lot to make money during college he worked in the library for $2 an hour and helped other graduate students record the results of their tests in the chemical engineering laboratory he dreamed of one day owning his very own aggie ring but by graduation patel was unable to afford it degree in hand and $22 in his pocket the new chemical engineer moved to houston where a week later he landed his first job at brown & root inc an engineering construction company patel has since had a very successful career working for prominent companies such as fluor corporation ford bacon & davis inc crawford & russell john brown raytheon abb lummus and shaw group he has been retired for about 10 years and is enjoying life with travelling spending time with his family and volunteering at houston methodist hospital all my success in life goes to becoming an aggie the 12th man patel said this was one of the happiest moments in my life which i will always treasure i am proud to wear this ring and honor the university
499,on sept 4-5 the student engineers council (sec) at texas a&m university held their fall 2019 engineering career fair at kyle field and the texas a&m hotel and conference center the event attracted approximately 10 100 students seeking internships and jobs from the 558 participating companies in attendance the fair is a premier recruiting event that is planned organized and staffed by students making it one of the largest student-run career fairs in the nation in addition to many aggie-owned companies such as ward getz & associates llp and shift administrators llc in attendance students had the opportunity to meet and speak with recruiters from many fortune 500 companies such as boeing exxonmobil procter & gamble and more historically our career fair has accounted for around half of the jobs given to graduating seniors and many internships to students throughout their time at texas a&m said abhi dhillon president of the sec beyond the impact it can have on our career i believe the career fair gives students an opportunity to grow in confidence it is not easy to approach a recruiter and talk about yourself for five minutes countless times throughout the day however in doing so students become more confident in speaking and in their accomplishments the day before the fair the sec hosted two events a welcome social and company showcase at the welcome social students had the opportunity to interact with company recruiters in a relaxed professional setting the company showcase is an informational style event where students learned about how to better understand companies recruiting practices and the typical positions that are filled by engineering students through brief presentations given by the participating companies
500,the exxonmobil aggies club have established the exxonmobil aggies mechanical engineering endowed scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from texas a&m university similar to texas a&m exxonmobil has hundreds of internal organizations that allow employees to connect with each other over shared passions carissa mark 15 an engineer with the company shared the exxonmobil aggies mission the exxonmobil a&m club is the first-ever corporate texas a&m club she said our mission is to enable aggies to network within the corporation globally as well as to strengthen the relationship between exxonmobil and texas a&m while the club started as a way for aggies to network within the corporation they now have their own muster host yearly tailgates and luncheons and volunteer at ring day the houston food bank and rebuilding together houston in addition to the fun we have together we have initiated six collaborative texas a&m endowments mark said all of which are in the process of being funded and we are working on starting two more matthew lindblade 14 a fixed equipment engineer said the competitive spirit and drive to help current students afford the cost of an education at texas a&m led to the exxonmobil aggies mechanical engineering endowed scholarship i was reading through one of the exxonmobil aggie newsletters and noticed that there was a chemical engineering and geosciences endowment lindblade said my competitive spirit decided it was time to create one for mechanical engineering the exxonmobil a&m clubs efforts are centered around fostering a sense of community within the corporation with fellow aggies through social and service events supporting and encouraging one another in their career endeavors through mentorship and collectively giving back to their beloved university as a 2014 graduate from the mechanical engineering program my desire is to ‘pass it back to a university that has given me so much and support the mechanical engineering students coming along behind me to pursue and achieve their dreams through an outstanding education lindblade said
501,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president for development
502,patricia 85 and dwayne meloy 85 have established the patricia 85 and dwayne meloy 85 and meloy family scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree from the college of engineering at texas a&m university patricia graduated with a bachelors degree in marketing and dwayne graduated with a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering their love for texas a&m led to the creation of a scholarship endowment we have been blessed by the university in so many ways we have many aggie engineers in our immediate and extended family as well as family with degrees from other colleges within the university totaling 19 rings and counting dwayne said tricia and i established an endowed scholarship in the college of engineering to give back to texas a&m and to help incoming students reach their career goals the meloys understand the financial burden of attending college and sought to contribute to the alleviation of this burden for students we hope this scholarship helps extend the aggie network and reduce some of the financial burden of obtaining a quality education dwayne said
503,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact thadd hargett senior director of development
504,"dr mauricio e tano visiting assistant professor in the texas a&m university department of nuclear engineering believes in the future of nuclear energy as a new professor tano hopes to dedicate his research and teaching career to the success of nuclear energy its a clean and low-carbon source of energy and one of the only viable options to secure the health of our planet moving forward said tano the rest of the world is already moving toward renewable energies especially places in europe its time we become more proactive to developing nuclear solutions to current problems tano is no stranger to foreign developments either born in argentina tano received his nuclear engineering diploma from balseiro institute before completing his doctoral degree in fluid mechanics energetics and processes in grenoble france after spending time in europe tano began seeking greater opportunities for his research the answer seemed obvious: move to the states i knew i wanted to continue researching said tano in the united states there are more opportunities available and theres more freedom especially concerning scientific research so i said ‘why not tano arrived at texas a&m in april is currently working with dr jean c ragusa in the department of nuclear engineering he admits that although he wasnt quite sure what nuclear engineering consisted of before he decided to study it there were two motivating factors that stuck with him as he continued his studies worldwide were producing a lot of harm to the planet by continuing to burn fuel explained tano we need to produce clean energy fast and safely so that we can continue to progress as a society also i really like complex systems such as nuclear reactors i enjoy the challenge of trying to understand and model them"" tano believes that the biggest strength he brings to the department is his knowledge of machine learning a method of data analysis in which computer systems learn to perform specific tasks without explicit instructions although machine learning is a quickly advancing field of study in regards to artificial intelligence its connection to the science of nuclear engineering remains largely unexplored tano hopes to change that one of my goals as a researcher is to mend the gap between nuclear engineering and machine learning said tano were actually going to offer a course in machine learning next spring with dr ragusa it will be the first of its kind in the country from there tano hopes to create an academic community of students professors and researchers to continue developing the field of machine learning in nuclear engineering he aspires to use the science and technology of machine learning to build new designs of nuclear reactors"
505,the texas a&m university system national laboratories office hosted nuclear security enterprise (nse) day on sept 9 the nse includes the national nuclear security administration (nnsa) and laboratories and other sites around the country managed by the nnsa that maintain the nations nuclear stockpile the nse is among the nations largest employers of students in stem fields brian m smith deputy associate administrator for management at the nnsa said in his keynote address that the nuclear enterprise would hire more than 8 000 new employees across the stem disciplines this year these opportunities will address some of the worlds most complex engineering and scientific issues involving the safety and security of the nuclear stockpile supporting the us navys nuclear propulsion fleet and responding to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the united states and abroad the workforce demographics are favorable for college students today smith added supervisors are often only a few years older than them so the common ground of shared experiences as well as the visual representation of the possibility for upward mobility is immeasurably valuable and unique
506,more than 80 students from the college of engineering attended the annual recruiting event students from west texas a&m university prairie view a&m university and other a&m system universities attended the event as well nse day also featured graduate and undergraduate panel discussions designed to provide students with the opportunity to ask questions and learn about internships and jobs at national labs ryan vrecenar from sandia national laboratories explained that internships are key for recruitment at national labs and expanded on the freedom interns have to shape their own research projects ive worked with students who have done projects in areas such as software analysis software development and machine learning he said the ability to choose their own projects essentially means interns have a hand in molding the future career they want for themselves there are also opportunities to network and collaborate across labs which further opens up future career opportunities for students who arent sure if they have what it takes to pursue an internship or fellowship dustin leclair from the nnsa had a few words of advice show that you have an interest in your major beyond classes be a well-rounded person who can work with others and have an interest in technology good writing skills help as well since effective communication is important no one wants the conversation about a stray comma or grammar mistake to distract from an otherwise sound argument
507,at the nse day career fair hiring managers were available to collect resumes for open job postings internships and fellowships technical representatives from various companies and national labs spoke with students about employment opportunities and other benefits such as professional development and tuition reimbursement programs this industry is great about helping employees better themselves by supporting advanced degrees and certifications since all that effort is usually fed back into the job said jd mohundro from honeywell things like tuition reimbursement are usually based on a managers assessment of need but for engineering you often dont even need to make a business case since engineering is the business texas a&m is one of only a handful of prestigious universities selected to host an nse day event to engage stem students interested in a career with the nse this was texas a&ms second nse day
508,the association for computing machinery (acm) recently awarded scott kolodziej third place in the grand finals of the student research competition for his work on code documentation earlier this spring kolodziej participated in the initial round of the competition at the acm special interest group on computer science education technical symposium and won first place in the graduate category before competing against first place winners from other acm conferences for the grand prize as a third-place winner kolodziej was invited to attend the acm awards banquet held in san francisco in june where he had the chance to meet and network with prominent computing researchers and practitioners as a graduate student in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university kolodziejs research began when he sought to answer a seemingly basic question: what is the best way to document computer code kolodziej led a team of undergraduates in designing a study in which student participants would read various code samples and then answer questions to measure their comprehension kolodziejs research team found that both good naming and good comments are crucial to clear and understandable code documentation but that good naming is the more important factor while opinions vary on what constitutes good code documentation kolodziej and his team took the first steps toward gathering hard objective data about what makes quality software the project was part of the aggie research leadership program which connects aspiring undergraduate students interested in research with graduate students seeking mentorship opportunities and research assistance the program helped form kolodziejs team of undergraduate students spencer anderson yara mohammed polina golikova sahil patel sagar patel akash rao and srinivas raghav tankasala from the departments of computer science and engineering and industrial and systems engineering the research opportunity proved to be a valuable and rewarding learning experience for all involved and kolodziej became a certified aggie research leader for completing the program given that i ran this study on an almost nonexistent budget with virtually no supervision it was quite powerful to see the research become recognized the way it has kolodziej said my team of undergraduates were fantastic the whole experience helped me see that i have a career in research and the skills necessary to lead a research team to success
509,gifted through the texas a&m foundation stephanie and aaron trask '11 have established the stephanie and aaron trask '11 chemical engineering scholarship their generous gift will support undergraduate students pursuing a degree in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering who have demonstrated leadership or involvement in a student organization scholarships were a major part of my time at texas a&m said aaron the generosity of former students in the form of scholarships allowed me to leave texas a&m with no student debt and start my career on a strong financial foot whether it was through scholarship banquets or the events attended during my time in maroon coats i realized quickly that scholarships and the former students behind them are one reason that texas a&m is so special and unique in addition to surrounding its students with support aaron explained that the chemical engineering department and his semester-long co-op experience played an integral role in his post-graduation success the ability to problem-solve think outside the box attack problems logically and present information concisely are areas that texas a&ms college of engineering excels at teaching versus other colleges said aaron after starting his career as a production operations engineer at hess corporation a leading global energy company based out of north dakota aaron returned to texas for two years to hold various business development roles in houston now he is returning to hess corporation as an area lead – armed with the lessons learned and insight gained from both industry and academia texas a&m provides a unique opportunity to not only receive a world-class education but also help ‘round students out through organization involvement said aaron i think this plays a crucial role in developing the leaders of tomorrow by equipping students technically and teaching them about leadership relationships and communication i truly believe that the community service-oriented mindset of texas a&m sticks with you after college and makes a big impact in the corporate world
510,this summer three gencyber cybersecurity camps were held on the texas a&m university campus the camps were part of a summer computing academy hosted by the texas a&m high performance research computing (hprc) group department of computer science and engineering and the college of education and human development the gencyber program provides summer cybersecurity camp experiences across the nation for k-12 teachers and students to increase awareness of the exciting career opportunities within the field overall 75 high school students from across the united states all sponsored by the program attended the camps during the camp students learned about the problem solving and teamwork aspects of careers in engineering and also participated in computing challenges through various hands-on activities such as enhancing their problem-solving and debugging skills in python the program also introduced the students to cybersecurity principles and addressed topics such as information privacy and ethics the students also had the opportunity to take a tour of the texas a&m campus susu and mark a fischer '72 engineering innovation center the teague data center to see two supercomputers and interacted with current and former students from the departments of computer science and engineering and electrical engineering as our society increases its reliance on computer technology the challenges and opportunities within cybersecurity continue to grow in complexity and importance said dr dilma da silva head of the computer science and engineering department and director of the gencyber camps we need a lot of talent to address these tough problems so by introducing them to the students now we hope it motivates more of them to pursue a career that will lead to a safer more secure society
511,just 48 hours is all the time 55 students had to compete in the first aggies invent competition of the new academic year the challenge nuclear security in a first of its kind partnership los alamos national laboratory (lanl) sponsored the event to prepare the nation for a rapidly evolving technological and geopolitical environment that will demand much more technical capability combined with a more rapid and innovative response lloyd brown guest scientist with lanl formerly taught as a professor at the united states naval academy and enjoys helping the students bring the theories and knowledge gained through their studies full circle to the real world a lot of students just dont see why theyre learning this stuff from the classroom brown said they cant see the application so this is where the rubber meets the road
512,brown was on the team from lanl that put together the list of 14 needs statements students could choose from to work on over the weekend when a team hit a road block he talked the students through the situation at hand and helped them to simplify the problem they were facing i try to stress to them that this is just a thermodynamics problem and to step back think about it and realize the work they were doing in the classroom or the reason they did that homework was to prepare them for something like this brown said for athena sagadevan doctoral student in nuclear engineering the competition offered an opportunity to further delve into her passion for nuclear security while working with other students from various backgrounds ive never worked with a multidisciplinary team before so my team members all bring extremely different perspectives that i have not seen through my years of studying sagadevan said don quintana division leader for weapons systems engineering at lanl described the topics presented to students as some of the most complex and challenging things the lab is working on those topics are things we have been working on for many years some even 20-30 years quintana said we brought them forward in an unclassified form so the students could give them their best shot with new sets of eyes while encouraging them to think outside of the box liam fortier sophomore nuclear engineering major chose to tackle the design of a shield for a space shuttle or missile to prevent the object from burning up upon re-entry into earths atmosphere this is a pretty dynamic problem that doesnt have a simple fix as of right now fortier said for this there are all kinds of variables you have to take into account such as different materials with aerodynamics stuff going on and heat transfer it also has a lot of application commercially
513,the winning team rock-e chose to address how countries can detect materials used in weapons of mass destruction and help prevent conflict between weaponized countries the team included david gregorio electrical engineering senior; carter radocha general engineering freshman; benjamin fenuyi mechanical engineering sophomore; brady trieu general engineering freshman; leonardo escamilla general engineering freshman; and amir rad aerospace engineering in order to be prepared for nuclear threats you need to know where they are coming from said fenuyi thus you need a device that detects nuclear materials before they become dangerous should the threat of a nuclear war arise it is essential that countries be able predict when an enemy is preparing to drop such a bomb nations around the world are reaching their era of nuclear weaponry with nearly 2 000 nuclear tests performed since the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki fenuyi said cue rock-e the teams answer to the challenge at hand and the reason the judges awarded them the $1 000 first-place prize rock-e is a compact module that can be adapted to any environment however this is no ordinary module the teams concept has the ability to be deployed in teams of one to five to detect any chemical biological or nuclear agent rock-e can also be used as a safety device to detect any chemical or radiation levels in real time said gregorio combined with an alarm it can provide workers in high-risk areas with crucial information before disaster strikes the lightweight design allows a single drone to carry up to a full team of five modules in whatever way best suits the terrain allowing for versatility in any situation the management of lanl has allowed us to explore ways of leveraging both the creativity or our students and their innovative mindsets and the deep understanding of the fundamental technology of lanl said rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship its simply phenomenal and very humbling to be a part of we look forward to next years aggies invent – nuclear security being even more impressive
514,radiation is energy traversing space little particles shooting through the air that can be utilized as a means of curing cancer or could cause irreparable damage to a persons health autumn kalinowski a graduate student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university is developing a computational model that converts raw data and radiation records from thermoluminescent dosimeter (tld) badges into more readily useable values for epidemiological studies as such her model will produce information that can be utilized to investigate the epidemiological – health and disease – effects of radiation especially low doses this ongoing project is part of an internship with oak ridge associated universities in oak ridge tennessee anyone who works in a nuclear field and is potentially exposed to radioisotopes be it technicians reactor operators or people who work in weapons fabrication or national labs wears a tld badge said kalinowski these badges are scanned and read periodically throughout the year the information is culminated annually and the total dose of radiation exposure for each individual is sent to oak ridge associated universities to be input into a massive database this is so that we can go back and look at individuals and see their exposure over time to monitor it and make sure that it is falling within regulatory limits said kalinowski unfortunately with how it is currently recorded and formatted the data cannot be effectively applied to epidemiological studies – limiting how much insight and information can be gained regarding the health effects and disease development of prolonged exposure to low doses of radiation so tackling this issue kalinowski is working on developing a model that can translate the raw database information into a format of values that can be more directly applied to epidemiological studies this will not only be a key element in the advancement of nuclear research but also stands to have a lasting impact on experts and engineers in the nuclear and medical industries at large with access to real-world interpretable data researchers industry leaders and others can track and investigate how radiation – especially at low levels – effects workers health and disease development over time as such her model will also be a vital tool in better understanding radiation and how to keep workers safe in environments in which they are exposed to radioisotopes having received her bachelors degree from the department kalinowski said that her experience as a nuclear engineering student at texas a&m has helped her with her internship the nuclear engineering program is really rigorous in terms of the amount of work that you do in your undergraduate and graduate degree all the classes are super intense and in order to do well in them you have to have a strong motivated work ethic and be willing to put the hours in to get it done said kalinowski learning how to work with tight deadlines and how to juggle priorities really helped prepare me for my internship and make sure i could get everything done while i was on site kalinowski was introduced to key movers and shakers at oak ridge associated universities by dr shaheen dewji assistant professor in the nuclear engineering department my advice is to talk to your professors and see if they know anyone that they can put you in contact with to start pursuing internships because this experience – that i'm very fortunate that dr dewji helped me find – opened up a whole new world of options for me said kalinowski
515,james c jones 05 a former student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering has established the james c jones '05 study abroad scholarship in engineering this endowment gifted through the texas a&m foundation is the second scholarship created by jones it will provide one or more scholarships to full-time civil engineering students who participate in a study abroad program through the college of engineering or another texas a&m university entity a third-generation aggie civil engineer jones followed in the footsteps of his grandfather truman r jones 43 and father jr bob jones 69 after graduation jones took the opportunity to work abroad in libya from 2009-10 the experience he explained was eye-opening applying his engineering knowledge to solve real-world problems overseas gave him the opportunity to experience a new culture perspective and place since working in libya he has traveled to 40 countries across the globe – each one broadening his horizons and offering something new i think my time overseas made me a better engineer upon my return to the united states he said now he is giving back in order to open the door for students to experience working abroad and reach new heights the civil engineering department has been important to my family personally and professionally for years he said i was inspired at an early age by my fathers example to give back to the university that gave me so much and provide for the next generation of aggie civil engineers
516,dr diego donzis and dr chang hsin chen from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have been looking at new ways in which shock turbulence interactions (sti) can be understood their research was recently featured on the texas advanced computing center website and shared on various websites including hpcwirecom physorg and sciencedailycom stis are observed in a number of contexts including supersonic aerodynamics turbulent combustion and astrophysical flows making them an important topic in fluid dynamics in the study shock-turbulence interactions at high turbulence intensities funded by the national science foundation and the air force office of scientific research and published in the may 2019 journal of fluid mechanics a new theoretical framework was developed and tested to understand turbulent jumps of mean thermodynamic quantities shock structure and amplification factors in order to prove their theories donzis ran a very large data set of shock turbulence interactions at different conditions on stampede2 the most powerful computer in the united states for open science research housed at the texas advanced computing center part of the university of texas at austin see turbulence meets a shock to read more about their research
517,bringing together the leaders of tomorrow with the prominent minds of today the senior capstone design program at texas a&m university challenges student teams to tackle real-world engineering problems faced by industry for their project amanda cheek and melanie vincitore both former students of the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering dove into the issues faced by offshore oil rigs namely how robotics could aid in painting on a corrosion-resistant coating to the horizontal vertical and curved surfaces on oil rigs their project now being prototyped by bp aimed to reduce the risk of flaws and human error during the application of the corrosion-resistant coating – a task that is as labor intensive as it is important flaws in the coating are a significant issue because applying the coating takes a very long time and can be tedious for operators to perform said cheek an autonomous robot would mitigate this risk and remove the need for operators to perform this task said vincitore as cheek and vincitore explained coating flaws on oil rigs can be especially dangerous in a salt water environment because salt water is highly corrosive and will quickly damage and break down rig assets if they are not properly protected this has the potential to endanger workers lives and the integrity of the structure
518,to combat this the team designed an autonomous robot that could navigate the surfaces of an oil rig much like how a pool cleaner traverses the curves and edges of a pool and paint on the protective coating safety was a large factor the design could not be a source of ignition or a safety hazard to workers (and) had to be robust since finding spare parts is not a feasible option in the middle of the ocean said vincitore in addition to developing a tested design for bp to use the team also made recommendations on building materials for the robots where the equipment and sensors should be located and how the robot should operate as such they reported and demonstrated the potential capabilities and limitations of a robotic painter and the impact it could have on worker safety as well as the reduction of risk and repair costs caused by human error it feels so good to know that our project is being utilized by bp an industry leader it was a daunting project that we are very proud of we hope to see it one day in the future of the industry said cheek (senior capstone design) taught me how to work and communicate with team members manage time and communicate with stakeholders to correctly identify project needs said vincitore its great to know that all of the hard work we put in has paid off and we were able to identify and satisfy the objectives that bp desired for a very broad and challenging project a global leader in oil gas and energy bp manufactures and markets energy fuels and raw materials used in everyday products ranging from cellphones to food packaging to automobiles implementing cutting-edge technologies and engineering advancements the impact of the company and their brands can be seen around the world in addition to being experts in the industry bp supports the education and cultivation of student experiences they have partnered with the senior capstone design program at texas a&m multiple times – their expertise and support helping to give students valuable insight and opportunities now and into the future partnering with texas a&m to sponsor capstone projects has been impactful of bp said collin kleypas ‘11 a subsea engineer at bp and former mechanical engineering student i believe the program is a win-win learning opportunity students gain experience of what it is like to work on a real engineering project in our industry while our company has the opportunity to understand the competency (and) capability of graduating engineers – something that is continuously increasing learn more about how to get involved with the mechanical engineering senior capstone design program
519,august is a busy month at texas a&m university faculty are finishing up summer trips students are moving back to campus and the amount of traffic increases exponentially around the city before the hustle and bustle hit full swing for the fall semester the faculty of the department of industrial and systems engineering participated in a retreat with industry professionals faculty and industry professionals discussed various issues within the field including healthcare oil and gas and transportation and how industrial engineers can help them improve current processes or create new systems to help with 21st century challenges two panels of industry professionals visited with faculty during the retreat
520,the first panel included speakers dr stephen jones md robert brydia scott livingston and logan havern jones works at the houston regional methodist research institute and focuses on the development of customized clinical informatics systems and databases for clinical research and practice brydia is a program manager for the advanced transportation operations group and senior research scientist with the texas a&m transportation institute his work has produced analyses and case studies that have led to permanent infrastructure improvements livingston is president of the intervention and stimulation equipment area at national oilwell varco delivering solutions to newbuild offshore vessels havern is the co-founder of blip biometrics and currently works for jetblue he is also a senior industrial engineering student who will graduate in december 2019
521,the second panel included speakers kendall bruce chris havern hudson high and dr samyukta sethuraman bruce works in innovation and business optimization for forward air solutions with more than 26 years of experience in logistics he has worked with several companies including waste management ryder integrated logistics and the united states postal service havern is the group president of integrity management at shawcor he has more than 25 years of experience in energy services and has also served as vice president of human resources of integrity management and vice president of mobile technologies along with other roles within the company high is the customer supply chain manager for north america with arconic he is a strong advocate for texas a&m and gives guest lectures works at volunteer events and serves on the advisory council for the industrial and systems engineering department sethuraman is a senior research scientist at amazon she has worked on building and implementing a capacity management system for amazon locker to maximize the number of packages that are delivered to the lockers
522,the retreat sparked dialogue and created relationships between faculty and industry professionals that will improve industrial engineering and systems in texas and around the world
523,dr jeff huang associate professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was recently honored with a young faculty award (yfa) from the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) the yfa program aims to identify and engage rising stars in junior research positions and expose them to the needs of the department of defense and darpas program development process huang received the award for his project titled smartscript: a learning-based approach to static type and semantic inconsistency analysis of dynamic scripts
524,the goal of this project is to develop smartscript a novel static code analysis that automatically detects type and semantic inconsistency errors in dynamic scripts such as shell scripts python lua javascript etc huang said to achieve the goal huang created a machine-learning technique that leverages inconsistency interference and valuable natural language information in the code such as variable names to discover hidden semantic errors the novel insight is that code semantics conveyed through natural language information are typically ignored by rule-based machines but can be spotted easily by human developers huang said by learning such nonstructural semantics smartscript can train a classifier with human intelligence to detect hidden semantic errors significantly beyond the power of existing tools additionally the detected inconsistency errors will be explained with high signals whenever an inconsistency is identified we anticipate that the tool and techniques resulting from this research will transition to industry and enable millions of developers to continuously reveal hidden bugs early in the software development cycle huang said huang is also collaborating with dr ruihong huang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering and an expert in natural language processing (nlp) to create advanced nlp techniques for this project
525,dr guofei gu professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2019 distinguished member of the association for computing machinery (acm) for his outstanding scientific contributions to the field all 62 of the 2019 inductees are longstanding members of the acm and were selected by their peers for their significant accomplishments in the field of computing computer science or information technology that have contributed to technologies that support how people live work and play gu is also the director of the success (secure communication and computer systems) lab at texas a&m where he and his students are involved in cutting-edge network and system security research his research interests include network and system security internet malware/botnet/advanced persistent threat detection defense and analysis software-defined programmable security mobile and internet of things security artificial intelligence security web and social networking security and intrusion/anomaly detection view a full list of the 2019 acm distinguished members inductees
526,sixteen students from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university recently attended the 2019 richard tapia celebration of diversity in computing conference in san diego california the group was led by dr david kebo houngninou instructional assistant professor in the department founded in 2001 the three-day event brings together students faculty and professionals from all backgrounds and ethnicities to acknowledge promote and celebrate the significant contributions of diverse people in computing the theme of this years conference diversity: building a stronger future highlighted the importance of diversity in computing innovation for the future and the critical role that the contributions of a diverse workplace plays during the conference attendees could participate in technical and development workshops a poster session and several networking opportunities with recruiters from various universities and companies that were in attendance as it was my first time attending i didnt know what to expect in the end it turned out to be a rich and colorful experience for me where i learned a lot about not only tech but also about diversity and inclusive behaviors in general said graduate student sarra bounouh all in all the tapia conference was such a positive and impactful moment for me and i would love to attend another one in the future the 2020 tapia conference will be held in dallas texas the computer science and engineering department has been a long-time supporter of the annual conference the tapia conferences are sponsored by the association for computing machinery presented by the center for minorities and people with disabilities in information technology and are in cooperation with the computing research association
527,its been 44 years since ronald ledbetter graduated from texas a&m university with a degree in engineering technology now hes back in aggieland serving his alma mater as a professor of practice and training the next generation of subsea engineers as the saying goes the apple doesnt fall far from the tree this rings true for ledbetter whose father worked in the oil and gas industry for texaco oil company as a child ledbetter moved around quite a bit due to his fathers job he lived in several texas cities corpus christi san antonio tyler and houston when it came time for ledbetter to choose his own path he decided to work in the oil and gas industry too ledbetter first arrived at texas a&m in 1965 then left a couple years later to serve his country in vietnam he returned in 1971 and graduated in 1975 for the next 42 years ledbetter worked in the oil and gas industry serving in multiple positions of leadership his career took him around the world from australia and france to england scotland canada guyana and mexico to name a few an expert in subsea engineering systems and offshore field development ledbetter helped develop the curriculum for the specialized masters program in subsea engineering at texas a&m several years ago hes excited for the opportunity to now work full time with students and help grow the program this concept of bringing professors in who have learned so much from the experience of their careers to teach from the perspective of having been there and done that is a brilliant addition to the theory and engineering processes already taught he said my overall goal is to make this program not just successful but also regarded as one of the top masters programs in the nation i want the program to grow and be self-sustaining
528,this concept of bringing professors in who have learned so much from the experience of their careers to teach from the perspective of having been there and done that is a brilliant addition to the theory and engineering processes already taught he said my overall goal is to make this program not just successful but also regarded as one of the top masters programs in the nation i want the program to grow and be self-sustaining for ledbetter the best part of his job is working with students i have been very impressed by their intelligence and their hunger for knowledge he said ledbetter said the oil and gas industry needs inquisitive minds to tackle immense challenges below the surface of the sea he likened the challenges of the subsea environment to the challenges faced by the space program where external pressures reach thousands of psi and internal pressures are even higher subsea equipment and systems are remote and operate in a highly corrosive environment both internally and externally as well as being inaccessible for maintenance or repair all in all it is an extremely challenging setting for engineering and design he said the oil and gas industry still has many difficult technical challenges and we need young lively minds with ideas to solve these challenges visit our website to learn more about texas a&ms master of engineering in engineering with a specialization in subsea engineering program
529,in july of 2019 nuclear science technology and education for molten salt reactors (nustem) and safety assessment of molten salt fast reactor (samofar) led the molten salt reactor (msr) summer bootcamp on the campus of the delft university of technology in the netherlands this event brought together participants from universities across europe and north america to learn more about msrs through seminars hands-on activities a capstone assignment a poster session and a round table presentation both nustem and samofar are large-scale multi-institution research projects investigating msr technologies with an eye to training new experts in this important field dr jean ragusa professor of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university leads the nustem project which was funded by the department of energys nuclear energy university program as an integrated research program over three years nustem funds numerous faculty researchers and students from texas a&m the university of california-berkeley and the university of wisconsin-madison to contribute to the development of enabling technologies for molten salt reactor concepts and to educate young professionals in molten salt reactor technologies other texas a&m nuclear engineering researchers working on the nustem project include dr mark kimber dr cable kurwitz dr sean mcdeavitt dr luis ortega dr lin shao and dr pavel tsvetkov samofar is a consortium of 11 universities and research centers throughout europe funded by euratoms horizon 2020 program and tasked with proving the innovative safety concepts of the molten salt fast reactor by advanced experimental and numerical techniques delivering a breakthrough in nuclear safety and optimal waste management and creating a consortium of stakeholders to demonstrate the molten salt fast reactor beyond samofar the workshop consisted of a series of five modules representing five major components of msr research with faculty members actively working in each area presenting the modules the bootcamp consisted of a thematic mixture of research topics related to msrs said dr mauricio tano visiting assistant professor in the nuclear engineering department at texas a&m who participated in the event this included multiphysics thermal-hydraulics reactor control materials corrosion and the nuclear fuel cycle among others tano also found it very enriching to be presented with the practices and challenges of each of these fields in addition to these presentations each module also included a hands-on practical exercise intended to teach the students and researchers a new skill that they could bring into their research
530,the summer school broke the traditional lecturing model said texas a&m graduate student mohammed bani ahmad who works on the nustem project with kurwitz the workshop turned classes into interactive sessions where we solved problems and did calculations during class time this kept us students involved and interested the whole time overall it was an exceptional experience the participants also worked together in teams throughout the session on capstone assignments each team developed an msr research proposal in which they detailed the background to their research question the methods they would use to investigate the topic the impact of their proposed research the resources needed to pursue their intended topics along with potential timelines and milestones the challenges to the topic and how they would handle quality assurance during the lifetime of the project this exercise gave the participants valuable experience in writing a competitive proposal for research an award for best capstone submission went to the group of franziska schmidt (uc-berkeley) tano (texas a&m) and nicholas winner (uc-berkely) for a project proposal titled in situ salt composition observation using optical techniques peter german of texas a&m won the award for best poster at the workshop through working together on the capstone teams presenting posters and talking about their research in round table discussions participants in the molten salt reactor summer bootcamp had the opportunity to share their work and network with other students and faculty in europe and north america working on msr research projects ramiro freile a texas a&m graduate student working on the nustem project with kimber said the connection with other students and professors who are working on the same project was extremely helpful it allowed me to discuss about future projects and possible collaborations with research centers and universities from all over the world
531,finding her sea legs on a 40-day research expedition loicka baille a senior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university spent last semester on the global ocean ship-based hydrographic investigation program (go-ship) cruise the only undergraduate student on a team of researchers she traveled from cape town south africa to antarctica and back on a voyage to collect water samples along the i06s hydrographic line – a stretch in the southern indian ocean running between the two continents – for further research there is a lot more to oceanography and to engineering if you combine both of them the program was not ocean engineering-based but being able to go out on a boat see how it works and see how the engine works was definitely a rewarding and useful experience said baille
532,the go-ship cruise in partnership with the national science foundation is an ongoing collaboration between the department of oceanography at texas a&m the scripps institution of oceanography at the university of california san diego and the university of washington every 10 years the program sends a ship out to sea to collect samples in order to analyze the physical chemical and biological properties of ocean water in key areas around the globe these findings are then compared to previous expeditions thus allowing researchers to track and gain further insight into the changes occurring within the earths oceans introduced to the opportunity through dr alejandro orsi a professor in the department of oceanography who led the study baille was excited to apply her education to a real-world setting although the program was focused on oceanography rather than engineering baille found her background to be advantageous during the program as she analyzed the technology used throughout the cruise i noticed that when we had very bad storms we had some technical issues with the boat she said and that's when details like rolling angle were critical – which means that the boat is rocking way too much to the point of tipping along with bridging the two disciplines baille was tasked with operating the collection equipment called a rosette this mechanism which is made up of 36 bottles that hold 11 liters of water each is sent to the bottom of the ocean before being raised slowly each bottle is able to be closed individually by the operator allowing water to be collected from different depths
533,her experience renewed her passion and interest in engineering new technologies as she recalled that many of the measurements on the expedition were done by hand rather than through computational means we were part of one of the best programs that exists for oceanography said baille we used high-tech equipment still with all of that i can see how much improvement can be done on the technology side i realized how much potential there is still to reach in those areas now as she looks forward to pursuing a doctoral degree in ocean engineering baille has found herself face to face with another exploration of the events taking place around antarctica i would love to create technology for oceanography purposes she said for example i was talking to this professor up in boston and he creates technology to follow whale migration through antarctica or to study the health of emperor penguins all of those would use acoustics and that's definitely ocean engineering but for more science-based purposes
534,texas a&m university hosted the third workshop for the transatlantic partnership between the texas a&m engineering experiment station and arts et métiers institute of technology jointly referred to as the am2 partnership the workshop held oct 16-18 built on the two before it in hopes of presenting the vision for the am2 consortium on industry 40 which seeks to strengthen this partnership and advance technology surrounding artificial intelligence and data science for smart manufacturing in the future two years ago the president of france emmanuel macron launched a national strategy for artificial intelligence in context of the european union as it is key for the sovereignty of our nations and states said the honorable alexis andres consul general from the french consulate in houston however he continued in order to have a successful strategy you need to have adequate training progressive research and companies that excel in this area france cannot succeed in such a challenge alone
535,but ushering in progress to a global manufacturing industry has been challenging since companies do not share data with one another so collaborative solutions are rarely developed with any efficiency share your data and you will be stronger advised ivan iordanoff vice president of research and innovation at arts et métiers institute of technology of course data is high value so i understand the impulse to protect it iordanoff proposed a relaunch of the am2 innovation pillar to bring together industry giants as well as small-to-medium enterprises technological providers and startups we have 3 000 years of scientists and good knowledge of what we want to simulate he said now we need to determine how to collect data securely so that we can actually use our knowledge the french government has launched a plan called open data meant to make more data accessible by categorizing what kind of data it is based on whether it should be available to the wider public certain companies or no one at all for example all data relating to health of citizens should not be made available publicly said andres we need to be very clear on what can be used with artificial intelligence and development efforts the opportunity to discuss such topics is one of the many benefits of collaborating with so many professionals from academia and industry in attendance at this workshop
536,since november 2017 we have been making significant progress toward forging a strong academia-industry partnership to address the emerging scientific technology and workforce development challenges for industry especially in the context of advanced materials and intelligent manufacturing said satish bukkapatnam professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m director of the tees institute for manufacturing systems and co-lead of the am2 initiative
537,the am2 partnership is of immense strategic benefit to both france and the us because it seeks to effect change to a global manufacturing industry through extensive research collaborations education programs and mutual faculty and student exchange initiatives that serve to elevate the am2 partnership as well over 100 aggies and gadzarts (students at arts et métiers) have participated in am2 global programs with aggies spending time in france and gadzarts in college station the arts et métiers and texas a&m partnership is a great example of how powerful the synergy of research and education can be remarked maria alves senior director of halliburton engineering global programs at texas a&m besides the great research collaboration solving problems that are relevant to the manufacturing industry around the world this partnership also allows our students to develop a global understanding of the engineering industry and the skills needed to lead in the global industry and society texas a&m is a tier-one research institution and among the top 10 engineering programs in the united states boasting over 35 faculty members with a focus on manufacturing and arts et métiers institute of technology is one of the most reputable engineering programs in france
538,"dr melissa grunlans contributions to the biomedical engineering community have been recognized by the american chemical society (acs) which named her as a 2019 fellow the award recognizes members for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science the profession and the society grunlan professor and holder of the charles h and bettye barclay professorship in engineering in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university said receiving the recognition is an honor and it is especially meaningful as several fellows have served as mentors to her during her career since becoming an acs member over 20 years ago as an undergraduate student the society has been an immense asset to my scientific and professional growth grunlan said i am humbled to be part of this group of individuals whose research and service contributions have made lasting impacts"" grunlans research is focused on regenerative medicine specifically to develop tissue engineering scaffolds that can help heal orthopedic tissues by improving the material properties and thus functionality of scaffolds we can improve the outcomes of tissue regeneration grunlan said grunlan said she thinks acs fellows have an obligation to both continue to make scientific contributions as well as elevate others to do so as an acs fellow i want to carry on my efforts to provide opportunities to students and young professionals to showcase their work grunlan said as well as to have opportunities for professional development including taking on leadership roles other projects in grunlans lab have included production of coatings hydrogels elastomers and porous foams from hybrid systems based on combining inorganic and organic polymers her projects include the development of self-cleaning membranes for implanted biosensors and clot-resistant coatings for blood-contacting devices another program that allows grunlan to give back to the biomedical engineering student community is texas a&m universitys presidential impact fellow program which was established to recognize rising stars in their respective fields fellows embody the universitys commitment to advancing knowledge through transformational learning discovery innovation and impact grunlan said the program has been instrumental in helping her mentor students to date i have advised over 60 undergraduate students in research in my lab grunlan said many of these students have co-authored research articles in journals written theses presented their work at conferences and gone on to earn advanced degrees the training and guidance that these students receive from their graduate student mentors is an invaluable asset"
539,emergency response workers are in dangerous situations every day but technology can facilitate safer work environments and protect workers from danger researchers at texas a&m university the texas a&m engineering experiment station virginia tech and the university of florida are working to accelerate the use of new technologies in emergency response by developing an adaptive personalized mixed-reality learning platform that empowers first responders to perform their jobs more safely and effectively dr ranjana mehta co-lead and associate professor in industrial engineering along with her collaborators have been awarded a $1 million national science foundation convergence accelerator grant to create technology-based solutions supporting emergency response worker safety and performance on the job this award focuses on one of the nsfs 10 big ideas in the future of work category at the human-technology frontier their project learning environments with advanced robotics for next-generation emergency responders (learner) focuses on integrating innovative robotics and augmented/virtual reality (ar/vr) technologies into emergency response work through use-inspired technology development a mixed-reality learning platform and the creation of an open source knowledge sharing platform which will help share the information learned over the duration of the project the research aims to create technology in close partnership with industry and public safety stakeholders that is centered around the emergency response worker specific for the situation and adapted for a particular use this research will use three different technologies ground robots exoskeletons (or wearable robots) and ar to accomplish the research goals
540,ground robots could aid (emergency response) workers during surveillance and search and rescue operations by going into areas humans cannot safely access said mehta powered exoskeletons allow workers to enhance their physical capacity while still maintaining autonomy from the machine ar allows (emergency response) workers to increase their teamwork skills including wayfinding collaboration and decision making during a stressful situation successfully operate robotic machinery in the field and learn new skills safely she said emergency response workers are in need of near constant training to reinforce current strategies and tactics and develop the knowledge skills and abilities they need to handle the next emergency the technology generated through this research will help address the workers requirement for constant learning and reduce the barriers to technology acceptance and adoption this project is currently in phase one for nine months and will have the opportunity to apply for phase two funding next year phase two would provide additional funding for two years mehta will collaborate with texas a&m researchers dr jason moats and dr robin murphy along with researchers in the cognitive engineering for novel technologies lab occupational ergonomics and biomechanics lab and terrestrial robotics engineering and controls lab lab at virginia tech and with dr jing du of the university of florida during phase one industrial partners include imaginate ekso bionics and the florida institute for human and machine cognition
541,research on human-robot interactions in the workplace will empower diverse populations of workers to be more productive in the future researchers at texas a&m university and across the nation are collaborating to improve the understanding of human-robot interactions in high-risk industries such as manufacturing and offshore oil and gas dr ranjana mehta lead researcher and associate professor in industrial and systems engineering and dr prabhakar pagilla professor in mechanical engineering along with collaborators around the country have been awarded a $12 million national science foundation grant for their work in human-computer interactions human-robot interactions and neuroergonomics the project augmenting human cognition with collaborative robots will contribute new information to human-robot interaction research through the development of safer and more efficient collaborative robot interactions collaborative robots work directly with humans in a shared space to perform tasks these robots are used in many industries including manufacturing mining construction and energy increasing the safety and efficiency of these collaborations between humans and robots by predicting human emotional states and how the robots will adapt to these states is a major goal of the research collaborative robotics is a growing area in robot technology and will be an estimated $13 billion business by 2025 it is thus timely to develop technical intelligent support mechanisms to enhance safer human-robot interactions and teaming mehta said to accomplish this goal and increase worker safety the researchers will use wearable brain imaging to understand fatigue and stress states of workers as they interact with the robots in manufacturing facilities in texas the use of machine learning will enable the robots to react to workers' cognitive and contextual states researchers will also use this information to develop an augmented reality assistant that will provide workers with information needed to safely perform their jobs with collaborative robots the project also seeks to empower new populations of workers such as workers with disabilities allow older workers to remain in the workforce and potentially assist novice workers thereby reducing skills gaps and improving work efficiency mehta said the research will also shed light on the socio-economic and behavioral challenges encountered as workers interact with robots such as workforce education trust and technology acceptance this research will be conducted with collaborations at the advanced robotics lab at texas a&m the human interaction lab at montana state university and the human-systems integration lab at clemson university
542,many students participate in internships but not all internships give students a chance to present a project to a four-star general three industrial engineering students from texas a&m university had the opportunity of a lifetime to do just that with the us army futures command (afc) this summer the afc which is headquartered in austin texas had nine interns who worked at different army research laboratories (arl) across the nation later this year arl will be moving some of their research and development programs to rellis campus the students spent the first two weeks of the internship visiting bases learning about the army and how research impacts the soldiers of today and the future we were able to fly on blackhawk helicopters and use simulators to get a feel for what it is like for a solider said kiran topiwala junior industrial engineering major this helped me put myself in a soldiers shoes after their introduction the students were sent to different army research laboratories across the country to work on research projects for seven weeks topiwala was sent to alabama his work focused on integrating human systems into rotorcraft – helicopters and other rotary-wing aircraft – in environments with poor visibility for pilots i made incredible connections during this internship and the opportunity to present in front of army futures command leadership taught me a lot topiwala said
543,jessica patino who graduated with an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering in may 2019 worked in alabama on a project involving army pilot training she focused on virtual and augmented reality technology for pilots i created a training scenario for pilots that simulated degraded visual environments such as sand snow smoke or rain patino said her project determined if more time should be spent creating high-fidelity environments – environments created in a simulation that are very realistic – or on effective and detailed mission objectives patino knew that she wanted to work with the military but thought the only way she could do that would be through enlisting this internship is an experience that allows civilians to work with the military she said the research being done by the army futures command is directly affecting soldiers lives the research i did this summer could save lives one day after her internship patino was offered a full-time position to continue her research with the afc she accepted and will be continuing her research this fall i have learned how important civilians are in the military and how much of an impact i am making as an industrial engineer for our current and future soldiers patino said syed hussain senior industrial engineering student interned at the army research laboratory west in california where he worked in the human object identification laboratory i used my industrial engineering education to solve problems and think critically hussain said at the end of the internship all of the students traveled back to austin and presented their research to afc leadership this opportunity along with the research they conducted has made a lasting impact on the interns i was blown away by how broad army research is and how it can be applied to bring soldiers back home safely topiwala said
544,the master of industrial distribution (mid) program at texas a&m university is a four-semester part-time mobile learning graduate program designed for working professionals it offers value through the incorporation of both academic professor and industry leaders who co-teach each course allowing you to learn not only academic theories but relevant and practical applicability with industry the mid program focuses on supply chain management logistics and profitability of distributors and manufacturers (suppliers) in industrial channels it specifically targets a variety of seasoned professionals in management and leadership roles on aug 11-16 a total of 96 mid students from the 2020 and 2021 cohorts attended a one-week residency at the zachry engineering education complex on the texas a&m campus residency week is an intensive learning experience designed to teach students the latest in distribution and to help them form successful working relationships with fellow students and faculty the lessons learned were immediately applicable to my job and company and the connections i made with cohorts and professors were invaluable said mid student and 2021 class president renata morgan in the 12 years i have spent in distribution i can easily say the five days spent in residency at a&m have been the most impactful on my career and im already seeing the return on investment both in the sense of time and money spent the mid program has modernized its curriculum with current and relevant research and with industry needs in mind it has incorporated new elements into all courses such as distribution customer experience digital distributor profitability and leading people and managing performance the program is especially excited about the development of a distribution channel development course that addresses strategy for development of distribution business within channels mid student and 2020 class president ryan johnson had some words of wisdom for potential applicants if i had to give one piece of advice to a student thinking about applying it would be to know that the mid program has no peers and to research for yourself why that is johnson said the college of engineering and specifically the (industrial distribution) program is the epicenter for the entire industry all of the current research and partnerships with industry are continually being updated and added back into the coursework learning from the professors as well as professors of practice helps to apply the knowledge in a real-world environment mid is currently accepting applications for the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters information sessions for prospective students are being held in october both in person and digitally during the information sessions faculty staff and current students will discuss the program structure course content and the benefits the program can offer students and their employers to learn more about the program application requirements and information sessions visit the mid website
545,biopharmaceuticals represent one of the fastest growing product segments in the pharmaceutical industry with more than $229 billion in global annual sales systems that can analyze the production of molecules needed to produce therapeutics can add enormous value to this industry by increasing target molecule output and reducing inefficiencies in the process dr arum han and dr pao-tai lin from the texas a&m university college of engineering and dr paul de figueiredo from the texas a&m college of medicine were awarded a grant from the national institutes of health (nih) for their collaborative project titled mirror: a chip-scale mid-ir ring resonance system for on-the-fly report of analytes their project aims to overcome challenges with the generation and monitoring of cells to produce therapeutics and other value-added products cell-based bioproduction is a very exciting up and coming area of both basic research and translational research but in-line monitoring of these processes is currently very difficult or costly so we are trying to develop new sensor technologies with integrated microfluidics to overcome these challenges han said the team believes that providing a means for continuous monitoring of the bioreactor used to grow these cells versus occasional monitoring can have significant impact to this growing field the co-principal investigators are relying heavily on lins photonics work for this research i am very excited about the opportunity to demonstrate mid-infrared integrated photonics for bioproduction lin said mid-infrared has great advantages in cell analyses because of its capability of label-free and real-time reporting the challenge was how to scale down a benchtop mid-infrared instrument down to the size of a chip our strategy is to miniaturize the optical system through complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (cmos) processes eventually the mid-infrared-based optical sensors can be embedded into various bio-manufacturing platforms to improve their bioproduction efficiency han is a professor and presidential impact fellow and lin is an assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering; de figueiredo is an associate professor in the department of microbial pathogenesis and microbiology
546,a car enthusiast since he was a teenager matt lawrence 81 and his wife lisa 81 have established the matt 81 and lisa lawrence 81 formula sae team fund to support the building of a new race car for the formula sae competition ive autocrossed various sports cars and formula cars from 1983 to 2011 said matt i have also built or rebuilt three replicas of classic sports cars gifted through the texas a&m foundation their generous gift will provide students in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the continued opportunity to gain hands-on project experience while working with a team of peers to create a competition-ready race car the formula sae competition hosted by the society of automotive engineers (sae) brings together more than 500 university teams from around the world to design build and develop formula-style race cars part of the mechanical engineering senior capstone design course at texas a&m the program consists of approximately 20 senior students each year
547,as a retired mechanical engineer and manager with exxonmobil i wanted to support a program in the mechanical engineering department that inspires students to use their minds and hands to engineer create and defend a finished design using imagination technology teamwork and communication said matt upon graduation in 1981 matt started full-time as a project engineer at the beaumont texas exxonmobil refinery there he held multiple individual contributor and managerial positions in engineering production and maintenance after the exxonmobil merger in 1999 he advanced through maintenance management assignments in the beaumont challmette and baytown refineries in 2017 he retired as the baytown complex mechanical manager i strongly believe my education at texas a&m provided me a strong understanding of mechanical engineering fundamentals and how to apply this understanding to the best of my abilities said matt i hope my donation along with the existing oem (original equipment manufacturer) funding will continue to enable the formula sae program to produce a world-class finished product
548,cody williams a senior computer science and engineering student at texas a&m university participated in the latest us cyber fasttrack competition where he made it to the finals and was awarded a $22 000 scholarship to attend the sans technology institutes undergraduate certificate program in applied cybersecurity us cyber fasttrack is an innovative nationwide competition that provides high-aptitude students with the practical cybersecurity training that employers demand from april 5 to september 16 more than 13 000 students from across the united states competed to solve more than 250 cybersecurity challenges the 100 finalists represented undergraduate and graduate students from 63 schools in 23 states the cyber fasttrack competition was one of the greatest challenges and learning experiences that ive had in my career as a student of computer science said williams the knowledge and skills that i gained through the five-month program have greatly increased my literacy in cybersecurity and various networking topics i was very fortunate to be selected as one of the 100 scholarship recipients from such a large pool of candidates it is an awesome honor and opportunity to be able to continue my cybersecurity journey through the scholarship provided by the sans institute with his scholarship williams will attend the sans applied cybersecurity program where students will complete three advanced immersion courses accredited by the middle states commission on higher education and will earn a professional global information assurance certification at the end of each which employers recognize as validation of their skill set upon completion of the program they will be introduced to various cyber employers for internships and employment the aim of the program is to prepare students with the knowledge tools and techniques needed to launch a rewarding career in cybersecurity the program is designed to produce graduates who are among the top 1% of all students in the united states in reliably measured cybersecurity aptitude embody a high level of tenacity curiosity and rapid learning capabilities and have fully mastered the skills critical to success as cybersecurity professionals ranging from networking to operating systems and programming cybersecurity is a fast-growing field where the demand for skilled workers surpasses the current supply said alan paller president of the sans technology institute which sponsors the competition these winners will set a new high bar for candidates for entry-level positions and demonstrate to employers that cyber fasttrack graduates are the among the best prepared and most effective new cybersecurity employees they have ever hired registration for the next cyber fasttrack competition opens in march 2020 see the full list of cyber fasttrack competition finalists
549,a team of researchers led by dr svetlana sukhishvili professor in the materials science and engineering department and director of the soft matter facility at texas a&m university is developing the next generation of biomedical soft materials their ultrathin coatings which react to increases in temperature will be able to deliver molecular treatments such as antibiotics to patients the project funded by the national science foundation is a continuation of a previous study that created the framework for designing soft biomedical materials for chronic wound repair consider a fever or inflammation around a wound as a patients temperature increases it becomes imperative to treat the symptoms to keep them on the road to recovery however that has not been the focus of past studies and innovations when temperature is used as a trigger for nanocontainers attached to surfaces most previous works have focused on coatings that respond to a decrease in temperature said sukhishvili here we are expanding this platform to become more practical and respond to an increase in temperature in real-world situations involving antibacterial or drug delivery coating on medical implants or wound dressing sukhishvili explained protective molecules are needed to decrease the risk of infection when temperatures increase not decrease to fill this gap we have been studying ultrathin coatings which contain nanocontainers (star molecules micellar spheres) which provide controlled delivery of functional molecules upon heating said sukhishvili in doing so the researchers whose synthetic efforts were led by post doctoral research associate anbazhagan palanisamy and graduate student qing zhou are not only creating more applicable and effective medical materials but are also gaining a fundamental understanding of how stimuli-responsive materials behave in practice developing stimuli-responsive materials that can deliver antibiotics only when needed is critical for the prevention of the spread of antimicrobial resistance a rapidly increasing problem said victoria albright graduate student in the department of materials science and engineering who leads the antibacterial drive of the sukhishvili lab the team included collaborators from texas a&m university and oak ridge national laboratorytheir findings were electronically published on the cover of langmuir these materials also gained recognition at the fall 2019 american chemical society conference when victoria presented a poster entitled surface modification of nanofibrous mats with polymeric micelles for enhanced tissue regeneration that won outstanding student poster award from the american chemical society colloid and surface chemistry division an award that is only given to three graduate student posters out of the entire division
550,taught to value family time from an early age virginia limon is now pursuing a second bachelors degree to pursue her passion for the ocean i was raised by a single mom who started her own business when i was in fourth grade so she could spend more time with my sister and i limon said money was tight when we were growing up but my mom was there for everything and i wouldnt change that for the world in 2013 limon earned her first degree from sam houston state university in instructional technology and landed a position as an instructional technology supervisor for the west campus open access labs at texas a&m university today she is working toward a degree in ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston and has started a marine technology society/society of naval architects and marine engineers (mts/sname) chapter on campus to bring more opportunities and exposure to her fellow ocean engineers q what is your dream job a my dream job is an engineering project manager that allows me to travel the world but still make time for my family q what drew you to ocean engineering a i specifically chose ocean engineering because the water has always been my passion when i was in middle school i wanted to be a marine biologist because i loved the ocean that plus a love for the water it is what i was born for
551,q why did you decide to pursue a second undergraduate degree in a field different from your first a i decided to go back to school to pursue this degree because i come from a family of engineers and accountants so engineering is in my blood and my mind is always thinking about solutions to problems we all enjoy solving puzzles i love seeing problems and designing solutions so i wanted to come back for a degree in engineering with my environmental degree and my ocean engineering degree i can be closer and more knowledgeable about my passions: the ocean and problem solving q what has been your greatest accomplishment in school outside of the classroom a i had to retake every math from college algebra because i hadnt taken a math class in almost 10 years i completed college algebra through calculus 3 in a year while taking physics 1 and 2 my greatest accomplishment outside of the classroom would be establishing a local mts/sname chapter at texas a&m galveston our campus didnt have any active professional engineering societies and i wanted to change that to help my fellow engineers make the contacts that will be so important for their future careers q what are you most proud of a being an aggie i am always very proud to see my fellow sea aggies making an impact in our community and in their careers q do you have any key mentors or people that have greatly influenced your career choice or who you are a my mom has been my biggest influencer and supporter she is just an amazing person she goes out of her way to help others she knows me better than anyone even though she is a former longhorn shes always supported my decision to be an aggie q if you had to provide some advice to a junior in high school thinking about taking a similar path to yours what kind of advice would you give them and why a itll be tough and require more dedication and time than most other non-engineering majors but it will be worth it youll make friends along the way with similar interests and goals which will help keep you focused they will also cheer you on when you are struggling
552,dr roderic pettigrew has been named the recipient of the 2019 national academy of engineerings (nae) arthur m bueche award for his contributions to technology research policy and national and international cooperation pettigrew is ceo of engineering health (enhealth) and executive dean for engineering medicine (enmed) at texas a&m university and houston methodist hospital as well as the robert a welch professor in the department of biomedical engineering though i did not personally know arthur bueche i have marveled at his history and his professional life pettigrew said an international statesman for engineering; a steadfast advocate for science and technology; an advisor to the government and academia; a top level industrial executive; and an innovator relentlessly focused on the application of research to societal needs truly a man for all seasons so what a humbling experience to receive an award named in recognition of such a person and what a great honor for ones life work to be recognized by your colleagues and peers the award recognizes an engineer who has shown dedication in science and technology as well as active involvement in determining us science and technology policy pettigrews award was given for leadership at the national institutes of health (nih) and for academic and industrial convergence research and education resulting in innovations that have improved global health care pettigrew received the award during the naes annual meeting on oct 6 as ceo of enhealth pettigrew leads the nations first comprehensive educational and research program to fully integrate engineering into all health-related disciplines enmed the first constituent program is a partnership of the colleges of engineering and medicine at texas a&m and houston methodist hospital located in houstons texas medical center enmed was created to develop a new type of invention-minded doctor or physicianeer students earn both an md and mengineering in four years through a unique blended curriculum the big driver for these new concept initiatives is to better meet societal needs in health the driver for enmed immediately and enhealth subsequently is to accelerate the transformation in health care that technological innovation can bring pettigrew said engineering converged with medicine and all other disciplines of the health care ecosystem will help catalyze new fundamental discoveries and translate these discoveries into practical advances that improve well-being the overarching goal for engineering being purposefully integrated into medicine and health care education research and translational science is to achieve good health for everyone everywhere for the entirety of our lives
553,pettigrew said tomorrows innovation will come from the students who are trained inspired and equipped today with such training there is no limit to the innovations their bright young minds can envision and realize we know this it abounds around us in other sectors of society pettigrew said we eagerly anticipate the health care contributions to the global society that this new generation of physicianeers will create and contribute he recognized the inaugural class of enmed students and faculty as trailblazers through a well-founded and compelling new concept in medical education it is our first implementation of an innovative initiative pettigrew said with it as with any first there are risks and initiation challenges to be met our inaugural class is brilliant and committed and our faculty exceptionally dedicated this promises that our vision of enmed and its physicianeers helping to transform the future of health will be realized before coming to texas a&m pettigrew served as founding director of the us national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering (nibib) of the nih where he oversaw $5 billion in research investments and is credited with building it into the signature nih institute for emerging medical technologies before his nih appointment he was professor of radiology at emory university school of medicine professor of bioengineering at the georgia institute of technology and director of the emory center for magnetic resonance research at emory university in atlanta pettigrews accomplishments have been recognized by election to the nae national academy of medicine national academy of inventors and the indian national academy of sciences as a foreign member other national honors include the bennie award for achievement from morehouse college most distinguished alumnus award of the university of miami the pritzker achievement award of the biomedical engineering society the distinguished service award of the national medical association the pierre galletti award of the american institute of medical and biological engineering the inaugural gold medal of the academy of radiology and biomedical imaging research university of miami miller medical school hall of fame the distinguished service medal of the international society of magnetic resonance in medicine the spirit of the heart award of the association of black cardiologists and the gold medal of the radiological society of north america
554,cybercrime continues to increase around the country and the state of texas has been hit particularly hard this year in august 22 cities across the state were hit in coordinated ransomeware attacks when cities near college station were impacted local officials turned to the cybersecurity experts at the texas a&m university system who contributed their skill sets as a part of response efforts by the texas division of emergency management thats why texas comptroller glenn hegar stopped by texas a&m as part of his good for texas tour: cybersecurity edition the purpose of the tour is to highlight the impact of texas colleges and universities in the fight against cybercriminals according to a study released by office of the state comptroller of public accounts in 2017 texas ranked third among states in the number of cybercrime victims and second in the number of financial losses as a result as an emerging leader in cybersecurity education and research and workforce development texas a&m engineering continues to develop the tools needed to face global security challenges said hegar texas a&m university has steadily been building its reputation in cybersecurity research education and outreach over the past few years and is one of only a handful of colleges and universities in the nation designated as a center for academic excellence in all three national security agency focus areas: cyber operations cyber defense and research the texas a&m college of engineering is also educating the next generation of cyber warriors as part of its master of engineering in engineering degree with a specialization in cybersecurity the degree program gives graduates a unique skill set within the engineering workforce empowering them to anticipate identify assess and mitigate threats to cyber systems they can also receive an industry-recognized certification combined the degree and certification elevate students to highly qualified job candidates as they pursue careers post-graduation the degrees and certifications conferred are regularly reported to the texas higher education coordinating board as metrics for its 60x30tx plan which has a goal of at least 60% of texans between the ages of 25-34 having a certificate or degree by 2030 graduates from any texas a&m academic or professional training program in cybersecurity are highly recruited with 90% of graduates accepting jobs upon graduation these students are very marketable after graduation due in part to the in-depth on-the-job training they receive as students the texas a&m college of engineerings research curriculum and workforce development programs are consistently recognized among the best in the nation in cybersecurity said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering our reputation for excellence in this field will expand as we address the important national problems of cybersecurity in critical infrastructure and manufacturing cybersecurity experts across the texas a&m system are frequently also sought after by government officials and peer institutions for their expertise that expertise was lauded recently by fbi director christopher wray who praised texas a&m for their outreach efforts in this important field during a us senate committee on the judiciary hearing in july texas a&ms reputation is also attracting cybersecurity heavyweights like dr stephen cambone who joined the texas a&m system in 2017 as associate vice chancellor for cybersecurity initiatives and is also a professor of practice in the college of engineering cambone is the former us undersecretary of defense for intelligence and brings with him a wealth of global perspective in which knowledge or experience in the cybersecurity realm is pertinent for graduates to be best prepared for important jobs in either the public or private industry sector earlier this year the us department of energy announced awards of up to $28 million as support for research development and demonstration of next-generation tools and technologies that will improve the cybersecurity and resilience of the nations critical energy infrastructure including the electric grid as well as oil and natural gas infrastructure networks among the 11 teams to receive an award includes the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) led by dr kate davis from the department of electrical and computer engineering daviss team from tees will develop a next-generation secure energy management system that can detect malicious and abnormal events through a fusion of cyber and physical data and algorithms effective integrated analytics and visualization
555,the texas a&m system is also home to two research centers devoted to cybersecurity: the texas a&m cybersecurity center and the tees center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives during this visit comptroller hegar toured several assets and met with many subject matter experts from across the texas a&m system including texas a&ms west campus data center; the texas a&m system security operations center and the college of engineerings zachry engineering education complex additionally he spoke with current students who are employed at various cybersecurity-related offices and a group from the texas a&m corps of cadets cyber corps the texas a&m system has some of the countrys best cybersecurity experts right here in the brazos valley said chancellor john sharp and that expertise has been recognized by the state and federal governments comptroller hegar is working hard to make sure the citizens of texas are protected against cybercrimes and so are we together we can help root out these cybercrimes before they happen
556,lauren borden 19 is one of several seniors graduating this december with a coveted bachelors degree in petroleum engineering from texas a&m university while she is proud of her accomplishment she chose to expand her education by applying and being accepted into the petroleum ventures certificate program (pvp) during her junior year this way she has a certificate to go with her degree one that shows she augmented her engineering education with business and finance studies when i learned pvp was a joint effort between the finance department (of mays business school) and this department (the harold vance department of petroleum engineering) i knew this was an opportunity to integrate business courses into my degree said borden borden recognized the value of being a well-rounded student when she came to texas a&m she pursued leadership roles and social involvement with opportunities such as the zachry leadership program she also enhanced her engineering studies with programs like the titans of investing and the pvp the pvp stood out as an investment in her future for several reasons: undergraduate petroleum engineering students work with business students on interdisciplinary projects that study real-world energy companies the courses in the program allow students to understand better how engineering projects can impact a business commercially industry leaders are available for networking opportunities through events and professional development opportunities while her decision to participate in the interdisciplinary program meant she would graduate a little later in the year than most petroleum students she felt the time investment was worth it i have seen doors open for individuals since this program specifically has set them apart in a way that is uniquely important in our industry said borden who begins her promising career in january with conocophillips petroleum has a significant impact on the economy making it a highly valued industry the work of petroleum engineers is also diverse meaning borden might experience role and responsibility changes throughout her career she believes the pvp provided her with a solid foundation of business concepts she might not have learned otherwise this foundation could help her move from a more traditional engineering role to a financial or managerial position in her future this industry is a business and it is extremely important to understand how our engineering projects will be of impact commercially said borden my internship experiences and projects have challenged me in a positive way and i have been motivated by learning how i can make a direct impact on the company and the team that i work with as a freshman borden was looking for a major that positively impacted society she felt that petroleum engineering provided the energy needed to empower future change and though it is a global diverse industry it has had a close-knit feel that highly values relationships that sense of belonging is also a part of the pvp which has been instrumental in helping her build connections with fellow students and mentors these connections will serve her well after graduation something she values as much as she does her degree i genuinely enjoy the classes here at texas a&m as well as the relationships i have built with my peers said borden we are supported by industry leaders who have found the value in supporting student engineers my favorite aspect by far has been the people
557,a study conducted by stanford university recently recognized dr jn reddy and dr alan needleman as the most highly cited researchers in the texas a&m university college of engineering reddy is ranked no 13 in all engineering fields and needleman is ranked 22 texas a&m and harvard are the only universities with two researchers ranked in the top 25 the study was published in plos and analyzed data collected during the period of 1996-2017 covering more than six million scientists in 22 major fields and 176 subfields reddy a university distinguished professor regents professor and the oscar s wyatt jr chair professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering is the author of 21 textbooks and nearly 700 journal papers and has been a leader in the applied mechanics field for more than 45 years he is widely known for his significant contributions to the field of applied mechanics through the authorship of widely used textbooks on the linear and nonlinear finite element analysis variational methods composite materials and structures and continuum mechanics and elasticity needleman a university distinguished professor tees eminent professor and professor in the department of materials science and engineering with a joint appointment in the mechanical engineering department is a preeminent leader in the area of mathematical modeling of materials his contributions include the development of a ductile fracture computational methodology the development of cohesive surface methods for fracture analysis and creation of a framework that enables the use of discrete dislocation plasticity to solve general boundary value problems he is a member of the national academy of engineering and the american academy of arts and sciences
558,"entering college with mathematics credits and experience in python programming bora oztekin an engineering freshman at texas a&m university is no stranger to tackling challenges and going the extra mile i feel like a lot of people are just waiting for their passion to come to them said oztekin but it usually doesn't come knocking on your door to say ‘i'm here hi i'm passion you have to go find it yourself so he did joining the aggie_challenge which aims to engage engineering undergraduate students in multidisciplinary team research projects that tackle real-world issues oztekin is applying his passion and experience in data coding to disaster relief and resilience led by dr ali mostafavi assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and dr xia ""ben"" hu assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering oztekin and his fellow researchers are developing a web-based system to boost resilience in times of catastrophe this disaster informatics project – which has the ultimate goal of creating a simulation akin to sims city for those in charge of disaster relief – will provide a vital tool to cities and communities with the ability to run different disaster and response scenarios the system will not only aid in a more efficient and effective response to disaster but will provide a method to help support and strengthen city infrastructure"
559,learn more about this project in the texas a&m engineering: soundbytes podcast episode featuring dr mostafavi
560,what we're trying to do is use all sorts of data to essentially establish a better response to emergency situations like hurricane harvey said oztekin when you think from an engineering standpoint there are inefficiencies with any disaster response the goal of this project if i were to sum it up is to minimize (those inefficiencies) to hopefully be able to save more lives and make the most out of the resources that we have focusing on coding and data processing oztekin is transforming datasets into visualizations that resonate with the general public – turning such information as census tracts into a map of neighborhoods labeled with commonly used names like sugar land and the woodlands i make the data understandable so that people can make more out of it and understand how to respond said oztekin it is critical for users to be able to interpret the impact of a disaster and decide how to effectively respond this not only aides in boosting the resilience – the ability to bounce back – of a city and its infrastructure but also helps first responders and engineers to save the lives of victims in need oztekin is pleased hes able to turn his passion into something that can help people i've been interested in computer science since second grade oztekin said and now that im at texas a&m im working with professors and researchers who are at the top of their field there's so many opportunities here and so many people who want to get you involved in something so i think people should just go for it
561,in an effort to support first-year graduate engineering students the college of engineering has created a new peer mentorship program to aid students in their transition to graduate school benefiting both their academic and social lives not only is this program a growth experience for mentees but it also offers opportunities for mentors to help other students find their place this program is currently designed to accommodate 75 mentees; however this number is expected to expand in the future interested students can sign up at the graduate programs office and mentors can submit an application in april 2020 for the 2020-21 academic year
562,alexandra hardman program specialist for engineering graduate programs said that mentors provide academic and professional guidance including research skills networking time-management advisor relationship advice and more peer mentors have completed at least one year of graduate school and are in good academic standing we believe that graduate students need to put time and energy into their overall well-being which is why our mentorship program is designed to focus on various aspects of graduate life hardman said the program is designed in a way that each mentor is matched with three mentees based on preferences and majors while graduate school is expected to be a fulfilling and enjoyable experience most graduate students will face challenges along the way hardman said our peer mentors serve as a helpful guide providing experience and advice to help mentees navigate those challenges the programs overall objective is to help students meet their academic and personal goals as they transition into graduate school the outcomes are expected to be different for everyone but we anticipate that students will have a more enjoyable experience throughout their first year at texas a&m minimizing stress and increasing the number of positive experiences they take part in to reach their goals hardman said learn more about the program here: txag/gradmentor
563,its been 21 years since dr chuck wolf graduated from texas a&m university with a bachelors degree in civil engineering despite having a successful career in industry which took him to avondale arizona for several years and then los angeles california wolf did what many other aggies have done he came back to college station to give back to the university that he loves since 2014 wolf has been teaching courses in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering as a professor of practice one of 85 professors of practice within the college of engineering wolf brings real-world experience and advice into the classroom hes hopeful that hell play a small role in molding young civil engineers who will one day define the industry themselves having the opportunity to work at texas a&m has easily been the bright spot of my professional life since returning wolf said while most of my professors have retired the faculty team here is still the best i have ever worked with at connecting with people they have helped me improve my teaching and engage in meaningful research inspiring kids to explore stem while wolf said he feels excited for the future of engineering hes also concerned that the number of students entering college to study engineering is far below what it should be in order to meet the current and future demand according to the united states department of labor nearly 140 000 new jobs are expected to be created for engineers by 2026 recent data collected by junior achievement found that the percentage of boys who are interested in stem dropped from 36% in 2018 to 24% in 2017 the same survey found that only 11% of girls are interested in stem i have been disturbed for pretty much my entire career by the fact that we are producing woefully fewer engineers than we need as a country he said i have joked at times that i dont want to reach retirement and feel guilty that we still dont have enough professionals to maintain and improve our infrastructure and make a big impact on quality of life wolf wants to change this so he has invested time in several volunteer activities over the years including efforts to inspire kids to study engineering at the schools where his wife jackie has taught middle school science from middle schoolers to doctorate students wolf is also passionate about educating undergraduate and graduate students about an academic path often overlooked the doctor of engineering (deng) after completing his bachelors degree in 1998 wolf stayed at texas a&m and completed a masters degree and eventually earned a doctor of engineering a few years later unlike a phd program the deng focuses less on research and more on developing industry leaders i love working with people and leading and supporting teams but the skills pertinent to doing this in a business setting are not part of a traditional engineering degree program he said when faced with office and project leadership opportunities early in my career i knew i needed to add these skills and add them in a way that connected to the engineering profession not just business in general the deng program was the perfect solution fewer than 100 aggies have earned the deng degree even though its been around since the 1970s wolf thinks this is a shame because the degree benefited his career exponentially becoming an industry leader when wolf graduated with his deng degree and re-entered the workforce at a civil engineering consultancy firm in 2001 he found he was far better prepared to handle higher level business-facing assignments than some of his peers i also was able to fill out my technical capabilities to be a more well-rounded design professional and project manager he said this combination of business understanding and technical skills which is unique to the deng degree allowed me to confidently say ‘yes when opportunities for advancement were presented wolf was able to advance his career quickly from a deputy project manager to project manager staff manager and finally a business manager the skills he learned also helped him in other areas of his life like the few years he spent as vice mayor of avondale arizona within 10 years of completing the deng degree i had the opportunity to take on roles that i didnt expect to have within the first 20 years of my career before the degree he said in the end however wolf simply wants to make a difference hes passionate about engineering education and the impact that engineers can have on society thats why hes back in aggieland inspiring the next generation of civil engineers
564,with only 48 hours on the clock student teams participating in aggies invent: energy solutions took on real-world challenges facing industry that ranged from combating climate change to keeping the electricity on during natural disasters sponsored by the society of petroleum engineers and the texas a&m energy club aggies invent: energy solutions brought together students from across the college of engineering to navigate the constantly evolving technologies that are reshaping peoples daily lives and seek solutions to power future generations their designs were presented to and judged by industry experts at the end of the make-a-thon you learn a lot on my end about how to mentor students without giving them the answers said sam rogers a wellsite leader at bp its just amazing in a 48-hour period watching them go from nothing to a prototype that may be feasible its overwhelming but its really empowering to see students doing that themselves jose flores a civil engineering senior with an arabic studies minor explained that he was inspired to design a reliable means of powering refrigerators in developing countries after spending 10 weeks in morocco learning the arabic language
565,i experienced what it's like to live there and propane was a big part of the living there because they would use it to warm their water and cook and do absolutely everything so as soon as i saw the need statement i thought you know propane to produce electricity to run the refrigerators said flores in response his team created an attachment that would allow a refrigerator to have a power redundancy – keeping it working during power outages for up to eight hours so that food is properly stored with or without electricity another team represented by abdul khan an industrial distribution senior tackled how to make cities more energy conservative i'm actually a climate change minor and its something i have an avid interest in said khan we thought (our need statement) was important because as cities are growing there's going to be more emissions from cars and people so we're making plans to reduce the amount of emissions from cars to decrease pollution
566,we captured the intensity (and fun) during aggies invent: energy solutions see for yourself!
567,the 48-hour limit put us under pressure like we never experienced before said taha rahman a general engineering sophomore and member of the winning team power protected with a lot of us being underclassmen it was a great opportunity for us to learn the team also included general engineering freshmen rudransh dikshit and tyler calhoun mechanical engineering sophomore meghan truong nuclear engineering senior trent tutko and computer science and engineering sophomore alex soudah together they developed a means to provide households with sustainable energy when electric power grids are either damaged or compromised by a natural disaster – cutting families and companies off from a stable flow of electricity the devastating effects of natural disasters are ample including causing detrimental impact to electrical power grids said tutko this impact will often times lead to thousands of individuals being without power allowing for the potential of life-threatening situations to arise such as when hurricane harvey left over 300 000 individuals without power – including those on life-preserving machines in hospitals and homes enter power protected a microgrid that uses solar thermal panels to collect energy and store it in thermal batteries for when it is needed microgrids function as a safety net for small areas or buildings and theyre unique in that they can function independently from a failing main electric grid said dikshit this is essential for areas effected by natural disasters because they are often cut off from the main electric grid
568,by storing energy until a disaster arises power protected ensures that those effected will not be left in the dark a backup generator is there in case of a disaster said truong a microgrid is there 24/7 when there is not a disaster and is storing energy and also feeding and supporting your main grid implemented mainly at disaster relief centers the teams design acts as a second path to power as an electric power grid supplies energy to homes power protected charges its thermal batteries with energy that is always at the ready when the power grid goes down power protected seamlessly takes over – making it so that the electricity never goes out in the building it is serving
569,the second-place team lux energy included multidisciplinary engineering technology senior jorge roa electrical engineering senior patience biyeh mechanical engineering junior sebastian chirinos mechanical engineering sophomore noah huerta industrial and systems engineering junior tuan hoang and biomedical engineering senior brandon look fong in order to provide sustainable energy to areas threatened by natural disasters the team designed an energy box to provide illumination at night communication abilities and power for sanitation and medical operations their project run off of solar power and packaged in a rectangular box includes fold-out solar panels a refrigeration unit and a chargeable battery the third-place team included petroleum engineering graduate student mojoolaolu malomo petroleum engineering junior xabier palacios electrical engineering graduate student bharathikannan gandhi mechanical engineering graduate student sai raviteja bhamidipati and petroleum engineering sophomore nifemi esan their project gas finders is designed to detect gas in the risers of offshore oil rigs as such it will reduce the risk of dangerous blowouts and explosive disasters and increase worker safety and environment protection learn more about engineering entrepreneurship and the many programs it offers
570,recruiting preeminent students is paramount to texas a&m universitys goal of becoming the premier engineering college in the country dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering understands that the vitality of a program is dependent on the level of which the college is willing to invest in its students to meet this need banks has established the deans scholar award program to offer competitive scholarship packages to the brightest emerging students in engineering freshman students the deans scholar award program provides scholarships to high school seniors who have excelled academically and have demonstrated outstanding leadership potential the deans scholars will have exclusive opportunities to participate in annual meetings with the dean lecture series leadership development and a mentorship program with select former students and senior engineering students valued and generous donors have contributed to the deans scholar award program and the first eight students will be awarded the scholarship this fall their support and investment in the program provide students with the opportunity to attend a world-class university while simultaneously transforming engineering education at texas a&m current deans scholar award donors include:m katherine banksmargaret peggy ‘85 and graham w bacon ‘85the boyette familythe student engineers councilgeorge hickox jr 80mary kay jackson 83james e wiley ‘46the wiley familyshari 83 and charles meloy 82linda and delbert a whitaker 65emily 92 and randy pogue ‘92
571,a deans scholar award can be established as an endowment of $100 000 or by committing to a four-year contribution of $4 000 each year for a total of $16 000 if you are interested in supporting the deans scholars award program or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
572,imagine a child playing with a magnifying glass – focusing the sunlight down into a single heated ring of light that light is the basis of solar energy a team of researchers led by dr christi madsen professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is fabricating new solar technology their project funded by the department of energy's advanced research projects agency-energy laid the groundwork for the future of solar concentrators using advanced photovoltaics (pv) cells at the heart of solar panels are pv cells that absorb light and transform optical energy into clean electricity solar energy begins like a child holding a magnifying glass: with components called concentrators the veritable magnifying glass focusing light into a single beam that beam is channeled through waveguides – tunnel-like paths for photons to move down – that all lead to the pv cell originally they aimed to both increase efficiency and shrink the large volume box-like concentrator array down to something akin to the residential solar panels found on house rooftops but the team found their focus in fabrication
573,we wanted to use the purest glass possible to get all the light – get all those photons – to the pv cell said madsen so we started pursuing this technique where we would use a femtosecond laser and would shine the laser on an area of a glass plate that we would then put into an etch bath and remove just that section in addition to being able to cut out various shapes and angles that would help reflect and guide the light toward the pv cell the fabrication method is also able to utilize a laser to smooth the glass smoothness is key to efficiently harvesting photons we set a target of very high efficiencies to get everything that the sun gave us out to the photovoltaic cell said madsen the way we were thinking about it was that every photon that comes in from the sunlight we want to get through our structure if the surface is rough then you're going to scatter light so its not going to reach the pv cell
574,the less photons that make it to the pv cell the less electricity that is produced and thus the lower the efficiency of the solar panel it's all about getting the ultimate efficiency that we can get from the sunlight said madsen so instead of playing with magnifying glasses we're producing electricity looking forward madsen is setting her sights on the future of solar technology and optical devices the fabrication techniques her team is continuing to develop has the potential to create glass structures of all shapes that will be useful to both research energy and consumers i think (this method is) going to make devices that will eventually make it into consumer products but right now we're just starting to flesh it out said madsen my goal is to get the fabrication and processes more repeatable and finer tuned we really want to be able to make interesting optical devices and this is a nice way to do it
575,texas a&m university system us army and army futures command (afc) officials and members of the bush family were on the rellis campus today for the official groundbreaking and naming of the new bush combat development complex (bcdc) named in honor of former president george hw bush we face a complex security environment one that requires we maintain our competitive edge today while simultaneously building tomorrow's i am grateful for the commitment from the people of texas and especially the texas a&m university system to help the army ensure we never send our service members into a fair fight now and in the future said james mcpherson senior official performing the duties of the under secretary of the army neil bush son of the president and the late barbara bush was in attendance and spoke on behalf of the bush family about the name my father loved texas a&m university and this community he also loved his country and was both a proud veteran and commander in chief having a facility dedicated to providing this nations military men and women with the most technologically advanced equipment possible is a tremendous honor to my fathers memory and his service to this country said bush the $135 million bush combat development complex will allow the texas a&m system to provide an ecosystem to accelerate research and technology development to modernize the army this investment is comprised of $50 million from the texas legislature during the 2019 session for establishing an innovative proving ground at rellis and $85 million from the texas a&m system board of regents for constructing a research innovation center and affiliated infrastructure also at rellis when we first envisioned how we could use the rellis campus to support the army one name came to mind george herbert walker bush the 41st us president the bush combat development complex will provide a living laboratory unlike any other and will uphold the highest values of service to our nation said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system last week us senator john cornyn the afc and the texas a&m system announced a cooperative agreement that will provide up to $65 million over the next five years to the texas a&m system to support research into new technologies to help the afc advance national security the goal is to shorten the time it takes to get emerging technologies from the lab to the field and maximize technology capabilities through soldier feedback a team of army and texas a&m system researchers will quickly evaluate prototypes that can be tested by soldiers in a real-world environment using a vast array of sensors and instruments at rellis achieving the goals of the agreement will result in more capable and survivable hypersonic flight systems and materials more lethal directed energy systems and more effective autonomous maneuvering vehicles
576,texas continues to be at the epicenter of development in advanced technologies and the new bush combat development complex at texas a&m systems rellis campus is a perfect example to continue that momentum said state rep greg bonnen (r-league city) the technology which will be created and tested here will not only help advance our military but it will also keep our soldiers safer in the field the agreement between the texas a&m system and us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory is the first step in a long-term partnership with the army futures command said sharp the combat development complex will bring together diverse partners from businesses - large and small - academia and most importantly our soldiers said gen john mike murray commanding general for the army futures command that's an important lesson weve learned here at army futures command: when we bring the team together we can innovate faster to develop game-changing solutions by testing emerging technology in an operationally relevant environment with soldiers providing feedback we can evaluate it early to ensure we're getting exactly what our troops need in the field
577,the bcdc will be a full complement of facilities equipment and instrumentation consisting of the innovation proving ground (ipg); research integration center (ric); ballistic aero-optics and materials (bam); and the technology innovation and modernization catalyst (timc) the ipg will provide a challenging outdoor test site for autonomous aerial ground and subterranean vehicles the technological systems involved are highly complex involving networks and sensors and innovative operating systems the ric will be a state-of-the-art innovation hub where researchers students industry government and the military can collaborate to create emerging technologies that will modernize the army the use of high-tech maker spaces will lead to product development that is tested and evaluated by soldiers allowing for continual and real-time design feedback the bam will be a one-of-a-kind facility in which hypersonics and directed energy research will be conducted bam will feature an above-ground tunnel that is 1 kilometer long and 2 meters in diameter with integrated sensors in addition to bams use by the afc it will be available to other military branches and defense contractors the timc will support the management and transfer of intellectual property and technology to industry for commercial applications the facility will provide space for early stage technology ventures business services commercialization training and startup launch support services to inventors and innovators army futures command has tasked texas a&m system researchers to focus on several key areas specifically the research will address hypersonic and laser systems; materials for withstanding hypervelocity blasts; coordinated maneuvering of air and ground vehicles; and resilient computer networks for autonomous vehicles to share up-to-the-moment battlefield information the target date for completion of the bcdcs innovative proving ground and research innovation center is june 2021
578,the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) announced its class of 2020 associate fellows which included dr diego donzis from the department of aerospace engineering and dr eric petersen from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the grade of associate fellow recognizes individuals who have accomplished or been in charge of important engineering or scientific work or who have done original work of outstanding merit or who have otherwise made outstanding contributions to the arts sciences or technology of aeronautics or astronautics to be selected an individual must be an aiaa senior member in good standing with at least 12 years of professional experience and be recommended by a minimum of three current associate fellows donzis is an associate professor co-director of the graduate studies program and director of the turbulence and advanced computations laboratory his research interests include large-scale high-performance computing fluid dynamics turbulence and turbulent mixing he received his doctoral and masters degrees in aerospace engineering from the georgia institute of technology and his bachelors degree in aeronautical engineering from the national technological university in argentina in 2018 donzis was named a presidential impact fellow by texas a&m for his scholarly influence petersen is a nelson-jackson professor and director of the turbomachinery laboratory his research interests include energy conversion and combustion materials and fluid mechanics he received his doctoral degree from stanford university his masters degree from the university of florida and his bachelors degree from the university of central florida each in mechanical engineering earlier this year he received the dean of engineering excellence award from texas a&m engineering for his contributions as professor the class of 2020 associate fellows will be formally recognized at the aiaa associate fellows induction ceremony on jan 6 in orlando florida
579,sarah macias often finds that her identity as a hispanic female influences her academic experiences although it never diminishes her passion for engineering she feels that being a hispanic female engineer is not easy because there are unspoken expectations that society has of her that dont line up with her own macias hometown is san antonio texas which is predominantly hispanic as the only one from her high school graduating class to pursue engineering she attributes a great deal of that to cultural influences macias a chemical engineering junior participates in the zachry leadership program the women in engineering program the society of women engineers student organization and is a member of the all-women autonomous underwater vehicle team she realized she wanted to be an engineer after a visit to houstons johnson space center i learned that an engineer only needs to have an idea and the tenacity to make that idea a reality to change the world macias said i left the space center that day knowing that i was meant to be an engineer although she found her calling in engineering macias came from a place where the concept of pursuing higher education was unfamiliar and where she was encouraged and expected to stay home while at first unsupportive of her decision to study at texas a&m macias said that her large family has since fallen in love with the campus and the beauty that comes with texas a&m
580,above anything macias said that she ultimately wants to make her parents beam with pride after she is able to show them her diploma when she walks the stage at graduation all the tears phone calls and sacrifices will have been worth it macias said it will be at this moment when i tell them that they can live worry-free because i can take care of them she said she is grateful for the chance to attend school because of the sacrifices her parents have made for her after all having the opportunity to attend college was not something her parents were able to have there will be no greater feeling than showing my parents my diploma because i wasnt supposed to leave home but i knew i had to chase my dream of becoming an engineer macias said macias wishes to spend her remaining two years as a student encouraging other female engineers to pursue their passion for engineering do not let anyone attempt to control the fire that you have within you macias said we all have a passion but it does no good for you or the world if you do not act on it and persevere through the obstacles it brings
581,with the aim of providing freshman women engineering students a chance to engage with other incoming peers and industry professionals the college of engineerings women in engineering (we) program partnered with accenture to host a mini-conference the programs purpose is to bring together women and increase their retention rate in college after their admission to texas a&m university this conference stands as the students first introduction to we and all of the opportunities the program holds for self-empowerment and the beginnings of their academic network shawna fletcher program director helped coordinate this event as well as other events similar to the conference to encourage academic opportunities for women engineers campuswide
582,fletcher hopes that this conference will help students discover that we was developed to support women engineering students with their academic and career goals megan rodriguez 18 former student and consulting analyst for accenture visited campus again to volunteer for this event and make it a success i want these women to know that they've got to own their experience here rodriguez said you're going to remember the people you met the classes you took and whether you let a failed class stop that experience or pushed you harder learn more about the women in engineering program at texas a&m university
583,martha bellens-martin 85 has established the martha bellens-martin 85 scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in industrial and systems engineering from texas a&m university preference will be given to texas residents graduating from high schools within bell county texas bellens-martin is a graduate of the industrial engineering department and was inspired to establish a scholarship within the department in support of the 80 for 80 campaign celebrating the 80th year of the departments existence the mentorship and education i received at texas a&m plus the lifelong friendships are unmatched and i hope the recipients of this scholarship will have a similar experience that sets them on the best course for their future career bellens-martin said she graduated with her bachelors degree in 1985 and her masters degree in engineering management in 1986 while attending texas a&m she held officer positions in the society of women engineers off-campus aggies and texas a&m student senate i started college as a petroleum engineering major in 1981 bellens-martin said at the time the oil market was booming and the discipline was a large one but when the market dropped in 1982 i realized it might not be the best chance for employment after graduation bellens-martin attributes the start of her career in industrial engineering to dr james k (jim) hennigan 54 in 1967 he developed a laboratory for the study of human factors which led to a second-generation human factors laboratory located in what is now the zachry engineering education complex where he conducted his research in addition to teaching full time he served as the department's academic advisor for undergraduate students for over 15 years and was a charter member of texas a&m mentors i never had someone ask me why i had chosen petroleum engineering as my major bellens-martin said when i met with hennigan he helped me understand that industrial engineering is the personal aspect of engineering focusing on how the individual human fits into an engineering environment and it sold me on the discipline to this day everyone who has worked for martha has said that what makes her a good manager and colleague is her willingness to listen and give feedback based on what she knows her colleagues are passionate about because of hennigan mentoring has become a hobby of sorts for bellens-martin and she has continued to do so since her time at texas a&m i am so grateful and thankful for my time as a student at texas a&m and hope this scholarship will give students the opportunity to attend a university that places a high priority on stewarding students for the short- and long-term goals they have set for themselves bellens-martin said mentors make an unbelievable difference in the course of a students life and can serve as a springboard into a fantastic career bellens-martin is a senior manager at vmware leading a team of technical account managers vmware is a global leader in cloud computing and virtualization software and services in her freebelltime she enjoys volunteering and spending time with her family in march 2019 she co-hosted a muster ceremony in the middle of the arabian sea she is also an avid traveler who has visited all 50 us states and 52 countries on her quest to visit at least 100 she stays connected to the university via the traveling aggies trips and reunions
584,the department of industrial and systems engineering is celebrating its 80th anniversary in the next year the departments goal for this celebration is to have 80 scholarships for the 80 years the department has existed endowments supporting the students in the department have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the departments goal or would like more information on how you can give please contact john bernheim senior director of development
585,conventional gas-processing techniques emit carbon dioxide (co2) and raise the carbon footprint but a novel process developed by researchers from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) could help gas-producing countries process their wealth of natural gas without significantly contributing to co2 emissions developed in qatar a country with a wealth of natural gas resources and unfortunately the high carbon footprint that comes with it the cargen (carbon-generator) reactor technology was conceived and designed by dr nimir o elbashir and his research team at texas a&m universitys qatar campus in collaboration with dr mahmoud m el-halwagi and dr debalina sengupta from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&ms main campus in college station texas this technology is believed to be the first of its kind that processes natural gas (methane) and captured co2 to produce both syngas a valuable precursor to numerous hydrocarbon feedstocks that drive qatars economy and high-quality solid carbon nanotubes (cnts) and unlike conventional processes all without releasing more co2 into the atmosphere elbashirs research focuses on converting natural gas into valuable hydrocarbon products including ultraclean fuels or useful chemicals in a process called gas-to-liquid conversion or gtl a major drawback of gtl processing is that it produces a lot of co2 which increases qatars carbon footprint and has led to the tiny country being named the worlds leading producer of co2 per capita under the umbrella of the tees gas and fuels research center (gfrc) headquartered at the qatar campus elbashir and researchers at both campuses have focused on how to reduce these co2 emissions elbashir directs the gfrc one of the largest tees research centers and a major initiative bringing together 32 multidisciplinary scientists and professors from texas a&ms campuses in texas and qatar all working in the same area but from different angles to speed up technology development in natural gas processing the cargen technology was developed to advance the dry reforming of natural gas which is especially attractive as it converts methane and co2 (both greenhouse gases) through a reactor to produce syngas a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen that is then processed to make liquid hydrocarbons and ultraclean fuels this process however requires a lot of heat to drive the chemical reactions this heat usually comes from burning fuels which emits even more co2 elbashirs team has designed the novel cargen reactor a second reactor added to the reforming process along with a catalyst to drive the chemical reactions to produce expensive carbon nanotubes and syngas from co2 and methane these high-quality carbon nanotubes can be used in several industries including steel and cement while the syngas can be turned into ultra-clean fuels and value-added products the process can be driven by either electric or solar power eliminating the need to burn fuel and thereby resulting in much lower co2 emissions than conventional technologies we are making co2 emissions into two products that are important to the economy in gas-processing countries such as the united states and qatar and will broaden the role of hydrocarbons in qatars manufacturing facilities elbashir said cnts are very expensive and extremely versatile and can be used to manufacture products such as computers and other high-quality materials and at the same time we are also producing syngas which can then be used to make the chemicals that the chemical processing industries rely on
586,phd student mohamed sufiyan challiwala who has been a significant contributor to the project said the cargen reactor is a result of a nearly $5 million exceptional proposal grant from the qatar national research funds national priorities research program challiwala started working on the project as a masters student in chemical engineering at texas a&m at qatar before pursuing his phd through the main campus and beginning his doctoral research in qatar cargen provides a new perspective on the implementation of natural gas reforming technology rather than considering carbon or ‘coke formation as a process challenge cargen treats it as an opportunity to convert at least 65 percent of co2 per pass with 50 percent lower energy requirements challiwala said most importantly it produces cnts and carbon fibers that are considered next-generation materials with tremendous applications because of its uniqueness this process is now patented with the support of qatar foundation dr hanif choudhury a research scientist in elbashirs research group said the cargen concept of cnt generation has been validated at the micro- milli- and gram scales with the quality of the carbon nanotubes controlled and preserved at every scale the next step is partnering with industry collaborators to scale up the technology even further this is a major achievement in the way people will look at co2 utilization in the future elbashir said its a homegrown technology developed in qatar based on the interest of qatar to utilize and sequester co2 and reduce the countrys carbon footprint but its applicable in any and all gas-processing countries we are producing material out of it not just liquid fuel that will be burned to produce something else or power a car for example which then puts co2 back into the atmosphere if we can scale up this technology it will be a turning point for everyone worried about co2
587,if youve ever used a smartphone or a fitness tracker youve likely been using a device thats a part of the internet of things a group of interconnected devices that communicate via remote servers but these central servers process huge amounts of data coming in from multiple devices that in turn cause processing delays diminishing user experience to boost data processing speeds dr zhangyang (atlas) wang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering has been awarded two grants from the national science foundation (nsf) for developing highly efficient and energy-saving machine learning algorithms for use on local devices rather than on remote servers wed like to develop algorithms that make devices like your phone run faster have low memory use and be more energy efficient wang says so if you want to use your iphone to take a photo with a facial recognition software for example energy efficient algorithms like the ones we develop are what ensure your battery doesnt drain within five minutes wangs first project enabling intelligent cameras in internet-of-things via a holistic platform algorithm and hardware co-design was awarded by the nsf energy power control and networks program and is a collaboration with yingyan lin and richard baraniuk from rice university this project will improve machine learning algorithms for object recognition and other computer vision applications such as traffic monitoring and self-driving cars particularly wangs team will optimize a type of machine learning algorithm called deep neural networks to process images
588,for the second project harmonizing predictive algorithms and mixed-signal/precision circuits via computation-data access exchange and adaptive dataflows wangs research team has been awarded a total of $138 million from the nsf real-time machine learning (rtml) program with collaborators lin and baraniuk from rice university boris murmann from stanford university and yiran chen from duke university wang aims to enhance machine learning programs by training these algorithms in real time for a particular task like object recognition this approach will make the algorithms progressively better at doing the task over time one of the many applications of his research is drone-based object detection systems that can learn new environments without human supervision if we think of monitoring wide terrains for rescue operations drones using our algorithms will be able to survey a large area more efficiently while continuously learning the layout of the new environment wang says when their algorithms are ready for public use wang and his collaborators plan to post them on openstax a nonprofit online education company created by baraniuk so as to lower the cost for people to access educational resources and encourage a global effort to address challenges in developing and improving software related to computer vision the nsf and defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) have teamed up to issue these grants through the rtml crosscutting program to explore high-performance energy-efficient hardware and machine learning architectures that can learn from a continuous stream of new data in real time the rtml program is a part of darpas electronics resurgence initiative a five-year $15 billion investment in the future of domestic us government and defense electronics systems out of over 100 submissions wangs team was one of only six selected for large grants further solidifying his groups leading role in the machine learning field
589,"the global grand challenges summit (ggcs) is a collaborative lab and conference event bringing together engineering minds from all over the world the summit which took place on sept 16-18 in london was hosted by the uk royal academy of engineering us national academy of engineering (nae) and chinese academy of engineering engineering deans from participating institutions were asked to nominate student delegates to represent their institution at the summit jainita chauhan brian welsh and jessica zamarripa attended the event representing aggie_challenge headed by magda lagoudas executive director of the industry and nonprofit partnerships program and the grand challenge scholars program (gcsp) headed by dr kristi shryock director of gcsp both programs while different introduce students to multidisciplinary research aimed at solving engineering grand challenges being able to participate in the global grand challenge summit as a first-generation mexican american student was a wonderful inspirational and humbling experience said zamarripa a senior electrical engineering student the program gave me a better insight on real-world problems that i was able to relate back to the undergraduate research topics i currently work on the summit theme was ""engineering in an unpredictable world "" with two subthemes: will ai and other transformational technologies change humanity for the better and can we sustain 10 billion people it brought together over 900 of the next generation's engineers researchers innovators entrepreneurs and policymakers pauline wade assistant program director of the gcsp accompanied the students and served as a mentor working as a mentor reinforced the importance of working with other disciplines in proposing a sustainable solution wade said the top teams clearly explained the engineering innovation but also quantified global impact revenue sources financial sustainability distribution methods and market penetration the first five days of the summit were structured as a collaboration lab where students from universities in each of the three academies were able to network attend personal development sessions and work in multinational teams in a hackathon event to propose a solution addressing at least one of the nae's engineering grand challenges or one of the unesco sustainable development goals i was blown away with the work and communications that occurred in my team - a team of myself another us student a student from spain studying at imperial college in london and two chinese students said chauhan a sophomore industrial and systems engineering student we were tasked with developing a full-fledged business proposal to solve a global grand challenge and address the united nations sustainable development goals all in the short time of 24 hours we produced a problem statement solution market plan financial analysis and many more aspects of the solution"
590,prior to the summit chauhan and welsh were each conducting research centered on the nae grand challenge restore and improve urban infrastructure just with very different approaches chauhan joined an aggie challenge team called disaster city digital twin focusing on disaster relief my team developed online software that solves the communication and coordination gap between humanitarian actor networks at the time of a disaster she said thus allowing them to provide relief to disaster victims in a more efficient and systematic manner welsh focused on determining the strength of concrete in buildings after they have been exposed to repeated cyclic loading like earthquakes by being able to quickly and effectively determine the residual strength of concrete buildings after being damaged disaster relief teams could safely clear buildings for resumed usage much more quickly allowing people to return to their daily lives sooner said welsh a senior civil and environmental engineering student the team i work on has been developing a machine learning-based algorithm to accomplish this and we are currently comparing the results to existing concrete strength simulations welsh aspires to one day work for a company revolutionizing urban development to create buildings and cities that function more cohesively serve the public more efficiently and reduce environmental impact after attending this conference i've had my eyes opened to so many other pressing problems our world faces and ways i can contribute to solving them that i'm having second thoughts about the classic ‘safe job path that i thought i wanted he said i'm not planning on completely shifting my career path but i believe my priorities in selecting a job have changed whether we like it or not the world is changing and as engineers welsh said we have a responsibility to ensure we are keeping on top of the problems that arise and are creating a sustainable future for everyone everyone is capable of playing a role in shaping this change whether it be large or small and if you feel you want to be involved in some way take initiative and find a way
591,sitting in a small rural elementary school auditorium with approximately 200 students encompassing grades k-5 i sat quietly eagerly squinting at the large state-of-the-art 35-inch color cathode ray tube television on stage streaming live the first space shuttle launch said laurrie cordes that small slightly blurred image encouraged this timid but curious and determined fifth-grader to be an astronaut cordes a doctoral student in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university earned her bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from texas a&m in 1991 at the time she was determined to pursue a career with the aerospace corporation in california they didnt hire undergrads cordes said and since the aerospace field was in an economic downturn at the time dr allen convinced me to pursue my masters degree with his guidance thats when i decided i wanted to be a professor while studying under dr david allen now a senior lecturer in ocean engineering cordes learned just how much she enjoyed research teaching and the whole academic environment in an effort to add diversity to her education she left texas a&m after her masters degree to pursue a phd at northwestern university in theoretical and applied mechanics with an inevitable change of heart along the way cordes began applying for industry jobs and accepted a position with stress engineering services (ses) in houston texas focusing in ocean and offshore-related projects unable to finish the research for her dissertation before the start date she left northwestern fully intending to see her project through the pace of the work at ses was exciting and intense not leaving much time for my dissertation especially with a growing family and some obstacles with health issues cordes said i decided to take a step back and focus on my family and my health though putting her degree on the back burner was a difficult decision cordes said it was the best decision for her and her family given the circumstances my first project at stress engineering lasted four years: designing and analyzing the riser systems for a spar platform cordes said i was able to get intimately involved with the project from design to manufacturing to installation it was fascinating ses was the first time cordes worked in the ocean environment but she says there are many areas in which the two fields of aerospace and ocean are similar they both deal with fluids: water and air she said low-speed aerodynamics have the same fundamentals as hydrodynamics by focusing and learning the engineering mechanics fundamentals the transition was straightforward and working for a consulting company like ses that focused on applying engineering fundamentals to multiple industries the job was stimulating cordes decided to resume her education and finish her phd under allen in ocean engineering 25 years after she received her masters degree in aerospace engineering we can either view this as i'm taking 25 years to do my phd or i'm starting over she said i consider it as i'm continuing my phd and finally completing that goal–showing my children its never too late to achieve your dreams or even change your career path always determined to earn her phd she decided now was the perfect time to redirect her career toward academia–students and research i thoroughly enjoyed my consulting job working with my colleagues and clients but i find i get more satisfaction from working with students and being in an academic environment cordes said you can see the ‘aha moment and know you impacted that student her love of learning translates easily to the research lab as she takes on projects from a different lens working with finite elements and computational mechanics is my focus she said my research as a phd student was on 3d nonlinear finite deformations there are similar fundamentals exploring moisture infusion into foundations and substructure for ocean engineering coastal projects such as sea walls engineering is cross disciplinary and its exciting applying alternative approaches in investigating engineering problems with an undeniable servants heart students and faculty alike who collaborate with cordes will learn that she genuinely enjoys learning and takes great pride in showing that everything is rooted in basic fundamental engineering concepts in addition to finishing her doctoral degree cordes will soon begin her teaching career as an assistant lecturer i want to spend my next 30-plus years teaching and performing research in solid mechanics/ocean engineering focusing on protecting coastal communities from rising oceans and extreme storm events and developing environmentally sustainable structural solutions she said i hope to inspire the next generation through my love for teaching and excitement for engineering this is what i want to be my legacy
592,the mary kay oconnor process safety center (mkopsc) will host its 2019 international symposium in memory of dr sam mannan oct 22-24 the symposium will take place at the texas a&m hotel and conference center and registration is free for texas a&m students faculty and staff with a valid universal identification number the conference will be held on the main texas a&m university campus in college station texas and includes expert panels student poster presentations an exhibition of industry partners an early career forum industry tours awards ceremony a scavenger hunt and door prizes keynote speakers include jerry wascom vice president of operational excellencesafety health and environment at the exxon mobil corporation; dr elaine oran tees eminent professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m; and dr andrew hopkins emeritus professor for the college of arts and social science at australian national university
593,this symposium serves as the crossroads for process safety where industry academia government agencies and other stakeholders come together to discuss critical issues of research in process safety more than 500 expert researchers and industry representatives from around the world will gather as a part of this two and a half-day symposium to share the latest information on important topics aimed at making the process industry safer the mkopsc was established in 1995 in memory of mary kay oconnor an operations superintendent killed in an explosion on oct 23 1989 at the phillips petroleum complex in pasadena texas in 1997 dr sam mannan because of his reputation as a world-renowned expert in process safety was appointed director of the center he served as director until his passing on sept 11 2018 this years symposium theme beyond regulatory compliance: making safety second nature is inspired by a quote from dr mannan that captures his approach to teaching and practicing process safety: safety should not be a priority; priorities change safety should be a core value a second nature the mkopsc mission is to promote safety as second nature in industry around the world with goals to prevent future incidents in addition the center develops safer processes equipment procedures and management strategies to minimize losses within the processing industry other functions of the center include serving all stakeholders providing a common forum and developing programs and activities that will forever change the paradigm of process safety
594,electrical and computer engineering doctoral candidate elif kaya is working with dr kamran entesari on a device to assist with early breast cancer detection in the hope of saving millions of lives worldwide breast cancer statistics are staggering: on average a woman is diagnosed with this type of cancer every 19 seconds and one woman will die every 13 minutes one in eight women will be diagnosed in their lifetime this project was born from kayas involvement with the national science foundation innovation corps (i-corps) site program during summer 2019 in the college of engineering at texas a&m university which supports up to 150 undergraduate and graduate student teams with highly innovative technical strategies as they explore the commercial aspects of these ideas over five years by participating in the site program kaya received training to develop her value proposition and pursue customer discovery to gain better understanding of how her technology meets the needs of patients and physicians kaya said her own sister passed through the breast cancer detection process and even though she was cleared it was very difficult on everyone in her family the first time you dont want to accept it you worry about whether she has something or not i decided to focus my research on cancer detection so if i can find a way to solve this problem in a shorter time it can help lots of people kaya said
595,early detection can increase a patients chance of finding breast cancer before it spreads the first process for breast cancer detection is a hand examination but a lack of comfortability with this type of examination among some patients has been shown to be a large issue with late diagnosis and high mortality rates other available techniques and devices currently used to detect breast cancer can be lengthy bulky and expensive a large portion of survivors detected the cancer early due to self-examination she said however lack of better self-examination education can be another reason for the high number of statistics of breast cancer unlike existing devices our specific device is concerned with creating and developing a technology that would be a near-field contact-less compact and portable device enabling easy use to combat the uneasiness associated with current self-examination and provide a comfortable interaction between doctors and patients by eliminating the hand examination and use artificial intelligence for detection to enhance accuracy while still in the early stages of the process the team is working on the idea for the device to be used in place of an ultrasound or mammogram in a doctors office to provide results in 10-20 minutes versus several days in a modern city and up to several months in a rural area kaya and entesari are using chemical detection to create a prototype of this device we have demonstrated that the first broadband time domain contact-less cmos (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) homodyne-transceiver works as a complex dielectric spectroscopy with an exceptional accuracy that can characterize the materials such as liquid/solid materials chemical/biological materials or body tissues kaya said i presented this work at the worlds biggest rf/microwave (radio frequency) event ieee (institute of electrical and electronics engineers) international microwave symposium this year in june which was then selected among the top three finalists of over approximately 400 accepted papers for the best advanced practice paper award which recognizes outstanding technical contributions that apply to practical applications the most difficult part of the project is having the system work for all patients accounting for the varying factors of body type and age although there are already some research projects focused on breast cancer detection kayas team is proposing to make a more cost-effective miniaturized portable device with greater accuracy ease of use and quick results if it is possible for you to make things to change the world why not even if we are not physicians we can help the physicians to save lives kaya said i dont care if people know my name i want to make people happy and save lives using my research and thats why i chose this project
596,i would like to take a few minutes to talk about this remarkable man bill mccain was a gentleman and a soldier and a scholar this tireless individual worked for 68 years and was in the classroom just a week or so before he died let me share with you his history in 1951 bill enlisted in the us army he served in the korean war and was discharged at the rank of sergeant in 1953 only three years later he received a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from mississippi state college upon graduation he went to work for esso research laboratories in baton rouge where he worked from 1956-1963 this is where he must have begun learning about what became his lifelong specialty: the properties of petroleum fluids during this period he managed to receive a master of science degree from the georgia institute of technology and a phd from georgia tech again in chemical engineering in 1963 bill returned to mississippi state to serve on the petroleum engineering faculty and after a couple of years became the department head a position he held for 11 years throughout his time at mississippi state he also served in the mississippi national guard eventually rising to the position of commander in 1976 the army called again and bill resumed his full-time military career this time as an officer he served in a variety of leadership roles mainly at the pentagon and retired from the army in 1984 with the rank of brigadier general after his last army stint bill resumed his academic career joining our petroleum engineering department as a visiting professor he took two breaks from teaching to be a full-time consultant but always returned to texas a&m university as a visiting professor he visited us for 27 years which must be some kind of record between mississippi state and texas a&m bills academic career spanned 46 years for eight or nine of those a&m years he had another full-time job as executive vice president and chief engineer at sa holditch & associates i find this career of bills remarkable but what i personally admired the most was his scholarship when you listened to what bill said you quickly realized this was a man of extraordinary intellect he was a brilliant thermodynamicist and in my opinion knew more about the physical behavior of petroleum fluids than anyone else in the world the properties of petroleum fluids the book that he wrote and re-wrote and re-wrote will be his legacy it has sold tens of thousands of copies and will be on the bookshelves of petroleum engineers for many years to come the second trait i most admired was his skill as a teacher bill was absolutely passionate about his subject and wanted all his students to learn what he knew his enthusiasm and dedication were unmatched on our faculty students flocked to his courses because of how valuable what they learned could be in their careers bill was also in high demand to conduct industry short courses i doubt anyone in petroleum engineering education other than perhaps john lee has trained as many industry practitioners he presented a graduate seminar in our department a number of years ago the subject was global warming and the relationship with the co2 concentration in the atmosphere this is a multicomponent gas-phase equilibrium problem – right in the middle of bills specialty i dont want to share bills conclusions here but i recall that he attacked the problem using fundamental principles of thermodynamics that he clearly explained his approach and the results and that it was completely original it is to this day one of the best lectures i have ever heard i close with one last observation about bill mccain – what a tough old bird what a fighter! he was diagnosed with cancer in 2012 and fought it tooth and nail ever since none of us win this fight against death but in bills case i would say it was pretty close to a draw we are all sad that he is gone and will miss him but we are also happy he is no longer suffering
597,dr warren pete miller was appointed to professor of practice with the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university miller served as the assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy in 2009 under the obama administration where he oversaw the countrys research development and advancement of nuclear energy miller has over 27 years of experience working with los alamos national laboratory and is also responsible for the creation of the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) at texas a&m q: you served as the assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy under the obama administration what was that likea: its kind of a funny story i wasnt the first choice for the position i actually knew steven chu the first secretary of energy under president obama through the national academy of engineering when he was assembling his team he called me to ask who i thought should be the next assistant secretary for nuclear energy so i gave him the name of someone i imagined was well-suited to the role it must not have worked out because eventually chu called me again and instead asked if i would fill the position after a bit of haggling i finally agreed as assistant secretary for nuclear energy my primary responsibilities were to promote research and development and to help develop nuclear energy technologies before they were mature enough to be introduced to industry i oversaw and defended the budget before the united states congress and tracked our successes and failures q: did you ever meet former president barack obamaa: i did i never worked with him personally but i shook hands with him at an event celebrating nuclear energy accomplishments it wasnt just me either there were a lot of us there shaking his hand when i called my son to tell him who i had just met my son told me that barack obama went home and told michelle that he would never wash his hands again because he met me ha! q: how did you find your way to texas a&m and what is it that you do herea: well i had just retired from los alamos national laboratory where i served as deputy laboratory director and i was living in albuquerque new mexico the board of regents of the texas a&m university system called to tell me that i had been nominated for the a&m system chancellors position my first thought was i dont even know much about texas a&m how was i nominated as it turns out an old friend of mine had nominated me i didnt end up becoming the chancellor but i was so impressed with texas a&m that i still wanted to remain affiliated with the university i talked with the dean of engineering at the time about how i could best contribute to the university thats how the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) was born i wanted to create a program for nuclear security where we could research problems related to safeguarding nuclear materials and the reduction of nuclear threats so i worked closely with former texas a&m professor bill charlton and others to propose nsspi we also included the bush school of government and public serve to address policy issues related to nuclear security q: you were appointed to a professor of practice position due to your industry experience do you teacha: i have a quarter time nine-month appointment during the academic year i give guest lectures in nuen 101 and i also help with professional development and strategic planning throughout the department q: what are your plans for after retirementa: im already retired being retired simply means that you have enough income to do what you want to do i am now free to do what i want to do which is this ive always enjoyed texas a&m and the mission-oriented can-do attitude we have i think its what makes us exceptional and its something im glad to be a part of
598,us senator john cornyn joined the us army futures command and the texas a&m university system to announce a cooperative agreement that will provide up to $65 million over five years to texas a&m supporting research into new technologies to help the army futures command modernize the nations fighting force our countrys military readiness depends on innovation and the army futures command is on the front line of that fight said sen cornyn this partnership with the texas a&m university system will ensure we have the best and the brightest working to address rapidly evolving threats and maintain our strategic advantage around the world the senator appeared at a press conference with gen john mike murray and chancellor john sharp after being briefed on the details of the agreement and plans for a $130 million combat development complex at the rellis campus in bryan and the armys plans for modernization this investment is comprised of $50 million from the texas legislature during 2019 session for establishing an innovative proving ground at rellis and $80 million from the texas a&m system board of regents for constructing a research innovation center also at rellis the agreement between the texas a&m system and the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory is the first step in a long-term partnership with the army futures command army futures command is excited to continue our collaboration with various partners in texas to successfully modernize our army the work conducted at the rellis campus in the coming years will directly impact our soldiers readiness equipment and capabilities said gen murray essential to that relationship is the creation of the combat development complex at rellis a 2 000-acre campus with already almost half-billion dollars in new construction and with more on the drawing boards the combat development complex will help develop prototypes for defense-related hypersonics and directed energy in a one-of-a-kind kilometer-long tunnel it will have laboratories runways underground and open-air battlefields and a resilient network of sensors and systems for data collection analysis and storage the texas a&m system is already contributing significantly to our nations defense with our duties helping manage the los alamos national laboratory said sharp we are proud that army futures command has chosen to work with us on their important mission through the cooperative agreement army futures command has tasked texas a&m system researchers to focus on several key areas specifically the research will address hypersonic and laser weaponry; materials for withstanding hypervelocity blasts; coordinated maneuvering of air and ground vehicles; and resilient computer networks for autonomous vehicles to share up-to-the-moment battlefield information hypersonic is speeds of mach 5 or faster the us military is making a major push to advance laser and hypersonic defense systems senator john cornyn a republican from texas is a member of the senate finance intelligence and judiciary committees
599,related stories
600,michael and angela tuller have established the michael 87 and angela 87 tuller scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time first-generation students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree from the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university michael and angela are graduates of the industrial engineering department and prioritized giving back to texas a&m once they graduated their commitment to texas a&m was recognized in 2017 with their induction into the texas a&m legacy society the legacy society recognizes individuals corporations and organizations whose cumulative current giving to support the university totals $100 000 or more and individuals who plan to make future gifts through their estates angela and i met in an engineering class in 1986 and got married in 1988 michael said while at texas a&m we made lifelong friends that share our love for this special place he highlighted the uniqueness of texas a&m and the impact the university had on his and angelas lives there is something unique about texas a&m that is hard to articulate or explain yet for those who have had the privilege of attending this university it is a spirit that stays with you for life michael said we are passionate and thankful for the gift texas a&m provided us in terms of our education which has served angela and i well over the course of our 32-year careers the tullers chose to establish a scholarship in the industrial and systems engineering department for several reasons we chose to establish a scholarship in the department based on our shared experience in industrial engineering and the opportunities this unique degree has presented to each of us in our careers michael said he currently serves as the executive director of cardiovascular sales for amgen a multinational biopharmaceutical company angela served as director of field operations at mclane foodservice a wholesale supply chain services company and retired in 2003 to focus on raising their daughter ellie ellie will graduate from high school in 2021 and michael and angela hope to add aggie parents to their list of accomplishments in the fall of 2021
601,the department of industrial and systems engineering is celebrating its 80th anniversary in the coming years the departments goal for this celebration is to have 80 scholarships for the 80 years the department has existed endowments supporting the students in the department have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the departments goal or would like more information on how you can give please contact john bernheim senior director of development
602,yash parikh is a phd student in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering he attended research labs day in 2017 and he said the event helped prepare him to intern at oak ridge national lab this past summer we recently sat down with him to discuss his experience working at a national lab q: when you attended research labs day what did you learn and how did that benefit you when you were applying for internships at national labs a: i participated in the inaugural edition of the research labs day in 2017 it was a one-of-a-kind event that brought representatives from different national labs under the same roof during this event i presented a poster with my preliminary research work it was indeed an enjoyable experience to interact and receive feedback from different lab representatives on my project which further opened up new directions for my research one important take-away from this experience was about getting an overview of the breadth of research taking place at these labs the career fair and networking events in particular provided much needed insights about the available internship opportunities which proved to be very beneficial during the internship application phase q: why would you recommend other grad students attend research labs day a: networking is the key here i would recommend all the graduate students to attend research labs day to get first-hand insight about the research work and corresponding opportunities available at these labs most often it is during such events the lab representatives get to meet their future candidates and discuss the research work and their candidate preferences one may assume that internship or fulltime positions may be restricted to us citizenship requirements but most often that is not the case these labs do have post-master and post-doctorate research opportunities for graduate and phd students respectively such vital insight is gained from attending the informational sessions and interacting with the lab representatives further there is no harm in collecting some of the cool freebies with the national labs endorsements q: can you tell us a little about your time interning at oak ridge national lab a: as an advanced short-term research opportunity (astro) participant at ornls manufacturing demonstration facility (mdf) in summer 2019 i was assigned multiple projects involving metal additive manufacturing apart from learning i also gained insight into the world-renowned facilities at ornl which includes visiting the fastest supercomputer in the world summit while interning i also had an opportunity to give back to the community by providing informational tours to the visitors and high-school students about the facilities and the research work carried out at mdf q: what is the most exciting aspect of working at a national lab a: the most exciting aspect of working at ornl was collaborating with multidisciplinary teams of scientists and technical personnel at state-of-the-art research facilities to conduct basic and applied research with employees from over 100 countries ornl had a welcoming inclusive and co-operative work culture q: would you have considered working at a national lab before attending research labs day a: before attending the research labs day i was considering research opportunities only in an industrial setting but with the distinct information and networking experience offered during research labs day my career horizons have broadened i can now firmly say that this event proves to be a helpful platform not only for graduate students but also for faculty members to interact and learn about potential collaborative opportunities
603,the nuclear regulatory commission (nrc) has awarded texas a&m university a $400 000 grant for graduate student fellowships it is among 45 grants awarded to 33 academic institutions in 19 states and puerto rico totaling $15 million in fiscal year 2019 this is an excellent opportunity for our students and faculty said dr michael nastasi department head in nuclear engineering funding and support such as this is what allows us to remain a cutting-edge research and educational facility at the forefront of nuclear engineering the grant supports education and encourages careers and research in nuclear mechanical and electrical engineering health physics and related fields to meet expected future workforce needs recipients include four-year universities and colleges two-year trade schools and community colleges and minority serving institutions which are a federally recognized category of educational establishments recipients are to use the grants for scholarships fellowships and faculty development more than 5 200 students in 35 states and puerto rico have been recipients of the nrc program over its 10-year tenure through this program the nrc has funded multiple research and development educational and training and experiential learning projects to enhance academic excellence and to produce a skilled future workforce visit here for the complete list of grants awarded and general information about the grant program is available on the nrc website
604,"biomedical engineering senior camella carlson has been named a recipient of the national astronaut scholarship from the astronaut scholarship foundation i am very honored to have received the astronaut scholarship i was thrilled to find out i was a finalist for texas a&m and even more so to find out that i was selected as a scholar carlson said the scholarship emphasizes research and advancing fields which aligns with carlsons interests her general research interest is in translational medical research working on ideas to implement new technology in a way that is clinically useful she works with dr kristen maitland associate professor who nominated her for the scholarship in maitlands biomedical optics lab she worked on projects involving the optical detection of tuberculosis and a microscope setup to monitor cells grown on microspheres in 2018 she participated in the harvard-mit health sciences and technology biomedical optics program and in summer 2019 she worked at the national institutes of health carlsons interest in biomedical engineering started when she was young and in high school an anatomy and physiology course caught her eye i chose to study specifically as a biomedical engineer because i liked the problem-solving mindset that accompanies engineering and wanted to understand human physiology through the lens of math and science carlson said i also was drawn to biomedical engineering because it is cutting edge"""
605,there also were personal reasons that drove her to work on translational projects that have direct applications to individual patients growing up with a blind dad i understand how medical conditions can affect an individuals quality of life in both obvious and subtle ways carlson said i am thrilled to be a part of a field where i can use my knowledge and skills to improve the lives of others carlson attended a conference earlier this year where she enjoyed meeting other astronaut scholars although they had varied specific fields they had a common interest in science and engineering which helped them learn from each other moving forward i think that being an astronaut scholar will set me apart among other applicants when i am pursuing further education carlson said she plans to pursue a phd in biomedical engineering possibly a combined masters and phd degree i can envision myself at a research hospital a crucial junction of clinical care medical expertise and innovative research carlson said i want to combine basic science discoveries with problems dictated by physicians and patients to radically improve the speed accuracy and simplicity of diagnoses and treatments
606,juggling several leadership positions within the fightin texas aggie band and corps of cadets with a full course load sounds like a daunting task but computer science and engineering student michael milton 20 is excelling on all fronts he discusses his leadership roles and how he uses the skills hes honed at texas a&m university to help optimize his time both in the classroom and on the marching field q: what is your role within the band and what does that entail a: i have two different jobs within the band one is being the head drum major each week i am the one out in front of the band leading and conducting there are two other drum majors conducting with me my main job is teaching the band the drill and practicing it because we learn a new set of drills every week i am also the career readiness and scholastics officer for the whole band i make sure everyone is doing well in their studies q: why did you choose to major in computer science and engineering a: my sophomore year of high school actually was my first computer science class i saw this sign that basically said hey if you're really good at math you should check out this computer science class i took another two coding classes during my junior and senior year i knew even before i came to texas a&m that i wanted to do computer science q: what sparked your interest to pursue a career in the cybersecurity field a: after graduating from high school i thought about going into video game design with a minor in visualization but then i realized i can't draw during my sophomore year at texas a&m i got a scholarship that came with a contract for the united states air force at the beginning of my sophomore year the corps created a cybersecurity unit when i joined that i found that i really enjoyed the work i was doing there so i picked up cybersecurity as a minor which i'm actually using to cover the emphasis area for my major q: does your background in computer science help you in your leadership roles a: one of the things thats always interested me is optimization looking at things and asking myself how can i do this more efficiently being the head drum major career readiness and scholastic officer for the entire band and training officer for the cybersecurity unit time management can be kind of difficult and my computer science background has helped me manage my time efficiently its also helped with explaining the drill during marching practice in a way that makes sense to everyone its helped us learn and get through drill sets faster q: have you participated in any internships a: last summer i interned with lockheed martin and i really enjoyed that so i am looking forward to going back next summer q: what do you hope to do as a career or after graduation a: im on contract with the air force so after i graduate i'll be commissioned as a second lieutenant i would like to be a cyber-warfare officer q: how has your time in the corps helped you in engineering or vice versa a: i think the corps and engineering have helped me with each other the corps taught me to have a great attention to detail which served to help me do very well in various projects over the years here and my engineering course load has taught me time management which has helped me be able to balance my coursework with my corps responsibilities and has allowed me to take on multiple jobs within the corps at the same time q: what advice would you give to freshman computer science students a: definitely study for csce 222 i would also say to get to know your professors a lot of professors here are really really nice get to know them they want to get to know you and they enjoy teaching its really helpful being able to go to them and say you didnt understand something in class and they're perfectly willing to talk to you about it and i found for me that reading the textbook always helps if you dont understand it in class
607,the college of architectures department of visualization recently hosted chillennium 2019 the worlds largest student-run game jam at texas a&m universitys memorial student center this year the annual event drew more than 400 video game development enthusiasts from universities and colleges all over the world to compete chillennium is an event where participants are tasked with planning designing and developing a video game from scratch in 48 hours during the competition they are given the opportunity to show off their computer programming and development skills meet fellow developers and network with industry professionals who are advisors on the competition floor the theme for this years competition was all for one and one for all kishan patel and ryan pfeifer senior students in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m competed in this years competition and both were on teams that won some of the top awards patel was part of team pig-cat which won the best in game design and fan-favorite awards they created aw sheep! in which players must collect as many sheep as possible before the timer runs out whoever collects the most sheep by sundown is the winner for the best in game design award each member of the team received a trophy and a $75 gift card and for the fan-favorite award members received a trophy and a $100 gift card i have attended three chillennium competitions during my time here at texas a&m and found each one to be a learning experience patel said the atmosphere is great because almost everything is taken care of and all we have to do is focus on our tasks i always learn a lot and i feel that is true for everyone who attends pfeifer was part of the first-place overall winning team biterate entertainment the team created honey up! a real-time strategy game where players are responsible for managing resources for a beehive each team member received a $150 gift card a one-year license for houdini (a 3d animation software application) tickets to south by southwest 2020 and a trophy ive participated in chillennium every year since i was a freshman im hoping to find a career in game development after college so i have always taken chillennium very seriously but its also a lot of fun to see a game come together in 48 hours said pfeifer ive absolutely loved competing throughout college and i think that the experience ive gained is invaluable for someone looking for a job in game development
608,when i moved i didn't speak a word of english sebastiao appleton figueira a sophomore in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university said i thought i'd learned english at school but it's the same thing as learning spanish in elementary school if you try to go to spain with that knowledge nothing's going to happen figueira born and raised in portugal moved to the united states with his family when he was in middle school on my first day two weeks late into the school year i went to my school he said they handed me a polo and said ‘put this on this is the uniform i couldnt understand a single word that was written on my schedule i had no clue what any of it meant they put me in my first class opened the door pushed me in and closed the door behind me and that's how my education in the united states began for the next three months figueira copied down his homework assignments letter by letter and then translated it to portuguese to complete it with the help of his parents he translated it back to english and took it to school to turn it in the next day by the end of it he was fluent in english this persistence and drive followed him through high school where he took a multitude of ap exams in preparation for his college career i wanted to go to california (for university) figueira said that was my dream but i came to texas a&m and fell in love with the school completely every little tradition everything's been my passion since coming from a largely coastal country and a family with naval and engineering roots figueira found a home away from home in the ocean engineering department – drawn to it by the versatility of the application a degree would offer him i could explore anything from renewable energy to ship manufacturing naval architecture even some electrical design thats all included here he said and then just the prospect of what is to come in the future ocean levels are rising the united states has not started planning for that as much as other countries have and so being part of a small group in the workforce that actually has the knowledge to solve those problems and knowing that i'm going to be one of the most prepared to do so through this program makes me extremely excited as figueira explained being part of a department that not only has industry connections and expert instructors but also a tight-knit community of faculty and students has allowed him to become friends with his fellow classmates quicker so much so that he is planning on participating in a departmental study abroad with a group of close friends next summer along with diving into the departments human powered submarine project and branch of the marine technology society figueira is also a recent inductee into the zachry leadership program (zlp) a mentor in freshmen reaching excellence in engineering a sub-team lead for the engineers without borders campus chapter and a fish camp counselor this year his fish camp experience hit close to home as he worked session g – the last camp of the summer dedicated to out-of-state and international students as such he was able to give those who are coming from a background similar to his own a few words of advice you are not going to look any different than anyone else while you're on campus it is going to be a struggle to deal with all the extra paperwork all the extra meetings that no one knows about all the extra things that you have to deal with that stay in the dark but the thing is nothing will ever stop you from pushing to be involved and my counsel to anybody who comes to texas a&m – international (student) or not – is to dive in headfirst texas a&m has proven to give me as much as i put in don't give in and don't give up keep pushing forward and for those who are trying to find their major figueira encourages his peers and fellow students to consider the ocean engineering department – hoping to help people share in his experiences don't give in on the program because it's small; the opportunity that comes from it is so much bigger than that he said don't shut it down because it's new we have fantastic professors and a really fantastic program the community that you're going to find here is putting their all in for their own growth and for the growth of the program and therefore your growth do it there's no reason not to
609,with the help of a grant from the nasa innovative advanced concepts program a texas a&m university-led research team will continue the development of a new type of propulsion system possibly enabling missions to the nearest stars in our lifetime since the launch of sputnik in 1957 space probes have explored our neighboring planets their moons and other minor bodies of the solar system the farthest spacecraft from earth voyager 1 has now left the influence of the sun and has entered interstellar space despite travelling at 38 600 miles per hour voyager would still take 74 000 years to reach the nearest star (other than our sun) proxima centauri the greatest obstacle to exploration beyond the outer planets and into interstellar space is traversing such distances in a reasonable time which requires tremendous speed even a 100-year mission to the rocky exoplanet proxima b entails traveling at 5% the speed of light these daunting requirements far exceed the current capabilities of chemical or plasma propulsion systems
610,through the nasa innovative advanced concepts (niac) phase ii grant the team led by dr chris limbach assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m has proposed combining a laser beam and a neutral particle beam using them to push a spacecraft to nearly 10% the speed of light unlike either beam alone the researchers are tailoring the beam parameters to exploit the refraction of light and optical forces to eliminate the spreading or expansion of the beams which would otherwise decrease thrust and limit the maximum speed this process known as self-guiding enables the beams to continue pushing and accelerating the spacecraft over millions of kilometers in addition to limbach the team includes dr ken hara assistant professor at stanford university and dr alexandros gerakis assistant professor at texas a&m the current investigation was preceded by a nine-month niac phase i study where the team looked at the physics and feasibility of this innovative concept and identified technology requirements they also developed high-fidelity modeling tools to simulate how light propagates through the particle beam and how the particles respond to the light field while traveling millions of kilometers through space for phase ii the team will spend two years further refining the propulsion concept by addressing unknown questions found in phase i including the interaction between the propulsion beams and the spacecraft this will include development of advanced numerical simulation tools and complementary laboratory experiments experiments will be conducted at the aerospace laboratory for lasers electromagnetics and optics (allemo) they intend to simulate the space environment using an ultra-high vacuum system to show they can produce a neutral particle beam with the properties required for self guiding the team will pass an atomic rubidium vapor through a convergent/divergent nozzle to produce a supersonic jet then a highly directional beam will be created by applying laser doppler cooling a technique that will bring the atom temperature to less than -459 f just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero this will allow the researchers to perform experiments on self guiding with lower power laser systems these experiments can be used to validate computational simulation tools and show the feasibility of the innovative propulsion technique at the end of phase ii the team wants to demonstrate progress toward future implementation of this propulsion technique including beam source development an improved understanding of the physics and the completion of modeling tools needed to design a full-scale system
611,once again cailin oconnell found herself surrounded by her peers as they worked over 48 hours in the hope that theyd win aggies invent oconnell a senior nuclear engineering student appreciated being there again with not only more experience but the tactical skills to take on this particular competition aggies invent a design competition that challenges students innovation and teamwork abilities allows students to develop prototypes around a theme and gives them the opportunity to take these concepts and form a startup oconnell said that she enjoys applying the design process under pressure in a 48-hour window of course my design wont be perfect by the end of it but getting through that first iteration can be the most challenging part of creating something new oconnell said this june her team secure the bag redesigned colostomy bags with the patients comfort in mind this bag utilized medical-grade magnets rather than traditional irritating adhesives to secure the bag around a patients stoma our team definitely experienced the brainstorming phase in the form of a stalemate between two ideas but we pushed through it oconnell said it ended up helping our design by incentivizing us to pitch to each other before pitching to the judges although her team did not place within the top four she said she realizes the importance of keeping an open mind to the ideas of others and that aggies invent competitions are a perfect example of a crash course in teamwork technical design and pitch development aggies invent is challenging but its also a fun time if you let it be oconnell said the more you put in the more you will get out and interacting with other teams making friends learning something new from your peers -- these aspects are all inherent to the aggies invent experience based on her experience freshman and senior year she advises other students in these competitions to not let the concept of perfection become the enemy of good in this sense she believes that it is important to not get lost in the minutia and make sure to go forward in designing as there will be other opportunities to alter it after aggies invent if you are a freshman just getting started there is no better way to dive into the world of engineering entrepreneurship aggies invent requires no prior experience and could even be a talking point for your next internship interview oconnell said aggies invent gives you the space support and some motivation in the form of time constraint to get things done learn more about aggies invent
612,two former students were recently honored by the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university for their career achievements in the engineering industry they were recognized during the annual distinguished graduate scholarship and fellowship banquet which was held on nov 7 at the hilton hotel in college station jeff collins 80 began a more than 35-year career in civil engineering after graduation from texas a&m beginning with crss engineering in houston as a department manager collins now serves as the executive vice president on the board of directors for lja engineering during his career at lja collins has focused on building the public side of the firm which inspired him to help build a firm that kept in mind while focusing on client needs
613,kelly kaatz 86 has been working in water resources at hdr engineering for more than 30 years progressing from an engineer in training to eventually become an area manager and regional director kaatz now serves as a senior vice president and regional director of operations for the company to kaatz the most significant step in his professional career was transitioning from a project engineer to a project manager in this role he learned how to serve not only the needs of the client but act as a role model and exemplar for those under his leadership
614,maria ximena cabrera lehmann senior industrial engineering student has been heavily involved in community service leadership and research at texas a&m university and her hard work has paid off cabrera was awarded the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award in october this award is presented to graduating engineering students from the college of engineering who demonstrate scholastic achievement leadership and character the prestigious award includes a scholarship which cabrera will use to help pay for her final semester of college cabrera started her college career at texas a&m university-corpus christi and is originally from colombia her unwavering dedication to pursuing community service high academic achievement and undergraduate research made her a perfect candidate the application process was long and required many steps and documents including recommendation letters a personal statement and transcripts cabrera applied in may and her application was sent to the department for review the department can nominate up to three students and these nominations are reviewed by a committee at the college level students nominated by the committee then move on to an interview with a distinguished panel that includes craig brown the awards namesake only around 1% of students are granted an interview with the panel and cabrera not only received an interview but was selected to receive the award cabrera spoke with us about the award and how students can achieve this or another high honor like she did
615,q: what does this award mean to you a: this is the highest honor i have received in my life receiving this award is one of those moments in life where you realize that all of your effort is worth it you realized that all of your hard work impacts the people around you and you have made a difference i am extremely grateful for all the people who have supported me and believed in me from the beginning my department and facultys support have played a huge role in my college career and i would have not been able to accomplish everything i have done without them q: which organizations are you involved in at texas a&m a: currently i am a grand challenge scholar industrial and systems engineering ambassador undergraduate researcher at the applied cognitive ergonomics lab certified in six sigma and recently i joined alpha pi mu and tau beta pi to get to know more people in my department and the other engineering disciplines i think that texas a&m is the perfect place to explore your interests and get involved in the many opportunities available to students i have been involved in multiple campus events and organizations while working toward my degree this award is based on scholastic achievement leadership and character and many of these characteristics are developed inside and outside the classroom
616,q: do you have any advice for current engineering students so they can be outstanding engineering students a: my advice to students is to value and recognize the opportunities they have from being an aggie not everyone gets the chance to learn from some of the best engineers in the country academics should be a priority for every student after all we are here to be the next generation of innovators and for that we need the technical tools once you feel comfortable with your school work i would recommend getting involved in organizations and activities you feel passionate about throughout my college career i have learned that there are some lessons that are not taught in the classroom the more you explore your potential the closer you will come to being an outstanding engineer it is about managing your time wisely and keeping your priorities straight think of college as your opportunity to get out of your comfort zone and this university certainly gives you the opportunity to be whatever you can imagine take advantage of the resources for entrepreneurship undergraduate research leadership and community service while becoming a good professional
617,you dont want to miss the opportunity to build a relationship with your faculty and staff; they are full of wisdom and life lessons i have had the best mentors in my department every professor i have met is seeking your success as long as you show your hard work the most valuable advice i have received came from one of them be humble enough to know that you are not better than anyone else but wise enough to know you are different an outstanding engineering student is not the one that knows the periodic table by memory; it is a student that is able to use their problem-solving skills for the greater good students should always believe in themselves the question that you should ask yourself is are you ready to explore your potential as an aggie engineer
618,dr steve suh has been named a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) suh serves as an associate professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he earned his doctoral degree from the department in 1997 his research interests include characterization and control of dynamic manufacturing instability engineering design theory micro-electromechanical systems and nano-electromechanical systems fabrication high-performance microelectronic packaging dynamic system diagnostics and prognostics linear and nonlinear stress wave propagation and laser ultrasonic thermometry an asme fellow grade is conferred upon worthy candidates to recognize their outstanding engineering achievements fewer than 3% of all asme members are fellows
619,joel 76 and karen 76 kiker met their sophomore year at texas a&m university and were happily married one week after graduation the kikers have since held successful careers in engineering and education and grew their aggie family when their three children also graduated from texas a&m in 2005 and 2008 recognizing first-hand the impact that support from others had on each of their aggie experiences the kikers have established the joel w 76 and karen g 76 kiker endowed scholarship as a way to continue supporting their aggie family made through the texas a&m foundation their generous gift will provide support to first-generation students who are working part time while pursuing their degree in engineering karen is a first-generation college graduate and we understand the value of encouragers and believers during her time at texas a&m and particularly when things were difficult said joel our desire is to directly help students with a financial need and meet and/or get to know the recipients (of our scholarship) so we can encourage them to persist graduate and make a lifetime contribution in their vocation family and community upon graduation from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering joel went to work for exxonmobil – holding various positions during his almost 39-year career with the company in 2015 he retired as vice president i benefited my entire career from the quality education and experiences that i got at texas a&m more than the academic education which was excellent my co-op work experiences convinced me that i was more than capable to pursue any opportunity in the engineering- science- and business-related fields said joel now stepping into the role of a mover and shaker for the students of today and tomorrow joel is excited to lift up his aggie family with support and encouragement – helping to instill the core values in students as they stride toward graduation and beyond aggies are a family and our family has remained friendly on campus and off through the seasons of our life wherever we have been in the world said joel we witnessed the unchanging core values and virtues in the culture of the aggie family when our three children went through 15-20 years ago and have seen it in recent years interfacing with the dean and faculty in the college of engineering
620,each year members of the society of hispanic professional engineers (shpe) join in celebrating their differences as well as their accomplishments at the shpe national convention this year in phoenix arizona was different however for the first time in their history texas a&m universitys chapter won national large chapter of the year on oct 31 president adriana urueta said that her organization dedicates this achievement to past officers she said that what sets her chapter apart is their level of transparency between executive board members they often found themselves leaning on one another for everything from last-minute food pickups or enhancing anothers presentations when we received our award at the convention hearing our name brought me great pride causing me to jump up out of my seat and give high-fives to the members around me before walking to the stage urueta said that moment was 25 years in the making for the chapter above all urueta said that it was always a continuous learning experience from year to year and to have won this award means they won it for their past officers too
621,it was not until her board members had their professional pictures taken after their name was announced that urueta calmed down and realized what her chapter has truly accomplished in no way does winning this award mean that texas a&m shpe has peaked because this all is just the beginning of great success for our chapter urueta said in the upcoming year urueta said she believes that the chapter goals will revolve around ensuring they have the resources to meet the demands of their members with the number of hispanics in engineering increasing at texas a&m the chapter goals will reflect on securing additional corporate sponsorships increasing the retention of their membership providing more leadership positions and improving their relationship with other shpe chapters throughout texas winning this award means that everything my team and i put into the organization was worth it urueta said on a personal level there are not enough words to describe what this means to me but this is proof that i can overcome my imposter syndrome and if i can then everyone else can too visit the shpe website for more information about the organization
622,it only takes one spark to cause a disaster when flammable gas is involved accidental leaks in the oil and gas industries are a known hazard and danger while most vaporous clouds that ignite result in fires that simply burn until the gas source is extinguished others detonate – putting lives and livelihoods at risk for a terrible explosion to bring more awareness of the dangers of vapor cloud explosions dr elaine oran tees eminent professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and a member of the national academy of engineering and her team are taking a deeper look at the fundamentals and history of vapor cloud detonation the teams work provides vital insight into the likelihood and reality of detonations involving flammable gas leaks as such it serves as the foundation for improving risk management in the oil and gas industry and creating a framework on which to base worker safety regulations imagine a whole fuel storage plant that may be half a mile or a mile in diameter and theres some sort of leakage of the fuel or flammable mixture said oran it vaporizes and spreads then a spark comes – theres always a spark – and this can lead to a serious deflagration (combustion) that could become a detonation this detonation travels at supersonic speeds and wipes out everything by analyzing and contrasting fundamental behaviors of both flame acceleration and detonations with catastrophes like the buncefield oil depot in the united kingdom and others in india and the united states the researchers are painting a clear picture of the disastrous effects of vapor cloud detonations
623,in addition to the fiery catastrophe of the initial detonation oran explained that the devastation continues with shockwaves – shaking the land around the origin point and causing further damage this was the case with the buncefield oil depot located just 25 miles from the center of london early in the morning as gas leaked out into the chilly air a spark caused by a firewater pump engulfed the storage plant in flames the following detonation and shockwaves devastated the land around it – causing billions of dollars in damage fortunately the one person in the area was far away said oran had it been two hours later the workers would have been there utilizing simulations controlled detonations and various astrophysical properties of explosions oran and her team hope to spur conversations based on their findings and bring to light the risk posed by the destructive albeit rare event of a vapor cloud explosion this research also applies to astrophysical explosions but it has a fundamental relevance to something very practical: safety and regulation said oran it shows that it isnt just large-scale vapor cloud detonations that are a hazard it shows that it can happen in terms of tens of meters and hundreds of meters but the physics all start with a tiny little thing the team includes dr geoff chamberlain from waverton consultancy ltd and dr andrzej pekalski from shell research ltd in the united kingdom
624,dr eric petersen has been appointed as the nelson-jackson chair in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university petersen also serves as director of the turbomachinery laboratory his research interests include gas dynamics propulsion combustion shock waves chemical kinetics optical diagnostics and spectroscopy laminar and turbulent flames and rocket combustion petersen was named director of the turbomachinery laboratory in 2018 after serving 10 years as a member with nearly 30 years of experience in the gas turbine and propulsion industry he has authored more then 400 journal and conference papers and serves as vice president of the institute for dynamics of explosions and reactive systems and an associate editor of the journal of engineering for gas turbines and power and the journal of propulsion and power additionally petersen is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers and is a member of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics the combustion institute and the american society for engineering education the nelson-jackson professorship was established in 1992 in honor of edwin nelson and charles jackson and was elevated to a chair this year it is awarded to a nationally prominent professor whose principal research activity is related to turbomachinery and has helped in elevating the stature of the turbomachinery laboratory jackson and nelson received their bachelors degrees in mechanical engineering from texas a&m in 1950 and 1951 respectively they were both charter inductees in the texas a&m mechanical engineering academy of distinguished graduates and received the texas a&m college of engineering alumnus honor awards for their work
625,cole fincher was one of two students to receive the 2019 college of engineering outstanding graduate student award which is given annually to one masters student and one doctoral student fincher is currently pursuing a masters degree in mechanical engineering in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university im thankful for my advisors and collaborators who have built an environment where i can both learn and contribute fincher said im looking forward to continuing to work and learn together fincher who is advised by assistant professor matt pharr earned a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from the department before continuing his studies in the masters program in 2018 he was awarded the national science foundations (nsf) graduate research fellowship an honor bestowed upon only the most outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based masters and doctoral degrees fincher is interested in the development of alkali metal and metal-alloy anodes toward solid-state battery systems and has thus far authored 10 publications focusing on his research on the mechanics of batteries with several more to come the pursuit of higher capacity batteries has long been an objective of scientists and engineers with some promising materials like lithium metal being put on hold due to potential safety issues it is a problem fincher is enthusiastic about exploring im excited to work on research that addresses these safety issues toward enabling ultra-high capacity lithium metal batteries fincher said not only would this make lighter and longer-lasting phone batteries but such batteries may enable new technologies like electric planes he said he also enjoys working with and mentoring undergraduates in the laboratory as well as participating in scientific outreach programs for high school and middle school students working with undergrads helps me to be a better scientist overall fincher said they challenge me to structure my work more thoroughly and mentoring them also helps me to reinforce concepts that i have learned following graduation fincher plans to pursue a doctorate with the goal of seeking a faculty position
626,solar energy is the cleanest and most abundant renewable energy source available and the us has some of the richest solar resources in the world to support the progression of solar power the us department of energy (doe) announced it would provide $128 million in funding to advance solar technologies through the office of energy efficiency and renewable energys solar energy technologies office the doe will fund innovative research projects that will lower solar electricity costs while working to boost solar manufacturing reduce red tape and make solar systems more resilient to cyberattacks among the 75 teams to receive an award is a team led by texas a&m engineering experiment station researchers
627,the team received $44 million for their project secure monitoring and control of solar pv systems through dynamic watermarking their goal is to develop and demonstrate a cyber-resilient operation for power distribution systems with massively photovoltaic (pv) generation such as rooftop solar panels it is led by dr le xie (lead pi) dr pr kumar and dr prasad enjeti from the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university partners include researchers from mit centerpoint energy argonne national laboratory (anl) and the illinois institute of technology (iit) with their project funding they will develop and demonstrate an active defense mechanism of the pv distribution system operation using a dynamic watermarking technique to monitor the cybersecurity the technique involves injecting a probe signal onto the grid to authenticate grid actions the approach will include real-time deployment of online computational algorithms in real-world critical locations the physical layer includes power transmission lines transformers solar generation units and power electronics devices the cyber layer includes communication control and sensing (meters) said xie these two layers tightly interact with each other hackers can compromise the pv distribution system by intruding into the cyber layer or manipulating the meter readings so we hope our pv distribution system can be immune to potential cyberattacks therefore cyber resilient xie said that by injecting a (small) private signal with certain signatures into the grid an indelible signature will be imprinted in the measurements from sensors and while hackers may compromise the grid by manipulating the sensors with such an indelible signature any cyberattacks on the sensors will be detected by checking the existence of the imprinted signature as any cyberattacks on the sensors will distort the signature using this idea tong huang bharadwaj satchidanandan kumar and xie designed a framework of securing automatic generation control (agc) which is a crucial frequency regulation scheme in bulk power systems the research funded by doe is built upon the preliminary success on agc a paper describing the preliminary success appears in ieee transactions on power systems by this technique we can determine if the grid is manipulated by hackers this is what we mean by authenticating grid actions xie said adding that they would need to develop an algorithm based on the watermarking method theory which they would then test on an existing system this would drive the innovation ecosystem of solar generation integration with a cost-effective yet powerful defense mechanism against sophisticated cyberattacks on the grid the comprehensive dynamic modeling of pv-dominant distribution systems would then be established we propose a defense framework against any cyberattacks on the telemetered measurements in the pv-dominated distribution system regardless of the attack model/objective he said this is valuable in terms of providing a general-purpose guarantee since the objectives of adversaries are unpredictable this team is uniquely composed and positioned to address the challenges in the future solar-rich distribution systems and advance the frontier of cyber-resilient situational awareness of deep pv-penetrated distribution systems xie said
628,the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university honored some of its most outstanding students at the 2019-20 donor recognition and scholarship/fellowship banquet on nov 7 more than 420 donors students faculty and staff attended the banquet in the bethancourt ballroom in the memorial student center where 381 graduate and undergraduate students received support for their academics in total the scholarships fellowships and awards totaled more than $1 million the department also recognized 19 students with seven awards including the j mike walker '66 impact awards and the james j cain '51 awards department leaders expressed thanks to donors for their support and to students who have excelled in their programs
629,"interning at general dynamics mission systems (gdms) last summer earned eddie chavez an opportunity to work with electronic security systems for the government and travel coast to coast the internship was a brand-new program and i was able to play a big part in defining my role chavez said gdms allowed me to explore various areas that fall under the companys umbrella chavez a mechanical engineering junior at texas a&m university believes it was through his involvement with the society of automotive engineers and society of hispanic professional engineers and help from the career center that helped him stand apart from other applicants based in georgia and away from his hometown kilgore texas his internship with gdms allowed him to find personal growth during the internship chavez was involved with supporting and analyzing the maintenance of security systems as well as the systems installations and vulnerability testing this gave him the chance to learn how to write procedures at a technical level and learn about team and project management of my favorite things working there i got to board two trident ssbn submarines and learn about fire guidance protocol chavez said while there are many perks to interning out of state chavez found his in exploring seattle and hiking at mount rainier he was also able to visit other places to get a feel of all the things engineering can lead to in my time there i also got to spend two weeks in our sister site based out of bangor washington and spend some time in cape canaveral florida chavez said chavezs internship meant fulfilling a few of his lifetime dreams of traveling getting to travel through work was a fantastic experience chavez said most of my time on travel was spent working but i never expected to have an opportunity of visiting seattle although moving to another state can be challenging emotionally because students are away from family chavez was able to find emotional support in his manager overall i had a lot of talks about leadership with my manager and grew a lot from my experience while having fun chavez said next summer chavez said that he hopes to find a dream position where he can get involved in designs and work with structural analysis using finite element analysis ultimately he found that seeking an internship far from texas allowed him to experience new adventures and forced him to mature even more ""i highly encourage other students to pursue internships out of their comfort zones because that is the best way to learn "" chavez said learn about what the career center can do for you"
630,bidding ciao to the texas summer heat a group of graduate and undergraduate students from the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university took their education overseas for a month they delved into the engineering wonders of italy through the departmental study abroad program – spending time in cultural hotspots such as venice florence rome ravenna and pompeii you definitely get a lot of teamwork said graduate student parker rodrigues we were all in the same boat everyone was willing to help everyone else because we didn't want anyone to fall behind and there is no better way to destress from class than to go for some gelato or italian food
631,it was a very well-rounded study abroad said graduate student hannah toerner you go expecting to do all this engineering work but you get a lot more out of it than that it's not just engineering its art you see the beautiful old structures and get to appreciate them for what they are then you also think ‘wow i wonder how much force is on that one you get the best of both mindsets and i think that's really cool emphasizing structural analysis and the design of facilities related to ocean engineering (such as ocean-going vessels seawalls and offshore structures like drilling rigs and windmill farms) the trip integrated elements from the available ocean engineering courses into the wonders of europe as toerner explained for example for ocen 345: theory of ocean engineering structures students chose one of the structures found in italy and reconstructed it in solidworks a digital modeling software they then were tasked with figuring out all of the forces affecting the building
632,yes it was a class but it makes you really think about what it takes to build those structures and make them stand for 3 000 years said toerner especially in todays world where we are building things that we know are going to have to be repaired or redone in 50 to 100 years and they didnt have the same technology we do today for things like water transport and treatment said rodrigues some of the aqueduct systems were able to get an inch of grade over a mile so thats one inch of difference (of water) from a point that is 5 280 feet away thats phenomenal without serving equipment and laser precision and with the italian renaissance a lot of the principle mechanics and fundamentals that we use today were developed there so being able to see why they developed them and how they used them was fascinating with applications to the 2020 summer program closing on dec 1 rodrigues looked back on their experience in order to offer one final piece of advice to fellow ocean engineering students
633,if you can put yourself in a situation where you can get on that trip you're going to have a unique amazing experience said rodrigues coming from somebody who chose not to go on a study abroad as an undergraduate – because i thought i was going to stay here and take courses all summer – i definitely missed out on that opportunity and i'm glad that i got a second shot in grad school
634,retired navy capt richard waer deployed on an undersea rescue mission in 2017 to locate and rescue the crew of the argentine submarine ara san juan which had disappeared off the argentine coast on nov 15 the rescue mission included more than 200 personnel a p-8 poseidon aircraft four submersibles an underwater rescue unit and equipment in an effort to locate the 44 missing crew members the ara san juan was located one year later but by then waer was already on his way to texas a&m to train and educate a new generation of leaders and engineers as a professor of practice in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university waer retired after about 30 years in the united states navy with over 12 as an active duty member in the navy he worked primarily on nuclear-powered submarines his day-to-day tasks included taking submarines out to sea to ensure they operated correctly as well as submarine and reactor repair at the shipyard although waer didnt follow the traditional path to become a professor the instinct for education comes naturally to him as much as he enjoyed his time in the navy and naval shipyard the most rewarding experiences came from being a mentor im sure i have some interesting projects that ive worked on but for me the best moments were always the ones where i had young engineers working for me and i could watch them grow and develop as scientists said waer seeing people excel and encouraging them as they move along in their career thats always a proud moment experiences like the search for the lost submarine can lead to lessons in perseverance and integrity
635,it was the weekend before thanksgiving and we dropped everything and worked for as long and as hard as we could said waer managing to transport the necessary people and equipment to south america in record time was an amazing feat it showed that we dont care about politics were here to rescue people as a professor of practice waer co-teaches a senior design course with dr karen kirkland and dr jason hearne he also teaches an engineering dynamics course for the college of engineering like most professors of practice waers teaching method is a combination of textbook-style instruction with anecdotal stories about his career sprinkled into his lectures with at least every lecture i have a story that i can tell to make the content more relatable said waer students are here to invest in themselves so i owe it to them to deliver the absolute best education that i possibly can
636,the impede® embolization plug originally designed by researchers in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has won a 2019 r&d 100 award from r&d world magazine the device is owned by shape memory medical inc a california-based company co-founded by dr duncan maitland at texas a&m r&d 100 awards are high-profile acknowledgements of the potential or existing impact of a new product or service when maitland worked at lawrence livermore national laboratory (llnl) he said r&d 100 awards were one of the highest external recognitions that a team could receive for the impact of their research my first reaction is tied to this history and my joy for the team members from llnl for receiving this award my second reaction is that the team that has worked on this project from concept to commercial sales has been hundreds of people maitland said this has been a marathon effort by a lot of people i am also very happy for the people at llnl texas a&m university shape memory medical inc and other many other institutions that have made this happen i am fortunate to have worked with so many bright and dedicated people texas a&m contributors that are also acknowledged as part of the impede development team include dr fred clubb dr balakrishna haridas dr staci jessen and dr brandis keller clubb clinical professor of veterinary medicine at texas a&m and joint faculty member in the department of biomedical engineering works in the cvpath lab on campus to provide quality data to garner answers to medical device safety questions we are honored and proud to be a part of the impede development team at texas a&m and excited to see this device receive recognition clubb said the impede family of peripheral vascular embolization products all include shape memory polymer (smp) the devices are designed to provide doctors with a more effective and less risky method for treating aneurysms – blood-filled balloon-like bulges in the walls of a blood vessel that can rupture and cause vascular damage that is debilitating or even fatal the device quickly clots blood to block it from reaching aneurysms tumors or other tissue smp is designed to transition between two shapes based on its environment it can be crimped for delivery through a catheter and it self-expands when exposed to blood and body temperature to date more than 250 patients have been successfully treated worldwide with impede and the team expects to have thousands treated in the next year or so looking to the future maitland said there are registered human studies to use impede to better treat patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms and pulmonary arteriovenous malformations and he hopes to expand its use even further going forward we are trying to develop materials and devices to apply this technology to improved treatment of cancer but peer-reviewed research funding is a slow and tricky process maitland said we are also working on prototypes of pediatric devices we will continue to submit grants and apply for funding awards will be presented at the r&d 100 awards banquet on dec 5 in san francisco california
637,in 1990 dr amy epps martin was an undergraduate student at the university of california berkeley who joined the american society of civil engineers (asce)now she has been elected a fellow of asce a prestigious honor given to members who have distinguished themselves as mentors and leaders in the civil engineering professionepps martin is a professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and a researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute where she teaches civil engineering materials courses and conducts research on safe sustainable asphalt technologiesthe rank of fellow is held by less than 3% of asce's more than 150 000 members in 177 countriesit is a special honor to be recognized by asce through election as a fellow as this was the first professional organization i became involved with during my undergraduate education through the concrete canoe competition at both the regional and national levels epps martin saidin her more than 22 years in civil engineering epps martin said among the most significant achievements in her career is the positive impact she has had on approximately 1 800 students including mentoring 42 graduate studentsshe is also an accomplished researcher her work is balanced between fundamental theory and practical science and led to the development of performance-based specifications for asphalt pavement materials national guidelines for the design and construction of specialty asphalt mixtures as well as the development of sustainable and durable asphalt materialsin april 2019 she was elected to the board of directors as director-at-large for the association of asphalt paving technologists (aapt) she has been a member of aapt for her entire career
638,yesterday the department of defense (dod) and the texas a&m university system co-sponsored drone venture day where us manufacturers of unmanned aircraft systems (uas) and counter-uas (c-uas) had the unique opportunity to meet with trusted capital providers to explore mutually beneficial business partnerships focused on national security concerns drone venture day represented the inaugural event in a series of trusted capital opportunities to build an ecosystem where trusted capital providers and domestic companies can limit adversarial foreign access to technology and strengthen domestic manufacturing in the defense industrial base the senior dod official deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy jennifer santos attended and spoke about the importance of the trusted capital mission the trusted capital concept takes a more proactive approach toward protecting us supply chains domestic manufacturers and american technology from foreign adversaries who want to undermine our national security
639,while drone venture day focused on unmanned systems other events will focus on additional key technology areas these fora will assist in promoting and protecting the industrial base especially fragile sectors as identified by the executive order 13806 report on assessing and strengthening the manufacturing and defense industrial base and supply chain resiliency of the united states attendees heard from senior officials from dod and other united states government agencies to include the office of the director of national intelligence as well as senior members of the texas a&m system we are pleased to partner with dod in its inaugural trusted capital event where critical companies and capital providers can come together to advance investment in key areas of national defense said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp we recently broke ground for the george hw bush combat development complex demonstrating our firm commitment to a long-term partnership with dod and a shared vision of ensuring the nations security and prosperity for more information please visit the industrial policy website
640,on veterans day weekend students from across texas a&m university joined forces to tackle real problems the military faces today during aggies invent: special operations command (socom) teams had 48 hours to brainstorm ideas and develop a solution to military operations and communication issues teams then marketed their designs to a panel of industry experts doing an aggies invent for military on veterans day weekend is really special because we were able to provide solutions to some of their most vexing problems said rodney boehm director of the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m one of those problems is debris on aircraft runways sticks wires and bolts litter runways and launch pads causing millions of dollars in damages the debris can get sucked up into motors shred tires and destroy helicopter rotors explained patrick currin junior mechanical engineering student and member of the first-place team fodbot the current solution for clearing the foreign object debris (fod) involves hundreds of soldiers spending hours walking the runways to retrieve the waste as an alternative their innovation offered an autonomous solution team fodbot developed a prototype with a three-part process; a dual rotating brush to sweep larger debris into a bin followed by a magnetic bar to collect smaller pieces of metal and ending with a vacuum to clear anything remaining when youre doing something in 48 hours theres a lot of things that could go wrong so we decided on a design that was simple but effective said sarojeet deb graduate student in mechanical engineering for most of the winning team this was their first time participating in an aggies invent and their first hands-on experience in engineering making the actual working prototype was an amazing experience i learned skills that i havent learned yet as a sophomore said noble gutierrez mechanical engineering student for oluwayemisi awofeso a junior in public health the experience was a big step outside of her comfort zone
641,other members of team fodbot included rebekah franklin a sophomore in the engineering academy at blinn-bryan and general engineering freshman vivian yu placing second was team dog operation gear (dog) with the design of a technology-driven mask and vest for military working dogs the concern they addressed was the insufficient communication between todays forward scout dog and handler we talked to a couple of special operations dog handlers and they told us that their main concern was latency (the lag for receiving real-time commands) said massaro ochoa freshman general engineering student to mitigate the delay in communication team dog implemented haptic technology into their vest design that would use vibrations to indicate commands by utilizing an application handlers can control this haptic technology as well as monitor the other features equipped on the vest and mask design these additions included a front and rear camera providing a 360-degree view pockets for various sensors protective goggles a microphone and speaker and an led light to help the dog see for team dog the opportunity to talk with industry experts about their firsthand experiences was an invaluable resource
642,ive never really been exposed to the issues and problems theyre having out in the field so getting to talk to them and understanding what its like on a mission was super cool and it helped us understand how we as students can help them said clara cliver senior industrial and systems engineering student i was really impressed with the resources that we were provided both the mentors who have an incredible wealth of knowledge that was so interesting to tap into and then other resources like the librarians and fedc (fischer engineering design center) said allison godfrey senior mechanical engineering student other members of team dog included ignacio galvan iii junior biological and agricultural engineer and justin witkowski junior aerospace engineer
643,taking third place and tackling the same limited communication concern between dog and handler was team k9kamera the main features of their mask and vest design included real-time video live streaming sensor data and two-way audio we happened on a really easy streamlined solution that worked out pretty well and in the end had very few moving parts said stephen kologinczak senior electronic systems engineering technology student a major priority for team k9kamera was minimalism both in the gear design and application system their goal was to create a solution that could be up and running in 10 minutes so their user interface promoted a simple customizable layout we talked to a variety of industry experts throughout the weekend said matt kendall junior aerospace engineering student all of them brought a different perspective from their own experiences throughout their military and defense careers so taking their advice and recommendations and trying to mold it into a feasible product that we can present was interesting and exciting a few k9kamera members were able to rely on their own military experience during the making of their design and lean on the groups diversity as a team its really important to be multidisciplinary said david webb a junior business student it was really great to see a bunch of people come together and go for the same goal other members of team k9kamera included seniors tanner reinhardt mechatronics engineering technology student matt bertone mechanical engineering and richard mccalley mechanical engineering
644,the judges were so impressed by the innovative solutions presented that they insisted on awarding a fourth place to team maintain ar who addressed the currently inefficient and unreliable military maintenance process maintain ar utilizes a cloud-based mobile application with augmented reality to provide military mechanics and their supervisors with paperless instruction manuals 3d models and a digital system for checks and balances their solution is designed to reduce repair time and costs and most importantly mechanical failure members of team maintain ar included grant singleton senior in computer engineering rajat wadhaw graduate student in mechanical engineering syed hussain senior in industrial and systems engineering rory gatson sophomore in computer science bryston lewis freshman in general engineering and tyler bagby sophomore in mechanical engineering learn more about aggies invent and the upcoming opportunities including invent for the planet
645,five faculty in the college of engineering were among 30 distinguished texas a&m university faculty named 2019 presidential impact fellows and the new chancellor enhancing development and generating excellence in scholarship (edges) fellows the recognitions highlight texas a&ms commitment to investing in faculty with significant and sustained accomplishments and the promise of continued high-impact scholarship the three engineering faculty members named presidential impact fellows were dr roozbeh jafari associate professor with joint appointments in biomedical engineering computer science and engineering and electrical and computer engineering; dr guofei gu associate professor of computer science and engineering; and dr michael demkowicz associate professor of materials science and engineering the two edges fellows were dr raymundo arroyave professor of materials science and engineering; and dr jodie lutkenhaus professor of chemical engineering the third class of presidential impact fellows joins with more than 40 colleagues recognized in prior years with one of the most prestigious scholarly impact awards presented to texas a&m faculty the award was initiated by president michael k young as a significant investment in faculty excellence and a recognition of the scholarship personal commitment and global impact they are making as they rise to meet the challenges of their field and demonstrate impact presidential impact fellows retain their new title for life and receive an annual stipend of $25 000 for three years the goal of this investment is to allow scholars increased opportunities for national and global dialogue and collaboration across disciplines and beyond the borders of institutions launched this year edges fellowships were developed with resources from texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp to support and honor mid-career faculty who are making significant marks in their discipline edges fellowships are awarded to faculty members with national and international acclaim and careers that are on track for membership in national academies or national and international awards in fields without national academies edges fellows retain the right to use the title throughout their tenure as faculty members in good standing the 2019 recipients were formally recognized in a ceremony on nov 5
646,the aggie 100 recognizes the success of aggie entrepreneurs from around the world aggie engineers dominated this years aggie 100 list with 40 college of engineering graduates seven in the top 10 among the 2019 honorees each year the mays business school's mcferrin center for entrepreneurship releases its list of the fastest-growing aggie-owned or aggie-led businesses in the state of texas members of the exclusive club were recently honored by hundreds of attendees at a private event held at the ford hall of champions at texas a&m university's kyle field the aggie network is filled with entrepreneurs and it is exciting to see so many of our former engineering students among the top 100 fastest-growing aggie-owned businesses said dr m katherine banks texas a&m engineering vice chancellor and dean i applaud our former students for their success college of engineering alumni listed in the top 10 include: #3: mike baker 80 (civil and environmental engineering) president of lja infrastructure in houston texas; #4: robert sheets 09 (mechanical engineering) founder owner and vice president of odin heavy industries llc in bryan texas; #5: jeff socha 03 (mechanical engineering) founder owner and managing partner of ark financial in austin texas; #6: brett witte 99 (engineering technology and industrial distribution) founder and ceo of premier coil solutions inc in waller texas; #7: william deupree 83 (petroleum engineering) owner president and ceo and andrew ellis 94 (petroleum engineering) founder chief operating officer and executive vice president of escondido resources in katy texas; and #8: travis stice 84 (petroleum engineering) founder ceo and director of diamondback energy inc in midland texas the college of engineering had a total of 27 alumni-owned or operated companies on this years list to be considered for the aggie 100 companies (corporations partnerships sole proprietorships) must operate in a manner consistent with the aggie code of honor and in keeping with the values and image of texas a&m and must meet specific criteria as we mark the 15th crystal anniversary of the aggie 100 program we celebrate our success by raising up the newest class of aggie 100 honorees said blake petty director of the mcferrin center knowing how each member company of the class of 2019 has overcome their own adversities to reach astounding levels of growth and prosperity we dedicate this significant milestone to the excellence exhibited by our newest additions to the aggie 100 family visit here for a full listing of the 2019 aggie 100 honorees with detailed ranking information
647,two faculty members from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university were part of the third class of presidential impact fellows which were recently announced by president michael k young the two honorees were dr guofei gu and dr roozbeh jafari initiated by young in 2017 the award is a significant investment in faculty excellence and a recognition of the scholarship personal commitment and global impact the honorees are making as they rise to meet the challenges in their respective fields the 2019 class of presidential impact fellows includes 20 faculty members across texas a&ms 16 colleges and schools two branch campuses and comprehensive university libraries gu is a professor and director of the success (secure communication and computer systems) lab his research interests include network and system security internet malware/botnet/advanced persistent threat detection defense and analysis software-defined programmable security mobile and internet of things security artificial intelligence security web and social networking security and intrusion/anomaly detection jafari is an associate professor with joint appointments in the biomedical engineering and electrical and computer engineering departments he is also the director of the esp (embedded signal processing) lab his research interests include wearable computer design and signal processing with applications in health care wellness and enhancing productivity and safety of the users he has been the recipient of several best paper awards each recipient will receive an annual stipend of $25 000 for the next three fiscal years to encourage more opportunities for national and global dialogue and collaboration across disciplines and institutions the award also includes the use of the honorific title for life the 2019 recipients were formally recognized in a ceremony on nov 5
648,who dr juan horrillo associate professor and leader of the tsunami research group (trg) at texas a&m university at galveston what horrillo and his team have developed numerical models that simulate tsunamis caused by large submarine landslides or those that occur underwater in the gulf of mexico their 3d and 2d models provide experts agencies and researchers a valuable tool in evaluating and preparing for tsunamis in the gulf the project is funded by the national weather service - national oceanic and atmospheric administrations national tsunami hazard mitigation program why its so cool:
649,this development can save lives said horrillo focused on underwater landslides in the gulf of mexico the trgs model assesses tsunami hazard predicts the time of impact and calculates the wave propagation (how tsunami waves travel across ocean basin) and inundation (flooding) in coastal areas all of which are critical for outlining evacuation routes and long-term safety and rescue planning in vulnerable coastal communities such as those along the gulf potential tsunami sources for the gulf of mexico are local submarine landslides said horrillo he explained that although the probability of a massive underwater landslide in the gulf is very low it is still a possibility thus making it important to be prepared and equipped to handle such a catastrophe should one occur such massive submarine landslides footprint would have been large enough to still be seen in the sea bottom of the gulf of mexico using modern systems such as google earth these are caused by large amounts of sediment being naturally emptied into the gulf by rivers and other geological processes while it is unlikely that a destructive landslide will occur in the near future the sediment buildup in the gulf continues to increase from sources such as the mississippi river as the sediment is deposited the pore pressure of the underlying sediments continues to increase – setting a stage of instability that could set the sediment into motion sending tsunamis toward the shore
650,based on the navier-stokes equations which describe the motion of waves the trg model combines a 3d wave generation with a 2d wave propagation and inundation calculation model to create tsunami hazard map products that are both accurate and easy to understand for local emergency managers maritime communities and third parties through this the team is providing a valuable tool not only for research but safety with it experts and agencies can see both the origin point (source) of a tsunami and which areas along the coast will be most impacted in turn this allows them the chance to run simulation after simulation and base their evacuation strategies on objective interpretable data gathered from previous tsunamis as well as prepare for future events before disaster strikes
651,the research team also includes dr wei cheng dr jens figlus and dr amanda wood from texas a&m external collaborators and researchers include dr zygmunt kowalik professor at the university of alaska fairbanks; william knight a senior and former physical scientist for the west coast and alaska tsunami warning center; dr yoshinori shigihara professor at the national defense academy of japan; dr yoshiki yamazaki researcher at the university of hawaii at manoa; dr alberto lopez professor and dr aurelio mercado professor at the university of puerto rico – mayaguez; and dr hermann fritz professor at the georgia institute of technology
652,like the weather in texas the moons temperature varies drastically over the course of its day and night cycle the moons surface can reach scorching temperatures as high as 250 degrees f during the day and a frigid 208 degrees below zero at night these dramatic fluctuations in temperature create a challenge during lunar missions – keeping payload whether thats astronauts aboard a spacecraft or an experimental device on a rover from becoming too hot or too cold with lunar explorations on the horizon including putting astronauts back on the moon by 2024 nasa is investing $2 million in cutting-edge thermal technology to make regulating temperatures during missions possible this technology will be developed by a team of researchers from texas a&m university the boeing company and paragon space development corporation the team is focused on creating shape-shifting technology to adjust thermal control systems automatically our proposed solutions incorporate shape-shifting metals that adjust their own heat rejection based on how hot or cold they are so it solves the problem for us said dr darren hartl assistant professor in aerospace engineering and head of the multifunctional material and aerospace structures optimization (m2aestro) lab at texas a&m hartl and his team have a successful history partnering with both boeing and paragon on shape memory alloy (sma) technology most recently hartl and dr john whitcomb professor in aerospace engineering have worked on an idea with paragon to create a morphing radiator composed of smas prototypes of the morphing radiator were developed by former graduate students christopher bertagne now at nasas jet propulsion laboratory and patrick walgren current phd student they successfully tested the prototypes in a small thermal vacuum chamber at nasas johnson space center
653,the recent funding from nasa awarded through the tipping point initiative will launch the sma-based thermal control technology into its next phase its incredibly rewarding to be a part of the team that advanced this technology to its current state and to learn that nasa is committed to further maturing the concept said walgren texas a&m researchers will begin their part of the project in the spring which includes further development of the morphing radiator as well as the modeling and optimization of an accompanying thermal switch also composed of smas these thermally sensitive technologies represent uncharted territory yet are critical to the operations of future space expeditions it will be another successful example of morphing structures enabling something that couldnt have been done before said hartl it will be another example to the aerospace industry that you can have a structure adapt itself to its environment
654,dr alex walsh assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the air force's young investigator research program (yip) grant the grant comes from the air force office of scientific research (afsor) which funds fundamental and basic science research as part of the air force research laboratory (afrl) the objective of the program is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the air force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering
655,i am very excited to receive the award both to work on this project and form relationships with the afosr/afrl and with the other yip winners walsh said walsh was awarded the grant for her planned research to study infrared light interactions with cells and what causes the light to impact neurons this research could be used toward further understanding of how neurons communicate brain-machine interfaces and medical devices impact neural activity we need to fully characterize the effects of infrared light on cells before these applications can be developed walsh said walsh is one of 40 scientists and engineers to receive funding this year her three-year grant totals $450 000 for more information on afrl/afosr visit the afrl website
656,fresh from the plains of nebraska and her summer internship rriel smith is on the right track smith a senior industrial engineering student spent her summer interning with union pacific railroad in omaha nebraska she sat down with us to discuss how her summer internship impacted her personally and professionally q: what was it like working for union pacific railroad a: working at union pacific railroad was an eye-opening experience i was able to learn so much about myself while gaining true confidence in my skills the people that i surrounded myself with pushed me to develop and mature in ways i didn't think were possible i learned how to navigate a corporate environment as a minority woman and collaborate with my coworkers and supervisors i was able to learn about the intricacies of a rail line and calculate the most efficient way to move trains along laid lines i was able to grasp vague concepts optimize and put math behind what i created i was able to use my industrial engineering courses for the duration of this internship
657,q: what was your favorite part of your internship a: my favorite part of my internship was learning about myself and maturing as an intern i was thrown some curveballs with my assignments during my internship but i ended up nailing my presentation and receiving a job offer! q: what are you glad that you knew before starting this internship a: i am glad that i learned to believe in myself before seeking approval from others if you live a life of looking for others approval it will lead to your demise while keeping the previous statement in mind you have to remember that internships are for your experience and exposure and you are not obligated to take a job or another internship in a place where you dont feel you will grow sometimes you will have a lot of options and choices to make you have to balance your personal and professional growth and make good connections you never want to close a door because you might someday want to walk back through it for a different opportunity making good connections is very important as an intern and professional
658,q: what are you doing now a: i had a busy summer with my internship and a study abroad in greece and this fall semester is even busier! i am currently the texas zone chair red in the national society of black engineers with eight chapters that range from 20-140 individuals each that report to me along with that i am the vice president of aggie big kick it a committee of the black former student network my focus is to work with my team to bring minority former students back to campus i am the marketing chair of the matthew gaines initiative we are working to increase awareness of the matthew gaines commemoration statue and raise money for it i am also a member of delta sigma theta sorority incorporated
659,in addition to my other roles i am blessed to be working with dr mike graul as an industrial and systems engineering student ambassador in this position i help recruit potential industrial engineering students to texas a&m q: do you think engineering students should pursue internships a: yes! of course! internships and co-ops are great opportunities for personal and professional growth they are also a great opportunity to earn money you can use to pay for tuition which is what i use my internship salary for you also have the opportunity to explore new cities make friends from all over the world and grow your resume
660,to celebrate the launch of texas a&m universitys enmed program that will train students jointly in medicine and engineering a symposium was held at the houston methodist hospital on oct 28 the attendees included current enmed students and faculty donors and many distinguished guests from inside and outside academia enmed is a texas a&m initiative that combines the college of medicines md program and the college of engineerings graduate degree program twenty-five students are enrolled in the inaugural class that will earn both an md and an ms in engineering the program integrates the medical school curriculum with engineering and entrepreneurship and will prepare students to have the skills needed to be both a successful physician and an engineer who can solve the medical fields complex problems through technology development for patients physicians and health care professionals in his opening remarks executive dean roderic pettigrew phd md said: enmed was established to train a new kind of physician with a new kind of medical mind one that seeks compassionate healing but also understands engineering the scientific laws of living things and how these are integrated in nature
661,the understanding of how engineering and biology and all scientific disciplines are seamlessly interwoven in life is core to enmed; it is the fundamental concept on which it is based from this greater understanding of how human life really works at the molecular cell and organ system levels will come the practical solutions to unmet medical and health care needs enmed seeks to develop a caring doctor who is also a problem solver at all biological levels a physician who is an inventor a physicianeer he said common to all students admitted to the enmed program is that they have a strong background in engineering and have demonstrated a clear passion for innovation enmed seemed like the perfect fit for me to achieve my career goals said frederick wang an enmed student and a recent graduate in biomedical engineering from the university of texas at dallas during his undergraduate years wang did extensive biomedical research on metal failure in dental implants and presented his findings at the international association of dental research the enmed symposium featured a talk by harvard medical school physician-scientist don ingber md phd who is also the founding director of the wyss institute for biologically inspired engineering ingber leads his institutions efforts in developing breakthrough technologies and commercializing them for medical use he explained to enmed students that big discoveries happen at the intersection of diverse fields that generally include engineering biology medicine and industry hence the ability for enmed students to train at texas a&m and at houston methodist hospital is a huge advantage i think that that you (students) are in a place where the intensity of engineering and medical research is more than anywhere and you must take advantage of it ingber said additional advice was given by paul yock md who founded the stanford biodesign program as professor of bioengineering and is the martha meier weiland professor in the school of medicine at stanford university he said enmed students should take a need-based approach to problem solving in the health care industry noting that a well characterized need is the dna of invention
662,other esteemed symposium speakers included peter agre md nobel prize winner in chemistry bloomberg distinguished professor of public health and director of the malaria research institute at johns hopkins university; and renaldo nehemiah legendary olympian 13-time world record holder and congressional gold medal recipient agre spoke of the importance of students using their talents for the benefit of others and how ideas that spark discovery can come from surprising places at surprising times he credits the idea that led to his nobel prize work to a family trip in the everglades nehemiah talked about the importance of being fully committed to your goals you must be all in he said in a discussion on breaking barriers the list of invited speakers included video greetings from dan mote phd president emeritus of the national academy of engineering and victor dzau md president of the national academy of medicine in encouragement of the aspirations of enmed students as pioneers pettigrew also ceo of engineering health and holder of the robert a welch chair in medial science said that the team of faculty at texas a&m and houston methodist are also pioneers and that they are dedicated to working with enmed students in this new educational paradigm to realize their full potential as physician-engineers and help transform health care after reciting then referencing the poem hold fast to dreams by langston hughes pettigrew said enmed hold fast to dreams and we will improve health and well-being across the globe for all of mankind
663,whether the body of a commercial aircraft or the suspension beams of san franciscos golden gate bridge materials used for carrying heavy loads are engineered for strength and durability but under unrelenting physical stress structures that may appear damage-free can crack suddenly shrouding the reasons for their failure in mystery unlike pure metals it has long been known that load-bearing materials like steel brass and alloys of aluminum or magnesium have different mechanical properties in different directions now texas a&m university researchers have found that under extreme tension this asymmetry causes load-bearing materials to deteriorate internally and over time develop visible cracks when alloys get damaged its usually very destructive since their ability to handle any kind of stress is sharply reduced said dr amine benzerga professor in aerospace engineering and the director of the center for intelligent materials and structures at texas a&m our findings on the main mechanism driving failure might help make better decisions about the lifetime of alloys that are currently in use which in turn can save a hefty amount of dollars in repairs a description of their research appeared in the journal scientific reports material failure depends on a number of factors including the precise arrangement of the atoms and molecules that make it up consequently unlike a slab of glass that shatters upon breaking metals in particular alloys break nonintuitively that is when a piece of alloy is pulled apart cracks are not always at 90-degree angles to the direction of the pull
664,the prevalent view of the cause of this type of crack known technically as shear fracture has been porosity softening according to this theory damaging stress creates empty spaces or voids within the metal alloy resembling holes in cheese under constant tension these voids grow and join at which point cracks form and the metal fails however the mechanisms that cause the voids to grow have remained murky also benzerga and his colleagues noticed that most studies investigating the cause of shear fracture were based on experiments in which tension was applied to rectangular-shaped alloys this shape increases the chances of shear fracture substantially said benzerga giving the impression that porosity softening is the main underlying cause for failure precluding other potential causes for their experiments benzerga and his team instead turned to cylindrical-shaped alloys and investigated if the tendency for shear fracture changed with the new shape they found their specimens did not always break in shear fractures the fact that the shape of our specimens was influencing how often we saw shear fractures told us that something else is driving shear failure and that porosity softening was not the whole story said benzerga to examine the cause of shear fractures benzerga and his team built a more sophisticated simulation model that considered porosity softening and other potential causes including plastic anisotropy the property by which a pull or load on a material from one direction causes damage that is different from that in another their simulations predicted that plastic anisotropy and not porosity softening triggered and propelled shear fractures our simulations were telling us something very different from the accepted theory for the cause of shear fractures said benzerga when we completely turned off the porosity softening in our simulations and just kept the plastic anisotropy we still got shear fractures suggesting that plastic anisotropy drives shear failure the researchers speculate that plastic anisotropy causes internal damage to the material leading to voids as damage continues these voids become larger naturally then coalesce over time and cause failure benzerga noted that in the near future their findings could help design materials that can resist shear failures better there are several new load-bearing materials whose mechanical properties are not fully known he said our model now provides a framework to predict what will happen to these materials if heavy physical stress is applied to them other contributors to the research include nithin thomas and joshua s harrington from the texas a&m department of aerospace engineering this research was funded by the national science foundation and by the lawrence livermore national laboratory under master task agreements
665,dr faruque hasan assistant professor and kim tompkins mcdivitt 88 and phillip mcdivitt 87 faculty fellow in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was recently named to the 2019 class of influential researchers by the journal industrial & engineering chemistry research a global team of editors and editorial advisory board members from the journal selects the winners independently without nominations or suggestions the 2019 class of influential researchers who are in the early stages of their careers were chosen on the basis of the quality and impact of their work hasan is renowned for his research in the field of computer-aided process systems design and process intensification using fundamental optimization theory and process systems engineering methodologies his work has led to the development of novel technologies for integrated carbon capture and conversion natural gas utilization and cleaner energy solutions
666,industrial & engineering chemistry research published a virtual special issue showcasing papers from the honorees in his article mapping the material-property space for feasible process operation: application to combined natural-gas separation and storage hasan takes a novel approach to identifying the optimal materials and process configurations for combined natural-gas separation and storage more often than not the researchers involved in natural-gas separation and storage operate in silos with each group working to optimize the performance of their particular area of emphasis however in this research hasan lays out a new framework that considers material and process development simultaneously for the design of new processes especially for those that have not identified the proper materials it is important to evaluate the designs for a range of candidate materials as such hasan has developed a framework to identify the ideal materials when developing a whole new process in 2017 hasan was awarded the prestigious american chemical society petroleum research fund new doctoral investigator grant aimed at tapping underutilized gas resources in 2018 he was a finalist in the 2018 world technology awards also in 2018 a team led by members of hasans research group won the annual u-challenge contest at texas a&m university
667,staring up at the model airplanes hanging from the ceiling of his childhood bedroom dr walter haisler 67 dreamed of attending the us air force academy and becoming a pilot little did he know that his lifes course would be redirected to texas a&m university where he would work in the aerospace engineering department for 41 years and spend more than 12 of them as department head i always wanted to attend the air force academy when i was growing up walter said but as things went i was not accepted when a friend of mine planned to attend texas a&m i decided to join him as newlyweds walter and his wife delores moved to college station in 1964 while delores worked as a bookkeeper in one of the campus dining halls walter pursued his bachelors degree in aerospace engineering at that time i never had any intention of becoming a faculty member he said i had my sights set on working for an aeronautical company after graduation but dr james stricklin asked me to assist him with his research the rest is history! under his mentorship walter completed his masters in 1968 and phd in 1970
668,about a year before finishing his doctorate walter was asked to consider joining the texas a&m aerospace faculty by this time i had realized my passion for teaching and research and it was clear that the university presented many new opportunities he said it is an honor to have been part of aerospaces growth from seven faculty members in 1970 to more than 30 when i retired in 2011 in his early years in the department walter contributed to the burgeoning excitement of space exploration and advancements in flight by researching ways to prevent the apollo spacecraft from burning to a crisp upon re-entry into earths atmosphere later as head of the aerospace department he launched the 1985 initiative to construct the harvey r bum bright building to provide new facilities more conducive to the departments research and during the next decade the department added a dozen faculty with particular emphasis on space-related research walter also encouraged the development of the nationally-recognized aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory located at easterwood airport the lab allows faculty to perform leading research on high-speed gas dynamics unsteady flows and flows with thermal and chemical non-equilibrium effects some of his most memorable moments however came from interacting with students i love meeting or hearing from students who i taught over the years he said they often tell me what they learned that was most important to them and that theyre thankful for my focus on teaching principles rather than problem solutions ive even received a couple thank-yous for being a tough grader!
669,having served the aerospace department for so long walter knows its challenges well as he and delores began working on their estate plans they realized their ability to make a lasting impact with their resources when they created their will they made sure to provide for the needs of their children first and then walter and delores estate will fund an endowment for aerospaces department head chair overall my challenge as department head was to direct aerospace onto the path of national recognition walter said with an endowed chair the department can recruit a candidate of the highest caliber who can use the chair funds for both departmental and professional development walter and delores hope that their gift allows future department heads to foster growth and a strong work ethic among professors and students it has been my pleasure to serve texas a&m particularly the aerospace department to have seen it grow in stature and reputation and to have been a part of the education of many thousands of engineering students walter said i want the department to continue to be the best undergraduate and graduate educational program in the nation and i hope our gift offers the resources necessary to do so
670,delores and walter haisler 67 made a bequest or a gift in their will to benefit texas a&m to make a bequest you can designate the texas a&m foundation as a beneficiary of your estate plan a bequest can be made as a percentage of your estate a specific asset or the balance or residue from your estate benefits include the ability to retain assets during your lifetime lessen the burden of taxes on your family and support a texas a&m area of your choosing to learn how you can support texas a&m through a planned gift like a bequest contact kevin westerman gift planning officerthis story written by morgan knobloch '20 with the texas a&m foundation originally appeared on the texas a&m foundation's website
671,the rise in popularity of electric vehicles and aircraft presents the possibility of moving away from fossil fuels toward a more sustainable future while significant technological advancements have dramatically increased the efficiency of these vehicles there are still several issues standing in the way of widespread adoption one of the most significant of these challenges has to do with mass as even the most current electric vehicle batteries and supercapacitors are incredibly heavy a research team from the texas a&m university college of engineering is approaching the mass problem from a unique angle most of the research aimed at lowering the mass of electric vehicles has focused on increasing the energy density thus reducing the weight of the battery or supercapacitor itself however a team led by dr jodie lutkenhaus professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering believes that lighter electric vehicles and aircraft can be achieved by storing energy within the structural body panels this approach presents its own set of technical challenges as it requires the development of batteries and supercapacitors with the same sort of mechanical properties as the structural body panels specifically batteries and supercapacitor electrodes are often formed with brittle materials and are not mechanically strong in an article published in matter the research team described the process of creating new supercapacitor electrodes that have drastically improved mechanical properties in this work the research team was able to create very strong and stiff electrodes based on dopamine functionalized graphene and kevlar nanofibers dopamine which is also a neurotransmitter is a highly adhesive molecule that mimics the proteins that allow mussels to stick to virtually any surface the use of dopamine and calcium ions leads to a significant improvement in mechanical performance in fact in the article researchers report supercapacitor electrodes with the highest to date multifunctional efficiency (a metric that evaluates a multifunctional material based on both mechanical and electrochemical performance) for graphene-based electrodes this research leads to an entirely new family of structural electrodes which opens the door to the development of lighter electric vehicles and aircraft while this work is mostly focused on supercapacitors lutkenhaus hopes to translate the research into creating sturdy stiff batteries the research team includes paraskevi flouda a doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering and lead author of the article; lutkenhaus professor presidential impact fellow and holder of the william and ruth neely faculty fellowship in the department of chemical engineering; dr micah green associate professor nancy and dan zivney '73 faculty fellow and director of the graduate program in the department of chemical engineering; dr dimitris lagoudas professor in the department of aerospace engineering university distinguished professor john and bea slattery chair professor and senior associate dean for research; and smit a shah a doctoral student in the department of chemical engineering
672,treva davis a senior industrial engineering student at texas a&m university is passionate about helping others davis had the opportunity to work with the anderson food pantry in anderson texas to redo their food storage and reception space her teams design maximized the existing space available allowing the pantry to serve more families in the community davis spoke with us about her capstone project and how it impacted her what was your capstone project anderson food pantry is a nonprofit organization that provides fresh produce and dry food to over 135 families each month their facility consists of a small house and an outdoor open carport which are used to complete the entire process: receiving food deliveries storing produce and dry goods making food boxes to distribute and welcoming and checking in clients on the day of distribution lack of space was preventing the food pantry from achieving their goal of providing their clients with not only groceries for their families but also a welcoming area to create relationships with others in their community the projects goal was to create a new facility layout to better utilize the space available
673,how did you solve the problem our team proposed that the carport be enclosed and determined where each storage location should be placed in relation to other departments within the facility this allows them to increase their food storage space decrease the distance volunteers must transport the goods and reduce the number of material transfers the new layout we proposed reduced the distance that volunteers traveled by 5589% reduced material handling by 3125% and increased storage space by 2547%
674,why does this project matter due to the layout of their facilities the food pantry was running out of room a lack of space limits the number of people they can help we were able to visit the food pantry many times and experience the distribution of goods to the clients our sponsor dreamed of giving the clients a welcoming space to spend the day our solution increased the pantrys food storage space and created a community gathering space what did you learn from this project i was inspired by our sponsor she told us to be dreamers and encouraged us to run with any ideas that we had not shutting off any possibilities i love this message because its not one that you often receive in an engineering project with budget and space constraints wherever i take my engineering knowledge i want to truly enjoy what i am doing every day for me i know that i will not be happy if my days consist of the same repetitive tasks that have little impact or recognition through this project i saw that industrial engineering could be applied to a meaningful project and change lives
675,aerospace engineering students traveled to houston in october to experience one of the top air shows in the united states in its category the commemorative air force (caf) wings over houston airshow more than 90 000 festival-goers from around the globe attend the annual airshow to see a showcase of vintage world war ii aircraft meet aviation legends and watch aerial performances this year brady allen and jacob collins undergraduate students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university attended the airshow as recipients of the 2019 caf wings over houston scholarship
676,allen interned with caf the summer of his freshman year where he provided maintenance on world war ii aircrafts and shared their history with visitors during tours his internship experience is what inspired his decision to pursue a future career in naval aviation now a junior allen is an undergraduate researcher in the multifunctional materials and aerospace structures optimization (m2aestro) lab where he has studied such diverse topics as morphing radiators for nasa and solid-liquid metal composite actuators for the air force office of scientific research
677,collins a senior has conducted research for both the national aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory and the texas a&m cybersecurity center he has also served as the commanding officer in his unit in the corps of cadets and as a member of the ross volunteer company outside of texas a&m collins recently spent time at nasas johnson space center working with northrup grumman he has already accepted an offer to return following graduation to continue his work in mission systems eventually collins plan is to pursue his aspirations of being a pilot
678,these are very impressive students and we are proud to be able to help them with their future endeavors said debby rihn-harvey chair of the wings over houston scholarship committee allen and collins will each receive $5 000 for their demonstrated academic potential leadership and extracurricular involvement
679,rg miller engineers inc has established the richard g miller '55 memorial scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil and environmental engineering from texas a&m university jack miller 81 president of rg miller engineers inc said he hopes this scholarship will aid students in their journey to a career in engineering our firms first choice is to hire from texas a&m miller said the quality of engineers from a&m is unmatched and with this endowment we hope to support the universitys initiative to graduate these students miller credits the college of engineering for teaching him what he needed to be successful in his career i grew up working for my fathers business but it wasnt until i was exposed to the engineering curriculum that i was able to make the connections between real-world applications and the science behind it miller said miller said texas a&m has been a great resource for their firm and they wanted to give back by being a resource to the college of engineering i had been approached by the development office over the years and had been planning on funding an endowment for quite some time miller said i was convinced to pull the trigger and the time was right to establish a scholarship to honor my father a texas a&m college of engineering graduate and founder of the firm
680,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact email true brown director of development
681,artificial intelligence (ai) the branch of computer science that emphasizes the development of machines thinking and working like humans is becoming more and more popular it is used extensively in many businesses – medicine education law manufacturing – to name a few researchers at texas a&m university are working to bring ai to one of the largest industries in the world construction the construction industry is booming and is one of the largest global industries employing 7% of the world's workforce and contributing more than $10 trillion annually to the world economy however it has the lowest productivity of any manufacturing industry due to labor-intensive jobs that have significant safety risks and rising costs of materials to help change this dr zachary grasley and his colleagues dr amir behzadan dr zj pei dr korok ray and dr nick duffield have received a planning grant from the national science foundation (nsf) to prepare for bringing ai to the construction industry grasley director of the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) and professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m said new ai technologies have the potential to address many of the major challenges the construction industry faces leading to a positive economic and social impact he feels ai is poised to revolutionize the construction industry similarly to how the assembly line revolutionized the automobile industry leading to significant cost reductions higher productivity and safer better-paying jobs there's a lot of opportunity there not only in terms of safety and in automating difficult tasks said grasley artificial intelligence can significantly help as we develop new materials and new methods of construction like 3d printing of structures for instance it opens the door to the optimization of both materials and structural design in a way that we've never done before the planning grants for engineering research centers competition is the first step to bringing ai to the construction industry the competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the nsf engineering research center (erc) program and is intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent center-scale engineering research grasleys $100 000 year-long planning grant will support the development of a research roadmap for implementing ai into the construction industry and the formation of a multi-institutional team working toward an erc ercs are one of the largest grants that the national science foundation gives out to support game-changing large-scale initiatives that transform society in some way shape or form said grasley the erc grants are so large in scope that in order to write a competitive proposal for them you really have to start well in advance building a team defining the theme road-mapping and identifying the right industrial and academic partners grasley said with the grant they will create a 10-member advisory board of experts in ai construction industry leaders and government representatives to identify and define their objectives they will also hold a symposium on ai in construction to develop the roadmap to achieve the erc vision and identify the academic partners finally they will have a writing workshop to produce an outline of the proposal with the grant and other advantages they currently have at texas a&m grasley feels they have a good chance of receiving the erc from the nsf the cir is a brand-new state-of-the-art center and because of the size of our engineering program the fact that we have the texas a&m transportation institute and such a large construction science department and civil engineering department we have the breadth of expertise particularly on the construction side that no place else has across the country grasley said we also have great connections to the construction industry and its part of the cir mission to develop technologies that will actually go out and be used and impact society through transforming the construction industry
682,shell has donated $6 million to the texas a&m engineering program the gift will be divided among the texas a&m engineering experiment stations mary kay oconnor process safety center the shell engineering foundations laboratory and the shell transport phenomena laboratory we are grateful for shells generosity and support of our engineering program at texas a&m said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering shells investment in education is improving lives and empowering students to fulfill their dreams of becoming aggie engineers this was a great opportunity for shell to embed safety principles such as life-saving rules and process safety fundamentals into students minds shells deep value for people our environment and our energy future really align with texas a&ms college of engineering and the mary kay oconnor program my belief moving forward is that we will continue to partner to make our energy future better said lori fremin general manager for surface engineering at shell the college of engineering will allocate funding for undergraduate research opportunities graduate fellowships and future development of process safety programs the mary kay oconnor process safety center develops safer processes equipment procedures and management strategies to minimize losses within the processing industry researchers conduct studies pertaining to general issues of process safety as well as specific interests of the centers consortium members the rest of the gift will go to name two important student laboratories within the zachry engineering education complex: the engineering foundations laboratory and the transport phenomena laboratory the engineering foundations laboratory is the largest student-serving experiential lab in the college of engineering it is a 35 000-square-foot experiential learning environment where the fundamental concepts of physics and engineering are taught every engineering student takes two courses in the engineering foundations laboratory the transport phenomena laboratory is a 2 000-square-foot laboratory designed to support the teaching of mass transport thermal transport and thermal property measurement techniques across multiple disciplines in engineering shell is an international energy company with around 84 000 employees in more than 70 countries in the united states shell is a leading oil and natural gas producer a recognized pioneer in deep-water exploration and production technology for the gulf of mexico and one of americas leading manufacturers and marketers of natural gas petrochemicals and a range of oil products including fuels and lubricants for home transport and industrial use
683,"meribeth and richard t wilkinson 82 have established the meribeth and richard t wilkinson 82 scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in industrial and systems engineering from texas a&m university the scholarship is designed to further their commitment to developing industrial engineering leaders of the future the wilkinsons have established a legacy of support to the university by funding a diamond endowment through the association of former students this time we wanted to be more specific keeping true to my journey with texas a&m and the industrial and systems engineering department rick said ricks career as an aggie industrial engineer has led us all over the country and world but aggieland has always been home meribeth said we have four children and our last child will graduate from texas a&m in may of 2020 as we dwindled down to just one left in college we started thinking about how we wanted to continue supporting young adults as they complete their education whether working for consulting firms large corporations or serving on industry boards or academic advisory councils i have always been an ardent aggie ambassador doing the best for my company my industry and developing future industrial engineers rick said as a scholarship recipient himself rick understands the impact a scholarship can have on a students ability to attend and graduate with a degree from texas a&m the wilkinsons view their endowment establishment as a way to give back to their aggie family and pay it forward to future aggie industrial and system engineers our scholarship is for an industrial and systems engineering sophomore junior or senior with a 30 gpa or higher "" they said ""we want to encourage and provide support for future industrial and systems engineering leaders"
684,the department of industrial and systems engineering is celebrating its 80th anniversary in the coming years the department's goal for this celebration is to have 80 scholarships for the 80 years the department has existed endowments supporting the students in the department have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the department's goal or would like more information on how you can give please email john bernheim senior director of development
685,taylor butler 19 has established the leasa 86 and kurt 86 butler scholarship in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering to be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering at texas a&m university butler established the scholarship in honor of her parents and fellow texas a&m petroleum engineering graduates leasa and kurt both class of 1986 i was fortunate to receive scholarships during my time as a student and knew i wanted to give back to the university through a scholarship endowment butler said i chose to name it after my parents in honor of their 25th wedding anniversary and the influence they have in my life watching her parents work in the petroleum engineering discipline sparked her interest in the field but it was the technology and problem solving that made her fall in love with it i remember walking through texas a&ms campus with my parents on a petroleum engineering department tour while i was still in high school butler said seeing the labs and walking through the buildings my parents attended class in got me excited about studying petroleum engineering at texas a&m butler was involved in the society of petroleum engineers where she chaired an annual clay shoot fundraiser served as the president of the petroleum engineering honors society and vice president of the petroleum ventures program while attending texas a&m the department provided me with opportunities through my involvement in organizations and participation in internships to prepare me well for what im doing now in industry butler said
686,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact thadd hargett senior director of development
687,kenneth m 79 and susan m 81 fulk have established the kenneth m fulk 79 and susan m fulk 81 architectural engineering scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in architectural engineering at texas a&m university the architectural engineering program at texas a&m is relatively new to the historic university ken fulk a graduate of the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and principal engineer at reed wells benson & co consultant engineers was invited by his good friend and mentor damon gowan to serve on the committee responsible for the creation of the architectural engineering degree plan damon approached me in late 2009 at the time there were two architectural engineering programs in the state but neither of them placed an emphasis on mechanical and electrical building systems design ken said our express purpose as a committee was to create a degree plan that met the needs of the industry and offered students who wished to pursue a career in the industry a viable option in state under the leadership of dr david claridge and dr morad atif the implementation of the committees recommendations was successful committee members offered their support to ensure its continued success damon established an excellence fund for the department which provided faculty with flexibility in how the funds were used ken said he and others involved in the formation of the program had a desire to help others in the industry and followed suit with similar donations after losing his friend and mentor to a battle with cancer fulk saw a need in the department and sought to meet it in honor of damon he planted the seed ken said i felt someone needed to carry the flag to keep the momentum up and in an effort to set an example i wanted to make this gift to help students fund their education at a&m while planting a new seed for others in the industry in the hopes they might follow suit susan fulk college of agriculture and life sciences graduate and performing arts secretary at allen isd fully supports the creation of the architectural engineering program ken and fellow industry leaders saw the need for the creation of an architectural engineering degree at texas a&m in order for the future of the discipline to be successful and innovative susan said for any new program to be successful there must be financial input and with this scholarship endowment we hope to both generate interest in the program and facilitate student learning by alleviating some of the cost associated with attending texas a&m susan understands the value of an education from texas a&m and desires for students to have every opportunity to attend should they choose an education from texas a&m carries a lot of weight in the business world susan said graduates from a&m are looked upon as well prepared forward thinkers achievers and innovators these are people others want on their team
688,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
689,"texas a&m university researcher dr alan palazzolo is leading a us department of energy-funded project that could result in lower greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs the project which includes collaborations with researchers from sandia national lab and electron energy corporation seeks to develop bearings for a new kind of turbine that relies on supercritical carbon dioxide (sco2) rather than steam ""bearings are an enabling technology for sco2 power turbines and their extreme environment operating conditions will require a high level of innovation and sophisticated modelling "" said palazzolo james j cain professor i in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering supercritical carbon dioxide is carbon dioxide held at a high temperature and pressure which when used in turbines could provide greater power and efficiency compared to modern steam turbines this advance would be particularly useful in the case of ships currently using steam turbines – fueled by oil coal or nuclear power – for propulsion in this supercritical carbon dioxide-powered turbine the bearings in development will allow for a higher speed of operation and greater efficiency palazzolo said he is excited to be part of a project using cutting-edge technologies with such valuable potential outcomes ""the prospect of reducing fossil fuel consumption and emissions is a strong team motivator "" he said the project is a continuation of palazzolo's ongoing bearing research he will be assisted by mechanical engineering masters student marshall bielefeld phd student robert lipham technician tom thomas and contractor randy tucker of otbog energy the project began september 2019 and is slated to last two years"
690,the doctoral program landscape across the country is increasingly competitive with top candidates receiving multi-year high-salary offers signing bonuses and travel funds from multiple highly ranked programs the national excellence fellows program (nefp) was created within the department to help attract these high-achieving students jim tronolone is a first-year phd student in dr abhishek jains lab working on organ-on-a-chip devices specifically researching type 1 diabetes treatment tronolone said he is interested in working to vascularize islets (help the formation of new blood vessels) which can be transplanted as a diabetes treatment the motivation is to improve islet survival following implantation currently islet replacement therapy has low success because the islets die before new vasculature transporting oxygen and nutrients can form tronolone said my project involves trying to vascularize islets on a chip and analyze their exocrine functions and well eventually move on to adapting the model so that we can 3d print implantable grafts tronolone was finishing his masters at george washington university when jains name came up in class jain had reached out to a colleague looking for prospective phd students tronolone had come across jains name before ive been doing organ-on-a-chip research since last year my previous lab was another organ-on-a-chip lab and just from doing work there i stumbled upon his research tronolone said the nefp is designed for students pursuing their phd in biomedical engineering specifically those intending to pursue translational research that impacts the biomedical engineering industry jain assistant professor said through the nefp faculty have additional incentives to actively recruit prospective students who would otherwise be going to the top five schools in the country it encourages faculty members to get engaged with some of these brightest students and advocate their work jain said [jim and i] were constantly in touch and he was very well aware of the work that we do he was very excited to be a part of our lab and i was very excited to have him participants receive a $38 000 annual stipend a $17 000 cost-of-education allowance an invitation to special networking opportunities with industry and academic partners and the opportunity to complete internships with industry or national labs or complete training programs on related careers in academia another goal of the program is for faculty and students to work together to help the student leverage the nefp to also apply for external fellowships tronolone was recently announced as a recipient of the national science foundations (nsf) graduate research fellowship program (grfp) the national excellence fellows program was developed with the intention to attract top graduate student prospects those with extensive research experience and outstanding potential as leaders with a rare opportunity to focus on translational work said dr michael mcshane department head and originator of the nefp concept this is a very different emphasis than traditional fellowship programs (nsf hertz etc) and is more aligned with our departmental goals still we have had students win both nefp and nsf grfp awards they are just so impressively prepared that they are able to bridge the fundamental and applied research the department expects to offer two or three nefp awards per year
691,dr guofei gu professor and lynn 84 and bill crane 83 faculty fellow in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named a fellow of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) for his contributions to malware detection and security of next-generation networks ieee fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement the ieee grade of fellow is conferred by the ieee board of directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the ieee fields of interest less than 01% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation gu is also the director of the success (secure communication and computer systems) lab at texas a&m where he and his students are involved in cutting-edge network and system security research he received his doctorate in computer science from the college of computing at georgia institute of technology his research interests include internet malware detection and defense software-defined programmable security (eg software-defined networking/network functions virtualization) mobile and internet of things security artificial intelligence security and intrusion/anomaly detection gu is a recipient of the national science foundation (nsf) career award (2010) air force office of scientific research young investigator award (2013) ieee symposium on security and privacy (s&p) best student paper award (2010) international conference on distributed computing systems best paper award (2015) texas a&m dean of engineering excellence award presidential impact fellow (2019) texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) faculty fellow tees research impact award and google faculty research award he is an active member of the security research community and has pioneered several new research directions such as botnet detection/defense and software-defined networking security gu has served on the program committees of top-tier security conferences such as ieee s&p association for computing machinery (acm) conference on computer and communications security usenix security and network and distributed system security symposium among many others he is a distinguished member of the acm an associate editor for the ieees journal transactions on information forensics and security and the steering committee co-chair for the international conference on security and privacy in communication networks he recently co-chaired the 2018 nsf programmable system security in a software defined world workshop the ieee is the worlds leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity through its more than 400 000 members in 160 countries the association is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering electric power and consumer electronics
692,dr anthony mcdonald assistant professor in industrial and systems engineering along with nilesh ade chemical engineering graduate student and dr camille peres associate professor in the school of public health received the 2019 human factors prize from the human factors and ergonomics society at their annual meeting in october their article using human factors and machine learning to design procedures was selected as the prize winner the article illustrates how machine learning can be used to design and optimize the steps in a process – procedure content – in order to improve procedure performance in the oil and gas extraction industry the findings of the research could be used to generate advanced guidelines that will ultimately lead to safer operations in high-risk industries the prize is awarded each year during the annual meeting to recognize excellence in human factors and ergonomics research researchers submit papers on a specific topic which is selected by the editor-in-chief and board of referees each year the 2019 topic was artificial intelligence in human-machine interaction as part of the prize their paper will soon be published in the societys journal human factors
693,four electrical engineering seniors put their skills to the test by teaming up with a biomedical engineering professor to design a wearable blood pressure device for their senior capstone project eden habtegebrial austin mitchell alexander ngo and ross raybon were tasked with developing a device that could constantly monitor blood pressure overnight and deliver the results to an app for health care tracking the idea was developed out of dr roozbeh jafaris lab in biomedical engineering but the students were able to bring in electrical knowledge to help figure out a way to have the controller in the device be small enough to wear and also keep the power needed as low as possible since none of us had done anything quite like this before most of the process was a lot of research online trial and error and asking questions to other people in the lab raybon said we all had to really learn a lot of technical and hands-on skills to complete this project that we hadnt learned or really used in labs and classes before
694,raybon said the team members were drawn to work on an interdisciplinary project because of the impact biomedical engineering can have on many people the biomedical work done in dr jafaris lab requires a lot of electrical engineering knowledge he said its really neat being able to use our electrical knowledge and also learn some new things related to biology and anatomy the four students graduated in december and all have plans lined up raybon will work for lockheed martin as a test engineering associate habtegebrial will be an engineer at automation company abb ngo is headed to california to work in electronics engineering for lockheed martin and mitchell is also headed to the west coast to work as an account development representative at arrow in seattle washington
695,a team of students from texas a&m university placed 10th in the nation out of 108 teams at the nov 16 department of energy (doe) cyberforce competition™ which is a cyber workforce development competition that focuses on the defensive/hardening nature of energy cyber infrastructure the doe partnered with current national laboratory staff that has successfully hosted four successful cyber defense competitions to exercise interactive scenario-based events to create this competition the national labs that hosted were argonne national laboratory brookhaven national laboratory idaho national laboratory lawrence berkeley national laboratory lawrence livermore national laboratory national energy technology laboratory national renewable energy laboratory oak ridge national laboratory pacific northwest national laboratory and sandia national laboratory which is the location at which the texas a&m team participated
696,the competition features realistic components such as a cyber-physical infrastructure lifelike anomalies and constraints and actual users of the systems and is structured with four teams that have different objectives and one panel the blue team interacts with the green team to ensure proper it support is administered as well as provides a creativity pitch to the chief information security officer panel; the green team acts as users and/or operators of the energy infrastructure by testing the usability and availability of the blue teams systems; the white team usually national laboratory personnel are the it administrators and architects of the competition; the red team actively attacks the blue team's infrastructure in order to disrupt the availability and usability of the system; and the ciso panel allows blue team members to pitch their level of creativity and innovation in their defense strategy the texas a&m team was the only team at their location to keep the red team from entering into their system
697,the students competing on the team were members of the texas a&m cybersecurity club and included junior braxton williams from the college of education and human development; senior patrick wlazlo from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution; senior philip smith from the department of electrical and computer engineering; junior ryan jones and senior nicholas march from the department of computer science and engineering; and cybersecurity club president john zenick from the mays business school dr kate davis assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering served as the teams coach the texas a&m cybersecurity center which sponsored the cybersecurity club in this competition seeks to advance the collective cybersecurity knowledge capabilities and practices doing so through groundbreaking research novel and innovative cybersecurity education and mutually beneficial academic governmental and commercial partnerships
698,"dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computing science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named a fellow of the association for computing machinery (acm) for her contributions to founding and advancing the field of computing for disasters and robotics murphy has deployed ground aerial and marine robots to nearly 30 disasters in five countries starting with the 9/11 world trade center collapse and including hurricanes katrina and harvey the fukushima daiichi nuclear accident and the kilauea volcanic eruption she has documented the science behind the robots and the need for artificial intelligence and human-robot teaming in more than 150 articles and an award-winning book disaster robotics founded the institute of electrical and electronics engineers international symposium on safety security and rescue robotics and has created training classes for responders in 2014 she was given the acm eugene l lawler humanitarian award for the societal impact of her work acm fellow is the most prestigious member grade in the organization it recognizes the top 1% of members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to the acm and the larger computing community ""computing technology has had a tremendous impact in shaping how we live and work today said cherri m pancake president of the acm all of the technologies that directly or indirectly influence us are the result of countless hours of collaborative and/or individual work as well as creative inspiration and at times informed risk-taking each year we look forward to welcoming some of the most outstanding individuals as fellows the acm fellows program is a cornerstone of our overall recognition effort in highlighting the accomplishments of the acm fellows we hope to give credit where it is due while also educating the public about the extraordinary array of areas in which computing professionals work"" the acm will formally recognize its 2019 fellows at the annual awards banquet in san francisco california on june 20 view a full list of the 2019 acm fellows"
699,a team of students from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university recently participated in the international collegiate programming contest (icpc) south central usa regional competition at baylor university in waco texas and qualified to advance to the north american championship round the south central usa region consists of texas oklahoma and louisiana this year 60 teams from 26 universities participated the team called the unordered cartographers was one of four teams that represented texas a&m and it includes julia graham (senior) tanner hoke (senior) and nathan mandell (sophomore) dr john keyser professor and associate department head of academics serves as a coach for the students with more than 3 000 schools from 111 countries participating in it each year icpc is the largest and most prestigious programming competition in the world its origins can be traced back to a small competition that was held at texas a&m in 1970 by members of the alpha chapter of the upsilon phi epsilon computer science honor society during the contest the teams were tasked with writing programs to solve as many problems sets as they could within five hours on a shared computer and were then ranked based on that time one team from each of the top four schools in the region advanced to the national round icpc is an incredible opportunity to develop not only ones individual capacity to solve problems and think critically but also ones ability to do so under pressure and in a team environment said hoke qualifying to compete in the national contest is exciting and im most looking forward to meeting other students from across north america the unordered cartographers will be among 55 other university teams that will compete in the national round which will be held at the georgia institute of technology near the end of february the top 18 teams will then go on to compete in the world championship round in moscow russia in june
700,leading a double life as both solids and liquids liquid crystals occupy center stage for creating smaller faster and more efficient technologies even at the level of single particles liquid crystals can bend light and react to external forces like electric fields or physical pushes and pulls and so a tiny quantity of liquid crystals is usually enough to achieve high performance in many applications ranging from monitor screens to solar panels but in order to fully tap into a liquid crystals wondrous properties its constituent particles must be systematically assembled in a new study texas a&m university researchers have discovered that applying a small difference in temperature to a watered-down mixture of a compound called zirconium phosphate initiates its liquid crystallization as zirconium phosphate particles move toward warmer temperatures they start aligning themselves with each other and eventually turn into pure liquid crystals the researchers said ours is the first proof-of-concept study to show that temperature gradient is an effective yet simple tool to assemble high-quality liquid crystals said dr zhengdong cheng professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering also our results indicate that we can move liquid crystals by just varying temperature a property that can potentially be used to transport liquid crystal particles from one place to another thus paving the way for applications beyond those that are commonly associated with liquid crystals today the researchers reported their findings in the october issue of the journal acs nano liquid crystals represent a state of matter that lie somewhere between solids and liquids like molecules in solids that form crystals those in liquid crystals are arranged in a semi-systematic fashion like cars in a partly-full parking lot but liquid crystals are also runny and can assume any shape like liquids furthermore in their liquid crystal avatar materials often show exotic properties for example they split up light beams or change their molecular alignments in response to electric fields but whether or not a material can assume a liquid crystal state depends on the overall shape of their constituent particles substances made up of spherical particles do not form liquid crystals on the other hand materials consisting of particles that are elongated like rods or flat like discs do form liquid crystals cheng and his team were particularly interested in zirconium phosphate because its disc-like particles have the ability to self-assemble into larger flat 2d structures in their liquid crystalline state
701,many particles found in nature like red blood cells nucleosomes and clay particles are disc shaped and under the right circumstances they can self-assemble into liquid crystals said cheng so we used zirconium phosphate as a proxy to investigate if there is a way to experimentally control the liquid crystallization of these particles zirconium phosphate has been shown to assemble into liquid crystals on its own if large enough quantities are added to water but the resulting liquid crystals often have defects and are unstable so cheng and his team came up with an alternative approach cheng had shown previously that applying a temperature difference could make spherical particles assemble into clumps of crystals using the same principle his team investigated if varying temperatures could be used to assemble zirconium phosphate into liquid crystals for their experiments the texas a&m team made a mixture of zirconium phosphate and water and filled it into thin two-inch-long tubes making sure that the quantity of zirconium phosphate was small enough to not trigger automatic liquid crystallization next they applied heat in such a way that the temperature difference between either ends of the tube was around 10 degrees within an hour cheng and his team found that the zirconium phosphate particles in the cooler end of the tube began to creep toward the warmer end triggering liquid crystallization from the tubes warmer end
702,just like water in a boiling pot circulates from the bottom where it is hot to the top of the container where its cold water in our tubes was also circulating from warmer to cooler temperatures said dali huang graduate student in the texas a&m college of engineering and a primary author of the study accordingly the zirconium phosphate particles also moved in the direction of the water flow and arranged themselves into liquid crystals the researchers speculated that the push from the flowing water helps zirconium phosphate particles to position themselves systematically until they form liquid crystals also they found that the liquid crystals created with temperature gradients were less defective than those formed by other methods cheng noted that their findings open new doors for use in a variety of contexts by virtue of their shape disc-shaped particles have a larger surface area compared to their volume said cheng if we think of the next generation of biomedical devices for example we can potentially take advantage of this geometry to load medicinal particles on their flat surfaces and then vary temperature to transport them to target a specific part of the body other contributors to the research include dr abhijeet shinde dali huang mariela saldivar hongfei xu dr minxiang zeng ugochukwu okeibunor dr ling wang carlos mejia sasha george and dr lecheng zhang from the texas a&m department of chemical engineering; and dr padetha tin from the nasa glenn research center ohio this work was supported by nasa
703,imagine a tool that can discover problems on utility lines before outages before power failures spark deadly wildfires or before fears of wildfires prompt massive pre-emptive power outages such as those suffered recently by millions of californians well the tool exists it is available today and it works engineers at texas a&m university have developed the tool a one-of-a kind diagnostic software called distribution fault anticipation (dfa) it is a software that interprets variations in electrical currents on utility circuits caused by deteriorating conditions or equipment it warns utility operators to respond to particular problems before they cause outages and possibly spark fires electric power companies have nothing else like it dfa has been tested successfully by more than a dozen utilities in texas and elsewhere over the past six yearsnow dfa is being tested by two of californias biggest utilities pacific gas & electric (pg&e) and southern california edison (sce) with encouragement from the california public utilities commission (cpuc) the cpuc administered a 2018 state law requiring utilities to submit wildfire mitigation plans texas a&m researchers also are preparing to test dfa at utilities in australia and new zealand dfa uses a sophisticated set of algorithms based on patterns discovered and refined through 15 years of research research that involved monitoring in-service distribution lines at more than a dozen electrical utilities the technology was developed by a texas a&m research team led by dr b don russell distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and carl l benner research professor in the department research support for dfa was provided by the electric power research institute the state of texas and various electric utilities russell and benner likened dfa to the computer-based diagnostic tools found in modern cars ones that warn when fluids are running dry or that an engine part is close to failure utility systems operate today like my 1950s chevy russell said they have some fuses and breakers and things but they really dont have anything diagnostic they dont have that computer under the hood telling them whats about to go wrong electrical power outages are commonly caused by falling trees tearing down lines or failures of devices such as clamps switches conductors and connectors the devices often deteriorate over weeks or months impacting electrical currents in small ways before an actual failure perhaps triggered by high winds dfa continuously monitors current sensors and applies its algorithms to detect and report abnormalities for investigation and repair until now utility companies have had little choice but to wait and react to failures electrical equipment is extremely durable and deterioration of devices is difficult or impossible to see that makes visual inspection and preventive maintenance only marginally helpful utilities have long recognized that something new is needed especially given the nations aging infrastructure dfa answers this need texas a&m engineers developed dfa to help utility companies improve reliability in general but they also saw its potential for preventing wildfires
704,"while russell and benner emphasize that dfa will not detect all utility failures they say it is the only diagnostic tool available to analyze in real time miles of working circuits and identify explicitly what is failingnot only could the dfa technology prevent fires it could give utility companies a tool to reduce the number and size of pre-emptive power outages which now are based on dry conditions and weather forecastspower is being turned off with nothing known to be wrong with a given circuit russell said utilities need a crystal ball something telling them which circuit is going to start a fire tomorrow because it is already unhealthy we are kind of that crystal ballpacific gas & electric is now testing six dfa circuit monitoring devices; southern california edison is testing 60 dfa monitors both utilities are conducting the tests under two-year research contracts with texas a&mcommercial installation for widespread use in california would cost far less than the billions of dollars in recent wildfire damage or the billions in spending being discussed for other types of preventive measuresfor example san francisco based pg&e the states largest utility would need several thousand devices to cover all 106 681 miles of distribution circuit lines a dfa device costs up to $15 000pg&e filed for bankruptcy this past january citing potential liabilities of more than $30 billion stemming from wildfires it estimates it will need another $75 billion or more to comply with a judges maintenance planwidespread use of dfa could lower maintenance costs and prevent future tragediesdfa is a new tool allowing utilities to transform their operating procedures to find and fix problems before catastrophic failures "" russell said utilities operators need real-time situational awareness of the health of their circuits…dfa does that this article originally appeared on the texas a&m university system's news site"
705,dr daniel alge assistant professor at texas a&m university received the montague-center for teaching excellence (cte) scholar award from the university making him the first biomedical engineering faculty member to receive the award i became a professor because i wanted to teach and impact students so i am extremely honored to be named a montague-cte scholar i'm also very humbled alge said every year each college can select one faculty member to receive this award award recipients receive $6 500 to research and develop innovative teaching techniques alge said he enjoys finding ways to enhance his teaching with technology facilities such as the learning studios in the zachry engineering education complex and the upcoming 21st century classroom building are equipped with state-of-the art technology and alge said theyre just the tip of the iceberg i would like to see more development and use of technologies that improve how we deliver and interact with information alge said he is planning to use his award to develop a virtual learning assistant for a biomaterials course which he envisions will provide students with an invaluable tool for self-directed learning it is easy to keep doing things the same way alge said however adopting new technologies or implementing new strategies in the classroom can help faculty become more effective teachers which is something we should all strive for our students also benefit because they receive a high-quality education and are better equipped for their future regardless of where their degree takes them the center for teaching excellence exists to provide leadership and services that contribute to improvement of teaching quality at texas a&m the montague-center for teaching excellence scholars program was initiated in 1991 as a cornerstone effort in this quest for sustained excellence
706,the frank and jean raymond foundation inc have established the frank and jean raymond foundation inc endowed professorship the endowed professorship will support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the director of the craig and galen brown engineering honors program in the college of engineering this fund will support a professor of practice professor of instruction or a tenured track faculty member the raymonds while not former students have been longtime supporters of the university in multiple facets frank attributes their involvement with the university to his business partner of 42 years and friend craig brown craig who received his undergraduate degree from the college of engineering and masters degree from mays business school supports the college of engineering in many ways and he talked to me about opportunities to use my business experience to support mays raymond said the relationship grew from there to where we are today aside from the encouragement of brown raymond said there is an emotional connection to texas a&m that encourages them to be apart of the university on a larger scale it started with going early to football games and walking beside the corps as they marched into kyle field raymond said as a former athlete it got me emotionally committed and perked my interest in learning more about a&m as they continued to learn about both the university and browns involvement raymond jumped at the opportunity to get involved starting with the mays school of business the frank and jean raymond foundation inc currently supports five to seven students in the mays school of business each year every year we come to college station and interview students for our scholarships raymond said it is one of the highlights of the year for us and we enjoy getting to know the students who will one day change the world with the ideas sparked by what theyre learning in the classroom the raymonds realize that college students are often on the forefront of the next great product service of solution and worked with texas a&m university to create the raymond ideas challenge a campus-wide competition that challenges undergraduate and graduate students to submit their ideas through a 45-second video pitch if chosen as a finalist the student will present a three-minute pitch to a panel of eight to 10 judges the top three pitches will be awarded their share of $10 000 to take their idea to the next level the ideas challenge really makes you feel good about the next generation and the positive impact theyll have on our world raymond said after years of supporting the mays business school the raymonds decided to expand their reach to students in the college of engineering through the establishment of a professorship within the craig and galen brown engineering honors program the raymonds commitment to texas a&m is admirable gifting five to seven scholarships a year to students at the university to aid in the funding of their education additionally the raymond family establishes two gifts a year at california state university fullerton for international students frank attended the machine design school at rhode island school of design is the emeritus chairman and co-founder of houston-based bray international inc he has been the founder of two other companies has numerous patents to his credit and over 50 years of experience in the process industry he also serves as an advisory council member for mays business school a board member of the fayetteville chamber music festival and is a director of brown raymond brown (brb) investments
707,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president for development
708,dr anand puppala researches expansive soils and ways to mitigate their distress to built infrastructure and his research solutions concentrate on sustainable materials and practices most recently he has focused on the impact of hurricanes on urban infrastructure with most of these focused on the resilient solutions for strengthening the built infrastructure for these research works the ap florence wiley professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university was recently recognized by the american society of civil engineers (asce) and geo-institute with the 2020 ralph b peck award i met professor ralph peck very early in my faculty career as he was the keynote speaker for a professor training class held in colorado in 2000 i had some interactions with him during that conference and i always remember his friendship and mentoring toward us in particular young faculty members puppala said i am truly humbled and honored to receive this distinguished award and i attribute this success to my faculty advisors and my research team members puppalas research has been instrumental in fundamental advances in expansive soils and unsaturated soil mechanics along with the practical implementation of soil improvement technologies for supporting transportation infrastructure the research he conducts for the national science foundation (nsf) us department of transportation texas department of transportation (txdot) us army corps of engineers tarrant regional water district and other entities helps infrastructure last longer and take on less distress during their usage specifically puppalas recent works with txdot and nsf included the use of drones to monitor the condition of roads embankments rail tracks as well as address infrastructure conditions in the wake of hurricane harvey he is the current chair of the geotechnical engineering section of the transportation research board and a member of the asce technical coordination council the ralph b peck award is presented for outstanding contributions to the geotechnical engineering profession through the publication of a thoughtful carefully researched case history or histories or the publication of recommended practices or design methodologies based on the evaluation of case histories
709,in many of the older buildings across the texas a&m university campus maintenance rooms suffer from lack of security monitoring and flooding during the significant rains and storms that frequent college station throughout the year floods can cause significant equipment damage resulting in monetary loss as well as disruption in educational and administrative activities these issues are currently present in fermier hall and thompson hall home to the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution (etid) these two buildings have a total of 11 such mechanical rooms many of which have experienced flooding and loss in the recent past
710,department head dr reza langari and facilities manager frank cervantez decided that action was required to address the problem and to find a way to better monitor these rooms and be alerted when problems such as flooding or unauthorized entry was detected once this decision was made a plan needed to be developed and implemented to mitigate these issues langari decided to challenge students in the department to design and implement a solution seniors dustin tish and brandon bowen stepped forward to take on the design and development of the maintenance room internet of things project over the summer semester tish is a student in the departments multidisciplinary engineering technology program with an emphasis in mechatronics and bowen is in the electronic systems engineering technology program (eset)
711,working with cervantez the team defined the overall objectives of the project its functional requirements and performance specifications during the initial design phase they decided that implementing an acceptable solution could best be accomplished through the application of internet of things technology both tish and bowen had helped develop the internet of things coursework used in a nation science foundation-funded itest workshop offered by principal investigator dr michael johnson over the last three summers to selected texas middle school math and science teachers they decided to put their newly developed expertise in building internet of things systems to the test by solving the costly problem faced by etid during the project langari took on the role of customer dr ana goulart eset program coordinator agreed to be the technical advisor and cervantez accepted the role of subject matter expert tish was the embedded systems lead while bowen took on the internet of things broker and dashboard software development efforts the team met weekly to provide status update reports and to seek decisions and approval for resource procurement the project resulted in a new embedded system module that uses the universitys wireless network to monitor and publish environmental data from each maintenance room to an internet of things program the dashboard created by the team allows authorized personnel to log into the program and subscribe to the information presented in graphical format in addition if certain environmental parameters such as water or light levels are exceeded the internet of things program informs cervantez about which parameter of which maintenance room is out of tolerance having this information essentially anywhere internet access is available allows cervantez to quickly address the problem and resolve the specific issue before costly damage is realized
712,in august the team delivered the first unit for operational testing during the test phase the system alerted cervantez to a problem allowing him to resolve the issue in a timely manner and avoid costly repairs and disruption of service the team is now in the final delivery of 20 operational units to etid together with the video-based documentation for continued support and servicing of the units as the project wraps up langari has strongly encouraged tish and bowen to seriously consider taking their design to the next level and becoming entrepreneurs
713,it happens in a flashthats how it got its name it quickly rushes through homes vehicles and entire communities leaving behind a devastating path of destruction its among the top weather-related killers in the united states flash floods hit with little lead time or warning but dr nasir gharaibeh and a team of scientists are working to reduce flash flood fatalities and injuries through better mitigation measuresthis project will increase our understanding of why unsafe conditions exist during flash flood events and how to reduce or eliminate these conditions said gharaibeh associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university problems are best solved by correcting their root causes rather than reacting to their symptomswork began in september 2019 with the development of algorithms for searching the web and social media for data on approximately 41 307 flash flood events that have occurred over the past 10 years in the united statesgharaibeh said a primary goal is to enhance public safety by creating the data and framework for disaster mitigation efforts employed by local and state governmental agencies this would include enhancing emergency response and capital improvement planswe are working with community civic groups (nonprofit organizations) in six cities in the balcones escarpment a line of low hills that extends through central texas and is often referred to as the flash flood alley he saidflash flood alley includes the hays county cities of san marcos dripping springs wimberley and kyle and the bexar county cities of san antonio and schertz in urban areas flash flood formation and impacts are affected by land cover and the built environment such as drainage networks streets tunnels and building
714,the study is not limited to urban floods but the flash flooding process is more complex in urban areas and will require a focused approach he said we are excited about this project because it allows us as engineers to help communities mitigate the risks of flash flooding in a holistic way gharaibeh said an interdisciplinary approach is needed for this study for several reasons engineering because of infrastructure and hydrology; social sciences because low-income populations living in poorly protected housing and neighborhoods are most vulnerable to flooding; geography because of the spatial nature of floods; and public health because of the need to understand the medical causes of injury or death from flash floodingthe team working on this research includes co-principal investigators dr fancisco olivera associate professor of civil engineering at texas a&m; dr lei zou assistant professor in the geography department at texas a&m; dr michelle meyer director of the texas a&m hazard reduction and recovery center; and dr garett sansom research assistant professor in the school of public health at the texas a&m university health science centerthis research is funded by a $350 000 grant from the national science foundation researchers estimate the project will take three years to completeread more about this study from the national science foundation
715,the houston gpa midstream association has established two houston gpa midstream association scholarships both annual and endowed to provide scholarships to full-time students pursuing a degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university the houston gpa midstream association is a 501c nonprofit organization committed to serve as a forum for exchanging ideas and information regarding the midstream industry (transportation of oil and gas) and provide opportunities for social interaction with others involved in the industry in the local houston area david street houston gpa midstream scholarship chair said the organization is one of six regional us based chapters associated with the national gpa midstream association with an additional three internationally our organization works to support and promote the use of natural gas as an energy source by being primary advocates for a sustainable midstream industry focused on enhancing the viability of natural gas and natural gas liquids said street providing scholarships to universities whose graduates have historically worked in the midstream industry is essential to bringing students into the energy sector who may at some point enter the midstream business in their career street said the organization has been supporting texas a&m rice university lamar university the university of houston and the university of texas for over 30 years recently adding texas a&m university at kingsville in the last five years in 2002 we established endowments of equal size at each of the initial five universities then in 2016 brought texas a&m kingsville onboard with an endowment as well he said the houston gpa midstream association recently expanded their scholarship offerings in addition to periodic contributions to our endowments we also give out annual scholarships said street this allows the chapter to provide scholarships to students who may not meet the annual and endowment scholarship requirements but deserve a scholarship nonetheless
716,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please email haley jennings director of development
717,one of the most memorable experiences of scott moses undergraduate career at texas a&m university took place on the first day of engr 101 the professor addressed the class with a classic line take a look to your left now look to your right by the end of the year two of the three of you will no longer be an engineering major out of his two neighbors scott was the one that made it through graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering scott said his professors warning wasnt unfounded the academics were demanding but the years i spent at texas a&m were some of the most enjoyable times of my life he said scotts academic tenacity paid off; he now serves as president of oil state industries where he has worked ever since leaving texas a&m after completing his undergraduate degree scott decided to pursue a graduate degree alongside his wife and fellow aggie rene who was studying for her masters degree in education and now serves as the principal of johnson elementary school in the carroll industrial school district as a graduate student scott received grant money from the mechanical engineering department to support his studies and research however halfway through completing his degree an available position opened up at oil state industries and scott left texas a&m before receiving his diploma it bothered me greatly that i never fulfilled the research obligation associated with the grant money i received said scott i decided that once i was able i would pay back the department of mechanical engineering by funding scholarships and fellowships this was what led the couple to endow the rene and scott moses 90 fellowship fund to benefit full-time students pursuing a graduate degree in mechanical engineering from texas a&m scott hopes his gift can help students like himself who would otherwise be unable to complete a graduate degree without financial aid despite their unconventional beginning to philanthropy scott and rene say they are motivated by the success of their scholarship recipients giving back to texas a&m began as a way to pay back money i didnt feel i had earned said scott but after meeting with our scholarship recipients it has become more about the joy rene and i get from sharing some of the blessings weve received in life with some incredibly talented young men and women who we think are destined to accomplish great things in their future
718,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment fellowships encourage collaboration between the faculty students and industry mentors while allowing graduate students to further their education and thus having a greater impact on the industry if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
719,in the perennial clash between man and microbe ultraviolet light has emerged as one of mans powerful tools against many pathogens although ultraviolet light can wipe out several germs the exact mechanisms that orchestrate the radiations damaging action have long been elusive in the september issue of pnas texas a&m university researchers reported that ultraviolet radiation creates holes in the microbes outer protective sheath by dislodging tryptophan a molecule that is an important component of the bacterias outer covering the researchers said that these holes provide gateways for ultraviolet radiation to go into the bacteria and disrupt its dna which then stops the microbes from replicating our study provides the science behind the germicidal action of ultraviolet light said dr peter rentzepis tees eminent professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the national academy of sciences wed like to use this knowledge to develop better ways to monitor bacteria inactivation in various settings including the food industry and health care ultraviolet light is a highly energetic beam of radiation that has been harnessed for a variety of applications ranging from food contamination prevention to infection control although ultraviolet radiation has been used for over five decades to kill bacteria the means by which it enters microorganisms and then accesses their genetic material has not been clear to reach the interior of the bacterium where the dna-containing nucleus is located ultraviolet radiation must pass through an outer layer surrounding the microbe called the cell membrane attached to this membrane are tryptophan molecules although tryptophan is popularly known for its sleep-promoting effects in humans in bacteria tryptophan anchors proteins made within the microbes onto the cell membrane consequently the bacterial outer covering is studded with tryptophan molecules
720,also unlike most other biological molecules tryptophan interacts with ultraviolet light when hit by ultraviolet light tryptophan molecules absorb the radiation and get energized and when they lose this absorbed energy they reemit a much weaker ultraviolet light dubbed fluorescent light rentzepis and his team investigated if these ultraviolet light-tryptophan interactions played a role in killing bacteria for their experiments the texas a&m team looked at the fluorescent light emitted by tryptophan molecules in escherichia coli and bacillus subtilis bacteria after shining a beam of ultraviolet radiation on them as expected they found that at the end of radiation which typically lasted several minutes the fluorescent light emitted by the tryptophan molecules was drastically reduced indicating that the radiation was killing the bacteria however to their surprise this decreased fluorescent light came after an initial increase immediately after the radiation was turned on the surge of the emitted ultraviolet light just after the radiation onset made us suspect that changes happening to tryptophan molecules before they are ultimately destroyed by ultraviolet light may be involved in how radiation gets into the bacteria said rentzepis past studies have shown that when hit by ultraviolet light protein molecules that are normally wound up in complicated shapes unfold and as a result expose tryptophan rentzepis research groups findings suggest that in bacteria ultraviolet light might unfold membrane proteins and detach tryptophan molecules which may then cause the initial increase in the emitted light signal with tryptophan plucked out of the cell membrane the space left behind forms gaping holes for the ultraviolet light to enter and damage dna he said while the general profile of emitted light is similar for different strains of bacteria rentzepis noted that there are subtle differences that are unique to each species and keeping track of these differences might help in identifying and cataloging different species of bacteria rentzepis and his team have also developed and patented the technology for a handheld device that can collect emitted light from bacteria during irradiation bacterial invasion can happen in different contexts from food processing centers to operation theaters he said but we now have both the science and technology to address these real-world problems since we have a grip on the biological basis behind ultraviolet-induced bacteria inactivation and an instrument that can within minutes and in situ determine how many bacteria are dead after radiation other contributors to the research include dr runze li and dinesh dhankhar anushka nagpal and arjun krishnamoorthi from the texas a&m department of department of electrical and computer engineering; dr maria king from texas a&m biological and agricultural engineering; dr jie chen from shanghai jiao tong universitys center for ultrafast science and technology and dr thomas c cesario from university of california at irvines school of medicine this work was supported in part by the welch foundation the air force office of scientific research and the texas a&m engineering experiment station funds
721,the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university installed a new driving simulator to use in research pertaining to driving autonomous vehicles and other vehicle technologies here are the top three things you need to know about the simulator including what types of research is currently being done and future areas of research that will help increase safety on the road including a future with self-driving vehicles
722,1 a one-of-a-kind feature the state-of-the-art simulator features a 270-degree field of vision which provides a realistic driving experience for the user field of vision is the area you can see on each side your peripheral vision while you look straight ahead this is a very rare field of vision for a simulator and there are only a few simulators with this capability in the united states
723,the driving simulator can also be run autonomously allowing researchers to conduct experiments about self-driving vehicles and how users react to these vehicles as self-driving vehicles become more prevalent this simulator will be helpful to researchers working to understand how self-driving vehicles will impact safety and traffic
724,2 current research projects the human factors and machine learning laboratory is using the simulator for research on autonomous vehicles and cyclist safety in partnership with researchers in the department of landscape architecture and department of psychological and brain sciences this research looks at how bias may play a role in cyclist interactions with vehicles realistic driving scenarios were created for the simulator that allowed the researchers to measure the impact of bias on driver and cyclist interactions this work was funded by the t3 grants awarded through the office of the president the human-system interaction laboratory uses the simulator for research on emergency responders specifically law enforcement the simulator will be used to determine the effects of in-vehicle technologies such as laptop computers driver fatigue and vehicle autonomy on the emergency responders performance these results will then be used to develop in-vehicle systems that adapt to emergency responders and training programs that will improve emergency responder safety on the job this work is funded by the north carolina occupational safety and health education and research center
725,3 interdisciplinary teamwork many different types of research can be done on the driving simulator including research on drowsy drivers autonomous vehicles on-road sign evaluation driving education driver behavior and much more the driving simulator is available to researchers interested in these areas of research or others
726,"dr jaime grunlan and his team are helping lead the effort to pursue safer more effective ways to protect flammable objects through the development of flame-retardant surface treatments grunlan the linda & ralph schmidt 68 professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is an international leader in the field of flame-retardant surface treatments and recently published a review in nature reviews materials describing the state of the art in this important field of research the team's goal alongside their peers is to produce surface treatments that serve to be more effective in their fire protection and less damaging to the environment ""many current flame-retardant treatments are ineffective or not effective enough and contain toxic chemistries "" grunlan said ""we and others around the world are seeking to make flame-retardant treatments safer and much more effective at stopping fire"" current research by grunlan's team aims specifically to protect telephone and transmission line poles to prevent forest fires treat textiles for military use and reduce the flammability of a variety of foams and fabrics used in vehicles including planes trains and cars while much progress has been made over the last decade there is still much work to be done ""as flame-retardant regulations are changing around the world and new fire threats are constantly presenting themselves this review of flame-retardant surface treatments is especially timely "" grunlan said through the use of these surface treatments researchers hope to make commonly used flammable materials including polyurethane foam and polyester fabric anti-flammable or self-extinguishing in some cases the treatments can even be used to reduce smoke production ""the field of flame-retardant treatments is seeking to prevent loss of life and property damage by imparting self-extinguishing and anti-flammable behavior to various materials "" grunlan said ""plastics are inherently flammable and are often the cause of spreading fire more rapidly in buildings and transportation appropriate treatments make it much more difficult for materials to ignite and spread the fire"" while surface treatments like those developed by grunlan's team have their benefits over the more commonly used method of mixing in the fire-retardant agent to the materials of interest there are drawbacks that researchers are seeking to address ""durability of these treatments to washing and environmental damage is one key issue along with the need for more effective and environmentally friendly chemistries "" grunlan said ""my research group is working to address both of these challenges and we are at the forefront of the field in this regard"" the nature reviews materials journal publishes reviews by invitation only and seeks out the leaders in a given topic nature reviews materials has quickly established itself as the second-highest impact factor journal in the world among any field of research"
727,solar energy is one of the cleanest renewable energy resources available and it is now being utilized by the power grid in the smart grid the cyber and physical layers are heavily intertwined the cyber layers such as computers networks sensors and controls and the physical layers such as the power transmission lines and transformers work together to generate power more efficiently this collaboration between the different layers is extremely valuable however the presence of cyber layers opens up the grid to potential threats dr le xie and his collaborators dr pr kumar and dr prasad enjeti are addressing this by working on a research project to defend the grid from potential cyberattacks through a real-time check of the actions occurring on the grid
728,there has been an increase of grid intelligence such as advanced sensors and photovoltaic (pv) panels that enhance the impact of solar power on the grid pvs work by generating electric power through solar cells that convert energy from the sun into a flow of electrons this is called the photovoltaic effect the team is working to develop and demonstrate an active defense mechanism of the pv distribution system operation using a dynamic watermarking technique to monitor the cybersecurity the technique involves injecting a probe signal onto the grid to authenticate grid actions the team will test and validate the integrated communication control and computational framework using an existing system the goal of this project is to design and test a scalable robust and online framework that provides much-needed secure monitoring of pv generation in the presence of potential cyberattacks in the distribution grid xie said this project will directly fill the gap between academic research and real industry need because the research team has opportunities to test their proposed defense mechanism in a real-world testbed that has been configured based on a commercial distribution system the team has received a $44 million department of energy grant for this research project the funded project is built upon the research on automatic generation control which has been published in ieee transactions on power systems lie is professor kumar is regents professor distinguished professor and college of engineering chair in computer engineering and enjeti is ti professor iii in analog engineering all in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university doctoral students tong huang jorge ramos and jaewon kim and post-doctoral associate woo hyun ko are also involved in this project alongside their faculty mentors
729,dr mi lu professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and her team received the outstanding achievement award from the 2019 international conference on computational science and computational intelligence (csci) csci 2019 presented the award to the team at the conference held dec 5-7 in las vegas nevada for their research contribution titled dilated fully convolutional neural network for depth estimation from a single image their paper received high scores in all the categories in the peer review csci invites paper submissions from diverse communities including researchers from universities corporations government agencies and standardization bodies accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings by conference publishing services papers are sought that address solutions to problems in all areas of computational science and computational intelligence
730,researchers at texas a&m university have recently developed a more comprehensive mathematical framework that can help engineers at petrochemical plants to not only reduce production costs and increase economic gain but also make these factories safer and more environmentally friendly the researchers said their new algorithm is a one-stop solution that can assist engineers in selecting the most optimal design for chemical processing units within their operating plants the novelty of our algorithm is that it provides a sophisticated decision-making tool that can be used by project engineers to decide between competing designs for their chemical processing units said dr prerna jain who worked in the mary kay oconnor process safety center as a graduate student at texas a&m and is currently an engineer at an oil and gas company our tool integrates data from potential equipment hazards economic data and more importantly complex man-machine interactions to generate a single numerical output this number then points to a design that maximizes profit while still lowering environmental and hazardous impacts an article on the research teams findings was published in october in acs sustainable chemistry and engineering before petroleum-based products are used for everyday purposes like heating homes or powering-up vehicles crude oil passes through a series of processing steps for refinement and packaging however each processing phase can be designed in a variety of ways using different technologies and a variable amount of manpower and so each design may differ vastly in terms of cost safety environmental impact and maintenance to select one design among many possible options engineers often resort to a numerical value called the return on investment this metric in its simplest version indicates the financial benefit or profit resulting from a certain initial monetary investment on a given design however engineers often use more extensive algorithms that include factors such as environmental impact and worker safety to compute return on investment values but jain noted that even these more complex algorithms have largely overlooked social factors such as how often operating procedure manuals at a chemical plant are updated or how frequently equipment maintenance is performed this human element is important to include while computing the return on investment she said because faulty man-equipment interactions often underlie chemical plant disasters like fires and explosions dr mahmoud el-halwagi professor and the bryan research and engineering chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m pointed out that social and safety factors are typically considered after major design decisions regarding the chemical plant have been made at this stage key design components are already finalized and it becomes rather difficult to make substantial design modifications he said to address these deficits jain and her team developed an even more elaborate mathematical framework that could be implemented when designing chemical processing units furthermore their algorithm now included man-machine interactions in the new algorithm they plugged in a quantity called resilience or the ability of a chemical plant to recover from a stressed state just as a rubber band can only be stretched to its elastic limit before it breaks chemical plants if used to their maximum capacity and without safety measures in place can degrade leading to catastrophes said jain by incorporating resilience into our algorithm we wanted to include the complex interactions between man and technology that can affect resilience and by extension the estimation of the return of investment once the algorithm was fully developed the researchers used it to compare different designs of gas compressor systems frequently used in chemical plants in particular they contrasted the value of the return on investment for a compression system existing in a chemical plant with five other hypothetical designs
731,jain and her colleagues found that after taking social factors into account the most promising compressor system design was not the one that was already in the existing plant but the one that the researchers had created jain noted that their observations indicate the feasibility of using their algorithm to evaluate new process design ideas that exist in theory but havent been put to the test in an existing plant there is often a hesitation in the energy industry to invest in a new process design if it hasnt been evaluated yet said jain with our algorithm we now have the ability to brainstorm ideas for new process designs and test them virtually without really needing them to be physically set up and running moreover we can feed the algorithm with numbers corresponding to different social factors pertaining to chemical plants in the process we might stumble upon a new better design that is safer for workers and kinder to the environment other contributors to the research included kariana mareno-sader tenorio from the department of chemical engineering university of cartagena colombia; luis carlos ballestas from ecopetrol sa columbia; and dr m sam mannan from the chemical engineering department and executive director of the mary kay o'connor process safety center at texas a&m this work was supported by funds from the mary kay oconnor process safety center
732,by studying the events that precipitate gas explosions on earth a team of researchers led by dr alexei poludnenko may have uncovered why some stars known as white dwarfs end their life by detonating violently in a supernova explosion although the conditions within these stars are vastly different from those on earth the researchers have shown in the november issue of science that the basic mechanisms that set off detonations in stars are similar to those that trigger terrestrial explosions consequently their findings might help in taking preemptive steps to avert explosion-related accidents and also advance novel propulsion and energy conversion systems here on earth for this study the researchers developed a theory of detonation initiation in gases based on the concept of turbulence simply defined as a chaotic and rapid motion of parcels of air or liquid in an ignited gas turbulence can rapidly mix unburned fuel with hotter products of burning as a consequence the rate of burning and energy release is vastly accelerated turbulence action in these flows is similar to what happens when we add cream to coffee left alone the cream takes a long time to mix with the coffee said poludnenko associate adjunct professor of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and associate professor of mechanical engineering at the university of connecticut but if we stir it with a spoon we can cause turbulence; so the motion of the spoon forces the cream and coffee to move faster greatly accelerating their mixing to investigate if turbulence could be a reason why volatile gases detonate the research team designed an experimental setup consisting of a 15-meter-long channel with a spark plug installed on one end along the length of the chamber they positioned perforated plates at different carefully chosen locations these plates were designed to promote turbulence in a flammable gas mixture after igniting the gas researchers measured the speed of the resulting flame along with the pressure generated by it at different locations along the chamber poludnenko and his team observed that the experimentally-induced turbulence within the chamber caused the flame to become unstable accelerating rapidly and creating shock waves that traveled much faster than the speed of sound as their theory predicted these shock waves grew in strength and sped up the rate of burning even more eventually causing a detonation since their theory described gas detonations well they next investigated if the same theory could also explain stellar explosions that is the detonation of material undergoing nuclear fusion inside white dwarf stars upon simulating the turbulent conditions in the blistering core of these stars poludnenko and his team found that their theory predicted that much like the events leading up to gas explosions turbulence can also cause supersonic shockwaves within the star these waves force the star to chew through its nuclear fuel vigorously triggering a massive detonation that ultimately blows up the star within a few seconds producing an explosion capable of outshining the entire galaxy poludnenko noted that while their findings have numerous applications in cosmology and astrophysics their work also has important applications on earth as well wed like to use our theory to predict why and when explosions on our planet will happen he said if we can accurately calculate the propensity for detonations in industrial settings for example we can fine-tune our safety procedures and hopefully circumvent major catastrophes other contributors to the research include dr jessica chambers and dr kareem ahmed from the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering university of central florida; dr vadim gamezo from the naval research laboratory washington dc; and dr brian taylor from the air force research laboratory florida this work was supported by grants from the energy combustion and non-equilibrium thermodynamics portfolio of the air force office of scientific research in the areas of turbulent combustion and detonation nasa and the alpha foundation for the improvement of mine safety and health
733,before dr qingsheng wang became an associate professor of chemical engineering at the mary kay o'connor process safety center at texas a&m university he was a doctoral student working there wang answered a few questions about his journey from texas a&m and back and how this experience has shaped him into the researcher and mentor he is today q: can you tell us a little bit about what brought you to texas a&m university as a student a: dr f albert cotton brought me to texas a&m university it was 2005 and i had just completed my undergraduate and masters studies in chemistry from zhejiang university in china i wanted to pursue a phd and at that time dr cotton was a distinguished professor in the department of chemistry at texas a&m he was a very famous chemist with his name appearing in a few textbooks i really wanted to join his lab he was studying the chemistry behind metal-metal bonds an area of research i was interested in so i applied to the universitys graduate program in chemistry and i got in q: cotton was part of the chemistry department and you spent the majority of your graduate studies at texas a&m working as a researcher for the mary kay o'connor process safety center in the college of engineering how did you wind up there a: when i was in my second year of graduate school dr cotton passed away and so i was on the lookout for a new lab for my doctoral studies i did speak to many professors in that regard but the conversations i had with dr sam mannan really stood out he was the director of the mary kay o'connor process safety center which is a part of the department of chemical engineering i was fascinated by the kind of research they did at the center particularly on the reaction mechanisms that trigger chemical explosions i could apply a lot of my knowledge in quantum chemistry to study how volatile chemicals break down and eventually explode also i had the opportunity to work on projects that were industry-focused which made sense since most incidents of chemical explosions happen in industries q: are explosions common in chemical industries a: oh yes they happen pretty often and some of them are really big for example in 1947 there was an incident in texas city where ammonium nitrate which is a common fertilizer exploded because it accidentally caught on fire in 2013 in west texas the same chemical exploded and just last year the chemical safety board investigated a few incidents in fact the mary kay oconnor process safety center was established to educate engineers to identify and prevent potential fires and explosions before situations become irreversibly dangerous q: did you continue studying fires and explosions after graduate school a: yes i wanted to remain in academia and do more research on that topic oklahoma state university had an opening in the department of fire protection and safety engineering i applied interviewed and got an offer to join as an assistant professor almost immediately after in my lab i studied mostly fire safety and the combustion dynamics behind fires caused by burning different materials i was very fortunate that my training in chemistry and chemical engineering at texas a&m uniquely positioned me to study this topic q: in 2019 you returned to texas a&m after spending eight and a half years at oklahoma state university what made you come back a: my phd advisor dr mannan i was doing really well at oklahoma state; i was an endowed professor and was supervising several phd and masters students dr mannan called me one day and said that the mary kay o'connor process safety center was expanding and there were a few faculty positions that were available he said that the number of phd students at the center had increased a lot he wanted my help and i wanted to help but i also knew that coming back gave me the opportunity to give back to the institution i learned so much from it was win-win
734,q: what is it like being on the faculty at texas a&m a: my journey has come full circle unlike when i was a student i now see the organization from a different vantage point i hope to bring all my experience in leadership and research to manage the safety engineering academic program i also now collaborate with several senior professors from other departments to enhance my research q: what career advice do you give your students a: i encourage all my students to have an open mind about their career pursuits i chose to be in academia because i really enjoy teaching and research but the wonderful aspect about being at the mary kay o'connor process safety center is that you also get to work on industry-related projects so i highly recommend that my students do at least one internship in industry before they make up their minds about the direction of their careers but if they enjoy research more and want to stay in academia they have my full support as well
735,"some kids grow up knowing they want to go to texas a&m university entrenched in the aggie traditions from an early age andrew salazar '19 is not one of them in fact hes a first-generation college studentin high school the san antonio native realized he wanted to study civil engineering and at one of the best programs in the nation so salazar jumped in with both feethe became part of the student engineers' council the society of professional engineers the american society of civil engineers and even the water polo club team but one of his favorite things was being a zachry department of civil and environmental engineering student ambassadoras an ambassador for the department salazar loved giving tours to prospective students""i find that we can really recruit and inspire some of the smartest and unique high school students not only in texas but around the country as well "" he said ""it also gave me a chance to answer questions i know they have since i had many of the same questions when i was a high school student"""
736,"salazar attended a conference hosted by the student engineers council during the fall of his junior and senior year in high school""i was inspired that college students would care so much about the kids that come after them and want to inspire them to study engineering and attend texas a&m "" he saidsalazar has nothing but love for the civil and environmental engineering department his favorite place to study and socialize is in the dwight look engineering building or dleb as the students call it""this department is a family "" he said ""for me this is the place where i see all my friends and the advisors i could spend the entire day chatting with different people who come through the doors it truly is the home of the civil and environmental engineering department it's the one area we can all meet to eat talk and study""the recent graduate has some advice for future and current civil and environmental engineering students""the best piece of advice i ever received was 'don't be afraid to put your pride to the side '"" he said ""i struggled my freshman year since i was not willing to accept help or tutoring the ones who are open to learning are the ones who grow and succeed most in the end""throughout salazar's undergraduate journey he said the department's mentors and professors helped him along the way""for me it was the advisors specifically ms (kasey) sims and mr (bob) appleton both of their personalities are perfect for developing relationships with students and giving advice during their many open office hours "" he said"
737,"he said dr michael brackin taught him statistics in a way that made new and complicated subjects easier to understand and that dr petros sideris taught one of the hardest classes in concrete""the passion he (sideris) came in with to a 4 pm class was refreshing "" salazar said ""along with the candor he had for teaching us a subject that many people don't enjoy yet challenged us to learn the proper methods and not cut corners""salazar said his most memorable class was urban traffic facilities with dr gene hawkins""he is a professor who is very passionate and knowledgeable on his subject of study "" he said ""almost all of my peers in the class were transportation engineers we bonded a lot over the class since we will be seeing a lot of each other during our professional careers""in february salazar will begin work for pape-dawson engineers in san antonio he will likely start in their transportation/roadway group and explore their traffic group as he decides which area he wants to specialize in for the company"
738,when kaya mariello was 10 years old her mother was diagnosed with cancer which she survived from a young age she witnessed firsthand the profound impact illness can have on a family i began to notice how many people are affected by not only cancer but basic diseases said mariello mariello herself lives with a degenerative eye disease that affects her vision and her husband has hearing loss her experiences with genetic disorders led her to texas a&m university where she studies nuclear engineering with the hopes of studying genetics and cancer research in medical school originally from maine mariello wanted to move south in search of a more advanced engineering education and warmer weather as soon as she came to texas a&m she says she fell in love while she didnt plan on majoring in nuclear engineering she soon realized that the major provided her with everything she needed to be prepared for medical school not only does a bachelors degree in nuclear engineering help medical school applicants stand out with a unique undergraduate education the rigorous math and science-dependent curriculum help prepare students for the complexity of medical school additionally many subsets of nuclear engineering such as radiological health and radiation biology are core components of cancer research i never thought that i was smart enough to study nuclear engineering said mariello but i learned that its a great way to get where i want to be in life
739,in addition to her nuclear engineering major mariello is also pursuing a minor in biomedical sciences and a leadership certificate through to corps of cadets as a member of the corps mariello works with career readiness and scholastics helping prepare cadets for life after college the corps also fostered her interest in other disciplines such as veterinary medicine as she spent a year assisting with reveille texas a&ms beloved mascot in the corps mariello was a member of company e2 as a sophomore where she was an assistant handler to reveille ix we bonded over our mutual love for peanut butter laughed mariello working with the mascot even prompted mariello to consider veterinary school something thats still on her mind for any incoming freshmen considering a degree in nuclear engineering mariello urges students to take a step back and consider the bigger picture i think any freshman pursuing a specific type of engineering should ask themselves what they really want to do with it said mariello what are their goals and are there other ways to reach them than a singular major you might be surprised at what you find
740,utilities can keep the lights on prevent fires with new diagnostic tool interest is spreading across the globe in a new technology developed at texas a&m university to help electric utilities keep the lights on and prevent horrific wildfires its a one-of-a kind hardware and software system called distribution fault anticipation (dfa) it can diagnose problems on utility lines before outages darken neighborhoods before power failures spark wildfires or before fears of wildfires prompt massive preemptive power outages dfa interprets variations in electrical currents on utility circuits caused by the deteriorating equipment it warns utility operators to respond to particular problems before they cause outages and possibly spark fires electric power companies have nothing else like it
741,‘a game changer engineers at texas a&m developed dfa over 20 years of research and testing at more than a dozen utilities across the nation including texas utilities such as pedernales electric cooperative mid-south synergy and bluebonnet electric cooperative dfa is now being tested by two of californias biggest utilities pacific gas & electric and southern california edison where utilities have been linked to some of the most destructive wildfires ever texas a&m researchers also are working on tests with utilities in new zealand the united kingdom and australia the texas a&m research team is led by dr b don russell distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering and research professor carl l benner due to the widespread interest in preventing wildfires russell testified in december before the us senate energy and natural resources committee to explain the technologys advantages afterward sen angus king of maine described dfa as dramatic and important sen catherine cortez masto of nevada called the technology a game changer like your ‘check engine light russell and benner liken dfa to the computer-based diagnostic tools found in modern cars ones that warn when fluids are running dry or that an engine part is close to failure utility systems operate today like my 1950s chevy russell said they have some fuses and breakers and things but they really dont have anything diagnostic they dont have that computer under the hood telling them whats about to go wrong electrical power outages commonly are caused by falling trees that tear down lines or failures of devices such as clamps switches conductors and connectors the devices can deteriorate over weeks or months impacting electrical currents in small ways before actual failures perhaps triggered by high winds dfa continuously monitors currents and applies its algorithms to detect and report abnormalities for investigation and repair until now utility companies have had little choice but to wait and react to failures electrical equipment is durable and deterioration of devices is difficult to see that makes visual inspection and preventive maintenance only marginally helpful utilities representatives have long recognized that something new is needed given the nations aging infrastructure dfa answers this need 4 000 texas wildfires texas a&m engineers developed dfa to help utility companies improve reliability in general but they also saw its potential for preventing some wildfires early research funding came from the electric power research institute a nationwide group of utility companies and other industry stakeholders in recent years the state of texas funded dfa testing in response to wildfires in 2011 more than 4 000 texas wildfires were caused by power lines in 2009 2010 and 2011 the texas a&m forest service found the largest was the deadly bastrop fire in 2011 which started when winds shook some loblolly pine trees into electric lines in the area served by the bluebonnet electric cooperative bluebonnet is among several texas utilities that have kept using dfa after the four-year test period thomas ellis manager of engineering said bluebonnet is expanding its use of dfa beyond areas most prone to wildfires dfa has provided greater insight into our system health ellis said it allows us to be proactive in equipment repair and replacement keeping the lights on not only does dfa improve reliability and help prevent fires it could potentially give california utilities a tool to limit preemptive power outages such as those endured by millions of californians last fall the utilities turned off the lights based only on dry conditions and weather forecasts utilities need a crystal ball something telling them which circuit is going to start a fire tomorrow because it is already unhealthy russell said dfa is kind of a crystal ball
742,dr emily pentzer associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering with a joint appointment in the department of chemistry at texas a&m university has been elected as one of two alternate councilors for the division of polymer chemistry (poly division) of the american chemical society (acs) along with dr phil costanzo professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department at california polytechnic state university pentzer will serve in place of a councilor not being able to fulfill their duties acs is the worlds largest scientific community with a vision to improve peoples lives through the transforming power of chemistry the poly division of acs has members from around the world in academia industry and government with the common goal of supporting polymer education and research to meet the global challenges of today and the future pentzers research uses organic synthesis to access new materials and assemblies as a route to understand structure-property relationships and access properties not possible with current state-of-the-art systems
743,safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industry is challenging to quantify especially with 80% of personnel being third-party contractorsdr ivan damnjanovic associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and the director of engineering project management at texas a&m university has been awarded a $733 631 grant from the gulf research program (grp) of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine to develop quantifiable measurements of safety culture improvementscurrently the safety climate is assessed mostly from the organizational viewpoint; however the industrys reliance on external contractors means team members may not share the same training experiences or even language he said we are looking to develop processes that can help offshore plant managers better understand how project requirements affect safety culture and what could we do to improve itthe grp awarded $725 million in grants for eight projects including damnjanovics focused on strengthening safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industry
744,ready set start your computers!texas a&m university engineers are looking to develop software for industry-standard computers and sensors for race cars at speeds of up to 200 mph the prize is $1 millionthe indy autonomous challenge is a competition among universities that enables self-driving dallara il-15 indy lights formula cars to compete head-to-head at the indianapolis motor speedway (ims) texas a&m was a part of the team that developed the competition and is one of 21 universities to enter the race so farthe texas a&m team led by dr ivan damnjanovic associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and the director of engineering project management is composed of faculty and graduate and undergraduate students
745,the indy autonomous challenge represents a unique opportunity for our faculty and students to get involved in what is arguably the most exciting racing competition in recent years he said this race brings a whole new set of challenges that need to get addressed having a car on a self-drive mode cruising on an interstate highway is one thing… now just imagine formulas racing autonomously at speeds close to 200 miles per hourthe contest involves a progressively difficult five-round sequence that provides teams with experience and resources in the runup to the final challenge the race on oct 23 2021 at the speedway's 205-mile ovalwe are in the process of developing an interdisciplinary team that will be composed of students and faculty from multiple engineering departments and beyondthe competition is sponsored by ims and energy systems network
746,since she was young ocean engineering graduate student lisa bratton has taken to the water as a swimmer – playing multiple sports in her childhood before committing herself to the pool now she is preparing to take on the 2020 olympic trials her olympic dreams started when she tried out for the global competition in 2012 when she was 16 and were rekindled in 2016 with another shot at the olympics her achievements and experience in the water inspire her to continue pushing forward for more i've been through not making it to the olympics and i think that kind of adds to the desire to go bratton said but it also helps me know where i need to be mentally in order to get there so the spring is just going to be managing the mental game having always loved the ocean bratton was introduced to the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university through an undergraduate event – excitedly discovering how it merged her passion for water with her desire to dive into renewable energy i come from a family of civil engineers she said my dad my dad's dad and my mom's dad are all civil engineers so from a very early stage i kind of knew i was going to be an engineer what i have loved about the ocean engineering department throughout my undergrad was how small it is and really getting to know people i think that's our biggest plug to incoming general engineers: you get to have a face here and that's something really special so what can an aspiring ocean engineer take away from competitive swimming drive determination and focus i always strive to do my best she said you dont become a college athlete unless you really want to put in the hours its kind of the same thing with your education: you dont get an engineering degree if you dont put in the hours that said bratton stressed the importance of focus when she is swimming that is her priority when she is in the classroom her education takes the torch when she is taking some time for herself she commits to relaxing and recovering both mentally and physically what i always like to tell everyone is to find the balance she said engineering is obviously crazy especially freshman and sophomore year with all those general credits theres a lot to do but there is time to get it all done just learn to manage your time and once you get that down its smooth sailing
747,from tracking ill cows on a ranch to safely restraining animals after a surgery students from texas a&m university were given 48 hours to develop impactful solutions for the animal kingdom during aggies invent: vetmed the 36th aggies invent kicked off jan 10 and challenged eight teams of students with various academic backgrounds ranging from engineering to animal science to develop solutions to a variety of problems the winning team seabisket developed a tube to safely and effectively deliver colic treating medication to horses the tube is inserted into the horses nose and fed to the stomach a really big challenge was being innovative about the solution because this a pretty simple very common procedure said diego sol aerospace engineering junior a lot of people have looked at trying to make it better and there havent been a whole lot of breakthroughs there were two main innovations the team added to the project a balloon that will read the pressure around the tube to determine if it has entered the trachea or the esophagus and wires at the end of the tube that form an incomplete circuit
748,stomach acid can conduct electricity said peter winsauer biomedical engineering junior once the tube is in the stomach acid it will complete the circuit and turn on an led outside the body that the technician can see teams are encouraged to include members with a variety of backgrounds to enhance the amount of shared knowledge ashley saddler biomedical sciences junior noted that for seabisket it was especially helpful with their prototypes design i would never have thought of the incomplete circuit but (the biomedical sciences members) thought of the balloon it was just a really nice mix of ideas and a constant flow of knowledge from different fields which was really cool saddler said gayle millard a senior technical services veterinarian at boehringer ingelheim animal health based in san antonio was an industry representative and judge she said events like aggies invent not only help students gain educational knowledge about working with people in different disciplines they also have an innovative impact in preparing them for the working world in the real world youre going to work with people that come with all kinds of educational backgrounds and different perspectives and different objectives and you have to work with them millard said
749,for some students like first year vet student chloe bening participating in aggies invent has adjusted their career goals my eventual plan is to be a professor but i really want to learn more about the engineering side of veterinary medicine bening said if i can be a professor (id) teach an elective in the vet school about more ingenuity and engineering in the veterinary field because there are a lot of veterinarians in industry that are not in private practice dr eleanor green dean of the school of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences acted as a judge she said students can take away much from the event from gaining confidence in using their own skills to learning how to respect and leverage the talents of others it also helps people understand that we have a lot of problems in our world and if we get the right people together we can solve them and come up with something pretty quick green said its amazing i think every single one of these projects could be built upon other teams that placed were: second place: hows my cow third place: under pressure honorable mention: padguard the next intensive design experience is invent for the planet where more than 40 student teams across the world will collaborate to address need statements that impact us all the event runs feb 14-16 and registration ends on feb 3
750,dr matt pharr has been awarded national science foundation (nsf) support for his work on developing improved rechargeable batteries pharr an assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was selected for the 2020 nsf faculty early career development (career) award for his work an honor designed to allow promising junior faculty to pursue cutting-edge research while simultaneously advancing excellence in education in addition to supporting pharrs research the award will also provide resources toward developing interactive and immersive augmented and virtual reality-based learning modules with the goal of improving undergraduate and graduate students' understanding of the mechanics of materials in electrochemical systems i am honored to receive this award pharr said the funding will provide key resources to develop my research program at an important stage in my career in particular it will allow me to continue to pursue mechanics of materials-based research in nontraditional areas in this case that of electrochemistry from portable electronics to electric vehicles rechargeable batteries are abundant in daily life with lithium-based batteries often selected as the power source of choice by properly distributing batteries into a connected grid pharr said energy storage from renewable resources - such as wind solar and wave could be enabled coupled with broader integration with electric vehicles the emission of greenhouse gases could be reduced however challenges still remain commercial batteries utilize materials with relatively low energy densities: batteries add substantial weight to vehicles and occupy huge volume in portable electronics but must be recharged every few hours pharr said pharrs research is investigating lithium and sodium metal anodes and key alloys as potential components of next-generation batteries and how to overcome the challenges of safety and durability currently associated with these chemistries while the electrochemistry of lithium and sodium has been studied extensively at the heart of the issue lies a mechanics of materials problem pharr said unstable deformation occurs during operation producing so-called dendrites and damage materials and mechanics-based studies are thus necessary to enable safe and durable operation pharr said the goal of this project is to provide an understanding of the interplay between functional and structural behavior of lithium and sodium anodes combined with materials discovery of alloys these studies will guide appropriate charging conditions applied pressures and material properties that prevent damage with an eye toward enabling safe and durable operation pharr said
751,dr justin wilkerson has received a grant benefiting his research on dynamic cavitation and fracture of soft matter which could have an impact in several areas from emergency first aid to robotics wilkerson an assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was recently one of four researchers awarded a haythornthwaite foundation research initiation grant by the applied mechanics division of the american society of mechanical engineers the objective of wilkersons research is to develop a high-strain rate strength testing capability for cavitation in soft matter hydrogel-like soft materials are used in a broad range of applications from wound dressings to soft robotics to disposable diapers wilkerson said from a scientific perspective they are a fairly interesting class of materials for fundamental studies hydrogel-like soft materials are transparent which enables real-time visualization of cavitation and fracture processes with high-speed optical cameras in structural metals this type of real-time visualization of internal dynamic failure processes can only be achieved by synchrotrons a type of circular particle accelerator wilkerson heads the laboratory for nonequilibrium phenomena which carries out fundamental research on rate-dependent deformation and failure processes in a broad class of materials including lightweight metals metallic glasses aerospace and hypersonic materials geologic materials energetic materials hydrogels and biological tissue the grant program is funded by the haythornthwaite foundation and targets new university faculty engaged in research involving theoretical and applied mechanics
752,two world-renowned researchers both members of the national academy of engineering will be joining the faculty of the texas a&m university college of engineering this spring semester dr ali erdemir joins the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering in january and dr ned thomas will join the department of materials science and engineering in june dr ali erdemir erdemir joins texas a&m as a tees (texas a&m engineering experiment station) eminent professor from argonne national laboratory where he served as a distinguished fellow and senior scientist he received his bachelors degree from istanbul technical university in metallurgical engineering and his masters and doctoral degrees in materials science and engineering from the georgia institute of technology his current research is directed toward the development of novel tribological technologies for a broad range of applications in manufacturing transportation and other energy conversion and utilization systems erdemir has served as president of the international tribology council and the society of tribologists and lubrication engineers he has published more than 300 papers holds 23 us patents and has generated more than 18 000 citations he was elected to the national academy of engineering in 2019 dr ned thomas thomas who will join as a professor and hagler fellow previously served as dean of rice engineering and also as department head of massachusetts institute of technologys department of materials science and engineering he earned a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from the university of massachusetts–amherst and a doctorate in materials science and engineering from cornell university thomas founded mits institute for soldier nanotechnologies in 2002 with support from the us army research office he developed several new materials and pioneered research areas that led to the discovery of important technologies for better soldier protection and revolutionized minimally invasive surgeries he has over 20 patents issued three of which are commercially licensed he was elected to the national academy of engineering in 2009
753,"dr yong-rak kim has come full circle in a way you could even say he's home the newest professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university once walked the building as a graduate studenttexas a&m engineering is one of the best engineering programs in the world and that was the main reason i chose it for my masters and phd degrees now i am back to my education home as a faculty member to teach students and work together with my former teachers and many colleagues he said this is extremely special to me and it is a great opportunity i am honored to be a part of this great programkim joins the transportation and materials division specializing in materials he will contribute research excellence technological innovation and workforce development as a core team member of the departmenti enjoy teaching courses on materials with a primary interest in infrastructure materials and their understanding to design our infrastructure better he said i like to integrate fundamental science (physics mechanics and chemistry) with practical applications for better materials and structures under various challenges i look at teaching as a core integration with my research""kims primary research area is understanding and predicting behavior of materials and structures that are subjected to various loads (mechanical and environmental) and different conditions (ordinary to extreme)""to do this i integrate experimental approaches with computational modeling in multiple length-time scales "" he said ""i believe this way we can make our understanding analysis prediction design and manufacturing of different classes of materials and structures much better than conventional methods""kim said to prepare students for the professional field he will focus on bridging the gap between fundamental understanding and practical applications""i like to train students who will be fully responsible and technically and ethically prepared engineers who can contribute to our society "" he said ""classroom instruction and advising graduate students help my research and new research outcomes and findings enrich my teaching""kim plans to team up with other researchers not only within the department but also with other departments and colleges and the center for infrastructure renewal (cir)""i expect my materials research focusing on fundamental mechanics and science can bring and develop opportunities to collaborate "" he said ""in particular my research background and experience are very well-suited to the mission and vision of the cir"
754,"the 2019 boeing innovation challenge (bic) an ongoing multi-university competition put student teams ingenuity and creativity to the test as they developed new ways to advance the commercial aviation industry six of the 19 student teams that advanced to the next stage of the competition hailed from the texas a&m university college of engineering – representing the largest number of teams coming from a single institution their goal to design solutions to real-world problems faced by the aviation industry inspire industry leaders and present creative ideas to better a field that connects cultures around the world this years competition focused on three main areas of impact: simplifying commercial airplanes creating adaptable and flexible airplane cabins and bringing advances from other industries to commercial aviation i believe that the bic can benefit me in two ways said taha rahman student at the texas a&m engineering academy at blinn-bryan professionally it could open doors for potential internships and allow me to network with boeing and students from other universities nationwide on a much more personal scale representing texas a&m on a national level means the world to me"""
755,the second-round texas a&m teams are time flies reveilles engineers pbetamu wright on pbebc and soar higher time flies included moss misiaszek vic lee and joshua tharakan reveilles engineers consisted of nathanael markle and korbin san miguel team pbetamu included jesus covarrubias kyle jungbluth and jose maldonado making up wright on was ali hasnain khowaja brady allen and mitchell mu pbebc consisted of connor mcmunn and blake neuendorf finally soar higher included taha rahman rushi patel and rami ayari on jan 10 all teams had a chance to pitch their idea in a virtual meeting and the 10 best ideas were selected for the hackathon event from here students were assigned new teams based on their interest in the selected ideas and partnered with other students across the nation to develop solutions in a hackathon-style event from jan 20-22 in mukilteo washington there they will be meeting with boeing leaders to discuss project ideas career aspirations and upcoming internship opportunities at the end of the event they will present their ideas to a panel of boeing judges students who have worked on creating new inventions for the company during this process will be included on any future patent applications as an inventor we were incredibly excited to see so many of our students selected for the boeing innovation challenge said magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships it demonstrates the innovative spirit of our students and their interest to pursue new challenges solve real-world problems and gain valuable skills outside the classroom
756,shivaranjan raghuraman took first place in the doctoral division of the three minute thesis (3mt) finals competition for his presentation on green mechanochemistry a doctoral student in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university raghuraman said it was a great honor to be recognized by the office of graduate and professional studies and texas a&m for his work as a researcher in the exotic area of mechanochemistry presenting my scientific work efficiently has always been a challenge raghuraman said it took a tremendous amount of thought and planning to successfully recast five years of my research into a condensed talk in a more accessible language while still preserving the intricacy of the work the three minute thesis experience taught me the essence of effective communication which is an invaluable asset to an engineer like me raghuraman added that his faculty advisor mechanical engineering assistant professor jonathan felts has provided invaluable support to him in the growth and development of his career dr felts has been a crucial influence in my scientific career he said his penchant to invent novel elegant and sustainable solutions to grand engineering problems defined my attitude towards research he always instilled a sense of creativity freedom and responsibility that motivates me to take the ideas beyond our lab into real lives i am ever grateful for the time effort and other resources he devoted to my success the three minute thesis developed by the university of queensland is a research communication competition designed to challenge students to consolidate their ideas and research discoveries and present them concisely to a nonspecialist audience
757,a recent texas a&m university graduate helped oversee the production of a boeing space capsule that made history last month as the first crew-capable capsule to make a land-based touchdown in the united states mitch carson 17 a graduate of the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering is making the most of the skills he learned while at texas a&m carson who started with boeing by interning as a student now works as a shift engineer helping oversee the production of the companys starliner space capsule at kennedy space center in florida carson took the time to share his thoughts on several topics including what first interested him in mechanical engineering and the historic achievement to which he contributed q: what interested you in mechanical engineering a: growing up i spent a lot of time taking things apart figuring out how they worked and putting them back together again i played with legos built props for plays and even restored a 1976 camaro i knew that i had a knack for all things mechanical but needed more than just intuition to really build things well with that in mind i started seeking a career that would both employ my talents and provide financial stability to the family i hoped to have after researching different fields it became clear that mechanical engineering was the perfect discipline to meet these goals q: how did your time in the mechanical engineering department help prepare you for your career a: it made me tough and gave me the grit i need to persevere through difficult situations it also taught me how to effectively manage my time work productively with a variety of people from diverse backgrounds and create tools to solve mechanical problems
758,q: what opportunities were most impactful during your time as a student a: the mechanical engineering department put an emphasis on learning how to use matlab and c++ i didnt understand why at the time but can now see how useful those skills are already at boeing ive been able to take what ive learned and automate processes that other engineers have been doing manually for years as a result im able to create more robust designs and complete my work much more quickly and correctly than many of my peers q: what do you do in your job now a: many engineering designs look great on paper but turn out to be unviable when it comes time to build them my job is to work with technicians to identify these issues during spacecraft construction modify the design so that it can be built analyze my modifications to make sure that they maintain the spacecrafts design intent and integrity and finally oversee the solutions implementation i really enjoy it; ive gotten to work on several satellites and for the past seven months have been helping build the starliner space capsule q: what excites you most about your work a: i feel like an artist i get to take ideas as they pop into my head and then go build them its really cool getting to see a picture in my head become a physical structure in front of me especially one that gets put on top of a rocket and shot into space q: how does it feel to be a part of this historic achievement a: it feels kind of like how you feel when you beat your record time in a race: proud excited and exhausted q: what advice do you have for current and future students a: first learn to use matlab for more than whats instructed by your professors; its an invaluable tool for engineers and texas a&m gives you a unique opportunity to learn it second do whatever you can to get an internship every year even if its not your dream job the experience will be valuable and help you get the job you want in the future texas a&m does an excellent job with career fairs and giving you resources to find a job/internship; remember though that its up to you to use them effectively i also advise that you pursue job-seeking avenues outside of those offered directly by the school you never know what might end up working out
759,for nearly five decades the department of ocean engineerings center for dredging studies (cds) at texas a&m university has hosted an annual dredging engineering short course (dsc) for professionals across north america and around the world bringing in esteemed lecturers from the dredging industry government and academia to present the latest science and technological advances in the field the five-day course creates a world-class continuing education environment for participants this year 73 participants representing the federal government (us army corps of engineers and the environmental protection agency) consulting firms ports and dredging companies from around the world attended
760,its cool to meet all the people from industry and have such a diverse group of owners engineers and contractors like us coming together said connor tennant a participant from manson construction in jacksonville florida its led to interesting conversations youre learning what everyone does differently and how they approach problems its good to be able to hear from all those voices in the room and thats how people come together to deliver a successful project i feel like its been beneficial to get a wide breadth of the industry and of the different considerations when it comes to dredging projects its been very eye opening said joseph mcmahon a participant from the us army corps of engineers in norfolk virginia topics covered in the dsc included basic dredge laws hydraulic and mechanical dredges dredge pumps and performance characteristics dredging best management practices and claims avoidance beach and dune restoration ecosystem (wetlands) restoration hydrographic surveys and dredge cost estimation the course also included a geotechnical laboratory and two dredging project exercises dr ram mohan an adjunct professor in the department led the course in coordination with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) continuing education office tees edge
761,we have been fortunate to get the best from the industry for our short courses these past years our classes get filled to capacity by around the end of october showing their high demand in the industry said mohan established in 1968 by dr john herbich the cds is currently under the direction of dr robert randall professor emeritus and wh bauer professor emeritus in dredging engineering in addition to research and industrial testing the center's activities include teaching university courses and providing annual seminars and short courses concerning advances in dredging engineering technology over the years more than 2 000 dredge professionals have participated in the dredging short course the 50th dredging engineering short course is scheduled from jan 11-15 2021 at texas a&m the course fee is $1 700 applications and more information will be available on the cds webpage by august 2020
762,"dr xia ""ben"" hu assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering and a lynn ‘84 and bill crane 83 faculty fellow has recently been given a national science foundation (nsf) and amazon joint award under their fairness in artificial intelligence program with this research funding hu will now take deep dives into investigating the causes behind biases in machine learning algorithms and ways to remedy them algorithms based on machine learning have seamlessly permeated into our everyday lives particularly to help us with decision making for example many businesses use artificial intelligence-powered applications to give people employment-related suggestions or to provide product recommendations however overwhelming research now shows that these algorithms are inadvertently discriminatory the bias in machine learning algorithms is quite ubiquitous and people have begun to notice it said hu take for instance employment-oriented services that use machine learning to match users with job opportunities for reasons that are currently not completely known these algorithms recommend stem jobs only to male users this bias he said can hurt both employers who hope to hire the best candidate regardless of their gender and women seeking stem jobs moreover machine learning algorithms specifically those based on a specialized form of artificial intelligence called deep learning are often considered impenetrable black boxes making the task of fixing them extremely hard compounding the problem is that the bias could also be caused by a multitude of other factors including faulty data for training the machine learning algorithm hu noted that his upcoming research will for the first time detect understand and correct the unfairness in deep learning algorithms in a quantitative way he said that once the bias is addressed the newer deep learning algorithms will be more sensitive to features that are most relevant to the decision-making task if we again think of the deep learning algorithms in the context of employment-oriented services we want to develop better algorithms that are insensitive to features such as gender and race and more sensitive to the candidates past experiences or what their expertise is said hu our goal is to reduce the bias in deep learning algorithms so that they are much more valuable to both the user and the service provider the nsf-amazon joint award under their fairness in artificial intelligence program is a highly competitive grant funding just six to nine applicants each year funding size varies between $750 000 up to a maximum of $1 250 000 for periods of up to three years to receive the award grant applications must be interdisciplinary projects that include contributions from various fields including computer science statistics mathematics and information science hu shares the award with dr james caverlee from the department of computer science and engineering dr na zou from the department of industrial and systems engineering and dr chaitanya lakkimsetti from the department of sociology at texas a&m university"
763,since 1876 the keepers of the spirit of aggieland and guardians of its traditions the corps of cadets has fostered bonds among cadets as they live and attend school together at texas a&m university on a hot summer day in aggieland in 1962 squadron 13s newest members had their first encounter with louis w zaeske jr 64 zaeske served as first sergeant and commanding officer of squadron 13 which required him to ensure freshman cadets were welcomed to texas a&m in true corps fashion wayne roesler 66 a member of the squadron 13 freshman class shared his first memory of zaeske we had no idea what to expect and from what we had heard corps life seemed scary so we were prepared for the worst roesler said the first person to greet us was first sergeant louis zaeske and from that moment on we experienced what being an aggie was all about while it was difficult to adjust to life in the corps of cadets roesler said zaeske took on their freshman class of cadets taught them what it meant to be an aggie and turned them into fine young men lou was hard on us but through it all he taught patriotism honor and camaraderie roesler said our group really bonded with lou over the two years we had him as a commanding officer and maintained our connection with him well after we all graduated another member of the freshman class of cadets buzz rogers 66 credited zaeske with instilling values into each of them that they hold dear to this day lous influence was widespread on all members of our fish class and as a result of his leadership direction and unique military training methods we all grew up significantly rogers said rogers pointed to zaeskes leadership for the success of the freshman class many of our class held high ranking positions within the corps of cadets and after graduation yielded a large number of officers in the military from the air force to marines rogers said rogers fostered a deeper relationship with zaeske as they shared a hometown san antonio texas and would share rides home together often he softened a little on our trips home but the respect was always there rogers said through my subsequent years both in military and civilian life after retiring from the air force i can think of no other individual who had a greater impact on my life than lou a third member of the class david decker echoed roeslers and rogers affirmations of zaeske zaeske set the tone for our squadron he hammered into us what it meant to be an aggie by demanding we devote time to the process of being the corps of cadets decker said i thought less of other outfits lacking a real first sergeant like zaeske he made us into aggies and graced us with a vintage fish year
764,honoring zaeske dick burns a graduate of the texas a&m college of engineering and a member of the 1962 freshman class received an invitation from the texas a&m college of engineering to purchase a commemorative brick after looking at the examples of bricks previously purchased burnss immediate thought was to place a brick in honor of fellow engineering graduate and first sergeant of his squadron zaeske i reached out to our little group of ‘fish buddies and asked if they would want to contribute to a brick in memory of lou who passed away in august of 2011 burns said the response of ‘yes count me in was overwhelming and after getting everything in order i ordered the brick after ordering the brick burns worked with college of engineering alumni relations coordinator abby tiemann to coordinate a brick setting ceremony we invited lous wife jo ann their two daughters jeannine koll and cheryl wenck along with their families burns said on sept 14 members of our freshman class of cadets and lous family met at the zachry engineering education complex for the tribute to our first sergeant mentor and friend members of the class of 66 and 1962 freshman class of cadets of squadron 13 who contributed to the brick include: burns terry callaway decker james darden bob henslee buddy jackson john nelson rogers diego sanchez bill wright and roesler
765,louis w zaeske jr zaeske was born dec 17 1941 at randolph air force base in san antonio texas he was the son of louis w zaeske sr and agnes (prihoda) zaeske zaeske traveled throughout the united states as his dad served in the air force a member of the class of 1964 zaeske graduated from texas a&m with a degree in mechanical engineering he was a member of the corps of cadets and a member of the esteemed ross volunteers after graduating from texas a&m he pursued advanced studies at purdue university zaeske married his high school sweetheart jo ann maha (macha) in 1964 they moved to bryan texas where he founded and operated zaeske engineering company for 35 plus years love of country was very important to zaeske in 1989-90 he ran for the texas senate and in 1993 he ran for the us senate he also worked on and contributed to many candidates' campaigns zaeske was always very open direct and honest in his political business and personal affairs zaeske is survived by his wife jo ann of 47 years; his two daughters jeannine koll and husband chris koll of lewisville and cheryl wenck and husband fred wenck of college station; and his grandchildren jennifer koll lauren koll adam wenck fallon wenck and faith wenck
766,if you are interested in purchasing an engraved brick on the engineering walk at the zachry engineering education complex or have questions please contact engineeringbricks@tamuedu
767,reaching for something on the top shelf in the grocery store or brushing one's teeth before bed are tasks many people can do without thinking but doing these same tasks as an upper limb amputee while using a prosthetic device can require more mental effort dr maryam zahabi assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university and her team are studying machine learning algorithms and computational models to provide insight into the mental demand placed on individuals using prosthetics these models will improve the current interface in these prosthetic devices the researchers are studying prosthetics that use an electromyography-based human-machine interface electromyography (emg) is a technique which records the electrical activity in muscles this electrical activity generates signals that trigger the interface which translates them into a unique pattern of commands these commands allow the user to move their prosthetic device unfortunately using such prosthetics can be mentally draining for upper limb amputees – even for accomplishing simple daily tasks like operating a toothbrush there are over 100 000 people with upper limb amputations in the united states zahabi said currently there is very little guidance on which features in emg-based human-machine interfaces are helpful in reducing the cognitive load of patients while performing different tasks
768,testing different interface prototypes through virtual reality and driving simulations will allow researchers to provide guidance to the engineers creating these interfaces this will lead to better prosthetics for amputees and other technological advances using emg-based assistive human-machine interfaces this research is a collaboration between texas a&m north carolina state university and the university of florida and is supported by the national science foundation
769,texas a&m universitys online graduate engineering program was again ranked no 1 in the state of texas according to the 2020 rankings released jan 14 by us news & world report best online graduate engineering programs the program was tied for no 5 in the us among public universities and was no 7 overall the program also was tied for no 4 among public universities and was no 6 overall for best online graduate engineering programs for veterans the college of engineering at texas a&m is known for producing high-quality engineers who are ready to tackle the challenges and needs of now and the future our faculty and staff are experts in their fields and dedicated to student learning and development said dr sunay palsole assistant vice chancellor for remote education our commitment to quality and student engagement is carried through to all our students be it in the physical or digital realm this ranking reflects our efforts to leverage distance learning technologies to expand high-quality educational opportunities and eminence in the field of engineering in texas and the nation the rankings include public and private colleges and universities with degree-granting programs offering online classes needed to complete the degree programs are rated on graduate indebtedness course delivery and academic and career support made available to students remotely the college of engineerings online graduate program currently offers 10 online masters degree options with more planned for the future and a doctoral degree in interdisciplinary engineering
770,four hours 30 minutes and 49 secondsthats how long it took for kentaro iio 19 to finish sixth overall in the 262-mile course at the antarctic ice marathon on dec 13 it was also his master's graduation day at texas a&m universityjust 600 miles from the south pole the temperature was a little bit different than college station iio was one of 56 runners to complete the race in 5-degree temperaturesduring the race i faced the hardest wind i have ever experienced iio said the wind was harsh but the most challenging part was snow terrain because it was slippery it felt as if i was swimming without knowing how to swimkentaro has run several marathons in asia and north america he first heard of the antarctic ice marathon when he was in high school
771,this race had been my teenage dream and it wasnt cheap but i thought i would never do this if i kept saying ‘someday he said the best part was meeting new people as they were all very adventurous great runnersand since the race fell on the day of his graduation he packed his graduation cap and gown but his checked luggage didn't arrive on time it was actually losti didnt have my running gear when we flew to union glacier he said fortunately some other runners let me use their extra gear but the fact that i could not wear my cap and gown on graduation day was mentally challenging too i couldnt do the probably-southernmost aggie ring dunk either but i still had a great time thereiio has run so many races that he has lost count but some stand out more than others in may 2019 he ran in the inaugural chuck norris 5k in college station and came in first crossing the finish line with a fake red beard taped to his face he was the first of more than 5 000 runners from 48 states and seven countries to shake hands with chuck norrisi like running because its simple most of the time he said there is no referee controversy instead running reflects who you are at the time of the race
772,whether it is running or research iio said the fundamentals are essentialfor me winning a race or doing research are both fun but i cannot run fast if i do not care about basic practice he said similarly i cannot do good research without learning basic knowledge and academic integrity that knowledge and academic integrity helped him complete his master of science in the civil engineering transportation program his research bid-based priority signal control in a connected environment: concept was published in june 2019 in the transportation research record: journal of the transportation research boardnow that he has graduated iio is working for a traffic engineering consulting firm in houston but hell also continue runningif i have a chance i want to run on the icy continent again he said i have no words to describe how spectacular the whole experience was
773,recently texas a&m university engineering undergraduate students transformed their inventive projects into competitive content for the 2019 virtual project showcase for a chance to win prizes and present their work the virtual project showcase is a platform that the college of engineering has created to explore the minds of texas a&ms students previously meant for only senior capstone students 2018 was the first year it was opened up to all undergraduate engineering students the virtual project showcase provides the college an opportunity to show industry professionals around the world the amazing engineering solutions developed by students to address real-world problems said magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships and instructional associate professor industries sponsoring senior capstone design projects are able to augment their technical teams while supporting our college goals to prepare our students for successful careers in this platform student teams are able to make a video of their end-of-year project and enter it into the competition where it is judged each video is assessed by three judges who can access videos remotely these three judges determine and rate the projects innovative qualities among other components within the showcase there are two categories that the participants videos are judged capstone and noncapstone projects the winning teams in the capstone category are: the sandbox from the department of mechanical engineering schlumberger anti-clog nozzle from the department of mechanical engineering jetblue from the department of industrial and systems engineering joshua vancura member of the sandbox team said their goal was to develop a large-scale test apparatus that would allow for the controlled experimentation on granular materials while the team had challenges of its own he said the bond he was able to form with his teammates was valuable and they were able to work well with each other to apply their skills
774,vancura next plans to pursue his graduate degree and said that the bonds that he formed with his teammates sponsor and the universitys staff have completed his undergraduate degree in the best way possible the winning videos in the noncapstone category are: a low-cost motion capture system using smartphones to resolve healthcare issues in low-income countries from the aggiee_challenge texas a&m university sounding rocketry team for design competition robomaster robotics standard robots for design competition chiseung lee member of the motion capture system and his team began the project initially as a way to gather and build their skills in communication and apply their engineering backgrounds productively to a place in the real world i learned more about the skills required in engineering by teaching myself or learning as a team lee said because of the projects invaluableness to him lee said he undoubtedly knows that it will help him in the biomedical field in the future this year additional top-placing teams in the industrial and systems engineering electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering departments also received distinction for their projects as a culmination of the projects these teams have worked so hard on for the past semester the students are able to flaunt their creations in this outlet winning teams from the capstone and noncapstone categories received monetary prizes for their project videos ranging from $100-$1 000
775,a conversation with carolyn '05 and john fenn jr '05 former students in the texas a&m university college of engineering carolyn and john fenn jr have established the carolyn '05 and john fenn jr '05 endowed engineering scholarship to support freshman first-generation students in the college of engineering at texas a&m their generous gift made through the texas a&m foundation will help bolster students as they break barriers and become the first in their family to obtain a college degree q what inspired you to give back to texas a&m and the college of engineering a we've continued the tradition of giving back via the association of former students that we started upon graduation however we lived in doha for five years and our up-close experience with texas a&m university at qatar inspired us to give in a more focused way via the texas a&m foundation to support the development of aggie engineers with a focus on global issues after moving home we were able to support dr mark weichold and the global engineering program and have been tremendously impressed with how impactful they are with donor support fortunately we both work for exxonmobil which provides an outstanding matching contribution to educational donations q why did you choose to focus on supporting first-generation freshmen a we recognize that going to college is a huge transition for everyone but it can be especially tough for freshmen who haven't had a voice speaking to that experience in their family anything that we can do to help with that transition and help an aggie make it through that rough first year is great plus bringing in a first-generation student means that we're growing the aggie family q what have you been doing since graduation a we have both worked for exxonmobil since graduation we've had the amazing opportunity to travel to a variety of places (nigeria alaska papua new guinea china australia etc) and have lived overseas in both doha and singapore as well as back home in houston this experience of the benefit of a global perspective further reinforced the criticality of making sure today's aggies are learning how to succeed in a global workplace q how did your experience at texas a&m influence or impact your career a it is impossible to overstate how essential texas a&m was to our careers first off the college of engineering was a rigorous training ground that forced us to learn how to work hard but it also challenged us to grow intellectually and find new creative ways to solve challenges while we both have gone into the commercial side of the oil and gas business and the engineering specifics haven't applied in a while the exercises in learning how to think analytically and dig into the core of an issue apply far more broadly then add the instant connection you have with other members of the aggie family and the fact that the aggie family is huge in houston and the global oil and gas business it's easy to say that the skills we honed at texas a&m put to use through the aggie network have been an invaluable asset to both of our careers
776,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
777,drilling into the earth to tap energy reservoirs is expensive and risky rapid decisions based on accurate information could reduce equipment failure or accidents and quicken the time it takes to drill a well yet current well imaging only gives a limited static picture of the underground environment to drilling operators to improve safety and cut costs the united states department of energy small business innovation research program has awarded a phase i grant to e-spectrum technologies and dr eduardo gildin associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university to create an advanced advisory system that accurately depicts underground conditions in real time during drilling operations
778,e-spectrum has a hardware package that can be installed behind the drill bit the software in it currently uses algorithms provided by gildin to gather and filter data from bit vibrations speed or sound changes and temperature or pressure changes but while the e-spectrum unit can quickly assess underground conditions and refine the data it cannot do much more the system in the well hole is robust but has limited space and memory to store and process all the data collected by the sensors said gildin with our new algorithm it processes the information in the hole and transmits the detection of abnormal bit behavior in real time to the surface for review and storage this way the surface unit can refine the information to see the conditions in the hole from a 360-degree birds eye view and better predict issues so the driller can take action before problems happen
779,historically drilling is not associated with sophisticated technology the harsh environments of geothermal and petroleum reservoirs can be disruptive that is as a drill bit travels underground it chews into challenging rock compositions and encounters high temperature and pressure fluctuations any of which can severely damage delicate electronics but even if a technology is designed to survive such harsh conditions it still must function rapidly without real-time data from the underground environment a drilling operator could force a drill bit into a hard rock formation at higher speeds than what the bit was designed to handle causing a dangerous and costly reaction to solve this problem e-spectrum and gildin have come up with a two-system solution in addition to the system developed by e-spectrum that operates in deep earth where temperatures can reach up to two and a half times the boiling point of water gildin has developed a surface-bound detection system thus the underground unit handles the jarring motions of passing through rock while it filters and wirelessly transmits this information about the drill bit vibrations rotation speed and other measurements to the unit above the ground the dysfunction detection system on the surface uses publicly open software gildin programmed it to sift through the information and look for abnormalities the drilling operators need to know quickly for instance if a bit strongly vibrates while traveling through a particular rock the system knows to warn the operator who will slow the bit speed and reduce the chance of equipment failure at other times the bit could smoothly cut through meaning the speed could be increased since the programming is based on machine learning the surface system records these patterns of vibration and bit behavior and learns from them gildin noted that his software can pinpoint drill bit position and unusual behavior faster and with better accuracy than current systems after the successful completion of phase i e-spectrum and gildin plan to apply for additional funding to move forward with phase ii in february 2020 in phase ii gildin will prepare the surface system not just to monitor what is going on underground but come up with suggestions for the drilling operator should problems arise this updated advisory system will be designed to assist the operator so that decisions are made faster without losing accuracy
780,right now this is an open-loop advisory system telling drillers what is happening what might happen and why said gildin it gives drillers a chance to adjust their plan of attack during drilling manually the closed-loop automated system is next where action can be taken by machines though still guided and approved by human choice it also opens up the door to autonomous drilling in a way that the operation can be done with minimal human intervention gildin said that in the future as companies gather more data the open-source software can be adapted to many other drilling applications no matter what hardware system is in the hole the downhole algorithms and surface system functions can use gathered data and machine learning to improve the drilling process said gildin this can advise in any drilling application whether using drill bits or water jets on the earth or even remotely in space
781,"alyssa walz has always had a passion for service and knew she wanted to serve others in her careerit came down to engineering or pre-veterinary medicine ultimately engineering won out and walz graduated in december from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university with a perfect 40civil engineering can be a very service-oriented field she said we build many necessary projects that people use every day and can easily be taken for granted i enjoy how civil engineering work is all about helping others live a better lifeit was associate professor dr francisco olivera who inspired her during a study abroad in peru not meeting in a traditional classroom setting walz said she got to know olivera differentlyin a short three-week span he showed me how to be a positive role model in and out of the classroom she said he showed that it is not only possible but important to be a leader who can get things done efficiently while also serving others with a heart of humility and compassionwalz also served outside the classroom giving tours of the campus the memorial student center (msc) and the bonfire memorial for msc hospitality and was also active in st marys catholic church ministriesthe bonfire memorial is hands down my favorite place to go on campus she said i find it very peaceful there and it has been a place for reflection in my college career it reminds me of the most important things in lifeimportant things like tradition and family there was never a debate on where walz would go to school she grew up in an aggie familyboth my parents and my two older sisters graduated from a&m so it has always been on my radar she said ""success in my academics cannot be attributed only to my own effort with the support of god my parents siblings professors and friends i was able to succeed i will be forever grateful for the time each of them spent with me to become a better person and leader""but she can take some of the credit for her academic success it takes work to graduate with a 40 one of her favorite classes was the structural design capstone she took her last semesteri enjoyed it because the class combined a lot of what we had learned in previous classes into a single project walz said this was a class where i got to see how all the small details fit together into the bigger pictureas for advice for other civil and environmental engineering students walz said networking is vitalyour network can help you get an interview for a job or help in a class you may be struggling in "" she said ""people in your network can also help you become a better leader by setting the example both good and bad that will help you discover what kind of leader you want to be in the future""as for her future walz will begin a full-time position with exxonmobil in february as a cost engineer"
782,"dr eyad masad will be inducted this spring as a fellow of the american association for the advancement of science (aaas) for his contributions to the field of infrastructure materials and systemshes being recognized for his work on the development of innovative methods for characterization of material microstructure and computational modeling of road performance this work has improved the design of long-lasting and sustainable road infrastructuremasad is the zachry professor in design and construction integration ii in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and professor of mechanical engineering at texas a&m at qatar he also is the executive director of global partnerships in the texas a&m engineering experiment stationi am quite pleased to be selected as a fellow of this prestigious organization masad said it is a privilege to be recognized for making scientific contributions that advance science and its applications""he has active research groups and programs in the united states and in qatar and has published more than 350 technical papers and reports he is a fellow of the american society of civil engineers and has served as associate editor of two major engineering journals through the years he has received several prestigious academic and professional awards in recognition of his professional academic research and administrative contributionshe is the co-author of a book pavement design and materials which is adopted for teaching pavement courses in many universities around the world based on google scholar he has an h-index of 61 and total citations of 12 337 citations as of dec 12 2019 masad has established several research laboratories and chaired/co-chaired many conferences symposia and workshops sponsored by professional organizations all over the world he received his bachelors degree from the university of jordan in 1993 and his masters (1995) and doctoral (1998) degrees from washington state university all in civil engineeringmasad will be recognized during the associations annual meeting in seattle washington in february formed in 1848 aaas is the worlds largest multidisciplinary scientific society with members in more than 91 nations"
783,by incorporating the architecture of city drainage systems and readings from flood gauges into a comprehensive statistical framework researchers at texas a&m university can now accurately predict the evolution of floods in extreme situations like hurricanes with their new approach the researchers said their algorithm could forecast the flow of flood water in almost real-time which can then lead to timelier emergency response and planning not knowing where flood water will flow next is particularly detrimental for first responders who need to gauge the level of flooding for their rescue operations said dr ali mostafavi assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering our new algorithm considers the underground drainage channels to provide an accurate representation of how floods propagate this tool we think can vastly help disaster management because first responders will be able to see which way flood water will flow in real time a description of the researchers algorithm can be found in the december issue of the journal computer-aided civil and infrastructure engineering hurricanes are notorious for wreaking havoc on shorelines toppling trees tearing down power lines and above all causing severe floods conventionally scientists have used physics-based models to predict where water might collect overflow and cause flooding in essence these models capture how physical features of the earths surface and urban landscapes affect the flow of water over the ground while robust at predicting when and where floods will happen under most rainfall conditions mostafavi said these traditional models do not perform as well at predicting floods during incidents of torrential rainfall like hurricane harvey physics-based models offer one perspective on how floods can spread which is extremely useful but the picture they provide is somewhat incomplete he said we wanted to use existing data on how past floods have spread through the drainage channels to develop a model that would be able to predict within a certain level of preciseness how future floods will spread drainage channels are an elaborate network of intertwined channels that meet together at junctions called nodes thus flooding in one channel can directly or indirectly affect other channels and cause floods to spread much like a domino effect
784,to predict which way flood water will flow along drainage channels and cause an inundation mostafavi and his team developed a probability-based model that was fed as one of its inputs the water-level readings on flood gauges these readings were for different time points during two major flooding events in texas hurricane harvey in 2017 and houstons memorial day flood in 2015 once their algorithm was trained on water flow patterns through the drainage network for these heavy rainfall events the researchers tested if their model worked by checking if it could predict the flood patterns that had been observed during houstons tax day flood in 2016 they found that their model achieved an accuracy of 85% in predicting how the flood propagated through the citys drainage system during the tax day flood although the model was validated using a past flood event mostafavi said that the models success suggests that it will also be able to predict how new floods will propagate through the citys drainage networks this insight could help emergency responders take preemptive steps towards evacuations he said noting the caveats of their model mostafavi said that the performance of their algorithm could be compromised if the sensors on flood gauges fail however complementing the predictions coming from physics-based models with those from their teams new algorithm can once again restore the accuracy of flood prediction traditional models and our data-driven models can be used to complement each other to give a more precise picture of where flood water will go next said mostafavi hurricanes of the magnitude of harvey or katrina are generally considered a one-in-a-thousand-year event but they may not be as rare if we consider the changes in global weather patterns because of climate change but we now have more robust tools to weather the storm other contributors to the research include dr shangjia dong and dr hamed farahmand from the texas a&m zachry department of civil and environmental engineering this research is funded by national science foundations rapid project and crisp 20 type 2 project
785,braden beasley is currently pursuing an interdisciplinary engineering degree at texas a&m university that combines architectural engineering and mechanical engineering beasley found this the perfect fit between his passions in energy consumption and thermodynamics from his former mechanical engineering classes as it broadened his perspective into how that interplays with architecture last summer he was able to use these skills and find an internship that truly spoke to him giving him new goals for the upcoming year q: how did you choose your major a: coming into college i knew that i wanted to pursue mechanical engineering i didnt get in initially but i found a way to keep taking mechanical engineering classes after a few classes i realized i didnt find certain aspects interesting but i loved all of the classes that involved energy consumption and thermodynamics when i learned about the architectural engineering mechanical track i thought it was the perfect major for me its one that combines various aspects of mechanical engineering civil engineering and architecture q: what is your career goal a: my career goal is to eventually work for a consulting company in dallas whether its with a financial or an engineering firm i want to be able to work face-to-face with clients and enjoy that social aspect i interned at a mechanical electrical and plumbing firm in dallas this past summer and really enjoyed learning from them and i realized that i might also go work for them after graduation another goal of mine is to acquire my professional engineer license in mechanical engineering
786,q: why did you become a student ambassador for interdisciplinary engineering a: i became an ambassador because i came into the interdisciplinary engineering program looking to get into architectural engineering and now that ive been in it for 1 1/2 years i wouldnt have changed anything about my decision the advisors are so welcoming and willing to help and i jumped at the opportunity to spread the word of this great major by talking to recruiters and firms in texas i have found that a lot of companies have been waiting for texas a&m to establish an architectural engineering program and the demand for them around the state is high i immediately volunteered to have the opportunity to help others through this process and inform engineers about this great major q: what organizations are you involved with a: im currently involved in the big event as part of this years staff i have worked with the big event for the past two years i am also involved in revelation outdoors which is an organization that has bible studies every week for guys who like the outdoors and want to grow in their faith with other guys that have similar interests i am also an avid member of the american society of mechanical engineers and plan on joining the american society of heating refrigerating and air-conditioning engineers this fall q: what advice would you give someone considering interdisciplinary engineering studies a: i would definitely say for students to come in the office and talk to one of us we have had plenty of time and experience in this major and if we cant help with what you are looking for then we can definitely point you in the direction of someone who can its a great opportunity to create your own plan and the advisors are always willing to work with you to get whatever you need because its a small major right now everyone knows each other and are always willing to help anyone interested with questions
787,nuclear engineering graduate dr x george xu 94 was recently awarded the edith h quimby award for lifetime achievement in medical physics the american association of physicists in medicine (aapm) awarded him the prestigious achievement for his renowned work in the fields of radiation dosimetry and safety medical physics is an interdisciplinary field that combines the principles of nuclear physics and engineering to address challenges in medicine this includes things such as radiation treatment and radiology and medical imaging although a lesser-known discipline of nuclear engineering medical physics trains scientists and engineers who work within hospitals and have a direct impact on patient health care throughout his professional career xu has spearheaded research projects involving clinical software tools that have since been used in hospitals throughout the world virtualdose a software tool developed by xu tracks organ doses for patients who have received x-ray ct examinations in 2019 the software was accessed more than 26 million times making it the most widely used software for its purpose currently xu is a faculty member in nuclear engineering at rensselaer polytechnic institute and a holder of the edward e hood chair in engineering since joining rensselaer in 1995 he has received more than $16 million in funding for research grants from agencies such as the national science foundation (nsf) the department of energy and the national institutes of health among his professional recognitions are an nsf career award the professional excellence award from the american nuclear society and the distinguished scientific achievement award from the health physics society the quimby award from the aapm recognizes significant contribution to the clinical practice of medical physics through research education and leadership said xu it reflects the quality and lasting impact of the phd education i received from texas a&m as a graduate student at texas a&m university xu was a member of the health physics society chapter and performed his doctoral research under dr dan reece an expert in monte carlo radiation transport simulation methods and dr john poston former president of the health physics society other faculty members who directly influenced xus interest in health physics also included dr wes bolch and dr milton mclain looking back i feel that i was greatly inspired by these faculty members i had the opportunity to work with during my time at texas a&m said xu my experience as a phd student provided me the technical and mental preparation for a very challenging but equally rewarding job as a faculty member
788,fatigue is something most individuals deal with daily with work culture stress and long hours all contributing while some can still manage their jobs and remain safe when fatigued workers in the offshore oil and gas industry need to be alert and ready for work in order to avoid accidents oil and gas workers have long shifts and high physical and mental demands while working causing them to have greater fatigue than average workers if excessively sleepy or fatigued they are 70% more likely to be involved in industrial accidents than alert well-rested individuals fatigue was identified as a contributing factor in the bp texas city incident of 2005 as some operators had been working 12-hour shifts for as many as 29 consecutive days a team of researchers from texas a&m university are using a wearable device and developing an interactive dashboard tool to help fatigued oil and gas workers avoid accidents and empower their front-line supervisors to make informed decisions about staffing the interactive dashboard uses periodic self-reports of safety culture elements such as the commitment to safety and performance management submitted using digital devices the wearable devices will measure how long workers sleep and how well they sleep this will be measured through total sleep time and sleep efficiency the ration of time spent asleep to time spent in bed but not asleep the wearable device will use different visualization techniques to provide this information to managers through an interactive dashboard called empower for evaluate measure promote offshore worker engagement and readiness offshore workers are often left to self-manage their fatigue – there is a critical need to integrate fatigue monitoring reporting and management practices into an organizations existing safety culture strategies such that stakeholders at all levels are empowered to make safer work choices said dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering the dashboard will allow managers to see how physiologically ready – rested and alert – workers are before their shifts and over the course of their time on the rigs offshore many work 20 consecutive days on the rig it will also display their psychological data which indicates the level of importance the worker places on safety this information will aid managers in their staffing decisions including stopping work for a particular employee and helping to promote a culture of safety in traditionally unsafe workplaces this technology enables remote monitoring of oil and gas workers health readiness and perceived safety culture said dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering using novel participatory ergonomics methodologies we hope to build a dashboard that provides sustainable benefits to front-line supervisors the dashboard will provide real-time data enabling managers to make data-based decisions in the moment and help protect workers from danger by combining research into fatigue and safety culture it will give managers tools to help them make safer choices when assigning employees to duties or making decisions about work schedules and priorities the funding from this grant will not only help develop reliable fatigue assessment tools that can be utilized in any industry but address a key question on whether fatigue and safety culture are interlinked said mehta the funding guarantees that this research effort continues and enables a dual focus on fatigue and safety culture in this industry this project is funded by a grant from the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine – gulf research program the research is a collaboration between mehta sasangohar and dr stephanie payne project lead and professor in the college of liberal arts visit here for more information about the projects in the gulf research program
789,"glen david sanders has established the glen ""david"" sanders 92 endowed chemical engineering scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m university sanders said that his decision to attend texas a&m became clear when he visited the campus for the first time and was able to meet the faculty and students i grew up in a small town and even though the school was huge i felt like a small-town guy could still make it there he said having come from a small town sanders was not sure he had what it took to become a chemical engineer or make it in the industry however he said that his time at texas a&m and his experiences in the co-op program gave him the confidence to accomplish anything he set his mind to he decided to establish this scholarship for a multitude of reasons the great chemical engineering faculty the dedicated employees of the foundation the history of the program and the experiences i had at texas a&m all led to my decision to give he said sanders hopes that his gift will be able to help students get past whatever might be holding them back some students just need confidence to reach their potential and i want to help other students have that same experience i had regardless of financial means he said the gift is about much more than me without gods help through some rough spots unwavering support from my family and 25 years with a great employer i would not be in the position to make this donation"
790,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
791,chemical engineering student allison van beveren joined the zachry leadership program her sophomore year of college the challenges she faced during her high school career taught her persistence determination and compassion: all the qualities of a strong leader q: can you tell me about your high school experience you graduated as the valedictorian but it wasnt an easy path what was that like a: in the middle of my high school career my family moved across the country from ohio to texas and i had to start over as the new girl in town our home in texas was still being built when we moved so we had to stay with a family friend until our house was finished i slept on the floor of a spare bedroom while my two taller siblings took the bed for about five months we lived entirely out of moving boxes to make the situation worse i had been experiencing some abdominal pain which i assumed was just from the stress of moving but when i spiked a 105-degree fever we thought it was my appendix and went to the hospital after a ct scan the doctors diagnosed me with crohns disease i ended up staying in the hospital for three weeks during which they gave me a long-lasting nutrition line via iv i was fed with only iv nutrition for three months because my body couldnt handle solid food after multiple hospital visits i finally had to have surgery to remove about a foot of my intestines when i applied to the zachry leadership program (zlp) they asked me what my biggest accomplishment was i said that it was graduating as valedictorian despite the many challenges i faced it was a humbling experience but im quite proud of myself
792,q: is that why youre studying chemical engineering to find a cure for crohns disease a: not necessarily but its in the back of my mind im still learning about everything that i can do with my degree really i just want to serve people i want to impact the world thats the thing about chemical engineering – no matter what you do or what aspect of the field you study youre still solving real-world problems and making a difference thats what i love q: what is the zachry leadership program (zlp) how do you expect it to influence your future career a: the zlp is a partnership between the college of engineering and the zachry group basically it helps you become a better leader in the engineering world and it gives you tools for your toolbox that arent strictly academic the first class we have to take is about becoming a self-aware leader which is what the zlp is all about its about refining our leadership skills so that when we graduate we can play active roles in our careers
793,i think having leaders and mentors like the ones running the program will help me grow as an individual and become the woman i need to be in the engineering field im excited about all of the students ill get to work with everybody is different and unique i learn something from everyone i meet because we all have different strengths q: what advice would you give to incoming engineering students a: its not about the money its about what you love to do if youre only in it for the money youre not going to last because engineering is hard my advice would be to not give up everybody in the major is so smart and talented and its easy to feel like you dont belong you have to remember that youre just as smart and capable too instead of being overwhelmed and intimidated dive right in and embrace the challenge with grit and determination
794,volcanic tsunamis triggered by an underwater eruption typically occur with little warning – devastating the coastal areas and communities they impact richards sunny a doctoral candidate in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston is developing and improving computational fluid dynamics simulations to map predict and research volcanic tsunamis
795,results from this work would help us to predict the propagation and inundation of potential underwater volcanic tsunamis and help emergency managers and agencies create evacuation plans and save lives said sunny sunny started his ocean engineering journey 10 years ago at the indian institute of technology madras one of the top universities in india diving into the field as a freshman he quickly fell in love with it it had all the elements i wished for said sunny challenging optimization problems such as designing deep-water floating platforms the potential to develop innovative ideas in the field of renewable ocean energy to help humankind and the ability to study analyze model and predict natural disasters such as tsunamis to save lives inspired by the wide range of applications and opportunities found within ocean engineering sunny traveled overseas to pursue a masters and doctoral degree from texas a&m where he found a new passion: research
796,a catastrophic problem since he was a graduate student sunny has worked under dr juan horrillo associate professor in the department of ocean engineering and leader of the texas a&m university at galveston tsunami research group on a national science foundation-funded project focusing on volcanic tsunami modeling in the last 250 years they said about a fourth of all fatalities directly attributable to volcanic eruptions are due to the tsunamis caused by the eruption additionally the two deadliest non-tectonic tsunamis are from the 1883 krakatoa eruption and japan's mount unzen lava dome collapse in 1792 more recently in december 2018 a tsunami followed an eruption and partial collapse of the anak krakatau volcano leaving more than 400 dead and over 14 000 people injured while the technology behind tsunami research has modernized and advanced there are still many unknowns associated with underwater volcanic tsunamis including the characterization of tsunami waves and the relationship between the source eruption mechanism and wave generation a calling for more the project done in collaboration with georgia institute of technology and oregon state university started with the galveston team conducting numerical simulations of an eruption of the underwater kick ‘em jenny volcano in the caribbean sea as sunny described their simulations and models served as a foundation for physical experiments conducted at oregon state university
797,with the physical tests complete sunny and his fellow team members are numerically reproducing the experiment based on the input conditions and results therein – combining traditional experimentation with modern technology to fill in the data gaps that physical experimentation cannot provide due to cost safety or resources as such the teams models will serve as a vital tool in the assessment and mitigation of the submarine volcanic tsunami hazard disaster response and planning along this same line sunnys thesis is expanding upon these models by developing an algorithm that will help in interfacial tracking of fluids and their fluxing for computational fluid dynamics simulations we are also working on implementing this algorithm into tsunami3d (the model horrillo developed in the tsunami research group) to evaluate its performance and to model and simulate full-scale volcanic tsunami cases said sunny this algorithm is expected to improve the accuracy of interface tracking and thereby increase the accuracy of simulations as they progress in time breaking waves for example in addition to saving lives through the research implementation of accurate tsunami simulations and providing a greater understanding and insight into how underwater volcanic eruptions cause devastating tsunamis sunny is looking toward his future career in research with excitement at the end of the day i believe all our decisions need to be based on what we are called to do rather than what our interests are said sunny i believe it is my call to serve others and i will try my best to choose a career option which fulfills my calling
798,a conversation with chris lourenco a doctoral student in the department of industrial and systems engineering chris lourenco will graduate in august with a phd in industrial engineering and set sail on a new adventure he will be serving as a tenure-track assistant professor in the department of mathematics at the united states naval academy before coming to texas a&m university he earned a bachelors degree in industrial engineering at clemson university in 2015 lourenco excelled in his operations research courses during his undergrad and after visiting texas a&m decided to pursue his graduate degree in aggieland lourenco spoke about his new role and how he has prepared to take on an academic career q what drew you to the us naval academy a the us naval academy is a very unique institution in that every student becomes an officer in the navy or marines after graduation as a faculty member at the us naval academy i feel like i will have the opportunity to make a huge impact on the next generation of us leaders q what will you do as an assistant professor a my job is primarily focused on teaching research and service on the teaching front i will be teaching undergraduate operations research linear algebra and general mathematics courses research-wise i plan to continue to expand on the methods i have developed during my phd specifically i plan to continue developing novel algorithms which can revolutionize our ability to solve systems of linear equations exactly and continue my work in computational mathematical programming lastly the service component involves duties such as helping to develop new courses and curriculum serving as a faculty mentor to student organizations serving on faculty committees and reviewing scientific papers and conferences
799,q how did your experiences at texas a&m prepare you for this role a one thing i love about texas a&m is how supportive the community is the faculty are truly committed to the success of every student my advisor dr erick moreno-centeno has helped me immensely over the course of my studies professionally he has pushed me to be the best researcher and instructor that i can be personally he has been an excellent mentor always caring about my success and well-being and going well above what i could ever expect from an advisor on the teaching front last semester i won the texas a&m graduate teaching fellowship which allowed me to teach a course i taught my departments undergraduate introduction to operations research course which actually is the course that inspired me as an undergraduate to go to graduate school it was an excellent opportunity to serve as the courses instructor while also having the help and mentorship of my advisor i believe this experience will help me hit the ground running as an instructor at the us naval academy
800,q what research did you do while at texas a&m a my research focuses on exactly solving sparse systems of linear equations in short there are many things we use on a daily basis such as google maps and every apple iphone and macbook whose programming requires solving large-scale sparse linear systems from an optimization standpoint i became interested in this topic due to issues with modern linear and integer-programming solvers many people do not realize that the linear and integer-programming solvers that every operations research practitioner uses can produce incorrect solutions for up to 5% of real-world problems
801,using my methods we can guarantee that the solution obtained from these solvers is indeed correct moreover my methods are dramatically faster than the approaches currently used in exact linear and integer programming solvers lastly one very unique thing about my research is that there is also a large software component; thus we make the code associated with my methods available to the general operations research mathematics and computer science communities i really enjoy working in this area because it is interesting in both the theoretical side of creating new algorithms and deriving new math but its also very practical for example my methods have the potential to make drastic real-world impacts such as improving cancer treatment or optimizing the electric grid some of lourencos research is published online in the society for industrial and applied mathematics journal on matrix analysis and applications
802,lourenco has had many mentors during his undergraduate and graduate career whom he would like to thank at texas a&m aside from his advisor moreno-centeno lourenco thanks dr tim davis in the department of computer science and engineering for his assistance who helped him improve his algorithm development and coding skills and for helping improve his software to a point where it could be used by other professionals in the field at clemson university lourenco thanks dr mary beth kurz and dr j cole smith for their help sparking his interest in operations research and graduate school and for preparing him to succeed as a doctoral student
803,"every summer large-scale saharan dust plumes from africa travel more than 6 000 miles on trade winds across the atlantic ocean impacting places in the eastern caribbean and sometimes passing over the southern united statesthe journey to houston takes about 10 days and once it settles over the city breathing the contaminated air could lead to a multitude of health issues ranging from irritated eyes to cancer depending on what's in the dust-laden air even after it has traveled thousands of miles across the ocean after mixing with houston area-aerosols""to assess potential health impacts of the dust there is a clear need for a fuller understanding of its chemical and physical properties "" said dr shankar chellam the j walter ""deak"" porter '22 and james w ""bud"" porter '51 professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m universityhe and a team of researchers set out to confirm that the dust affects houstonians' air quality when pollution is detected in urban areas it's easy to blame industrial companies but chellam said there are other unexpected natural factors such as dust and smoke from fires that can also affect air quality"
804,"""one of the big problems in air pollution is air has no boundaries "" he said ""how do you know where the sources of pollution are coming from how do you know whom to police unless you know where the source is how do you reduce air pollution""these are questions chellam has been asking for two decades he has spent the last 20 years investigating the amount of human-made locally sourced pollutants used in petroleum refining in the industrial areas of houston this research led to his most recent studies of the saharan dust plumeschellam and his research team published their latest findings in the november issue of the journal of geophysical research atmosphereschellam began his research by setting up a test site in an industrial area in houston to collect air quality samples during testing he and his team discovered the natural phenomenon that affected air quality and dusted houston literally he was able to use the same research techniques used to study industrial air pollution to determine the presence of the african dust in the most microscopic form chellam identified the ""fingerprint"" or signature of african dust and then separated it from other types of pollution found in samples collected in houston including industrial dust from crude oil refineries vehicle pollutants and wildfire smoke"
805,"collaborators collected samples of the african dust in barbados that served as a control sample because they didn't contain industrial pollutants found in the united states it's also the eastern-most caribbean island and the first to be impacted by the traveling dust making it an ideal test site galveston was used as a background site because it is not affected by significant local pollution sources from industriesfor this study measurements were made over six weeks from early august to mid‐september 2014 in all three locations almost every summer they put out samplers to track episodic emissionsthe results revealed that the fine dust particles in all samples were a match ""we show that such dust events significantly increase the concentration and alter the chemical concentration of ambient fine particle matter in southern texas in summer and early autumn "" chellam said"
806,"doctoral student sourav das traveled to houston to set up and evaluate the sampling equipment which captures and filters the air particles das then analyzed the results in the civil engineering lab all of the sources of pollution have a unique signature he said so each signature helps us better quantify each of these sourcesthey can tell how much of each pollutant is in each sample collected by looking at its elemental composition chellams team is now working with the center for disease control and prevention to analyze the potential microscopic organisms that travel in the dust""along with the chemical signature we are looking to see if there is any biological signature to this dust which could include fungi which are highly robust that would survive this trek from north africa to houston "" chellam saidthese microscopic organisms could impact the health of the public so they are continuing to research the possible health implicationsthe research was partly funded with grants from the texas commission on environmental quality and the texas air research center"
807,carla and eric stoltman 88 have established the carla and eric stoltman 88 scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in engineering technology and industrial distribution from texas a&m university a graduate of the department himself and carla being a teacher the stoltmans aim to encourage students in the south san antonio independent school district to consider texas a&m and a career in engineering technology or industrial distribution as the first aggie in his family eric said he chose texas a&m for many reasons first i wanted to stay in texas he said second the values and traditions of texas a&m more closely aligned with my belief system versus other schools in texas finally a number of my high school classmates selected texas a&m as well eric said that his time at texas a&m largely impacted his career i'd say the biggest impact that texas a&m had was instilling a sense of duty of service to those around me – whether it is my co-workers customers friends and family or country he said coming from a school district in a lower income area of san antonio eric wanted to provide an opportunity to give back to students like himself who are hoping to attend college carla and i are funding a modest scholarship for the etid department for graduates of the school district i attended while growing up in san antonio he said my inspiration was simple i've been successful in my professional career and personal life and i wanted to give back
808,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact thadd hargett senior director of development
809,kimberly kim tompkins 88 and phillip phil mcdivitt 87 have established the gene and dolores mcdivitt chemical engineering scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m university with two older sisters who attended texas a&m phil was exposed to the culture and values of the university from a young age he later decided to attend texas a&m himself for these characteristics as well as the outstanding reputation of the college of engineering my desire was to receive an education in chemical engineering so texas a&m was the perfect fit the strong education and the set of values consistently on display at texas a&m have been foundational elements in my professional career he said phil and kim have established this scholarship in honor of phils parents gene and dolores phil said they inspired all three of their children to work hard in school and strive for excellence every day we wanted to leave a lasting legacy in honor of the positive impact they had as parents and their focus on the importance of education as proud aggie parents of two children logan and megan phil and kim understand the importance a parents encouragement can have on their kids their goal for this endowment is to help a student in financial need we want to give financial assistance to a chemical engineering student which will hopefully allow them to focus on achieving their full potential from their educational experience at texas a&m phil said
810,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
811,the student-run organization tamuhack recently held its sixth annual hackathon in conjunction with the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university during the two-day invention marathon last month student programmers called hackers were tasked with developing innovative software and hardware solutions to solve real-world problems faced by industry today while the main goal of many other similar competitions is to win the top prize what sets tamuhack apart from other hackathons is that its main focus is to provide a creative space for students to connect with other hackers learn new skills and network with industry experts more than 240 teams representing over 40 schools across the nation participated this year making it the most successful hackathon the organization has hosted to date
812,for organization members sophia lee who is the current president and humza jaffri tamuhack gave them a home being surrounded by people who have the same interests and ambitions as them gave them a sense of belonging and showed them that they could take on the world they hope theyve succeeded in creating the same environment for other students to use as a stepping stone to do much bigger things during the hackathon students had the opportunity to work on a variety of challenges presented by several company sponsors including american airlines who challenged them to create a product that would help elevate the customer travel experience boost operational efficiencies and employee performance or enhance american's brand image global financial services firm jpmorgan chase & co challenged students to develop a web or mobile application that would help to encourage people to provide more structured information on accessible spaces
813,for the student organizers working to put together an event the size of tamuhack is a huge undertaking but witnessing the participants make lasting connections and realizing their full potential over the course of the event makes all of the hard work worth it one of the greatest takeaways that i hope students get from tamuhack is seeing that the world is so much bigger than just the classroom setting said jaffri i like to think about hackathons as a proof of concept that you are capable of developing anything as long as you put your mind to it i hope they can see their potential and that they are capable of learning and creating incredible things given the right resources and environment
814,read about the winning teams and their projects
815,elif kaya a doctoral candidate in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2020 institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) microwave theory and techniques society (mtt-s) graduate fellowship this is the highest honor that the ieee mtt-s gives to top graduate students recognizing their research activities and promise in microwave engineering kaya is among 12 elite graduate students from across the globe to have been named a recipient of this award annually and the second texas a&m doctoral student to be given this prestigious award she will be presented with the award during the student awards luncheon at the 2020 ieee international microwave symposium (ims) which will be held june 21-26 in los angeles california she won the award for her research proposal titled a cmos microwave broadband adaptive dual-comb spectroscopy system with ai calibration for liquid chemical detection conducted under the supervision of her advisor dr kamran entesari her proposal is based on her accepted paper for the ims which reports the first complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor microwave broadband dual-comb dielectric spectroscopy system with an on-chip sensor and system calibration kaya completed her undergraduate study in electric and electronic engineering at the erciyes university kayseri turkey where she graduated top her of class she received an mse in electronics and telecommunication engineering from istanbul technical university istanbul turkey and an msc in electrical and computer engineering from columbia university new york and she is currently pursuing her phd in electrical engineering at texas a&m her research interests include rf/microwave/millimeter-wave integrated circuits and systems microwave chemical/biochemical sensing for laboratory-on-chip applications and fifth-generation communication systems she also placed first in the student poster competition at the ieee texas symposium on wireless microwave circuits and systems in 2019; was one of the top three finalists for the advanced practice paper competition at the 2019 ieee international microwave symposium by ieee mtt-s of which she was the first texas a&m graduate student nominated for this award; was a texas a&m 2019 national science foundation innovation corps site fellow and was a recipient of the 2017 ieee solid-state circuits society student travel grant award that recognizes and promotes early career accomplishments in all solid-state circuits fields of which she was among 24 elite graduate students from across the globe to have been supported to travel to the 2017 ieee solid-state circuits conference
816,work to help communities prepare for and recover from natural disasters can continue thanks to the renewal of a $20 million partnership from the us department of commerces national institute of standards and technologydr maria koliou assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering is among texas a&m university researchers working on the project known as the center for risk-based community resilience planning housed at colorado state university in fort collins coloradoat texas a&m civil engineering and urban planning faculty help communities better prepare for and recover from natural disasters the engineering contributions from texas a&m to this center are led by koliouwe will develop and refine models to quantify functionality and recovery of systems and communities with proactive and post-disaster actions she said this will support decision-making by community leaders and stakeholders to facilitate and expedite post-disaster recoveryestablished in 2015 the group of researchers from 13 partner universities developed a free open-source computer tool called interdependent networked community resilience modeling environment (in-core) released in december 2019 this tool enables community resilience planners to model the physical and socio-economic systems of a community and assess the effectiveness of measures aimed at minimizing post-disaster disruption and recovery timethe extension of the grant will allow work to continue developing computer and field study tools best practices and guidance for local governments to decide how to invest the best resources intended to lessen the impact of extreme weather and other hazards on communities and to recover rapidlyproject scholars from texas a&m also include dr shannon van zandt head of the department of landscape architecture and urban planning; dr michelle meyer director of the college of architecture's hazard reduction and recovery center (hrrc); dr maria watson from the architecture urban planning faculty dr walter peacock hrrc senior research fellow; and dr nathanael rosenheim hrrc associate research scientistbefore the center's establishment engineers and social scientists studied natural disaster resilience and recovery separately from distinctly different disciplinary angles this center approached it comprehensively by forming interdisciplinary teams to develop in-corethe center's multi-disciplinary team includes experts in engineering economics data and computing and social sciences from the california polytechnic university in pomona georgia institute of technology stony brook university oregon state university portland state university rice university texas a&m university of illinois at urbana-champaign the national center for supercomputing applications university of kansas university of oklahoma university of south alabama and the us naval academy college of architecture communications coordinator richard nira contributed to this article
817,the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) announced its class of 2020 fellows which includes dr rodney bowersox professor and head of the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university bowersox is the holder of the ford motor co design professorship i and was named a department of defense vannevar bush faculty fellow in 2017 he founded and directs the texas a&m national aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory he also serves on the air force scientific advisory board his research interests include gasdynamics hypersonics aerothermochemistry high-speed aerodynamics aero-propulsion turbulence modeling and numerical simulations bowersox received his doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from virginia polytechnic institute and state university in 1992 he is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers and member of the american chemical society american physical society and the optical society he is also an associate editor for the aiaa journal and aiaa journal of propulsion and power the grade of fellow recognizes individuals of distinction in aeronautics or astronautics who have made notable and valuable contributions to the arts sciences or technology of aeronautics or astronautics to be selected an individual must be an aiaa associate fellow and recommended by four members in good standing the class of 2020 aiaa fellows will be inducted on may 19 and recognized on may 20 at the aiaa aerospace spotlight awards gala at the ronald reagan building and international trade center in washington dc
818,in 2014 783 data breaches were reported with at least 8561 million total records exposed representing an increase of nearly 500% from 2005 that number more than doubled in three years to 1 579 reported breaches in 2017 how can we change this cycle and make our data more secure christiana chamon is a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university working with dr laszlo kish on ways to keep sensitive information as secure as possible chamons research project focuses on the kirchhoff-law-johnson-noise (kljn) key exchange which is the only unconditionally secure hardware that can be integrated on a chip to secure credit cards computers and other instruments kljn is the classical physical competitor of quantum key distribution (qkd) kljn and qkd both provide unconditional security which means that the encryption cannot be cracked by a high-computational power such as a quantum computer or even by an infinitely fast computer chamon said this directly affects industry in that classified projects can be kept confidential as well as email and other forms of electronic communications to the everyday individual this means social security numbers and other highly sensitive materials can be kept safe and secure from any potential threats the difference between the current key exchange systems that are used today and the kljn key change system is that the communication systems we use today are only conditionally secure the security in these systems is based on mathematically unproven assumptions that there are no more efficient cracking algorithms than the ones that are used today chamon said with the current systems it takes a long time for an eavesdropper to crack the encrypted data but the access of that data is still a possibility chamons work with kish on the kljn system eliminates this as a possibility altogether the biggest advantage of kljn compared to qkd is that it can be integrated on a chip which means that unconditional security can be expanded to communications within computers instruments military equipment and video games chamon said thus even if the equipment gets into the hands of an adversary or pirates they still cannot follow the communication and access the secure data in it chamon first became interested in this subject after auditing kishs security course where she began to see the applications of this work this interest turned into a joint paper with kish that will be submitted for publication at the end of the month
819,researchers at texas a&m university have found that the presence of a fossilized organic substance called kerogen plays a vital role in how easily carbon dioxide can travel through shale reservoirs why is this important injecting carbon dioxide into shale reservoirs accomplishes two critical results the action stores an unwanted greenhouse gas safely underground and also improves the flow of oil and gas within the shale rock for recovery by the petroleum industry however less carbon dioxide is going into these reservoirs for storage and the massive quantity of oil and gas recovered is still far lower than predicted models used to predict carbon dioxide movement through formations are inaccurate because most simulations are focused on limited information: the properties of shale said dr maria barrufet a professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering we need a realistic forecast that includes carbon dioxide interaction with reservoir fluids materials and environments we cannot neglect the other facets in the mix shale reservoirs are mainly formed with layered shale a dense rock containing tiny pores similar in diameter to a human hair sandwiched between these layers often hundreds of miles wide are millions of pockets of inorganic minerals such as clay quartz and pyrite along with an organic mineral called kerogen since shale properties are relatively well known barrufet and her team considered this complex combination of inorganic and organic materials when tackling the mystery of reduced storage and flow
820,results of their lab tests published online in applied energy showed that kerogen could not absorb carbon dioxide quickly so it reduced the effectiveness of injection processes kerogen is an abundant source of fuel from its first stage of development as loosely packed peat on the earths surface to deep underground where it bakes into its final stage as solidified coal in a shale reservoir kerogen is compressed by the layered rock and slowly oozes out oil molecules that seep into the surrounding shale and inorganic minerals petroleum companies fracture the dense shale to create channels where the oil can flow still fracturing alone does not always speed recovery oil molecules react to the pressure changes and temperatures within the reservoir and can switch from a liquid state to a gas state and back again this phase change behavior hampers flow unlike conventional reservoirs where rock pore sizes easily allow fluid flow pores sizes in shale are only slightly larger than the oil molecules barrufet said these confined molecules feel like prisoners and want to escape if you fracture a space containing these trapped molecules you suddenly change the pressure from high to low in that space there will be a rush for the exit as the pressure releases but the two phases liquid and gas together will compete with each other and block the door over the years testing with shale core samples showed that carbon dioxide would move quickly in fractured shale rock when injected carbon dioxide improves the flow of oil and gas by pushing these molecules out of the rock and into fracture channels however not much attention was paid to how well carbon dioxide traveled through organics like kerogen barrufets research team used shale core samples cut pieces of rock one and a half inches in diameter and approximately six inches tall for their experiments pockets of kerogen were embedded in the center of these cores before the samples were saturated with oil the cores were inserted in tubes packed with glass beads to simulate fractured shale channels and then injected with carbon dioxide using the two leading industry methods: core flooding and huff and puff
821,modeling the lab experiment results found a critical behavior pattern: oil-saturated organic matter acted as a barrier that is the kerogen would not allow a high-pressure application of carbon dioxide to move through it easily yet results also showed that when pressures were kept up over an extended time the kerogen slowly absorbed the greenhouse gas it is the difference of ‘huff and puff to ‘huff and huff barrufet explained in many field applications carbon dioxide is injected a ‘huff and then pressure is reduced a ‘puff to allow production to resume a continuous pressure injection known as core flooding is a ‘huff and huff but there also needs to be an extended soak time under this pressure to take advantage of the slow fluid movement within kerogen a waiting period allows the organic minerals to soak up the injected gas which eventually displaces the oil and increases recovery kerogen pockets can form clusters that span significant areas of space barrufet and her team noted that high injection pressures alone do not allow as much storage of carbon dioxide or recovery of oil and gas because the kerogen prevents carbon dioxide from reaching large quantities of trapped oil continuous pressure held for an extended time allowed far greater movement of carbon dioxide through kerogen and into the spaces and materials beyond it producing better storage and more substantial recoveries it is a fine delicate balance said barrufet injections are critical to recovery and storage but work best if applied with an understanding of the complexities within the reservoir as a next step wed like to do field trials to confirm our results better
822,jeremiah lockhart a sophomore in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is a self-proclaimed ordinary kid from duncanville texas taking a chance on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he applied for and was awarded an extraordinary scholarship – the gates scholarship – that will bolster him as he pursues his education at texas a&m out of around 30 000 applicants lockhart was one of just 300 students selected to receive the prestigious gates scholarship with it lockhart is able to focus on his studies and extracurricular opportunities without any student loans or financial burden in order to be eligible for the scholarship applicants must be in the top 10 percent of their high school class have pell grant eligibility exceptional personal success skills and proven leadership ability applicants undergo a rigorous three-phase process which concludes with only 300 students awarded my parents worked so hard and have sacrificed so much for me since i was a kid to get me where i want to go and just to get to tell them that they dont have to pay a thing for me that they can relax and retire and that i wont be a financial burden and have everything taken care of it was a great blessing from god lockhart said im really happy to be given it
823,lockhart has been drawn to electrical engineering since he attended an engineering camp in eighth grade when i made that first circuit and saw the led light up because of how i coded it i fell in love with electrical engineering he said from there he pursued the electrical engineering track in high school and decided to continue that trajectory at texas a&m lockhart feels that his electrical engineering degree from texas a&m will allow him to reach his dream of becoming an electrical engineer he recognizes that though its not easy its worth it and will position him to achieve great things in his future career the way they teach us is not easy lockhart said its tough but its for a purpose it really gets your brain to understand the purpose behind (the lessons) how to implement it and how to put it all together to reach the market im really excited about that and long story short i just love it it challenges me enough that i wont get bored with it and its provided enough satisfaction that all the work i put into it is one of the best experiences ive had i want to use the skills from the electrical and computer engineering department to help mold me into an emboldened innovator that is ready to take on the world's problems and develop impactful solutions he is not only passionate about this field but also for letting other students know that what he has accomplished so far in his academic career is possible if you put the work in do not let other people define who you are do not let where you come from define who you are or what you amount to be in life he said just because you are from this small town where most people are minorities or low income doesn't mean you're destined for mediocrity lockhart is an officer in the national society of black engineers at texas a&m where he is working to help college students excel academically exceed professionally and positively impact the community he is also a member of the zachry leadership program (zlp) which is a joint program between the college of engineering and the zachry group that provides students with a broader and deeper level of personal awareness and enhanced leadership skills in addition he is working with the superintendent of his high school to encourage high school upperclassmen to apply for these big scholarships i dont want anyone feeling how i felt he said im not a special person i dont deserve this but thats no way of thinking because anything is possible if you believe in yourself
824,dr arul jayaraman professor and interim department head of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university; the artie and dorothy mcferrin foundation; and the chemical engineering advisory council have come together to establish the dr nazmul karim endowed chemical engineering graduate fellowship the endowment will be used to provide one or more fellowships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a graduate degree in chemical engineering the fellowship was established to honor the life and legacy of karim who passed away in june 2019 he was the holder of the t michael o'connor chair ii and head of the chemical engineering department from 2012-19 over the course of an impressive 30-plus year career karim authored more than 250 refereed publications and gave over 400 technical invited and contributed presentations at national and international conferences he was the co-author of the textbook chemical and bioprocess control which is used in over 50 universities worldwide he graduated more than 25 doctoral students and was an american institute of chemical engineers fellow karim had a tremendous impact on the chemical engineering department during a memorial event at texas a&m faculty members from the department shared memories of dr karim
825,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
826,the greater houston chapter of houston engineers week has named five texas a&m university civil engineering graduates as 2020 young engineers of the year for their contributions to the engineering industrypatricia pacee bean pe was selected as young engineer of the year for the society of american military engineers she holds a bachelors degree in civil engineering and is a transportation engineer at costello inc she has more than six years of experience in roadway design for clients including texas department of transportation (txdot) harris county fort bent county and multiple toll road authoritiesvanessa hernandez eit was selected as young engineer of the year for the american society of highway engineers she has a bachelors degree in civil engineering and is a utility coordinator at entech civil engineers inc where she has worked on major roadway projects for txdot san antonio txdot waco and txdot childress as well as in openroads modelingapoorv kumar was selected as young engineer of the year for the american society of indian engineers he holds a bachelors degree in civil engineering and works for pmg project management group llc as a senior project manager providing design construction management inspection and consulting services in the greater houston areacatie reid was selected as the young engineer of the year for the texas institute of transportation engineers she has a bachelors and masters degree in civil engineering she works for gunda corporation and specializes in traffic engineeringjoey roberts was selected as the young engineer of the year for the national society of black engineers he holds a bachelors degree in civil engineering and works in the public and private sectors having spent five years at cobb fendley & associates inc as a project engineer and project manager where he provided various derivatives of public works consulting broadband design subsurface utility engineering and utility coordinationhouston engineers week is dedicated to the promotion of the profession of engineering as a social and economic influence vital to the welfare of the community state of texas and beyond
827,"dr miladin radovic professor in the department of materials science and engineering and director of the materials characterization facility at texas a&m university has been awarded the prestigious global star award by the engineering ceramics division of the american ceramic society the american ceramic society is a professional community of global leaders in the field of ceramics and glass the society is made up of more than 11 000 professionals from more than 70 countries an announcement regarding the global star award was made during the 44th international conference and exposition on advanced ceramics and composites (icacc) on jan 27 in daytona beach florida the award recognizes active volunteers and their contributions to the engineering ceramics division and icacc and has been given to distinguished individuals annually since 2010 i am truly privileged to receive this distinguished award said radovic it is a great honor to be recognized by the american ceramic society for contributions to the engineering ceramics division"" radovics research focuses on the processing of advanced structural and multi-functional ceramics for extreme environments and their thermal and mechanical properties his research group has been working on the development of several different ceramics materials including max phases and their 2d derivatives (mxenes) solid-state ionics and geopolymers"
828,for the third year texas a&m university hosted invent for the planet – a 48-hour intensive design competition which took place at more than 30 universities around the world students developed solutions for major issues facing society that have arisen as our world continues to modernize and become more populated over the course of two days students at each campus formed teams developed a plan and prototype created a business plan and pitched it to a panel of judges in march a panel of international judges will select the top five teams from around the world and those teams will travel to texas a&m for a final pitch competition to be held march 31- april 2 the winner will be named the champion of invent for the planet 2020
829,the last plastic straw dr christine figgener 18 texas a&m former student and independent marine conservation biologist based in costa rica served as a challenge moderator mentoring students around the world through the microsoft teams environment during the course of the weekend she visited with texas a&m students in person offering guidance as they developed solutions for reducing single-use plastics and cleaning up the oceans figgener is known for a viral video she created in 2015 when she and her team found a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nose since then a global movement to use reusable straws was born and figgener has become the face of that movement it was really the moment that was the last plastic straw so to say because its an item we use pretty much on a daily basis said figgener it could have been from any one of us that is when i started campaigning against single-use plastics and ocean plastic pollution and how we as consumers can make changes that will positively affect the outcome of that figgener said she was thrilled to serve as a mentor i think its absolutely incredible when young people try to solve the big issues of our time she said im not an engineer but i do have a science degree in marine biology and i have gathered a lot of experience working with different solutions to the ocean plastic pollution issue over the years im incredibly impressed with the attitude of all the students they seem super excited to take on such a big issue i think its a bit of an overwhelming issue but they are so motivated to do their best and were grateful for the input i was able to provide
830,around-the-world collaboration priyanka ambati 20 a biomedical engineering major said figgener really helped her team address ways that they could make a difference on reducing single-use plastics on campus were developing a campaign model for this campus to promote sustainable use and were starting out by spreading awareness about the presence of single-use plastics and providing alternatives she said ambati said her team spoke with students in the united kingdom and uganda through the microsoft teams environment it doesnt feel like a competition because its so awesome working on the same problems she said it doesnt matter if we win this or not we want to pursue this and make a difference this is about making an impact ambati said her team plans to continue innovating their rewards-based app after invent for the planet
831,texas a&ms winning teams ecotory the first-place team from texas a&m developed an app that allows airline passengers to exchange unwanted meals and amenities for airline miles it also allows airlines to better gauge passenger needs that integrate with their inventory systems ten billion pounds of waste is produced every year by airline passengers said emily gonzalez senior biomedical engineering student twenty to 30% of that waste is from untouched food and beverages what is really interesting about our need statement to me is the lack of knowledge on the passenger side they may just throw away their plastic and half-eaten food but they dont realize the huge impact this is having on the environment whether their innovation makes it to the final five or not the team wishes to continue looking into commercializing their innovation through engineering inc the college of engineerings incubator program the second-place team aero-stainable created a web-based interface that would allow airline passengers to select their food choices when purchasing their tickets third-place team city seeds worked to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions in densely populated areas by using hydroponic plants and kinetic energy from footsteps to power leds simulating sunlight the texas a&m presentations are available to watch online the final five finalists will be announced in early march sponsors of the event were rs-grassroots and socar aqs
832,"the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university presented its 2019 outstanding alumni award to dr ashok gowda co-founder and president and ceo of biotex inc a houston-based medical technology developer and manufacturergowda has served as principal investigator on more than 15 national institutes of health grants authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and abstracts and is an inventor on more than 20 issued patents he is also an active investor advisor and board member for a number of early-stage medical technology companies gowda received a bachelors degree in biomedical engineering from vanderbilt university and his masters and doctoral degrees in bioengineering from texas a&m ""it all started by me stepping on this campus getting an education here meeting the people that i did and starting biotex gowda said i cant say enough about how thankful i am to be here dr michael mcshane department head presented the award and shared some stories about gowdas experience on campus in the ‘90s when mcshane was also a student gowda worked with a group of faculty and students to establish biotex and their headquarters was located above the subway restaurant in downtown bryan since then the company has grown into a successful venture the company specializes in the development launch and manufacturing of medical and biotechnologies to date under gowdas direction biotex has raised tens of millions of dollars successfully licensed numerous early-stage technologies and spun out three separate companies that have become independent these accomplishments under his leadership show ashok as a role model who is quite deserving of this award mcshane said"
833,for visualase inc one of the spinoff companies gowda founded he was able to partner with clinicians to develop a minimally-invasive laser brain surgery to treat epilepsy the human impact that this technology had is really what drives me today the first time i saw the technology used on a human go into a patients brain that was a very addictive feeling gowda said once you see that happen once youve had that kind of impact with technology that you started right here (at texas a&m) trust me you will want to do it again and again when biotex launched there were not as many resources available to students who wanted to pursue entrepreneurship and mcshane said the team had to figure things out as they went they exhibited grit tenacity and determination mcshane said they were able to succeed despite the lack of training and the support network for entrepreneurship at that time gowda recalled his first moments at texas a&m when he visited for a tour as we walked around everyone was saying howdy and not aware of the tradition i just remember thinking to myself ‘these guys are the nicest people ive ever met in my life i have to go to school here gowda said im really fortunate that i did choose texas a&m it really did transform my life and better yet its transformed a number of other lives for the better mcshane encourages current and future students to take advantage of the faculty and resources available on campus as gowdas story does not need to be such a unique one his enterprise should just be one of many important products from the department that are led by motivated students and the support offered by the department and university as a whole
834,mental health issues are becoming more prevalent on college campuses across the country and researchers at texas a&m university are working to develop evidence-based services that will help manage students mental health while mental health counseling is available on most college campuses the stigma around mental health care can keep students away from the help they need tools to help combat this stigma are readily seen on college campuses today – smart devices most college students have either a smartphone tablet or smartwatch these devices allow students constant access to one another and the world around them and can provide a reliable platform to deliver mental health services
835,a team of researchers led by dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering is developing a wearable continuous monitoring tool the tool utilizes advanced machine learning and a wide range of sensors provided on commercial off-the-shelf smartwatches to detect signs and symptoms of high anxiety and direct the smartwatch wearer to resources the wearable device would be triggered by negative indicators such as anxiety patterns of heart rate and self-reports by the smartwatch wearer and would prompt the wearer to engage in therapeutic activities the pilot program is called mental health evaluation and lookout or mhelp
836,resources available through mhelp include therapeutic activities like mobile self-assessments educational content and self-management tools such as biofeedback and mindfulness exercises these services are available through a mobile platform the monitoring tool will also integrate with in-person and virtual counseling sessions which will help mental health providers guide their patients treatment plans more effectively this pilot program hopes to bring mental health care to students as they experience anxiety or depression and provide on-demand or proactive access to virtual and in-person counseling by allowing students to manage their mental health through a wearable device the researchers feel that some of the stigma associated with mental health treatment can be overcome
837,mental health is affecting students academic success and their overall quality of life sasangohar said mental illness can also affect a students motivation concentration and social interactions which are all crucial factors for a student to be successful in college and life
838,this program is the first of its kind and could be used as a model for integrating mobile-enabled technologies into mental health care in other communities sasangohar will collaborate with student counseling services the office of the dean of faculties the division of student affairs as well as faculty in the bush school of government and public service college of education and human development school of public health and college of engineering this project is funded by the x-grants program at texas a&m through the office of the president funding will be used to implement the pilot program at texas a&m
839,from meeting at nasa to being married in an aerospace themed wedding katie and steven gilliam former students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have shared their passion for engineering with one another since they were in high school now in the spirit of valentines day they look back on the impact their time in the department and industry has had on their careers and relationship like any aerospace love story its got to start at space camp while they didnt start dating until college katie and steven first met the summer of their junior year of high school at nasas johnson space center (jsc) in houston texas like any aerospace love story its got to start at space camp said katie katie and steven were two of about 100 high school students who traveled to houston for nasas high school aerospace scholars (has) program a summer experience for students interested in learning more about aerospace engineering born in houston katie had previously visited the jsc as a kid while her classmates were fascinated by the idea of being astronauts katie was far more interested in mission control but despite her youthful excitement for space she spent most of high school focused on business
840,its what my parents did and seemed stable said katie i did not even consider engineering as a career path until i went to that camp and i fell in love with it steven on the other hand always had an interest in engineering as a kid he enjoyed reading stephen biestys cross-sections books and loved anything that spun moved and turned as a kid once i learned that we were putting stuff in space i wanted to be an astronaut said steven when i got older i realized i actually liked the rockets and all the little bits that make it go i got more and more interested reading about space and planes and jets so ive always been an engineering type at heart after their week spent on the same team together at has katie and steven stayed in touch even doing extracurricular engineering competitions together throughout their senior year of high school thats the thing in aerospace we all work together with her rekindled interest for aerospace engineering katie decided to prioritize engineering when applying to texas a&m in fall 2014 katie and steven were both admitted into the college of engineering and after they settled into life on campus they reconnected
841,we started asking each other who we were taking for classes and we would sit next to one another and compare notes and try to help each other said steven thats the thing in aerospace we all work together to make sure we all know the material were all helping each other learn katie and steven are both double aerospace engineering degree holders receiving their bachelors and masters degrees from the aerospace engineering department they both worked from their sophomore year through masters to pay for their education steven worked as a technical lead in what is now the susu and mark a fischer 72 engineering design center and katie worked for the engineering entrepreneurship program on events such as aggies invent the last aggies invent that i helped out with was my 20th aggies invent said katie it was actually aerospace and defense themed so that was really awesome
842,in addition to the many hours they worked katie and steven were heavily involved in extracurricular activities and class projects anticipating marriage in the future they knew they needed to be top candidates to have their choice of where they worked to get jobs in the same location that we would both enjoy and that were really targeted toward our passion we would have to be the cream of the crop said katie we pushed each other if id hear something related to propulsion or any of stevens interests i would really encourage him to do it and he would encourage me just the same on top of their involvement on campus katie completed four internships and steven completed three allowing them to travel across the united states and gain experience in their field of study after a long week at their last internship the couple visited their favorite beach in corpus christi steven proposed katie said yes
843,i think we have to do an aerospace themed wedding as wedding plans were in the works and the couple was searching for a venue the two couldnt help but to find inspiration in their shared passion
844,i said ‘if you go to space camp and you dated through your aerospace engineering degrees and youre about to be flight test engineers i think we have to do an aerospace themed wedding i dont think we have a choice said katie with a laugh it was set and in early january the couple married at the american airlines cr smith museum in fort worth texas aerospace is so essential to our lives and our relationship said katie we met through aerospace our love grew through aerospace its our shared career our shared passion in the theater where the ceremony was held guests were seated in vintage first class airline seats appropriately outfitted with seat buckles and ash trays each guest received (e)motion sickness bags with tissues inside and as they took their seats vintage airline travel advertisements played on the screen katie was escorted down the aisle to the theme song of the 80s movie top gun and the newlyweds exited the ceremony to another top gun song mighty wings the reception that followed was held in the museums hanger under the large wings of a restored 1940 douglas dc-3 aircraft at the reception were pilot hats and aviator sunglasses for guests and travel postcards for them to write notes to the bride and groom on the tables were blue and gold sheets of paper along with instructions on how to fold a paper airplane at the end of the reception katie and steven walked out to a shower of paper airplanes
845,we both very much enjoy aerospace not long after their wedding katie and steven moved across the country where they again found themselves working together this time in industry instead of the classroom anytime an aircraft flies overhead well be like ‘oh i wonder what that is a fighter a commuter maybe we both very much enjoy aerospace said steven living her first love of mission control katie is training to become a flight test director which consists of communicating with the pilot and flight test engineers to provide effective test performance in support of this steven is in charge of evaluating and maintaining jet engine operations i still have the dream of being the mission director on the first mission to mars said katie and steven wants to be in the control room as the propulsion lead when we do that
846,a conversation with lucy miller a senior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston a first-generation student with a longstanding passion for the sea lucy miller started her texas a&m journey pursuing a degree in marine biology her interest in emerging technologies however led her to chart a new course in ocean engineering after her first semester i fell in love with the traditions and atmosphere of texas a&m and the island vibe of galveston miller said now as she sets her sights on graduation and beyond miller took a moment to chat about her time at texas a&m q: why did you choose to study ocean engineering a: i have always felt drawn to the ocean my heart belongs here i picked ocean engineering because i wanted to study remotely operated vehicles (rovs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (auvs) but also get a degree that is diverse and encompasses various parts of many engineering disciplines q: how would you describe the ocean engineering department in one word what makes it different from other departments a: diverse this program has so many students from different backgrounds with different career goals ocean engineering encompasses pieces of civil engineering aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering and brings them together in a marine environment q: what is your dream job and why a: there is a huge worldwide initiative to use rov and auv technology to map the seafloor and explore the deep ocean id love to help accomplish this it is my dream i would like to work as an rov pilot and technician for a while and then use that knowledge to design and create new technology for the future
847,q: which organizations are you involved in a: i am involved in our professional organizations marine technology society (mts) and society of naval architects and marine engineers which allows undergraduate students to meet and interact with industry professionals i also got the privilege to be on the human powered submarine team during my time in college station last semester this semester i am competing in (educating smart marine aggies robotic technologies) a new robotics competition on the galveston campus designed to teach students about programming robotics and collaborating with teams made up of members with different technical skills and experience q: what has been your greatest accomplishment in school and outside of the classroom a: my greatest accomplishment in school has been learning to persevere even when things feel impossible this has granted me so many opportunities to meet amazing people who give me confidence and the chance to travel to foreign countries through study abroad outside of the classroom i had the opportunity to solo build an rov that gave me hands-on experience with the technology and allowed me to learn many new skills that i will use in the future q: do you have any key mentors or people that have greatly influenced your career choice or who you are a: of course! there are professors who have embraced my career goals and have worked hard to help me succeed dr paul koola and dr david allen last summer i got to participate in a couple of mts sponsored programs in michigan and new jersey liesl hotaling former mts vice president for education was the brains of these programs and has continued to be a mentor to me in addition the instructors i had at northwestern michigan and rutgers university did nothing but encourage me and further solidify my career goals also my family has been one of my greatest supporters they have always encouraged me to follow my dreams and picked me up when things get hard q: what advice would you give to your fellow engineering students a: follow your dreams and pursue your passions you are far more likely to succeed when you are doing something you are passionate about
848,the research of dr scott socolofsky on oil biodegradation models and microbial methane in the ocean has been featured by the gulf of mexico research institute and eos earth & space science news socolofsky and colleagues were interviewed about their work on oil biodegradation models and dispersant effects published in the marine pollution bulletinin this study researchers determined the most important factor affecting surfacing was initial droplet diameter their research confirms the idea that knowledge of the initial size of the oil droplets is fundamental for predicting the fate and transport of oil droplets in the subsurface based on the model simulations presented in this work response efforts that reduce the size of oil droplets at the well head were predicted to decrease the amount of surfacing oil and increase the residence time and biodegradation of oil within the water columnsocolofsky also served as chief scientist on a research cruise in the gulf of mexico where scientists researched microbial methane in the ocean the work helps refine scientific understanding of what happens when methane is released into seawater by studying methane-munching microbessocolofsky is division head of environmental water resources and coastal engineering in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university
849,dr faruque hasan assistant professor and kim tompkins mcdivitt 88 and phillip mcdivitt 87 faculty fellow in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering has received the national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award the career award is the most prestigious recognition given by the nsf to teacher-scholars early in their academic careers the five-year research project entitled career: synergistic design analysis and learning of intensified process systems aims to systematically detect and analyze the existence emergence and role of hidden synergistic effects in complex systems synergy is the combined effect of cooperative interactions between two or more organizations substances or other agents that is greater than the sum of their separate effects wherever complex systems exist there exists synergy or the potential for synergy hasan argues that studying and understanding synergies could unlock hidden potential across a wide swath of academic disciplines it [synergy] has a very transformative impact beyond chemical engineering said hasan biology materials science economics business and education can all benefit from a deeper understanding of synergistic effects much of hasans research deals with process design and intensification essentially intensification aims to make drastic improvements in the size cost energy waste and safety of a chemical process in this context synergy is a fundamental principle however it is not always clear under what conditions or when and how synergy emerges evolves and contributes to overall process intensification further synergy can arise in many nonintuitive cases it is to this end that hasan and his research team will develop systematic methods and algorithms for synergistic design and operation of intensified systems identification of hidden synergies has the potential to transform many chemical processes especially where nonintuitive synergies exist the integration and application of research and education will play a role in this career project hasan aims to promote synergistic learning at the undergraduate level by performing the same synergistic analysis of the curricula in the department of engineering the goal is to determine if the prerequisites are set up for optimum synergy
850,dr aakash tyagi professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university recently received the department of residence lifes 2020 honoring excellence award for his outstanding support of his students and their academic success the award celebrates faculty and staff members at texas a&m who go above and beyond both inside and outside their classroom/positions to impact student learning and academic success seven recipients were selected by a committee of faculty staff and students from a competitive pool of nominations my favorite teacher in high school taught with joy and cared to know if we understood his teachings in the classroom but outside the classroom he also cared to know about our plans for life ahead and he cared to know if we were all right said tyagi his example continues to guide my path as an educator and i am gratified to honor his legacy with this recognition all of the recipients were recognized at the third annual honoring excellence award banquet in january
851,weve all shared the frustration software updates that are intended to make our applications run faster inadvertently end up doing just the opposite these bugs dubbed in the computer science field as performance regressions are time-consuming to fix since locating software errors normally requires substantial human intervention to overcome this obstacle researchers at texas a&m university in collaboration with computer scientists at intel labs have now developed a complete automated way of identifying the source of errors caused by software updates their algorithm based on a specialized form of machine learning called deep learning is not only turnkey but also quick finding performance bugs in a matter of a few hours instead of days updating software can sometimes turn on you when errors creep in and cause slowdowns this problem is even more exaggerated for companies that use large-scale software systems that are continuously evolving said dr abdullah muzahid assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering we have designed a convenient tool for diagnosing performance regressions that is compatible with a whole range of software and programming languages expanding its usefulness tremendously the researchers described their findings in the 32nd edition of advances in neural information processing systems from the proceedings of the neural information processing systems conference in december to pinpoint the source of errors within a software debuggers often check the status of performance counters within the central processing unit these counters are lines of code that monitor how the program is being executed on the computers hardware in the memory for example so when the software runs counters keep track of the number of times it accesses certain memory locations the time it stays there and when it exits among other things hence when the softwares behavior goes awry counters are again used for diagnostics performance counters give an idea of the execution health of the program said muzahid so if some program is not running as it is supposed to these counters will usually have the telltale sign of anomalous behavior however newer desktops and servers have hundreds of performance counters making it virtually impossible to keep track of all of their statuses manually and then look for aberrant patterns that are indicative of a performance error that is where muzahids machine learning comes in
852,by using deep learning the researchers were able to monitor data coming from a large number of the counters simultaneously by reducing the size of the data which is similar to compressing a high-resolution image to a fraction of its original size by changing its format in the lower dimensional data their algorithm could then look for patterns that deviate from normal when their algorithm was ready the researchers tested if it could find and diagnose a performance bug in a commercially available data management software used by companies to keep track of their numbers and figures first they trained their algorithm to recognize normal counter data by running an older glitch-free version of the data management software next they ran their algorithm on an updated version of the software with the performance regression they found that their algorithm located and diagnosed the bug within a few hours muzahid said this type of analysis could take a considerable amount of time if done manually in addition to diagnosing performance regressions in software muzahid noted that their deep learning algorithm has potential uses in other areas of research as well such as developing the technology needed for autonomous driving the basic idea is once again the same that is being able to detect an anomalous pattern said muzahid self-driving cars must be able to detect whether a car or a human is in front of it and then act accordingly so its again a form of anomaly detection and the good news is that is what our algorithm is already designed to do other contributors to the research include dr mejbah alam dr justin gottschlich dr nesime tatbul dr javier turek and dr timothy mattson from intel labs this research is partly funded by the national science foundation career grant and intel
853,on feb 14-16 invent for the planet (iftp) returns to texas a&m university and the world for the third year with nearly 40 universities participating in 48 hours student participants around the globe will collaborate to solve one of 13 challenges that affect people around the world in this two-day design competition interdisciplinary teams of four to six students are tasked with solving issues in areas such as medical technology education digital security environmental changes and transportation the event provides an opportunity for students to network with industry professionals meet new friends develop presentation and problem-solving skills and add a dynamic accomplishment to their resumé students will work locally with their peers but also connect globally to share ideas and collaborate said rodney boehm 78 director of the engineering entrepreneurship program thats where innovation happens for one weekend there are no barriers there are no borders and the sun will never set on innovation while two days might not seem like enough time to accomplish anything substantial the winning teams of the previous two years continued to develop their impressive innovations beyond the competition most recently the winners of iftp 2019 the brazilian team tupa made up of students from the universidade federal do rio de janeiro and the centro federal de educação tecnológica celso suckow da fonseca are fast approaching their goal of putting their innovation out into the world
854,the team was inspired to design a solution that would benefit students at the benjamin constant institute a school for the visually impaired in brazil they said there is a shortage of guide dogs and assistive technology for people who are blind when they entered this competition and saw a need statement about visual impairments they knew this was a challenge they wanted to tackle their design uses a low-profile hat with sensors and a vibrating mechanism along with a lightweight wand that the user would move while walking the wand would send a signal to the hat sensors which would vibrate with increasing frequency when the user approaches an obstacle after participating and winning the final competition last year they visited the texas school for the blind and visually impaired in austin there they presented their idea and prototype and received invaluable feedback from professors and students when they returned to brazil they kept up their momentum they showcased their equipment at an annual brazilian summit that brings together hundreds of experts and personalities to discuss the political scenario and development effects in brazil support for those with physical impairments like team tupas device fit right in with the topics of discussion in order to learn more about their primary audience they attended accessibility events to receive first-hand feedback and have officially partnered with the benjamin constant institute thanks to the repercussions [sic] of our victory and the equipment we developed a part of our team is going to cern in geneva said breno ferreira tupa team member there we will have the opportunity to work with a similar technology for [our devices] accelerator particle detectors and of course we will have the space to show the winning equipment of iftp 2019 to several scientists from around the world and improve it even more although the idea behind invent for the planet was developed at texas a&m and the event is hosted and coordinated by staff of texas a&m the director behind it all emphasizes that the most important aspect is lifting up the global collaboration and pursuit for solving something that impacts the world our engineering students are known for their innovation and ingenuity boehm said this competition goes beyond that its not just a good way to get students across our campus involved but to fix something with the greatest of impacts together even though the competition is 48 hours there is a lot of work put into the event and it kicks off around the world at different times the first event starts on thursday afternoon our time in vietnam friday afternoon is when our aggies will come in and get the challenges said boehm theyll make teams begin formulating their ideas and try to sketch out a rough prototype saturday is the busy day students work with mentors and industry to get good prototypes and begin an elevator pitch sunday morning theyll be polishing up their presentation and innovation just in time to deliver the pitch that afternoon to judges invent for the planet is free to enter and open to all students within any major boehm said that its not only a competition designed to take on real-world problems but also a chance to experience working together as a team we open up aggies invent and invent for the planet to the whole campus for a reason boehm said the strongest teams are interdisciplinary teams that give students a taste of what industry and real-life experience will be i hear at each event how surprised students are to see how such a diverse team can come together and truly put together a strong and powerful solution to our global challenges iftp was a unique life-changing experience said ferreira we appreciate the opportunity to have participated and we strongly recommend everyone do so creating something that impacts society or the world in some way even if only a little is priceless
855,for a list of participating universities or for information related to the media please visit our media kit: txag/iftpkit
856,jamie c and christopher d white 99 have established the allie estelle white memorial scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university white decided to attend texas a&m based on the reputation and standing of the mechanical engineering program however he said that the aggie culture and camaraderie were what initially drew him to the university and ultimately made him pick texas a&m the four and a half years at a&m helped me develop the technical and leadership skills needed to be successful in the real world christopher said white has established this scholarship not only to help mechanical engineering students offset financial burdens and stress while attending texas a&m but also to honor the memory of his late daughter allie we recently lost our youngest child allie estelle white due to a tragic accident in round rock allie was 2 years and 9 months old when she died so we want allies memory to live on and help raise awareness of the dangers of distracted driving christopher said establishing an endowed scholarship in her name is a great way for her name to always be remembered white hopes that recipients of this scholarship can learn about allies legacy and realize the importance of safe driving i really value the education and leadership skills i received at texas a&m he said i continue to see strong leaders graduate from the school and want to support this in allies name
857,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
858,from drones guiding rescuers during hurricanes to robots navigating through collapsed buildings to find survivors engineering is making a mark in the field of response and emergency aid a leader in this area dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university recently attended the white house humanitarian assistance and disaster response (hadr) executive forum and was featured at the national science foundation (nsf) natural disaster resiliency event on the hill she was chosen to participate in each for her expertise in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics for emergency responders during disasters the confluence of the two events shows that the nation is catching up to what weve known at texas a&m all along – that reducing the impacts of disasters requires multi-disciplinary systems science murphy said i was proud to represent the tremendous work being done by my group and throughout the texas a&m system as part of the nsf natural disaster resiliency event on the hill on jan 28 murphy was one of five speakers selected to discuss disasters and the impact that her research has had on first response to demonstrate she brought along two of her robotic companions – bujold (a ground robot used at ground zero of the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center) and kelly (an unmanned aerial system that murphy and her team have used during hurricanes irma and michael and the kilauea volcanic eruption)
859,i have been researching disaster robotics since 1995 and am the first principal investigator to have an nsf grant about rescue robots murphy said two days after the nsf event murphy joined the hadr executive forum at the white house along with representatives from google microsoft facebook verizon at&t national oceanic and atmospheric administration (noaa) branches of the military fema and major emergency management agencies my role was to discuss what was available in the academic sector from my work at texas a&m and the center for robot-assisted search and rescue to contribute to a clearinghouse of datasets algorithms computing resources and domain expertise murphy said as murphy explained such contributions include the largest known open set of small aerial system imagery taken during disaster response professional training courses for practitioners and documentation and expertise from over 30 disasters in five countries
860,carol 90 and slater sauer 87 have established the carol 90 and william slater sauer 87 endowed civil engineering scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university from an early age slater had a strong connection to texas a&m through his father who was class of ‘55 slater was able to attend several football games growing up and visited the campus regularly while staying at his grandparents house near northgate he said that his fathers aggie ring stood out as a key feature of texas a&m and he thought that someday he might wear his own although at the time i had no idea what the symbols meant i thought the carefully crafted ring was amazing and at times i envisioned wearing my own one day he said as a freshman slater joined the corps of cadets in order to ensure he had the full on-campus experience the corps encouraged service university involvement and helped foster leadership skills it helped open new and unexpected opportunities and paved the way to developing relationships that i continue to treasure today said slater he attributes his leadership academic and relationship skills to his experiences at texas a&m and says that those skills have played a significant role in both his personal and professional life not only do carol and slater hope their scholarship will provide students with a vital education they hope it will encourage students to get involved in organizations and activities to feed their passions the confluence of academics leadership development and building relationships are key ingredients that propel individuals toward valuable life experiences and help them forge new friendships that will last a lifetime said slater carol and slater chose to establish a scholarship for several reasons we believe that gifts supporting academia will help provide others the opportunity to gain a great education and become a part of a wonderful institution with a long-lasting legacy of service and leadership slater said our wish is that students that benefit from these gifts will have wonderful experiences like we did and will want to provide opportunities for future generations to come slater said that his and carols greatest memories and feelings of belonging during their time at texas a&m were the driving force behind their desire to give back and support students
861,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson assistant director of development
862,robert 90 and tera davis 94 have contributed to the engineering entrepreneurship program their gift will be used to support the program within engineering academics and student affairs at the texas a&m university college of engineering robert davis was deciding between two schools when contemplating where to go to college before attending texas a&m he states that it was the passion and love that aggies had for texas a&m that ultimately made him decide to attend former students of texas a&m were much more enthusiastic and would spend significant amounts of time trying to convince me how great a&m was he said davis said his inspiration behind wanting to give back to texas a&m was the help he received while attending i was fortunate to receive several academic scholarships including a presidents endowed scholarship even as a student i always planned to someday return the favor robert said to whom much is given much is expected the support of all former students is critical to a&m becoming the flagship university in texas and renowned internationally robert said as first-generation aggies robert and tera found entrepreneurship to be a critical skill they founded their own company critical start in 2012 and said they have been fortunate in their success entrepreneurship is an important skill to teach students as this has a tremendous impact on the success of our alumni and increases their ability to fund both academics and athletics longer term robert said the davises aim to give back to texas a&m to provide support for current and future aggies tera and i both believe that nothing feels quite as good as paying it forward especially when benefiting students we want the best for texas a&m and success is a team sport in which every aggies help counts robert said
863,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact kirkland rivers assistant director of development
864,elizabeth ann and ben krueger 84 have established the elizabeth ann and ben krueger 84 endowed scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m university when deciding where he would attend college krueger chose to attend texas a&m for both its chemical engineering program as well as the values and culture found in the university he was able to attend and graduate from texas a&m through scholarships and recognizes their importance and impact they had on his life a&m gave me the foundation to become successful at chevron and the ability to work all over the world ben said i established this gift as a way to pay back the generosity of the jesse h jones foundation in providing me with a scholarship to be able to attend college he said the texas a&m legacy started in the krueger family through him and his siblings and is carried on through his son krueger said that he understands the importance of being able to graduate from college debt-free and hopes to help other students achieve this goal having a scholarship made it possible for me to go to college and not be in debt god blessed me and my family with funds to put my children through college without debt and i see the difference it made in their lives so i would like to continue to give ben said the kruegers hope that their gift will have a lasting impact and help students get a quality education i hope that someone in need will be inspired to become a chemical engineer be a lasting legacy to others and that they will give back as well he said
865,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
866,brian welsh 19 has always been fascinated with buildings specifically the magnitude and scale of these human-made objectshe thought he wanted to be an architect but as he moved up through high school he realized that civil engineering was a natural fithis high school in san antonio was part of a texas a&m university program called e12 now engage (engineering aggies gaining experience) through the college of engineerings access and inclusion program during which his team built and programmed a solar-powered car operated with an android phonethe summer before my senior year of high school i spent a week at a summer camp here in the old zachry building welsh said this experience really got me excited about the opportunities at a&m and gave me an exposure to the aggie culture that ive come to know and love throughout my years as an undergraduate studentas an undergraduate welsh took advantage of all texas a&m has to offer he joined engineers without borders (ewb) as a freshman and was a part of the college of engineering's craig and galen brown engineering honors programas a part of ewb and later as president of the organization welsh worked on international hands-on engineering service projects in some developing countries he worked on a water chlorination system for a small community in rural nicaragua eventually moving into a leadership position where he managed the project traveled there and actually built the system he also helped with the start-up of a new sanitation project in rwandai poured a lot of time into the organization and gained numerous invaluable experiences i will never forget welsh said
867,"in the engineering honors program welsh was able to help with a research project that gave him a taste of what it might be like to pursue a graduate degree and learn about the new cutting-edge technology being developed in civil engineeringthe honors program provided me with opportunities with the college that i may not have otherwise heard about or thought to get involved with he said the program allowed me to take honors courses which challenged me to talk to professors more and get a deeper understanding of the subject matter that i was most interested inwelshs primary interest is structural engineering and he has a minor in computer science he enjoys civil engineering because of the direct interface between the general public and the world of engineeringmy favorite challenge about structural engineering is finding feasible ways to accomplish whatever wild visions an architect or owner has for a project he said the wilder the design of a building the more fun it is to bring it to reality""welsh is also interested in promoting the implementation of new structural materials or design methods that have less impact on the environment than concretecivil engineering projects are designed to benefit people and improve the built environment in which we all live and i really like being able to have that sort of impact on society he saidwelsh will start work this month at hunt & joiner a structural engineering firm in dallas and work there for seven months before starting his master's degree in structural engineering in august after graduate school welsh plans to work as a professional structural engineer with the goal of becoming a professor of practice someday"
868,baby diapers contact lenses and gelatin dessert while seemingly unrelated these items have one thing in common theyre made of highly absorbent substances called hydrogels that have versatile applications recently a type of biodegradable hydrogel dubbed microporous annealed particle (map) hydrogel has gained much attention for its potential to deliver stem cells for body tissue repair but it is currently unclear how these jelly-like materials affect the growth of their precious cellular cargo thereby limiting its use in regenerative medicine in a new study published in the november issue of acta biomaterialia researchers at texas a&m university have shown that map hydrogels programmed to biodegrade at an optimum pace create a fertile environment for bone stem cells to thrive and proliferate vigorously they found the space created by the withering of map hydrogels creates room for the stem cells to grow spread and form intricate cellular networks our research now shows that stem cells flourish on degrading map hydrogels; they also remodel their local environment to better suit their needs said dr daniel alge assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering these results have important implications for developing map hydrogel-based delivery systems particularly for regenerative medicine where we want to deliver cells that will replace damaged tissues with new and healthy ones map hydrogels are a newer breed of injectable hydrogels these soft materials are interconnected chains of extremely small beads made of polyethylene glycol a synthetic polymer although the microbeads cannot themselves cling to cells they can be engineered to present cell-binding proteins that can then attach to receptor molecules on the stem cells surface
869,once fastened onto the microbeads the stem cells use the space between the spheres to grow and transform into specialized cells like bone or skin cells and so when there is an injury map hydrogels can be used to deliver these new cells to help tissues regenerate however the health and behavior of stem cells within the map hydrogel environment has never been fully studied map hydrogels have superior mechanical and biocompatible properties so in principle they are a great platform to grow and maintain stem cells said alge but people in the field really dont have a good understanding of how stem cells behave in these materials to address this question the researchers studied the growth spread and function of bone stem cells in map hydrogels alge and his team used three samples of map hydrogels that differed only in the speed at which they degraded that is either slow fast or not at all first for the stem cells to attach onto the map hydrogels the researchers decorated the map hydrogels with a type of cell-binding protein they then tracked the stem cells as they grew using a high-resolution fluorescent microscope the researchers also repeated the same experiment using another cell-binding protein to investigate if cell-binding proteins also affected stem cell development within the hydrogels
870,to their surprise alges team found that for both types of cell-binding proteins the map hydrogels that degraded the fastest had the largest population of stem cells furthermore the cells were changing the shape of the map hydrogel as they spread and claimed more territory in the intact map hydrogel we could still see the spherical microbeads and the material was quite undamaged said alge by contrast the cells were making ridges and grooves in the degrading map hydrogels dynamically remodeling their environment the researchers also found that as the stem cells grew the quantity of bone proteins produced by the growing stem cells depended on which cell-binding protein was initially used in the map hydrogel alge noted that the insight gained through their study will greatly inform further research and development in map hydrogels for stem-cell therapies although map hydrogel degradability profoundly affects the growth of the stem cells we found that the interplay between the cell-binding proteins and the degradation is also important he said as we as a field make strides toward developing new map hydrogels for tissue engineering we must look at the effects of both degradability and cell-binding proteins to best utilize these materials for regenerative medicine other contributors to the research include dr shangjing xin from the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m and dr carl a gregory from the institute for regenerative medicine at the texas a&m health science center this research was supported by funds from the national institute of arthritis and musculoskeletal and skin diseases of the national institutes of health
871,researchers in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university have been awarded a $18 million grant from the department of energy (doe) dr mustafa akbulut associate professor and dr joseph sang-ii kwon assistant professor are leading the research project aimed at enhancing the productivity of unconventional fossil fuel reservoirs their research will focus on a new class of viscosifying agents they developed in 2016 natural gas overtook coal as the leading fuel used in us utility-scale electricity generation according to the us energy information administration (eia) natural gas accounted for more than one third of utility-scale electricity generation in 2018 further since 2017 the us has been a net exporter of natural gas (exporting more than it imported) net us natural gas exports doubled from 2018 to 2019 and the eia is projecting that these numbers will double again by 2021 when extracting natural gas from unconventional sources large amounts of fluid are pumped into a reservoir increasing pressure enough to create cracks in rock formations allowing trapped natural gas to flow freely to the surface where it is collected the fluid used in this process has two main purposes first it creates cracks in the rock formations second it distributes proppant along the cracks proppant is a solid material most often sand that holds the cracks open two of the main ways to increase the effectiveness of the extraction process are to increase the viscosity of the fluid and to introduce favorable interactions between the fluid and proppant one of the main issues with extracting natural gas from unconventional sources is the wide variability of conditions from source to source to combat this issue akbulut and kwon have developed dynamic binary complexes (dbcs) a new class of viscosifying agent dbcs are incredibly flexible and have super-adjustable characteristics making them ideal for use in the extraction of unconventional fossil fuel reservoirs the doe grant is being used to further the development of improved viscosifiers that can be used under elevated temperatures pressures and salinity to improve oil and natural gas recovery from unconventional reservoirs this project is aimed at creating commercially viable dbc formulations the researchers will investigate properties of dbc-based fluids and interactions of dbcs with a commonly used proppant with the goal being the development of the best dbc formulation after identifying the most optimum dbc formation the researchers will perform a full-scale field test this test is crucial as it will allow the research team to test the market validity of dbcs the research team has partnered with incendium technologies llc to create a pilot-scale reactor system to produce large amounts of the selected dbcs needed in field tests
872,"brenda a stout 93 and craig stout have established the brenda a 93 and craig stout chemical engineering endowed scholarship to support full-time students who are pursuing a degree in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university the stouts' gift will also receive matching funds from shell as part of their helping employees reach out (hero) program since graduating from the chemical engineering department at texas a&m brendas career has taken her and her family across the us and around the world most recently living in singapore growing up traveling was a luxury her family could not afford and without a job and scholarships so would have been an engineering degree from texas a&m i came from a poor family and i had a lot of help from people to get through college said brenda ""ive always thought at some point i really want to do that for someone else in addition to paying it forward she hopes this scholarship will give others the opportunities that a career in engineering has given her its gratifying as an engineer to be solving the worlds problems and i look out there and see students in school and society and i think ‘wow if they could just get a foot in the door like i did to get an engineering education…it opens up the world for you for brenda the value in being an engineer is being a part of mapping the future and creating important advancements that positively impact the world outside of her career endowing a scholarship is another way for stout to invest in the future i see all the cool things that students are learning today even how to efficiently do their jobs which is different than we have ever done in my generation and its so exciting brenda said there are so many opportunities out there and what i see are engineers coming out of school and taking where we are and turning it into the future and its an exciting time to be a part of that receiving an engineering degree from texas a&m and pursuing a long-running career in industry has made a dramatic impact on her life and her familys future for her opportunities are about people believing in you and taking a chance on you i hope they get the opportunity like i did to change their life and the life of their family said brenda its the beginning of something i couldnt even have imagined at that age"
873,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment fellowships encourage collaboration between the faculty students and industry mentors while allowing graduate students to further their education and thus having a greater impact on the industry if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
874,"you could say that aggie maroon runs through conner lutzs bloodthe recent civil engineering graduate was born and bred an aggie his parents met at texas a&m university and his two older siblings graduated here toolutz always knew where he wanted to go to school but still had to decide his major initially he thought mechanical engineering but said he went for civil engineering because of the guidance and inspiration of his father a senior vice president at pape-dawson engineers""because of its unique demand for soft skills such as public speaking and teamwork i was drawn toward the program and future career "" he said ""plus it was rumored that only the best and brightest go into the civil engineering department and i didn't want to pass up that opportunity""before lutz began his collegiate career he was accepted into the college of engineering's craig and galen brown engineering honors program""engineering honors gave me the motivation and connections necessary to be the best i can be in college "" he said ""to anyone considering the program apply trust me similar to when you thank your mom after taking her advice you will thank me later""speaking of advice lutz has some for fellow engineering students""always better yourself and i don't mean just in terms of studying "" he said ""always look to push yourself beyond what you think you are capable of and work on personality traits that are less than helpful such as laziness or selfishness i realize that is demanding but in the end you will benefit"""
875,"lutz credits his parents james '92 and melissa '93 lutz for their lifelong guidance and consistent encouragement but he also had some professors who inspired him through his collegiate career""i met professor (alton) rogers through the cven 400 capstone class and although i technically met him once through my industry connections i had no idea the amazing life he has lived "" he said ""he has literally done everything that i desire to do in life whether it be his deep interest in the well-being of his family or owning a successful business in civil engineering professor rogers has shown me what a very driven individual can do with the education that texas a&m provides""lutz was also drawn to programming classes like richard hutchinson's autocad and structural design engineering classes like michael brackin's steel design class""i feel that these classes allowed me to truly test and stretch my engineering abilities "" he saidwhile not in class lutz was involved in organizations both on and off campus during his undergraduate studies he was a member of the american society of civil engineers the student engineers council institute of transportation engineers as well as st mary's catholic church connect retreat aggie awakening and john 15in fact one of his favorite places to study was at the st mary's catholic student center""in addition to having an unusual amount of civil engineers in the congregation st mary's provided a quiet yet social atmosphere that enabled me to study as best i can "" he saidlutz is currently working for the engineering firm lockwood andrews & newnam inc in college station and san antonio and plans to begin his master's degree in structural engineering in fall 2020"
876,tim daugherty graduated in 2003 and started working in industry for research and development company millar inc sixteen years later hes now the president and ceo i was looking for a job in houston wanted to go into industry and just started applying to different companies daugherty said a job offer on an a&m bme listserv came up for technical support and sales engineering at millar i started here right after school while in technical sales daugherty said he was exposed to end users and customers a lot he said he was fortunate to have opportunities to advance as positions would open up he moved through the ranks at millar from product and then sales manager director of cardiology products and then sales and marketing to finally being named president and ceo its been really interesting daugherty said i didnt come to this company with the goal of running it i did want to run a company at some point but not the first i started with since taking on the role of ceo daugherty said the company has drastically changed the strategic direction of the company by narrowing their focus around millars core capability of micro-electromechanical systems (mems) pressure sensor integration top line revenue has increased 15% over 2014-15 averages my primary goal when i assumed this role is basically the same goal that has kept me at millar since the start of my career: to see the company realize its latent potential to become a significant contributor in the clinical medical device space when he chose to study biomedical engineering daugherty said his goal to go to med school however by the time he graduated with his bachelors degree he was ready to enter the job force he said he was excited to find a good job as the market was unique when he graduated in 2003 when i was a freshman i remember the seniors all talking about how good the economy was and all the job offers they were receiving daugherty said when i graduated about a third of students were going to med school a third were going into industry and a third were continuing on in masters or phd he said he encourages biomedical engineering students to also take business-related courses or activities while in school especially if they want to go into management its been 16 years since daugherty graduated and he said hes worked to find ways over time to help students and biomedical engineering overall he has recruited biomedical engineers at texas a&m and has hired four over the years to start their careers at millar what i find interesting is how many of these engineering students whose internships have co-ops which gives them industry experience daugherty said thats something thats changed for the better since i was there he also serves on the industrial advisory board for the biomedical engineering program at the university of houston overall daugherty said his message for current students is to never stop learning youve got to be ready to keep going strategy never stops daugherty said stay ahead of the curve and continue to expect a continuous learning experience
877,"artificial intelligence (ai) has revolutionized just about every field it has toucheddr stephanie paal assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university will work to wield that revolutionary power in the civil engineering fieldpaal recently received the faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) one of the most prestigious awards for up-and-coming researchers the grant provides funding to support promising integrated research and education projectspaal will use the career award to leverage existing knowledge and artificial intelligence to understand the performance of civil infrastructure under extreme loads such as natural or human-made disasters like earthquakes hurricanes or firesinnovations in new materials and structural design are being created to respond to these extreme situations there is a need for a rapid and reliable approach to understanding the behavior of existing and new structures in light of these innovations""i will focus specifically on the application of ai techniques such as transfer learning by leveraging available relevant large datasets to address the small datasets that are comprised by the development of these new materials and structural designs she said while my research goal focuses on augmenting human knowledge with the artificial my education goal focuses on augmenting current practices with the physical""paal will take a multidisciplinary collaborative team-based approach to education and outreach which is integral to the research plan called stem in motion""the integrated research and educational plan aim toward a more intelligent and informed approach to design analysis and evaluation of our built world in the face of disasters and response to the ever-changing technological landscape "" she said moreover although ai-based approaches are very promising right now my integrated plan will focus on determining when and to what extent these approaches are suitable within the applied science domainsthis award contributes to the national science foundation's role in the national earthquake hazards reduction programread more about paals research and objectives in her nsf abstract"
878,there is a layer that separates the sky and sea its tiny – only one millimeter at its thickest – and yet this sea-surface microlayer plays a major role in weather prediction and the relationship between the air and ocean while the sea-surface layer has been known about for decades the dynamics and greater implications of it are largely unknown in order to remedy this dr aarthi sekaran and dr noushin amini two research assistant professors in the department of ocean engineering at the texas a&m university at galveston campus are taking a deeper look into the flow instabilities of this microlayer their research will provide a better understanding of how changes in the sea-surface microlayer affect weather patterns such as wind speed and temperature variation the science that is hidden in this microlayer is both fascinating and challenging since we see large variations of properties like temperature salinity and organic matter composition said sekaran essentially a lot happening over a small thickness which is an exciting fluid dynamical setup as the incidence of extreme weather conditions increases sekaran explained that it becomes more essential to understand the sea-surface microlayer which plays a pivotal role in predicting weather and climate changes the question then becomes how global conditions are affected by shifts found in the microlayer my research aims at using state-of-the-art computer simulations to unearth the role of flow instabilities coherent structure dynamics and other related processes on the development of the sea-surface microlayer said sekaran
879,while an undergraduate and graduate student at texas a&m university sekaran was introduced to hydrodynamic instabilities hydrodynamic instabilities – the study of fluids in motion and how their flow can be disrupted – look at how such instabilities can cause large-scale dynamic changes in systems (such as weather patterns) applying these concepts to ocean engineering early into her appointment in the department sekaran discovered that distinct flow patterns and instabilities could be simulated in the sea-surface microlayer opening a door for fundamental processes to be discovered focusing on the heat and mass transfer across the sea-surface microlayer sekaran and amini are looking to do just that: discover fundamental processes and understanding of the microlayer and how it impacts weather prediction and other systems the ocean engineering department is an exciting place to work in today sekaran said the experienced faculty is always willing to guide younger ones and we are all enthusiastic about the department growing in new directions ive also had the opportunity to work on some unique department initiatives such as the natural marine processes in engineering design program and am certain we will have an unparalleled group of aggie ocean engineers graduating soon
880,with a touch of inspiration from macgyver aggies have developed a way to make medical protective gear from readily available materials a group of professors and graduate students from the college of engineering at texas a&m university are researching methods to construct desperately needed personal protection masks for medical personnel who have seen a depletion of resources as the number of covid-19 cases increases dr john criscione professor in the department of biomedical engineering and a johns hopkins-educated medical doctor said he and his colleagues are investigating a low-technology solution to a growing problem criscione and his team have figured out a way to build masks with materials such as air-conditioning filters sheer curtains staples and stretchable cords john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system said the texas a&m community has a long tradition of helping society when it needs assistance the most this is exactly the kind of aggie ingenuity that has been evident on our campus for generations he said
881,criscione said his team will be quantitatively testing do-it-yourself masks in the coming days the team will continue its efforts to create a mask that has features similar to the n95 respirator which is capable of filtering 95% of airborne particles including viruses (surgical masks cannot block as much) if the gap between supply and demand continues to worsen and particularly our emergency medical colleagues are forced to use diy masks we want them to have technical guidance as they make their choices of materials and construction criscione said we see this as our selfless service responsibility to the general public as aggies and we are here to help the project began after emergency room physicians asked criscione to explore potential solutions in case masks become unavailable the result is a work-product that would be approved by macgyver the innovative namesake of an iconic late 1980s/early1990s tv show the prototype never was intended to join the supply-chain of approved personal protective equipment or ppe criscione said rather he said that the aggie masks should be reserved for worst-case scenarios where overwhelmed hospitals had no protective masks to use for life-saving procedures another group at texas a&ms college of engineering is working on options to produce similar personal protective masks with 3d printers see the video with a step-by-step guide concerning the construction of protective masks
882,pamela and scott doyle have established the pamela b 93 and scott e doyle 93 endowed scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university they have also established the pamela b 93 and scott e doyle 93 dean's scholar award this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time freshmen students scott earned his degree in civil engineering in 1993 from the texas a&m while pamela earned her degree in kinesiology in 1994 scott is a professional engineer and is the executive vice president for natural gas distribution at centerpoint energy he has been with the company for almost 15 years and is responsible for the companys eight-state natural gas operations utility footprint in addition scott oversees centerpoint energys enterprise customer organization including utility sales and marketing pamela and doyle come from a long line of aggies and have two children erin and grant
883,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
884,lindi j horton has established the dr bob 71 dvm 78 and debbie 04 horton leadership award distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university lindi established this scholarship in honor of her parents who both attended texas a&m her father dr bob horton received his bachelor's degree in veterinary science and zoology in 1971 and her mother debbie received her masters degree in educational curriculum and instruction in 2004 lindi graduated from texas a&m with a degree in computer science in 2002 during her time at texas a&m she was the founder and president of the national society of collegiate scholars as well as a member and director of volunteerism for upsilon phi epsilon the computer science honor society lindi works for cloud whisperer as their chief transformation officer and has been with them for six years she supports the transformation of teams and individuals to empower their lives and define life on their terms in addition she supports teams in leading transformation and change through connection relatedness and conversation she currently resides in the austin texas area
885,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
886,vivian and william latimer jr have established the vivian and william bill latimer jr 61 scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from texas a&m university william earned his degree in mechanical engineering in 1961 from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering the couple has two children who both graduated from texas a&m their daughter leslie graduated with a degree in psychology in 1987 and their son craig graduated from texas a&m university at galveston with a degree in marine science in 1984 william is now retired and the couple resides in dickinson texas
887,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
888,angela and craig collins have established the angela 98 and craig collins 98 endowed chemical engineering scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at texas a&m university angela graduated from the mays business school in 1998 with a degree in marketing craig earned his chemical engineering degree in 1998 from texas a&m and his mba from rice university in 2003 they have two children morgan and lauren and reside in spring texas currently craig is the senior vice president and chief operating officer of western midstream an occidental petroleum company
889,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
890,on any given day you might walk by the 10-story richardson building and think of it as just one of the taller structures on the texas a&m university campus: stately and unsurprising but did you know a vertical lab stands inside the building one that is taller than the building you see on the outside graduate student omer kaldirim knows all about this hidden facility he recently led a team of students through an intensive upgrade of the lab one of the most unique labs at texas a&m and one of the tallest academic research flow loops or piping systems designed for studying fluid and gas interactions in the world people wonder where im coming from when i come up from the basement all the time said kaldirim not many of our undergrads grads and not even all the faculty know about tower lab
891,this large-scale flow loop research lab affectionately known as tower lab is a 142-foot vertical assembly of clear pipes steel pipes pumps tanks and other equipment tucked away inside a hollow column of space within the core of the richardson building an access door on every floor allows entry but because of the tall unbroken piping loops and pump systems there is nothing between the roof and the basement to stand on except a series of open grating panels and a very long ladder while not quite a ‘tower of terror looking up or down inside tower lab nearly half a football field in height can easily mess with depth perception why have such a tall vertical lab oil and gas exploration efforts usually begin with a vertical well drilled into the earth these initial wellbores are often thousands of feet deep and since they can be the first contact with a reservoir the place where challenging pressure changes fluid movements and accidents usually occur for example trapped gas in a reservoir will want to enter the well travel up and escape to the surface where it can expand in a dangerous blowout situation drilling muds are circulated down inside the drill pipe and back up inside the casing around the drill pipe to force gasses to stay within the reservoir tower labs height and equipment help researchers understand how compressed reservoir gasses react if they manage to invade the different types of muds in the well the lab features clear two- and four-inch diameter pipes so that gas behaviors can be visually studied and measured experiments in tower lab can be scaled up to match the actual drilling conditions of using 19- to 22-inch diameter pipes in one- to 12-kilometer depths said kaldirim right now im outfitting it for use in research to improve existing deepwater drilling well control practices
892,kaldirim is a member of a team led by dr jerome schubert and dr rashid hasan faculty in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering their work is part of a joint project with louisiana state university to improve deepwater drilling safety the project began in 2018 funded with a $49 million award from the gulf research program of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine the tower lab upgrade was paid for with a portion of that said kaldirim we needed to make the lab more versatile and work better for the riser gas research risers are the large vertical pipes a drilling assembly travels through between offshore rigs and the seafloor below most operations have a blowout preventer on the seabed and trust that drilling fluids like the mud and this blowout-prevention device will keep gasses from coming up to the surface but in 2010 reservoir gasses invaded the riser of the macondo well operation out in the gulf of mexico leading to a deadly blowout explosion the destruction of an offshore rig and a catastrophic oil spill shale may be slowing down the deep well drilling offshore but its still there said kaldirim companies are interested in this research no one wants uncontrolled riser gas to cause another blowout were just now acquiring a lot of information on safer managed pressure drilling methods in controlling riser gas and improving well control practices this lab can prove concepts and prove which ideas dont work kaldirim is a phd student with a masters degree in petroleum engineering and a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering he has experience working with oil companies and even did short-term work at well sites where he acquired a deep respect for drilling processes yet the tower lab upgrade was a different kind of education
893,redoing this lab has been a huge learning experience he said whatever i didnt know i investigated whatever i couldnt do i outsourced yet still tried to help with you cant be shy in the petroleum industry you engage people in what youre trying to do and in turn they become interested in you kaldirim spent the summer and fall 2019 semesters and part of the spring 2020 semester assembling new pipes and changing out equipment he also connected with other students who were willing to help him especially kaushik manikonda pedro sousa mohamed shafik khaled and dinara dussenova together with the help of richardson building facilities coordinator john maldonado they recalibrated systems tested transducers upgraded meters and moved tanks and separators to different heights the upgrade will produce higher flow rates and gain better accuracy in gas expansion experiments and flow experiments for the managed pressure drilling research he will complete this year when people find out about tower lab theres interest said kaldirim to lose tower lab would be to lose an opportunity for future research and to make a difference in oil and gas safety we have to market it make sure people know its here
894,jacqueline and paul a pirkle 97 have established the thomas and shirley pirkle scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university growing up with strong ties to the university of texas through his parents paul surprised everyone when he decided to attend texas a&m when i visited the a&m campus during my high school senior year i knew that aggieland was where i wanted and needed to be i bought an a&m baseball cap that day and i can still remember the shock on my dad's face when he first saw me with that cap on my head but my parents always supported my decision paul said paul said that his time at texas a&m was instrumental in making him who he is today attending texas a&m taught me to work on my weaknesses when i came to texas a&m i really had to focus on becoming more outgoing and gain confidence in communication and building new relationships he said those skills have been critical to my professional success as an engineer and i continue to work on my weaknesses today in order to continually improve in my job and life paul and jacqueline hope that their scholarship will encourage students to attend texas a&m and study engineering paul said my hope is that the scholarship can help nudge students from small towns toward the opportunity that aggie engineering represents when they might be intimidated or be otherwise pushed toward some other opportunity that can't match a&m engineering if it can provide one student with the assistance that they need to chase this amazing opportunity and make it a reality then this gift will have been a great success paul said we have been blessed in ways that i could have never imagined our gift is out of a sense of gratitude to texas a&m and my parents for everything that both have done to be a positive influence on my life
895,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
896,charles lindsey kroll 71 has established the theodore h kroll and charles a kroll 40 memorial scholarship in honor of his grandfather and father distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in electrical engineering in the college of engineering at texas a&m university kroll earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1971 and his masters degree in electrical engineering in 1973 as a student kroll was a member of the corps of cadets and was in company h-2 and squadron 14 he was also a member of the honors invitational program and the msc student conference on national affairs
897,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
898,prashanth kumar siddhamshetty a doctoral candidate in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2020 association of former students distinguished graduate student award for excellence in doctoral research siddhamshetty who is advised by dr joseph kwon has focused his research on developing a model predictive control framework for the design of pumping schedules to regulate propped fracture geometry in hydraulic fracturing geometry of the fracture strongly influences the fluid conductivity of natural oil and gas from shale formations which depends on injected flow rate and concentration of proppant – to keep the fracture open – with time his research addresses key practical and fundamental challenges and has the potential to lead to a lower break-even price with respect to crude oil and gas and to greatly impact the economy of the state of texas ultimately enabling us energy independence upon receiving his bachelor of technology in chemical engineering from indian institutes of technology madras siddhamshetty worked in the technical services team at reliance industries limited and joined texas a&m in 2015 he has authored/co-authored 27 publications in leading archival journals presented research at several national conferences and made consistent contributions to secure grants he has received several honors and awards including the paul & ellen deisler fellowship by the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering apart from academic work within the department siddhamshetty was involved in energy research society activities in 2017-18 in the capacity of a technical general officer he defended his dissertation in january 2020 and will graduate in may 2020
899,texas a&m engineerings graduate program was ranked 13th overall nationally and eighth among public institutions in the latest us news & world report survey americas best graduate schools 2021 seven departments in the college of engineering were also ranked in the top 10 public universities: aerospace engineering (5) biological and agricultural engineering (4) civil engineering (9) industrial and systems engineering (8) mechanical engineering (8) nuclear engineering (5) and petroleum engineering (2) the complete list of individual programs ranked were: aerospace engineering 8 (5 public); biological and agricultural engineering 4 (4); biomedical engineering 37 (18); chemical engineering 28 (17); civil engineering 14 (9); computer engineering 28 (15); electrical engineering 22 (13); industrial and systems engineering 12 (8); materials science and engineering 23 (14); mechanical engineering 17 (8); nuclear engineering 6 (5); and petroleum engineering 2 (2)
900,its said that 95% of the ocean remains unexplored today scientists are one step closer to unveiling the mysteries of the deep aquatic sea because hidden on the ocean floor lies an untapped energy source that could revolutionize the future of energy: ice-like crystalline structures known as gas hydrates gas hydrates form when a gas usually methane combines with water and freezes under high pressure and low temperatures unlike typical ice gas hydrates are highly flammable and unstable at normal sea-level conditions because of this researchers face enormous challenges in trying to safely extract the methane additionally their location on the ocean floor presents additional environmental challenges as destabilizing the sea floor could trigger submarine landslides or tsunamis petroleum engineering graduate student kotaro anno is one of the researchers spearheading the efforts to determine ways to safely access these gas hydrates originally from japan he decided to come to texas a&m university after his previous advisor encouraged him to travel to the united states to study he now researches gas hydrate simulation in dr george moridis lab due to the volatile nature of gas hydrates researchers must first learn to predict their behavior before extracting the methane anno is developing ways to simulate the behavior of gas hydrates under varying conditions by modifying the julia language on a super computer julia is a programming language developed at the massachusetts institute of technology that is used for scientific and numerical computing by rewriting the code using power computing anno can achieve faster computation of gas hydrate simulations
901,this is one of the biggest problems the oil and gas industry is facing said anno weve encountered many obstacles with gas hydrates for example in a natural gas hydrate reservoir we are limited by the surrounding sand production which prevents us from accessing and extracting the gas hydrate so if we can simulate when or under which conditions that sand is produced we can better understand the best way to access the reservoir gas hydrates consist mainly of methane gas which is less carbon-intense than other fossil fuels making them eco-friendlier gas hydrates are a viable resource because natural gas or methane is a relatively clean source of energy said anno additionally gas hydrates are estimated to contain twice the carbon than whats found in other fossil fuels this means that we can use these resources for a longer amount of time this is why researchers are considering gas hydrates to be the bridge to renewable energy switching from fossil fuels to a completely renewable energy source on a global scale is a timely process and natural gas can help ease the transition while simultaneously opening doors for future research and production annos research is carving a path for research scientists and engineers to one day extract gas hydrates and fuel a cleaner future
902,dr satish bukkapatnam professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as the recipient of the 2019-20 fulbright-tocqueville distinguished chair award serving a two-year term as the distinguished chair bukkapatnam will work on collaborative research in france to enhance smart manufacturing capabilities and develop sustainable materials and advanced optical systems in addition to research he will also give seminars across france he will present his first seminar on march 12 the award was created in 2005 by the franco-american fulbright commission together with the french ministry of higher education and research and the us department of state the goal of the award is to enhance cooperation between france and america which bukkapatnam will contribute to during his tenure bukkapatnam was selected as a distinguished chair for his research in smart manufacturing some of which is done through the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) institute for manufacturing systems where he is director he has also previously worked with the arts et métiers institute of technology (école nationale supérieure darts et métiers – ensam) on smart manufacturing research smart manufacturing uses automated sensors and technology to improve and monitor the production process part of bukkapatnams research focuses on the smart sensors used in smart manufacturing and how these sensors can be used to provide more information about the manufacturing process while in france he will work with researchers in the arts et métiers institute of technology and stil marposs a small french company to develop the next generation of smart sensor systems i am very grateful for this opportunity and thankful for the honor of being named the distinguished chair bukkapatnam said i look forward to continuing my research and working with my collaborator dr mohamed el mansori on this project in 2017 a partnership was created between arts et métiers and tees referred to as am2 this partnership was formed to advance the technology surrounding artificial intelligence and data science in smart manufacturing while promoting collaboration between the two organizations graduate student exchanges between the two schools deepens this collaboration and allows knowledge to flow into both countries french graduate and doctoral students actively participate in this transatlantic cooperation through classes conferences and joint research projects said audrey stewart director of international and european development at arts et métiers whereby sharing knowledge to address the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution faced by american and french companies while in france bukkapatnam and his collaborators will launch the am2 consortium for industry of the future which will strengthen the am2 partnership and deepen the understanding and commitment of companies in the consortium said stewart
903,deepfake images of people look real they pose in realistic settings and in the case of videos can emote almost naturally however everything about deepfakes is synthetic – just a series of codes that come together to form an image of a person who doesnt exist however as dr freddie witherden assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university discussed in a paper titled fourier spectrum discrepancies in deep network generated images the images and bots behind the falsified faces are not without fault used largely as bots on social media platforms to spread fake news and sway opinion deepfakes are a global and interdisciplinary issue that begs the question: is seeing really believing it seems initially like something vastly different to what an ocean engineer would normally do day to day but quite a bit of my day to day research involves machine learning applications of machine learning and in the same way that deepfakes try and synthesize realistic looking pictures of people some of my research involves using the same technology to simulate fluid flows or generating fluid flows without having to do a full simulation witherden said
904,his research began when ocean engineering doctoral student tarik dzanic approached him with a desire to test ways to differentiate deepfake images from real ones together they dove into the intricate details of pictures – comparing and contrasting how each scaled and differed our approach is a little bit different from what we've seen in the literature witherden said the idea is that if you look at a real photo which is of a person of an object that will typically be taken with a camera and so that photo will have some degree of noise associated with it if you zoom in and look at the pixels of a high-resolution photograph there's typically some kind of noise pattern because that noise does not bother people viewing an image attention is normally not paid to it similarly he explained the algorithms that are trained to generate deepfake images also do not pay attention to the noise either rather deepfake algorithms focus on the big picture and recognizable features of a face such as a mouth nose and eyes and that was the key for witherden and dzanic they're not concerned about the minutia associated with the noise and so they don't make any effort into trying to get that noise profile correct witherden said and so deepfake images that you see online at the moment generally have a different noise profile to those of real images that were captured with the camera and so by doing some very simple signal processing we can identify these discrepancies and thus discriminate between real images or fake images hear more about how witherden and dzanic are exposing deepfakes in a recent podcast interview listen on your favorite audio platform or stream witherdens podcast episode directly from the soundbytes website
905,a continuing renewal grant of the industry-university cooperative research centers program from the national science foundation (nsf) will allow researchers to continue working toward extending the life-cycle of civil infrastructure resulting in less maintenance and lower costs to taxpayersthe nsf awarded a five-year $250 000 grant to the center for the integration of composites into infrastructure (cici) led by principal investigator dr anand puppala professor and the ap florence wiley chair in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university the center has university partnerships with other centers housed at west virginia university the university of miami and north carolina state university that are focusing on composite materials and their applications in structural engineering related topicswe received funding for the center for the final phase (phase iii) for five years and we anticipate to recruit more industries and partners to work with us on the centers research activities student recruitment and training as well as developing new patents we also anticipate more collaborative studies with our research consortium partners puppala saidresearchers for the center will use the grant along with annual membership funds (anticipated to be more than $1 million dollars) from several agencies and industries to examine ways to create stronger more sustainable infrastructure such as foundations retaining walls slopes and related structures dr surya sc congress and dr sayantan chakraborty co-principal investigators and postdoctoral researchers will work with puppala on the centers research recruitment and outreach activities faculty working in similar fields will also be recruited to work with specific research studiesthe texas a&m cici site has a strong research background in soil-structure interactions and will work with the partner universities on materials structural retrofits and offshore soil treatment including geosynthetics (synthetic materials used to stabilize terrain)specifically puppala and his partners will continue to examine the utilization of composites including these geosynthetics polymeric materials including geopolymers and other geocomposites in subsurface infrastructure this infrastructure could include pavements runways embankments retaining structures earth dams and levees both life-cycle cost analysis and sustainable utilization of composites will be addressed all cici-related work will be performed at the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) geotechnical laboratories specifically soils and unbound materials labs puppala serves as associate director of cir facilities at the rellis campus in bryan
906,ever wish your computer could think like you do or perhaps even understand you that future may not be now but its one step closer thanks to a texas a&m university-led team of scientists and engineers and their recent discovery of a materials-based mimic for the neural signals responsible for transmitting information within the human brain the multidisciplinary team led by dr sarbajit banerjee professor in the chemistry department in collaboration with dr r stanley williams professor in the electrical and computer engineering department and additional colleagues across north america and abroad has discovered a neuron-like electrical switching mechanism in the solid-state material β-cuxv2o5 specifically how it reversibly morphs between conducting and insulating behavior on command the team was able to clarify the underlying mechanism driving this behavior by taking a new look at β-cuxv2o5 a remarkable chameleon-like material that changes with temperature or an applied electrical stimulus in the process they zeroed in on how copper ions move around inside the material and how this subtle dance in turn sloshes electrons around to transform it their research revealed that the movement of copper ions is the linchpin of an electrical conductivity change that can be leveraged to create electrical spikes in the same way that neurons function in the cerebral nervous system a major step toward developing circuitry that functions like the human brain their resulting paper metal-insulator transitions in β-cuxv2o5 mediated by polaron oscillation and cation shuttling features texas a&m chemistry graduate students abhishek parija (now at intel corporation) justin andrews and joseph handy as first authors it is published in the cell press journal matter the nuances of neuromorphic computing in their quest to develop new modes of energy efficient computing the broad-based group of collaborators is capitalizing on materials with tunable electronic instabilities to achieve whats known as neuromorphic computing or computing designed to replicate the brains unique capabilities and unmatched efficiencies nature has given us materials with the appropriate types of behavior to mimic the information processing that occurs in a brain but the ones characterized to date have had various limitations williams said the importance of this work is to show that chemists can rationally design and create electrically active materials with significantly improved neuromorphic properties as we understand more our materials will improve significantly thus providing a new path to the continual technological advancement of our computing abilities while smart phones and laptops seemingly get sleeker and faster with each iteration parija notes that new materials and computing paradigms freed from conventional restrictions are required to meet continuing speed and energy-efficiency demands that are straining the capabilities of silicon computer chips which are reaching their fundamental limits in terms of energy efficiency neuromorphic computing is one such approach and manipulation of switching behavior in new materials is one way to achieve it the central premise and by extension the central promise of neuromorphic computing is that we still have not found a way to perform computations in a way that is as efficient as the way that neurons and synapses function in the human brain said andrews a nasa space technology research fellow most materials are insulating (not conductive) metallic (conductive) or somewhere in the middle some materials however can transform between the two states: insulating (off) and conductive (on) almost on command by using an extensive combination of computational and experimental techniques handy said the team was able to demonstrate not only that this material undergoes a transition driven by changes in temperature voltage and electric field strength that can be used to create neuron-like circuitry but also comprehensively explain how this transition happens unlike other materials that have a metal-insulator transition this material relies on the movement of copper ions within a rigid lattice of vanadium and oxygen we essentially show that a very small movement of copper ions within the structure brings about a massive change in conductance in the whole material handy added because of this movement of copper ions the material transforms from insulating to conducting in response to external changes in temperature applied voltage or applied current in other words applying a small electrical pulse allows us to transform the material and save information inside it as it works in a circuit much like how neurons function in the brain andrews likens the relationship between the copper-ion movement and electrons on the vanadium structure to a dance when the copper ions move electrons on the vanadium lattice move in concert mirroring the movement of the copper ions andrews said in this way incredibly small movements of the copper ions induce large electronic changes in the vanadium lattice without any observable changes in vanadium-vanadium bonding its like the vanadium atoms ‘see what the copper is doing and respond demands deficiencies and the global data glut transmitting storing and processing data currently accounts for about 10% of global energy use but banerjee said extrapolations indicate the demand for computation will be many times higher than the projected global energy supply can deliver by 2040 exponential increases in computing capabilities therefore are required for transformative visions including the internet of things autonomous transportation disaster-resilient infrastructure personalized medicine and other societal grand challenges that otherwise will be throttled by the inability of current computing technologies to handle the magnitude and complexity of human- and machine-generated data he said one way to break out of the limitations of conventional computing technology is to take a cue from nature specifically the neural circuitry of the human brain which vastly surpasses conventional computer architectures in terms of energy efficiency and also offers new approaches for machine learning and advanced neural networks to emulate the essential elements of neuronal function in artificial circuitry we need solid-state materials that exhibit electronic instabilities which like neurons can store information in their internal state and in the timing of electronic events banerjee said our new work explores the fundamental mechanisms and electronic behavior of a material that exhibits such instabilities by thoroughly characterizing this material we have also provided information that will instruct the future design of neuromorphic materials which may offer a way to change the nature of machine computation from simple arithmetic to brain-like intelligence while dramatically increasing both the throughput and energy efficiency of processors because the various components that handle logic operations store memory and transfer data are all separate from each other in conventional computer architecture banerjee said they are plagued by inherent inefficiencies regarding both the time it takes for information to be processed and how physically close together device elements can be before thermal waste and electrons accidentally tunneling between components become major problems by contrast in the human brain logic memory storage and data transfer are simultaneously integrated into the timed firing of neurons that are densely interconnected in 3d fanned-out networks as a result the brains neurons process information at 10 times lower voltage and an almost 5 000 times lower synaptic operation energy in comparison to silicon computing architectures to come close to achieving this kind of energetic and computational efficiency he said new materials are needed that can undergo rapid internal electronic switching in circuits in a way that mimics how neurons fire in timed sequences parameters of perfection in principle handy notes that the team still needs to optimize many parameters such as transition temperature and switching speed along with the magnitude of the change in electrical resistance by determining the underlying principles of the metal-insulator transition in β-cuxv2o5 as a prototype material within an expansive field of candidates however the team has identified certain design motifs and tunable chemical parameters that ultimately prove useful in the design of future neuromorphic computing materials a major endeavor that has been seeded by the texas a&m x-grant program this discovery is very exciting because it provides fertile ground for the development of new design principles for tuning materials properties and also suggests exciting new approaches to researchers in the field for thinking about energy efficient electronic instabilities parija said devices that incorporate neuromorphic computing promise improved energy efficiency that silicon-based computing has yet to deliver as well as performance improvements in computing challenges like pattern recognition tasks that the human brain is especially well-equipped to tackle the materials and mechanisms we describe in this work bring us one step closer to realizing neuromorphic computing and in turn actualizing all of the societal benefits and overall promise that comes with it the multi-year project incorporates team members from four disciplines (chemistry physics materials science and engineering and electrical and computer engineering) and researchers from texas a&m lawrence berkeley national laboratory the university at buffalo binghamton university and texas a&m university at qatar while also relying on work performed at berkeley labs the molecular foundry and the advanced light source the advanced photon source at argonne national laboratory and the canadian light source the research was funded primarily by the national science foundation with additional support from a texas a&m x-grant and the qatar national research fund this article originally appeared on the college of science's news site
907,the gut microbiome which is a collection of numerous beneficial bacteria species is key to our overall well-being and good health recent studies have linked the gut microbiome with several beneficial properties such as aiding in the development of our immune system and warding off pathogen infections many deadly pathogens are motile meaning they can move spontaneously and their ability to infect is based on their response to different environmental cues major cues for the pathogens are the molecules (or metabolites) produced in the gut pathogens interpret distinctive metabolites differently and are either attracted or repelled by them (ie migrate toward or away from them) the metabolite indole is an example of a microbiome-produced small molecule that is abundant in the gut and is a powerful repellent for bacteria according to dr pushkar lele assistant professor and dr arul jayaraman professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university this fact led to a simple question: why does indole – which is produced by many of our beneficial bacterial species – not repel the good gut bacteria along with the bad ones to answer this question a research team including lele jayaraman and dr michael manson from the department of biology at texas a&m studied the response of the beneficial gut bacteria e coli to indole in an article in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences the researchers describe the discovery of a previously unknown response to indole in which the molecule seems to both repel and attract bacteria this janus response – named after the roman god janus who had two faces one looking into the future and one looking into the past – has to do with the way indole is interpreted by the bacterial chemo-receptors
908,we found that there are two receptors in e coli that sense indole lele said one senses indole as a repellent and one senses indole as an attractant sustained exposure to high concentrations of indole desensitizes the receptor that interprets it as a repellent this leads to indole being sensed only as an attractant according to jayaraman the janus response displays a large amount of sophistication and the discovery could lead to a better understanding of the complexities of the gut microbiome beneficial bacteria aggregate on the surfaces within the gut based on some common feature said jayaraman we propose that one such feature is the ability to produce or sense indole bacteria that produce indole could group together and be attracted to niches where indole concentrations are high
909,since the bacteria that produce indole in the gut typically are enmeshed in mucus layers among other bacteria the indole concentration drops as one gets further away from the source of indole since pathogens tend to pass through the gut relatively far from the bacteria that produce indole they are not likely to encounter high concentrations of indole for a sustained period therefore they are not sensitized to indole and any indole they encounter repels them studies continue to show that it is important to have a diverse mix of beneficial bacteria in the gut according to lele this research is a step toward understanding how the gut microbiome might change with time the key question is ‘how do different species of bacteria colonize specific niches we have addressed a part of that question said lele the next step is to examine the response of multiple species of bacteria to a mix of different metabolites that are found in the gut this research was supported by the national institute of general medical sciences and the us department of defense army research development and engineering command army research laboratory
910,"dr dallas little received his doctoral degree from texas a&m university in 1979 now 40 years later he has been awarded the highest faculty honor by the university he has served so welllittle regents professor and eb snead chair professor of transportation in the zachary department of civil and environmental engineering has been named a texas a&m distinguished professorthe title identifies faculty members who are preeminent in their fields and exemplified by outstanding teaching mentoring discovery and service""i feel very humble and very honored for such a wonderful recognition when you get something of this magnitude you question whether or not you deserve it and i feel that way right now "" little said ""a number of things brought this to be and one was having a great faculty mentor when i was getting my phd here dr jon epps he is a recognized leader in our industry and gave me a tremendous start i owe a lot to him""i'm also fortunate to have a position here on the faculty in a department where we are provided with such an accommodating and supportive environment for research and learning i learn every single day he said it's a joy to be able to apply the principles of physics and chemistry to help solve problems for an industry with such a profound impact on our nations transportation systems""little referred to as the father of chemo-mechanics by some of his colleagues is a recognized international leader for his work on predictive performance modeling and design of structural pavement systems characterization and modeling of damage and healing mechanisms in asphalt paving composites and chemical soil stabilizationwhen one considers the significant influential contributions dr little has made to the development and improvement of millions of miles of highways airports and other paved surfaces around the world very few individuals can claim his impact said dr robin autenrieth head of the civil engineering departmentduring his distinguished career little has been making critical contributions to the transportation industry he applied the principles of chemo-mechanical processes to micro-damage and micro-damage healing in asphalt and concrete composites that comprise the majority of multi-trillion-dollar pavement infrastructure his work on micro-damage healing began a revolution in the way the damage process is considered in asphalt pavement structureslittle said his breakthroughs in chemical stabilization of soils and the extended model for the way pavements perform are two of his pride pointslittle's pioneering contributions are followed by researchers globally taught in undergraduate and graduate courses and adopted in professional design and analysis manualslittle is the primary author with two other co-authors of an 800-plus-page textbook released in 2017 and has more than 230 refereed journal publications contributed to five books and given 420 invited lectures and 40 keynotes and plenary presentations"
911,as a child stephanie cruz ‘21 dreamed of living in cinderellas castle her internship with walt disney world allowed her to experience that magic firsthand and put her industrial engineering knowledge to the test while she did not get to live in the castle her internship was pretty magical cruz a junior industrial engineering student has always had a passion for new experiences she grew up in brazil was an exchange student in spain when she was in high school and speaks three languages: english portuguese and spanish she has accomplished many things including starting a new student organization on campus club of aggie females in engineering (cafe) this semester she is a member of the sorority kappa kappa gamma and the brazilian student association in addition she is an industrial engineering student ambassador and mentor for the institute of industrial and systems engineering but it hasnt always been mickey mouse ice cream bars and mickey-shaped pretzels for cruz
912,attending a career fair as a freshman was a rough wake up call cruz said ‘because of my lack of experience recruiters were not interested in what i had to offer taking this setback in stride cruz got a research internship in her native brazil that summer to gain experience and was published in the journal elsevier since then she has interned with exxonmobil and the walt disney company this summer she will intern with accenture in consulting this variety of experiences has prepared her to tackle the real world after graduation the best part about my diverse experiences is that they have allowed me to see what my potential is in the real world so that when i graduate i can be certain and confident in the path i choose i hope cruz said this semester she brought the magic to texas a&m and spoke with us about her internship in the happiest place on earth what was it like interning with disney as a young girl i grew up visiting the disney theme parks knowing every character and imagining living in cinderellas castle completing an industrial engineering internship at disney gave me the unique opportunity to combine a personal passion with an incredible professional experience that has added tremendous value to me and my career while i can dream along with disney movies i also realize that disney like any other major company is a business with people working behind the scenes to make it what it is i was that person the person working behind the scenes helping to create the disney magic for others that has always captivated me as walt disney said you can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world but it takes people to make the dream a reality
913,disney is all about storytelling yes even for us engineers my projects began with data collection leading to comprehensive analyses such as workload planning forecasting capacity utilization and process optimization from there it was my job to craft and present the story to our clients giving them an unbiased and holistic perspective of their business situation what were you doing while on the job during your internship i had the incredible opportunity to create magic as an industrial engineering intern for the walt disney company the planning and industrial engineering team acts as internal consultants providing recommendations through data analytics to all areas of the business – ranging from the beloved parks and resorts to the back-of-house operations that deliver the magic i was part of the facilities and operation services (fos) team that focuses on textiles and distribution the textiles area support the day-to-day activities of 30 000-plus resort rooms in addition to costuming services and more the distribution area includes anything from food and beverages to merchandise and events
914,what was your favorite part of your internship luckily for me my internship was during a very exciting time for the company i was fortunate to support the opening of star wars: galaxys edge which includes the rise of the resistance and millennium falcon: smugglers run in addition to the opening of the disney skyliner and riviera resort it was truly unique to be there experiencing the adrenaline of the opening of the new star wars land seeing the expressions on the guests faces when they saw the space that the incredible minds of so many individuals had been working years to bring the movies to life was truly magical
915,my favorite moment happened at 6 am on the opening day of a new groundbreaking ride rise of the resistance executives were next to me making last-minute decisions while operators moved around to warm up and get ready to manage the massive wave of people about to come through it was then that i saw an incredible and true moment of teamwork all cast members got together no matter their position for a quick pre-opening pep talk then i heard three two one break! as they all began to cheer and prepare for the large rush of guests it was a moment ill never forget what did you learn from your disney internship did you have any learning experiences on the job this internship was an incredible experience to develop myself both personally and professionally my biggest takeaway was centered around the art of simplicity all of my projects included parsing through various excel spreadsheets with thousands of data inputs it requires a certain ability to take all of this information and condense it into high-level actionable solutions
916,i learned that the real world isn't as black and white as we would like it to be or as school teaches us while hard data is an extremely important tool while trying to understand a business or a process you also need to pay attention to the intangible factors along the way in many situations the intangible factors helped bridge the gaps where the data didn't fully make sense at disney i truly had the opportunity to leverage both sides of the equation: the data and the people/processes to truly understand the fascinating ecosystem that the walt disney world operation is
917,"two faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering were among seven faculty appointed as university distinguished professors the recipients are dr helen reed regents professor presidential professor for teaching excellence and holder of the edward ""pete"" aldridge '60 professorship in the department of aerospace engineering; and dr dallas little regents professor and snead chair professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering the title is among the highest honors awarded to texas a&m faculty members the designation identifies faculty members who are preeminent in their fields and who have made at least one landmark contribution to their discipline their research and advancements are considered central to any narrative of the field past recipients of the lifetime title participate in the selection process growing the ranks of distinguished professors by just a handful of scholars each year distinguished professors retain their current title but add the new distinction along with additional salary support during the summer for three years and an annual bursary of $5 000 for five years the honorees will be inducted at a ceremony in march it is a privilege to recognize these faculty and honor the impact they have made on the world through scholarship and advancements in understanding provost and executive vice president dr carol a fierke said distinguished professorships celebrate the high caliber and global significance of research underway at texas a&m university dr dallas little little is a senior research fellow at the texas a&m transportation institute where he was the first researcher to hold that position he is a distinguished member of the american society of civil engineers (asce) one of about 200 to hold that rank out of over 150 000 members in 2016 he was presented with two awards from asce: the francis c turner award and the carl l monismith lecture award turner is considered the father of the interstate highway system as the first administrator of the federal highway administration monismith professor emeritus at uc berkeley is considered by many as the father of modern structural pavement design his research interests include asphalt technology pavement design soil stabilization fracture mechanics soil mechanics and foundation engineering he has served as principal investigator on over $35 million in research during his academic career and has chaired the doctoral committees of a number of nationally and internationally prominent leaders in academia little has published over 230 refereed journal publications over 80 refereed proceedings has contributed to five books and has given over 420 invited lectures he has served on many advisory and executive committees and remains a widely sought-after consultant and expert witness on projects related to infrastructure performance and forensic studies dr helen reed in addition to small satellite design reed is widely regarded as an expert in hypersonics boundary-layer stability and transition and energy-efficient aircraft in addition reed directs the computational stability and transition lab as well as the aggiesat lab satellite program she is a licensed professional engineer in the state of texas and has received numerous professional awards and honors including being named a fellow of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) the american physical society and the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) she is the recipient of the 2018 aiaa/national academy of engineering (nae) yvonne c brill lectureship in aerospace engineering the 2018 aiaa fluid dynamics award the 2016 kate gleason award from asme the 2007 atwood award from the american society for engineering education and aiaa and the 2014 minnie stevens piper professor award from the state of texas reed is a member of the united states air force (usaf) scientific advisory board the usaf studies board development planning roundtable the nae intelligence science and technology experts group and the nato science and technology organization applied vehicle technology 346 technical team in hypersonic transition she is a co-founder of chandah space technologies reed was also inducted into the academy of engineering excellence and the committee of 100 in the college of engineering and the inaugural class of the academy of aerospace and ocean engineering excellence all at virginia tech"
918,a team of mechanical engineering seniors is bringing music back to the childrens museum of the brazos valley by refurbishing a large walk-on piano as their capstone senior design project falls into a decrescendo the team wishes to not only inspire an appreciation for music but also hopes that the distinctive mechanical characteristics stimulate a want to explore engineering as well the importance of this project is to help out the people of this community said senior madelyn dudley who is partially responsible for the fabrication of the design as well as team communication as a student at texas a&m it is sometimes hard to remember that there is so much more to the community than just the university this is a small way that the mechanical engineering department can say thank you several years ago students from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university created the piano for the museum serving as an interactive way to expose children to music by utilizing pressure sensors a child can step on a piano key and the corresponding key plays music after years of excited children bouncing on the keys the piano has several parts that no longer function
919,the mechanical engineering department used this as an opportunity for a new group of students to develop their skills along with dudley the team includes randall mozingo charlie green reagan tucker etoroabasi nwoko joanna steele and moyinoluwa adejumo assigned as a capstone senior design project and funded by an endowment from the departments namesake dr j mike walker the team of seven students are responsible for reconstructing the piano in a way that provides more durability realizing that the pressure sensors would only work for short time periods it became evident that a whole new design was needed one of the main issues that we have had to overcome is trying to figure out how the old piano worked said dudley we had to spend a lot of time planning how we wanted everything to be laid out
920,the design that hit the right notes was deemed connecting plates there is one metal plate resting under each key and the other on the floor of the tray that the key resides in when a child steps on a key the top plate will deflect the two plates connect and electrical signals cue the music as an added part of the design the students hope they will be able to add a unique feature by having the piano keys light up when stepped on the most significant design change lies within the way the piano converts energy rather than work through pressure it now uses a switch-like function which the team believes will be more suitable for the environment the piano is in we are changing the way that the piano actuates energyhow the piano detects someone stepping on a key and turning that into a sound and light response dudley said we have redesigned the piano to use a switch-like function which we are expecting to last much longer we have also designed a code that enables the piano to hold notes as long as a child stays on the key which was not the case beforehand the team plans to have the piano fully functioning and back at the museum by the end of march for more information about the senior capstone design program or to sponsor a future capstone project email dr joanna tsenn at joannatsenn@tamuedu
921,john r 86 and gina m dickerson 86 have established the gina m dickerson engineering scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time freshman students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university the dickersons had early exposure to the engineering industry through their fathers both having worked in the petrochemical industry they both have a passion for math and science so the highly ranked college of engineering at texas a&m led to their decision to attend texas a&ms reputation as a top engineering school was certainly a key factor for each of us selecting the university gina said john and gina say their time at texas a&m has impacted their careers in numerous ways aside from the technical foundation the strong work ethic and leadership skills we gained in college the undeniable bond among aggies has opened up common ground for networking and collaboration gina said when asked what the inspiration behind their gift was john and gina mentioned their children having two kids who currently attend and two kids who graduated from college john and gina understand how motivational recognition is to them and aim to honor students like them we were looking for ways to give back to the university and recognize strong academic students interested in pursuing an engineering career gina said gina has served on the external advisory and development council for the college of science since 2008 i get to see first-hand how the university and its professors continue to try and improve and enhance the students education through efforts like the science leadership scholar program and outreach like the physics festival she said john and i want to be a part of improving that experience and helping to attract the best and brightest students to pursue an engineering degree
922,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
923,stephanie walker is a biomedical engineering sophomore from houston texas she is a member of engineering honors and was inducted into the zachry leadership program (zlp) in fall 2019 q: what drew you to study biomedical engineering i am interested in going to medical school biomedical engineering offered an opportunity to study math and science which i loved in high school and an opportunity to go into health care whether thats being a doctor or working as an engineer thats what drew me in q: why texas a&m in general a: i come from a huge aggie family so you could say ive bled maroon since i was born my siblings my parents and all my aunts and uncles attended texas a&m i also was drawn to texas a&m because of the unique traditions and the welcoming aggie family texas a&m is an amazing university and i could not imagine ending up anywhere else q: did you come and visit campus a lot growing up a: both of my brothers were in the corps of cadets so i would drive up to college station and see march in before every home game during the fall semester i would be in college station almost every weekend so i definitely knew the campus well before i got here q: do you have a favorite tradition a: my favorite tradition at texas a&m is aggie muster i think this tradition is really special and unique i was able to attend muster last year and it was an amazing experience remembering the lives of aggies who have died is what makes tecas a&m so special and different from other universities q: so far hows your experience been within engineering a: engineering is extremely tough i have had to learn how to structure and organizing my time to make sure that i have time to do everything both social and educational however i do enjoy studying engineering its not an easy major but if you are devoted and have a goal you can accomplish so much q: but it makes the degree that much more worthwhile right a: for sure i think i will be very glad when i graduate i feel like i can make difference in this major whatever route i decide to take q: shifting to the zachry leadership program how did you first hear about it a: i heard about zlp through someone in my organic chemistry lab last year she was in zlp and she said hey i think you should look into this i think this would be a great fit for you so i looked into it and i just loved the program i think it sounded really great and something that i could be involved in to help me become a more well-rounded person q: based on what youve been told what are some of your goals going into the program a: some of my goals going into the program are to become a more well-rounded person learn more about leadership and different styles of leadership and also just become better friends with everyone in the program we had some older students come talk to us at the reception and they said you will make some very close connections within this program and also they said it was one of the best experiences of college so far q: are you involved in any other organizations a: i am a member of tri delta an on-campus sorority i absolutely love it its a great way to meet other girls who share a common bond we get to grow and develop during our four years here together its just great to be able to experience this family relationship during my years at texas a&m and beyond q: has anything surprised you coming to college a: one thing that has surprised me when coming to college is how independent you must become you are responsible for yourself and there is no one looking out for you of course your parents and friends are checking in on you but you have to make the decision to get up every morning go to class see how you can get involved on and off campus and determine how to be the best version of yourself if you want to do research get connected with people its all on you you have to make that change and be responsible q: what are your goals for the spring a: i would like to get involved in research i havent looked into any current research projects but i plan to look into different research opportunities in the spring i am currently interested in the bioinstrumentation track so im hoping to get involved in research in that area the biggest problem will be trying to find the time for it in my busy schedule
924,matthew j mason has established the matthew j mason 21 endowed chemical engineering scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m university as an out-of-state student mason understands the impact that scholarships can have on lessening the financial burden of attending college he has chosen to establish this scholarship to help students attend texas a&m and offset some of those financial hardships my endowment is designed to help students with tuition costs a very similar endowment is what allowed me to attend texas a&m and devote myself to learning and networking mason said additionally he hopes to leave a lasting legacy at texas a&m and encourage future students i hope that my gift will allow students to focus more on school and extracurriculars instead of worrying about paying tuition mason was initially drawn to texas a&m for a few reasons i came to texas a&m because i believe in the power of the aggie network and loved the traditions surrounding the school he said although he has not yet graduated mason knows that texas a&m has prepared him for whatever he may face after graduation and wants to give students like himself this same opportunity
925,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
926,major hospitals in the houston area reached out to texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) to determine if researchers and staff could use their rapid manufacturing expertise to assist with the shortage of medical devices and personal protective equipment (ppe) as the nation responds to the unprecedented emergency that is the covid-19 pandemic texas a&m engineering has 21 000 students but now that theyre not on campus weve converted some of our spaces like the susu and mark a fischer 72 engineering design center into manufacturing facilities said dr yossef elabd associate dean for research and chemical engineering professor elabd who is leading texas a&ms covid-19 rapid response team added we now have a system in place to produce face shields and diffusers for metered dose inhalers and were continually producing ppe every day and delivering to hospitals
927,as an america makes satellite center tees boasts one of the largest concentrations of core manufacturing subject matter experts in the country the knowledge base is multidisciplinary comprised of representatives from various colleges within texas a&m and the texas a&m university system we have advanced manufacturing and additive manufacturing capabilities to support us in our learning objectives and to help us in productivity and in reducing costs said rob gorham executive director of manufacturing initiatives at tees gorham elaborated that it is texas a&ms and tees' unique approach placing service above self that sets them apart from their peers and enables them to rapidly deploy solutions across the state and nation in order to solve some of the worlds hardest problems
928,manufacturing anything requires diversity in approach gorham continued we have to focus not just on making a functional solution but a functional solution that works and is safe to use by the many people depending on our answers texas a&m as a tier one university has all of that in-house ordinarily a university campus where the tees headquarters is located would not be manufacturing medical devices and delivering them directly to hospitals but these unusual times have called for a new way of doing things internal staff and legal teams are executing agreements in a matter of hours or daysinstead of monthsin order to meet urgent demands from medical professionals this situation highlighted a lot of discussions that we probably were not having between physicians at hospitals and a lot of engineers at texas a&m said elabd once the nation overcomes covid-19 i look forward to new directions for research informed by our recently developed working relationship with texas hospitals
929,the susu and mark a fischer '72 engineering design center is an exclusive academic makerspace and design center that focuses on learning designing and building through partnerships with industry and non-profit sponsors the center is an environment where concepts become solutions to real-world problems and student teams come together to build new prototypes acquire new skills and develop new relationships it is supported with differential tuition funds and it is open to engineering undergraduate students
930,dr jn reddy is the winner of the 2020 sec faculty achievement award for texas a&m university sec achievement award recipients must hold the rank of full professor have a record of extraordinary teaching particularly at the undergraduate level and have a record of research that is recognized nationally or internationally university winners receive a $5 000 honorarium from the sec and become their campus nominee for the sec professor of the year award reddy professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering is a member of the national academy of engineering and holds the titles of oscar s wyatt endowed chair professor university distinguished professor and regents professor he also serves as a foreign fellow of the indian canadian brazilian chinese and spanish national academies of engineering reddy is the author of 21 textbooks nearly 700 journal papers and has been a leader in the applied mechanics field for more than 45 years he is internationally known for his significant contributions to the field of applied mechanics through the authorship of widely used textbooks on the linear and nonlinear finite element analysis variational methods composite materials and structures and continuum mechanics and elasticity he has been recognized as the most highly cited researcher in the college of engineering at texas a&m and number six worldwide among engineers according to a study conducted by stanford university not only is dr reddy a superb researcher and teacher but in some respects he is a research celebrity recognizable around the world and he is also a very caring colleague especially for our junior faculty said dr andreas polycarpou mechanical engineering department head
931,steady hands and uninterrupted sharp vision are extremely critical when performing surgery on delicate structures like the brain or hair-thin blood vessels while surgical cameras have tremendously improved what surgeons see during operative procedures the steady hand remains to be enhanced new surgical technologies including sophisticated surgeon-guided robotic hands cannot prevent accidental injuries when operating close to fragile tissue in a new study published in the january issue of the journal scientific reports researchers at texas a&m university show that by delivering small yet perceptible buzzes of electrical currents to fingertips users can be given an accurate perception of distance to contact this insight enabled users to control their robotic fingers precisely enough to gently land on fragile surfaces the researchers said that this technique might be an effective way to help surgeons reduce inadvertent injuries during robot-assisted operative procedures one of the challenges with robotic fingers is ensuring that they can be controlled precisely enough to softly land on biological tissue said dr hangue park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering with our design surgeons will be able to get an intuitive sense of how far their robotic fingers are from contact information they can then use to touch fragile structures with just the right amount of force
932,robot-assisted surgical systems also known as telerobotic surgical systems are physical extensions of a surgeon by controlling robotic fingers with movements of their own fingers surgeons can perform intricate procedures remotely thus expanding the number of patients that they can provide medical attention also the tiny size of the robotic fingers means that surgeries are possible with much smaller incisions since surgeons need not make large cuts to accommodate their hands into the patients body for operations to move their robotic fingers precisely surgeons rely on live streaming of visual information from cameras fitted on telerobotic arms thus they look into monitors to match their finger movements with those of the telerobotic fingers in this way they know where their robotic fingers are in space and how close these fingers are to each other however park noted that just visual information is not enough to guide fine finger movements which is very critical when the fingers are in the close vicinity of the brain or other delicate tissue surgeons can only know how far apart their actual fingers are from each other indirectly that is by looking at where their robotic fingers are relative to each other on a monitor said park this roundabout view diminishes their sense of how far apart their actual fingers are from each other which then affects how they control their robotic fingers
933,to address this problem park and his team came up with an alternate way to deliver distance information that is independent of visual feedback by passing different frequencies of electrical currents onto fingertips via gloves fitted with stimulation probes the researchers were able to train users to associate the frequency of current pulses with distance that is increasing current frequencies indicated the closing distance from a test object they then compared if users receiving current stimulation along with visual information about closing distance on their monitors did better at estimating proximity than those who received visual information alone park and his team also tailored their technology according to the users sensitivity to electrical current frequencies in other words if a user was sensitive to a wider range of current frequencies the distance information was delivered with smaller steps of increasing currents to maximize the accuracy of proximity estimation the researchers found that users receiving electrical pulses were more aware of the proximity to underlying surfaces and could hence lower their force of contact by around 70% performing much better than the other group overall they observed that proximity information delivered through mild electric pulses was about three times more effective than the visual information alone park said that their novel approach has the potential to significantly increase maneuverability during surgery while minimizing risks of unintended tissue damage he also said their technique would add little to the existing mental load of surgeons during operative procedures our goal was to come up with a solution that would improve the accuracy in proximity estimation without increasing the burden of active thinking needed for this task he said when our technique is ready for use in surgical settings physicians will be able to intuitively know how far their robotic fingers are from underlying structures which means that they can keep their active focus on optimizing the surgical outcome of their patients other contributors to the research include ziqi zhao minku yeo and stefan manoharan from the texas a&m department of electrical and computer engineering and dr seok chang ryu from ewha womans university south korea
934,most vehicles today come with their fair share of bells and whistles ranging from adaptive cruise-control features to back-up cameras these advanced driver-assistance systems or adas are in place to make driving easier and safer however increasing evidence shows that older seniors who are also an age group at higher risk for motor vehicle crashes do not use many of these driver-assistance technologies in a new study research partners from the texas a&m transportation institute and texas a&m university have found that older adults are likely to use adas if they are taught how to use these technologies through interactive videos rather than through manuals or live demonstrations they also reported that once adas-trained older adults find it easier to access and use driver-assistance technologies without compromising their attention on the road older adults have a higher rate of vehicle crashes because of degradations in physical mental and motor capabilities said dr maryam zahabi assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering and director of the human-system interaction (hsi) laboratory with adas some of the mental workload related to driving can be taken off and weve shown that instructional videos are the best way to introduce adas to seniors we hope that this insight will lead to better video-based training materials for this age group so that senior safety while driving is enhanced their findings were published in the january issue of the journal applied ergonomics according to the national highway traffic safety administration in 2016 18% of all motor vehicle crashes involved people 65 years and older with the population of seniors expected to increase in the decades to come the number of people vulnerable to vehicle crashes is also estimated to increase proportionately think of the risk for motor crashes as a u-shaped curve said zahabi following the shape of the letter ‘u the chances of crashes among younger adults and teens is very high then with age the risk for crashes lowers and remains at a small relatively constant value until about 60 years after which it shoots up once again risk of a vehicle crash among seniors is largely related to the fact that they find it difficult to perform multiple activities while driving for example starting the adaptive cruise control while still paying attention to the road and looking up to see what is the acceptable speed limit while adas is designed to relieve some of the driving-related tasks these technologies need to be introduced to seniors in a manner that is conducive to learning at their age said zahabi
935,ashley shortz a graduate student researcher from the neuroergonomics laboratory at texas a&m narrowed down four main ways to provide adas instructions manuals videos driving simulators and live demonstrations from an instructor based on prior research and existing training best practices however little is known about which one of these methods best fit seniors more importantly while there is substantial evidence that men and women adopt different learning strategies research on adas design and training delivery methods have largely overlooked such gender differences said dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering and director of the neuroergonomics laboratory to address this the researchers included 10 male and 10 female drivers ages 58-68 for their study for this age group the team concentrated on video-based and demonstration-based adas training rather than manuals or driving simulators their choice was guided by prior studies showing that drivers dont read detailed instructions from manuals or have easy access to driving simulators after receiving training for either adaptive cruise control or the lane-keeping assist system which are both popular adas technologies the participants driving performance was evaluated in a laboratory-housed driving simulator that provided an immersive experience of driving along a roadway then while the drivers switched between adas and manual control the researchers kept track of where the drivers directed their gaze and the activity in the part of the brain that regulates attention and mental workload among other things the team found that for both male and female drivers video-based training was more effective than demonstration-based training for introducing adas technologies to seniors however the researchers also found some subtle gender differences we were surprised to find that while male drivers were faster at activating adas they were also the most distracted by it said zahabi so from a neurological standpoint older female drivers were more efficient at using adas technologies and reducing their mental workload after video-based training this finding is important as it not only emphasizes how training methods impact different groups of people but also provides the foundation to develop more equitable and thus more effective training paradigms said mehta the researchers noted that more comprehensive studies involving a larger number of older adults a broader age range of participants and a wider option of driving scenarios still need to be done they said that these studies might shed light on other gender-based differences that may have not been uncovered in their present study but even if preliminary zahabi said that their results still indicate why videos work best for teaching adas to seniors
936,videos we think are effective because they can be paused rewound and reviewed multiple times giving seniors a sense of control over what they are learning and at what pace said zahabi our work does not diminish the importance of manuals and other forms of instructional materials instead our results challenge the way we normally think about communicating adas technology-related information to seniors the results of their work have important real-world implications these results and others from the project have already been shared with driver education and training agencies throughout the united states and abroad to aid in the design of curriculum for all ages this was a great opportunity for work conducted at texas a&m to impact driver safety said dr michael manser from the texas a&m transportation institute another contributor to the research includes ashiq mohammed abdul razak from the department of industrial and systems engineering
937,"disaster events from hurricanes earthquakes wildfires and even the covid-19 pandemic can cause disruptions in infrastructure services and the impact on the social fabric of communities is inevitabledetermining how to decrease these disruptions by targeting the most significant vulnerabilities and needs is keyfor the last year jennifer dargin a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been researching how to integrate social inequality considerations into infrastructure resilience analysis by examining the interactions between human and infrastructure system networksdargin's paper on this topic received the best paper award in the infrastructure systems and sustainability track of the 2020 american society of civil engineers construction research congress the largest and most important construction research conference in north americathe distinguishing point of this paper and the research we are working on as a whole at our lab is highly interdisciplinary converging engineering social sciences and fields of hazards and disaster to examine social inequalities in infrastructure resilience "" she said ""the findings present novel insights to understanding the role of infrastructure resilience in household well-being as well as inequalities in well-being impacts across various sub-populations the research approach and findings enable a paradigm shift toward a more human-centric approach to infrastructure resilienceaccording to dargin the results specifically show that disruptions in transportation solid waste food and water infrastructure services resulted in more significant well-being impact disparities as compared to electricity and communication services they also show households were more likely to feel helpless have difficulty doing daily tasks and feeling distance from their community as a result of service disruptions""while working on this research what strikes me most is the inherent complexities and dependencies of our infrastructure systems and why it is so important to understand these interactions to reduce risks and minimize their impacts on our communities "" she said ""my research and the work in our lab (the urban resilience networks and informatics lab) highlight that infrastructure disruptions are much more than an engineering problem""current infrastructure resilience models can predict when a system will face failure but they cannot predict or measure the social consequences of disruptions who suffers for how long and why""integrating social inequality considerations into infrastructure resilience is critical for addressing these questions and essential for building communities that are both sustainable in the long term and resilient in the face of future disasters "" dargin said ""a human-centric approach is the key to advancing our fundamental understanding of household-infrastructure service disruption""taking this approach will effectively reduce the risk disparity of vulnerable populations to service disruptions and integrate social equity into prioritization and planning of infrastructuredargins work is a part of dr ali mostafavis national science foundation career award one of the most prestigious awards for up-and-coming researchers that provides funding to support promising integrated research and educationmostafavi assistant professor in the department hypothesizes that there is a disparity in the impact of risk and his research aims to increase the theoretical and empirical foundations in the interdisciplinary area of urban resilience researchjennifer's work is highly interdisciplinary and is part of our nsf career project which aims to advance the fundamental understanding and modeling of social inequality aspects in infrastructure resilience assessments "" he saidthe project uses machine learning social sensing and complex networks simulation to analyze people's responses to infrastructure disruptions following disasters""factors such as ethnicity and household income affect the amount of tolerance that a household can emotionally and mentally withhold when experiencing hardships due to service disruptions "" dargin said ""using the correlation analysis this study discovered disparities in well-being experience due to disruptions in infrastructure services primarily among racial or ethnic groups""these events alone are a reminder of why this line of research is so critical and serves as greater motivation for me to keep working on these issues which i continue to address in my ongoing research she saiddargin and mostafavi will investigate the influence of other factors such as preparedness previous experience expectations and social capital on the well-being impacts of infrastructure disruptions"
938,over the course of their journey from the open fields to the produce displays at grocery stores fresh vegetables and fruits can sometimes get contaminated by microorganisms these items can then spoil other produce spreading the contamination further and increasing the number of food items that can cause illnesses to prevent cross-contamination between fresh produce researchers at texas a&m university have created a coating that can be applied to food-contact surfaces like conveyor belts rollers and collection buckets in addition to being germicidal the researchers have designed their coating to be extremely water-repellent they said without water bacteria cant stick or multiply on surfaces thereby drastically curbing contamination from one produce item to another consuming contaminated raw foods causes hundreds of people to get sick annually and so food contamination is not only a huge health concern but is also a significant economic burden said dr mustafa akbulut associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering in our study we show that our new dual-function coating one that can both repel and kill bacteria can greatly mitigate bacterial spread averting cross-contamination the results of their study are in the february issue of the journal acs applied materials & interfaces foodborne illnesses can be caused by a whole swarm of pathogens that include multiple strains of viruses and bacteria to remedy any infection after harvest fresh produce is generally washed and then sanitized in powerful antimicrobials like hydrogen peroxide or acetic acid however bacteria can still escape unscathed if they manage to hide in hard-to-reach places on the skins of fruits and vegetables also if the number of bacteria is large enough they can form protective sheaths called biofilms that further protect them from the action of sanitizers contaminated produce items can spread the pathogens either directly by touching other food items or indirectly via food-contact surfaces currently there are several ways to prevent indirect transmission ranging from antimicrobial surface coatings to antifouling polymer surfaces that act like springs to push bacteria away however the researchers said for a variety of reasons these approaches although efficient at first can lose their effects over time to overcome the obstacles posed by the current technologies akbulut and his team proceeded to create an antimicrobial surface coating that is also extremely hydrophobic they noted the coatings water-repelling property can help food-contact surfaces retain their germicidal action much longer most bacteria can only survive in an aqueous environment said akbulut if surfaces are superhydrophobic then water and along with it most of the bacteria will be repelled away with fewer bacteria around less germicides are used up increasing the overall lifetime of the coating to make their dual-function coating akbulut and his team started with an aluminum sheet a metal commonly used in the food industry for contact surfaces onto the surface of the metal they chemically attached a thin layer of a compound called silica using high heat then with this layer as a substrate they added a mixture of silica and a naturally occurring germicidal protein found in tears and egg white called lysozyme
939,together the silica-aluminum layer bound to the silica-lysozyme layer made a coating that had a rough texture when viewed at microscopic scales the researchers noted that this submicroscopic roughness or the tiny bumps and crevices on the coating is key to superhydrophobicity in general if you increase roughness the hydrophobicity of a material increases but there is a limit said shuhao liu a graduate student in the college of engineering and the primary author of the study if the coating is too rough bacteria can once again hide behind crevices and contaminate so we tweaked the proportion of silica and lysozyme so that the roughness yielded the best possible hydrophobicity without compromising the coatings overall function when their superhydrophobic lysozyme-infused coating was fine-tuned and ready the researchers tested if it was effective at curbing the growth of two strains of disease-causing bacteria salmonella typhimurium and listeria innocua upon examination they found that the number of bacteria on these surfaces was 9999% lesser than that on bare surfaces despite the high efficacy of their coating in preventing bacterial spread the researchers said that more investigation is needed to determine if the coating works equally well for mitigating viral cross-contamination although longer-lasting than other coatings they noted that their coating too would need to be reapplied after a certain amount of use thus as a next step akbulut and his team are working on developing more permanent dual functionality coatings our goal is to create smart surfaces that can avert any kind of pathogen from attaching and multiplying said akbulut in this regard we have developed surface coatings that can prevent bacteria from collecting on surfaces which is one of the major reasons for cross-contamination we are now working with researchers in agriculture to take our invention from bench to practice other contributors to the research include michael bae and dr ethan a scholar from the texas a&m department of chemical engineering; jeremy zheng and beril ulugun from the texas a&m department of biomedical engineering; dr li hao from zhongkai university of agriculture and engineering china; dr thomas matthew taylor dr luis cisneros-zevallos and yagmur yegin from the texas a&m department of nutrition and food science; and dr jun kyun oh from dankook university republic of korea this work is supported by the food manufacturing technologies program and the united states department of agriculture
940,ocean engineers are no strangers to weathering the storm and uncharted waters adaptability and resourcefulness – be it from a natural disaster change in tides or covid-19 – are skills honed by the unique dual-campus set up of the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university for the safety of students faculty and staff the college of engineering transitioned all classes to an online format for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester and the following summer sessions while this change from physical to virtual classes may have been a shock to some students in the ocean engineering department are well versed in learning from a distance – those in college station taking courses from professors in galveston and vice versa all year round with years of experience under their belts ocean engineering graduating seniors anna oconnor from the galveston campus and loicka baille from the college station campus are sharing their experience and advice on how to succeed in an online world of education
941,i think the transition has gone really well said oconnor all of my professors seemed to adapt very quickly and have been very understanding of any issues we may have texas a&m has been handling this new situation very well and i am glad the university took the appropriate measures to keep us all safe said baille however for graduating seniors this particular semester is not like any other it is an exciting and stressful semester where students often are trying to finish their academic curriculum find a job and also enjoy their last moments as college kids unfortunately the conditions we were put in just do not enable us to live the full experience nostalgic but looking toward the future with determination both oconnor and baille took a look back on their many years of experience with virtual classes to provide those around them with their top tips and tricks – hoping that their final semester could help bolster and bring together every student facing the covid-19 pandemic oconnor explained that while studying for online classes hasnt been very different to her from studying for in-person courses taking advantage of new online resources has been extremely helpful since my professors record the classes we are able to go back and re-watch them if we have any issues while studying and doing homework said oconnor it also makes taking notes much easier since you can pause if needed and go back to things you missed
942,in addition to utilizing these new avenues of learning oconnor encourages her peers to create a group chat for classes as it often quicker to ask questions and get answers through it than by emailing a professor however while having a class full of aspiring engineers is a great asset for studying and learning from one another she also stressed the importance of reaching out to professors when needed they are there to help and support students however they can while studying in pajamas and having snacks readily available all day might sound like paradise studying from home blurs the lines between professional and personal life to this end both baille and oconnor stress one thing: time management i found it very difficult to draw a line between study/work time and personal time said baille it is easy to either ‘over work or ‘under work because the physical boundary of campus does not exist anymore most of my classes are done through zoom which helps a lot with staying on top of the material but i have a class that is video-recorded and that can be challenging as it is so easy to put off until later but my overall advice would be to consider virtual class as an 8 am – 5 pm job (assuming you dont have classes after 5 pm) try and follow a schedule: set times to do homework and study like you would during a normal semester said oconnor if you have a morning class wake up 30 minutes or so before so that you have time to wake up and get in the right mindset it also helps to have a specific place to work on school things to keep school and home life separate if you try and do homework in the same place you usually sit and watch tv it can often be hard to focus find a quiet spot somewhere in the house and make that your school work area
943,while this was not the end of her undergraduate experience that baille expected she is excited to begin her graduate career at the massachusetts institute of technology - woods hole oceanographic institution (mit-whoi) joint program personally i wish i knew that the friday before spring break was going to be my last day as an undergraduate said baille i am a bit of a nostalgic in general but i wish i knew it would be the last time id see all my classmates together it is just sad that we didnt get to have closure that we wont get a chance to say a formal goodbye to professors that followed us for the past four or five years to the buildings we spent so many hours working at and to texas a&m as a whole for baille and oconnor like many students college is a time of discovery and charting new horizons it is the bridge into a career and adulthood filled with friendship educational experiences and inspiration that drives innovation and success while this time is not the norm students are most certainly not alone
944,in addition to their entire aggie network the college of engineering is continuing to support students however possible for more information and resources visit the university's covid-19 webpage
945,the student engineers council (sec) has established the texas a&m student engineers council engineering entrepreneurship excellence fund this endowment will support the engineering entrepreneurship program in the college of engineering at texas a&m university and its funds will be used at the discretion of the director of the program abhi dhillon senior chemical engineering major and current sec president first heard about the student engineers council during their career fair his freshman year he soon joined the organization and served as chair of the sec career fair before serving in his current position most recently dhillon has led the charge in the creation of the new entrepreneurship excellence fund the student engineers council has an established tradition of generosity in 2013 the sec donated $1 million to the renovations of the zachry engineering education complex and named the fourth floor of the building after their student organization in 2019 the sec created five new scholarships to benefit students in the college of engineering dhillon and his fellow officers knew that it was time for another gift the sec executive committee began to look at supporting one of the colleges programs dhillon said we spoke with rodney boehm professor of practice and engineering entrepreneurship director who taught us more about the engineering entrepreneurship program we saw that the programs relevance to students outlived their undergraduate or even graduate degree program engineering entrepreneurship could teach them things that they could use 30 years into their careers many of the sec students had already participated in engineering entrepreneurships largest functions like aggies invent a 48-hour intensive design experience where students in multidisciplinary teams push their innovation creativity and communication skills to compete for cash awards events like aggies invent are a tangible way that students can get out of their comfort zone and work with students in other disciplines said dhillon in recognition of this gift aggies invent will be renamed aggies invent powered by student engineers council for the next three years dhillon hopes that this gift will bring more attention to engineering entrepreneurship from current students looking to stretch themselves outside the technical learning that happens in the classroom we want the college to know that students care about engineering entrepreneurship dhillon said we support it and we believe in its mission enough to put money behind it we truly believe that this program can change students lives while theyre in college and even after they leave texas a&m
946,as classes have moved to an online format during the covid-19 pandemic advisors in texas a&m universitys college of engineering have also moved online having already implemented some elements of online advising previously they were well prepared for this transition the general engineering advising team began providing virtual advising in 2016 offering large group advising webinars and evening hours for walk-in advising during peak times like pre-registration bonnie bustos-rios director of engineering academic operations said her team tested various technology tools prior to launching virtual advising those early tests helped us determine key features of each platform and ways to make the students experience seamless and less clunky she said engineering advisors are using various tools to meet with students virtually including zoom and google hangouts as well as phone calls advisors continue to support students in the transition to online courses point them to critical resources and serve as keen observers and reporters of what our students are really dealing with she said the latter is incredibly important as the college works to provide timely information about support services and other important resources
947,in the department of electrical and computer engineering windy lala assistant director of undergraduate programs said she misses visiting with students in person though my favorite part of being an academic advisor is meeting with students learning about them and the successes and issues they experience she said despite this she and her team have taken things in stride we want to make sure that we are staying connected with our students and that they are still feeling connected to our advising team and the department she said ashlea schroeder academic advisor iv in the department of biological and agricultural engineering said students have reported that their online classes are going well for the most part i have spoken with a few students who struggle with time management being back home and keeping up with classes but most students feel they will pass their classes though she said laura olivarez assistant director of general engineering academic advising services said they are operating as normally as possible with wait times less than 15 minutes the students are keeping us going she said we are passionate about advising and helping our students during this time we do this because we genuinely care for them and know this is a tough transition for them bustos-rios said shes grateful to her team that has stepped up during these difficult times they could be resistant to change especially in this time of uncertainty but im so thankful for their trust adaptability and flexibility during this time she said we cant serve our students if i dont take care of my team and the health and well-being of my team is of utmost importance bustos-rios said shes thought a lot about what the students must be going through as well i would be so worried but thankful to have academic advisors who care about me and my success she said i am also incredibly grateful for our college leadership the academic deans continue to exercise care and caution as they make the best possible decisions to keep our students staff and faculty safe
948,for millennia metallurgists have been meticulously tweaking the ingredients of steel to enhance its properties as a result several variants of steel exist today; but one type called martensitic steel stands out from its steel cousins as stronger and more cost-effective to produce hence martensitic steels naturally lend themselves to applications in the aerospace automotive and defense industries among others where high-strength lightweight parts need to be manufactured without boosting the cost however for these and other applications the metals have to be built into complex structures with minimal loss of strength and durability researchers from texas a&m university in collaboration with scientists in the air force research laboratory have now developed guidelines that allow 3d printing of martensitic steels into very sturdy defect-free objects of nearly any shape strong and tough steels have tremendous applications but the strongest ones are usually expensive the one exception being martensitic steels that are relatively inexpensive costing less than a dollar per pound said dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and head of the department of materials science and engineering we have developed a framework so that 3d printing of these hard steels is possible into any desired geometry and the final object will be virtually defect-free
949,although the procedure developed was initially for martensitic steels researchers from texas a&m said they have made their guidelines general enough so that the same 3d printing pipeline can be used to build intricate objects from other metals and alloys as well the findings of the study were reported in the december issue of the journal acta materialia steels are made of iron and a small quantity of other elements including carbon martensite steels are formed when steels are heated to extremely high temperatures and then rapidly cooled the sudden cooling unnaturally confines carbon atoms within iron crystals giving martensitic steel its signature strength to have diverse applications martensitic steels particularly a type called low-alloy martensitic steels need to be assembled into objects of different shapes and sizes depending on a particular application thats when additive manufacturing more commonly known as 3d printing provides a practical solution using this technology complex items can be built layer by layer by heating and melting a single layer of metal powder along a pattern with a sharp laser beam each of these layers joined and stacked creates the final 3d-printed object however 3d printing martensitic steels using lasers can introduce unintended defects in the form of pores within the material porosities are tiny holes that can sharply reduce the strength of the final 3d-printed object even if the raw material used for the 3d printing is very strong said karaman to find practical applications for the new martensitic steel we needed to go back to the drawing board and investigate which laser settings could prevent these defects for their experiments karaman and the texas a&m team first chose an existing mathematical model inspired from welding to predict how a single layer of martensitic steel powder would melt for different settings for laser speed and power by comparing the type and number of defects they observed in a single track of melted powder with the models predictions they were able to change their existing framework slightly so that subsequent predictions improved after a few such iterations their framework could correctly forecast without needing additional experiments if a new untested set of laser settings would lead to defects in the martensitic steel the researchers said this procedure is more time-efficient testing the entire range of laser setting possibilities to evaluate which ones may lead to defects is extremely time-consuming and at times even impractical said raiyan seede a graduate student in the college of engineering and the primary author of the study by combining experiments and modeling we were able to develop a simple quick step-by-step procedure that can be used to determine which setting would work best for 3d printing of martensitic steels
950,seede also noted that although their guidelines were developed to ensure that martensitic steels can be printed devoid of deformities their framework can be used to print with any other metal he said this expanded application is because their framework can be adapted to match the observations from single-track experiments for any given metal although we started with a focus on 3d printing of martensitic steels we have since created a more universal printing pipeline said karaman also our guidelines simplify the art of 3d printing metals so that the final product is without porosities which is an important development for all type of metal additive manufacturing industries that make parts as simple as screws to more complex ones like landing gears gearboxes or turbines other contributors to the research include austin whitt and dr raymundo arróyave from the texas a&m department of materials science and engineering; david shoukr bing zhang and dr alaa elwany from the texas a&m department of industrial and systems engineering; and dr sean gibbons and dr philip flater from the air force research laboratory florida this research is funded by the army research office and the air force research laboratory approved for public release by the air force; distribution is unlimited 96tw-2019-0336
951,as members from around texas a&m engineering come together to find ways to help the community in dealing with the covid-19 pandemic the team in the susu and mark a fischer 72 engineering design center (fedc) in the zachry engineering education complex is working around the clock to make solutions to those needs a reality the design centers skeleton crew of essential research members last week kicked off a project to provide baylor college of medicine in houston with 3 000 face shields to help protect its medical workers while treating sick patients to help meet the health care providers urgent need the team at the design center had to innovate – their specialty starting with a face shield design made publicly available by the georgia institute of technology the team worked to modify the design to work with the materials they had available the main challenge for completing the face shield design – essentially a re-sizeable headband with a curved plastic sheet covering the users full face – was in finding a way to use a thicker plastic than is typically utilized
952,dr david staack director of engineering laboratory instruction said due to supply shortages staff technicians had to find a way to make the design work with the materials they had on-hand – including supplies he had available in his research lab as well as those able to be sourced from the college of architecture it was ‘what materials do we have this is something where the technicians figured this out said staack they know these machines; they know these materials we can work with the materials we have on-hand and make a nice durable shield the staff here is all behind that kind of mentality of ‘lets turn around a product and lets get it back into peoples hands within a week of baylor college of medicines request over 300 face shields were delivered with the remaining less than 2 700 units on schedule to be delivered by the end of april
953,staack who also serves as associate professor and the sallie and don davis 61 career development professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering said typically during this time of year the design center would be operating at full capacity helping students complete their senior design projects with all classes going online in march due to covid-19 the team has extra capacity given their experience aiding thousands of students each semester with a wide variety of projects the design center staff is well suited to take on the task at hand the crew here is working very hard staack said were doing a public service and in this case with the immediate need where were providing something that may protect somebody from getting covid-19 or may directly go into a patients hand i think its more of this great sense of purpose that they come in with every day without the typical student projects to work on jim wilson general manager of the fischer engineering design center said he and his team are glad to have found another way to be of service during these trying times we miss the students but what were doing right now we know is helping a lot of people wilson said the covid-19 projects are our top priority right now and its a team effort wilson said technical laboratory coordinators adam farmer and todd williams are part of the team – including nathan panak cody ricther brey caraway richard mccalley iran ramirez and tobias gualandri – that has stepped up to help lead the efforts to fulfill the design centers mission through the production of the face shields as well as several other projects currently in progress
954,both farmer and williams said getting the ability to contribute in some way to those on the front lines of treating sick patients is an incredibly rewarding experience its nice to know that were doing something farmer said you see all kinds of stuff online and on tv of people just trying to do something to help for us to be able to do something and know that what were doing is going to people who are doing more good than we are to help them is a happy feeling as the staff at the design center continues to bring these impactful projects to fruition staack said they are also a part of a wider texas a&m community coming together – from loading dock attendants to members of the legal team – to make sure these pieces of equipment make it to those in need the impact is obvious and everyone is behind it so its been very nice to see very inspiring staack said its been inspiring to see how people have come together to try to solve these problems
955,lee (bender) coleman 81 and keith w coleman ‘81 have established the lee (bender) coleman 81 and keith w coleman 81 endowed chemical engineering fellowship this endowment will be used to provide one or more fellowships to full-time students pursuing a graduate degree in chemical engineering and working in safety-related areas in the college of engineering at texas a&m university the colemans have also established the lee (bender) coleman 81 and keith w coleman 81 deans education scholars award in the texas a&m college of education that will support first-generation students keith and lee met on campus at texas a&m on a blind date set up by lees roommate at the time lee was studying finance and accounting and keith was en route to becoming a chemical engineer lee came to texas a&m at the encouragement of her parents who were not aggies keith grew up in el paso and chose a&m without ever visiting the campus because it was the best engineering school around keith younger sister and brother and his wife also graduated from a&m after graduation lee and keith were married and went to work for chevron after staying home a few years to raise their four children lee went back to school to become a kindergarten teacher it was there that the colemans hearts were first touched by the hardships young graduates face i was able to see up close that these young people my classmates were really struggling lee said its a high calling choosing to teach young people and for many of the education students i met they worked very hard just to get by meanwhile keiths career took him to downstream refining within chevron and he became passionate about process safety during this his time at texas a&m continued to play a role in his life texas a&ms six core values of loyalty integrity excellence leadership respect and selfless service influenced me throughout my career keith said from my first day at chevron until i retired in 2015 i could see how those values instilled in me from my days at a&m inspired and guided me in my life they made me a better person in recent years the colemans reflected on their time at texas a&m and their careers the idea of giving to texas a&m came up in a conversation somebody created the texas a&m that i knew when i was there keith said the traditions the values and the technology that were available to us didnt appear out of thin air someone contributed i began to think that it was my obligation to do the same and give back to the place that gave me so much without much discussion the colemans decided to give back not just to one program at texas a&m but two each gift would reflect the passion of the colemans lives the deans education scholars award will benefit young aspiring teachers the endowed chemical engineering fellowship will help graduate students pursuing a process safety focus in their chemical engineering careers weve given gifts to other organizations like ministries and charities before were giving to texas a&m because like those other causes we value their mission and believe that aggies will continue to make a profound positive impact on the world texas a&m changed our lives i cannot thank the people who steered me here enough this school instilled values in me that i try to follow daily they are the values we tried to teach our children lee said
956,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment fellowships encourage collaboration between the faculty students and industry mentors while allowing graduate students to further their education and thus having a greater impact on the industry if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
957,the southwest electrical metering association (swema) has established the mike compton memorial scholarship this endowment will be used to provide scholarships to a full-time student in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university swema was inspired to establish this scholarship to honor the memory of mike compton former swema president who passed away in 2017 mikes dedication to swema inspired the organization to establish this gift said jay dee wilkins former swema president although compton did not attend texas a&m both of his children graduated from the university this led to swema choosing to establish the scholarship with texas a&m in electrical and computer engineering because of his involvement with the department while his children attended our hope is to affect the life of a deserving individual in the texas a&m electrical engineering program and honor the memory of mike wilkins said
958,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
959,due to the coronavirus pandemic seniors preparing to graduate from colleges across the country will face one of the most precarious economies since the financial crisis of 2007-08 the college of engineering at texas a&m university is responding by offering texas a&m engineering students graduating in may or august 2020 with a 30 gpa or higher expedited admittance to engineering graduate studies to help those without jobs weather the economic storm these students are eligible for the special quick admit program which includes a simplified application and does not require application fees gre scores or letters of recommendation some employers of our students have furloughed or eliminated significant segments of their workforce due to the pandemic and job offers have been impacted said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering when the economy stabilizes recent college graduates will face a highly competitive marketplace this program is one way we can support our students through the economic downturn while helping them build a more competitive skill set the college offers several master of engineering and master of science in engineering degree programs graduate study advisors are offering virtual office hours on tuesday april 14 from 1-2 pm to assist students interested in learning more about this program additional information and a link to the short application can be found on the colleges website
960,mary hovden (spivey) 78 and jack hovden have established the mary hovden (spivey) 78 industrial distribution endowed scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in industrial distribution at texas a&m university mary said she was inspired to establish this scholarship by her own experiences in the industrial distribution program at texas a&m the industrial distribution program the curriculum the professors and the classmates were a profoundly positive influence in my life and career and i'd like to give back to this program that made such a difference mary was drawn to texas a&m by the universitys values traditions quality education and friendliness my years at a&m were some of the best of my life while i was there i learned the value of service hard work and perseverance which served me well in my life and career she said mary said that graduating from texas a&m is the proudest achievement of her life and she hopes that her scholarship can help students complete their education at texas a&m giving back financially to the industrial distribution program which made such a difference in my life and career is really important to me she said as to what impact she hopes her scholarship will have mary said i hope that this endowed scholarship will help students complete their education at texas a&m and then go on to have a rewarding career and make a difference in the world
961,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact thadd hargett senior director of development
962,bob 86 and sandra judge 86 have established the robert bob a 86 and sandra k judge 86 study abroad scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering and participating in the study abroad program at texas a&m university both bob and sandra appreciated the small-town feel of texas a&m and the traditions that are respected and practiced by the students there's nothing better than a big 'howdy' from a fellow student to make new arrivals feel at home bob said our time at texas a&m really drove home an appreciation of hard work bob said we've both been open to taking diverse difficult and unfamiliar paths in our careers and our time at a&m prepared us well for dealing with anything that comes up bob and sandra decided to establish their scholarship at texas a&m because they feel that the school prepares students to excel in the real world both of us have benefited a great deal from our time in aggieland and we are blessed to be in a position to help others in the future bob said the judges established a study-abroad endowment to allow students who might otherwise not get to experience a semester abroad a chance to take advantage of the opportunity we both have learned so much from our travels that have benefited us during our careers and personal lives bob said people need to be able to work and understand some of the cultural drivers behind people across the globe bob and sandra hope that their endowment is impactful and will encourage students to study abroad we hope that students who think they can't afford it will be able to say yes to the study-abroad experience bob said sandra and bob judge both graduated from texas a&m in 1986 sandra received her degree in ocean engineering and bob received his in mechanical engineering together they have a son griffin who graduated last december he followed in his fathers footsteps earning a degree in mechanical engineering but with a minor in aerospace engineering
963,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
964,in light of the emergence and spread of covid-19 researchers across many disciplines are using their expertise to address these and future pandemics and texas a&m university urban resilience lab researchers are joining the global effortdr ali mostafavi assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering recently received a grant from the national science foundation (nsf) to better understand predict and effectively respond to the risk of infectious disease outbreaks in urban areasmy urban resilience lab has been investigating the robustness and resilience of urban systems in the face of different disruptions such as floods earthquakes and wildfires urban resilience to pandemics is a relatively under-studied dimension for us and other researchers in the field we are honored to receive this award from the nsf to advance the fundamental understanding and methods in this area he said in this project we will harness urban-scale big data and create novel artificial intelligence (ai) and data-driven network science models to help better monitor and predict hidden pandemic spread riskscovid-19 outbreaks have had dire societal and economic impacts across the globe and its spread has become a major societal threat in the united states the majority of epidemic spread models however do not adequately consider the tremendous uncertainty associated with human response behaviors (both populations and individual actors) and anxiety in urban system supply chains during an epidemic outbreakmostafavi and his team will analyze the data through spatial modeling network analysis and machine learning techniques to reveal hidden pandemic spread risks in urban areas the outcomes will suggest new ways for better prediction of pandemics and offer new insights on ways to conduct urban-scale surveillance of epidemic spread risks the findings will inform strategies and possible data-driven tools and methods to prevent help contain and mitigate the effects of future epidemics and pandemicsour urban resilience lab at texas a&m is uniquely positioned to undertake this work in addition to our expertise in ai and complex urban networks we also have close collaboration with multiple local and state agencies and technology companies mostafavi said in the initial stage our goal is to disseminate data and findings to help agencies contain the pandemic and its impacts in the next stage we will make our computational data-centric models available as open-source tools to help predict and mitigate future epidemic outbreaks more proactively and effectively
965,texas a&m engineering former students and friends i would like to express my sincere wish for the good health of you and your loved ones during the covid-19 pandemic although there is much to cause concern and worry i am reassured daily by the strength integrity and can-do spirit of aggies during this crisis texas a&m university is committed to the safety of our students and ensuring that they are being fully supported in their educational endeavors as you will see in the stories in this newsletter we have transitioned operations to deliver courses virtually and only essential staff are working on campus most of our coe employees are working remotely from home yet the core value of selfless service is being manifested in many ways as our faculty staff and students respond to community needs if you have technology-related ideas that could address covid-19 challenges please see more details about our covid-19 research program texas a&m engineering is utilizing resources in unprecedented ways to support our governing bodies and health care providers you are welcome to join us best regards m katherine banks phd pe dean
966,proud aggie karen olson class of 87 and her husband louis turner recently gave back to texas a&m university in the form of a generous gift to establish the karen e olson 87 and louis h turner endowed excellence in research faculty award in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering being an aggie is very identifiable said olson people recognize my ring even on the other side of the world it has opened doors for me the award will provide recognition for a faculty member who performs outstanding research recipients of this award will be determined by the head of the petroleum engineering department per university guidelines my education at texas a&m has made a difference in my career said olson i have applied that knowledge to everywhere ive worked without that degree i wouldnt be where i am now olson has been a completion or reservoir engineer for several companies during a career that spans more than 30 years she has handled challenging duties and leadership roles both onshore and offshore in the us and overseas she has amassed considerable expertise in the design modeling and operational execution of hydraulic fracturing but has always recognized the value of keeping an open mind to learning new things its very important to stay in contact with your professors theyll be on that leading edge of research olson said just through the oil and gas industry weve stayed in touch one of the things i can do now is give back to them to a&m a distinguished member of the society of petroleum engineers olson holds a bachelors degree in petroleum engineering from louisiana state university and a masters degree in petroleum engineering from texas a&m she currently serves on the industry board for the petroleum engineering department
967,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
968,ken c kavalew '89 has established the tabitha h kavalew '91 memorial aerospace engineering scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at texas a&m university kavalew says he was interested in texas a&m because of its excellent engineering program rich history and traditions as a mechanical engineering graduate i was able to join dupont right out of school he said the aggie network at dupont has helped me have access to opportunities that i otherwise don't believe would be available to me kavalew says his late wife tabitha was the inspiration behind this gift my wife tabitha passed away in august of 2015 after a long but hard-fought battle with breast cancer he said both graduates of texas a&m kavalew says his and tabithas love of the university contributed to his decision to establish the scholarship with texas a&m in aerospace engineering the endowment is in honor of my wifes love of a&m aerospace engineering and work with nasa at the johnson space center kavalew said i want future recipients of the scholarship to be inspired by her and her hard work and passion for space exploration by either choosing a career with nasa or a partner company the couple has two children and kavalew hopes they can be involved with their mothers endowment for years to come my kids and i want to get to know the future recipients of the scholarship he said we hope this scholarship will help reduce the burden of college tuition so future recipients can focus on their school work
969,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
970,megan and jonathon shuhart '96 have established the megan and jonathon shuhart '96 scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time first-generation students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university as a first-generation college student jonathon attended his first texas a&m football game his freshman year of high school and was set on being an aggie i only applied to a&m and wasnt interested in any other school jonathon attributes the inspiration behind his gift to the financial aid he himself received at texas a&m i am a first-generation college graduate and was able to attend texas a&m as a recipient of the president's achievement scholarship which made it possible for me to graduate without student loans he said i have always wanted to provide a similar opportunity for a deserving student that may not otherwise be able to attend a&m jonathon hopes his scholarship will have a positive impact on the recipients i wanted to give back to allow someone the same opportunity i was given and hope this will provide another pay it forward moment he said i am thankful for the generosity of previous donors that helped me with my education at texas a&m and want to provide the same opportunity for someone else
971,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact thadd hargett senior director of development
972,texas a&m university through its unique engineering medicine (enmed) partnership with houston methodist hospital is stepping up to help the health care system keep up with the demand for medical supplies brought on by the increasing number of confirmed and suspected covid-19 cases a team led by dr michael r moreno has already delivered 200 3d-printed diffusers for metered dose inhalers (mdi) to the houston hospital and stands ready to produce more if needed the spacer or diffuser that we created will allow the doctors to use metered dose inhalers to treat diagnosed and suspected covid-19 patients who are not yet in need of ventilator therapy without using nebulizers that may aerosolize the virus moreno said and this is important because if this early stage intervention is effective then it is possible that these patients may recover before reaching that critical point where ventilator therapy is required moreno assistant professor in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering and director of innovation for engineering medicine said the hospital was facing a critical shortage after being unable to find the diffusers from its normal suppliers he said one of the most powerful aspects of the project is that it came from direct communication with doctors who at the forefront of this crisis are identifying emerging unanticipated needs in some cases the solutions are not that complicated but you have to know that the problems exist moreno said and the only way youre going to know that as an engineer is if you have an open line of communication with the doctors
973,while ventilators are reserved for patients experiencing severe symptoms respiratory inhalers are a part of the early treatment plan for most hospitalized patients exhibiting signs of covid-19 infection bronchodilator drugs used for treatment of asthma can be utilized in covid-19 patients to improve their ability to breathe in the hospital setting these would typically be administered using nebulizers the concern is that the use of nebulizers could aerosolize the virus placing those in the area at higher risk of contracting the disease consequently inhalers are the preferred method of delivery for these drugs with confirmed and potential covid-19 patients the inhaler devices require precise timing of inhalation for proper delivery to the lungs which is something moreno said even experienced users like himself can find challenging with the help of a diffuser patients are better able to get more of the medication into their lungs these spacers work like diffusers and allow the patient more time to draw the entire dose of medication into their lungs moreno said and when you're suffering from respiratory illness this may be very important
974,dan metzen system director of pharmacy services at houston methodist said diffusers – such as the commercially available aerochamber - are currently in short supply due to the increased use of inhalers for both confirmed and suspected covid-19 patients leaving the hospital itself with a limited supply
975,although metzen said nebulizers could also be used to administer the medication metered dose inhalers are preferred due to a concern that nebulizers used by patients with covid-19 in the hospital could spread the virus houston methodist has a partnership with the texas a&m college of medicine and college of engineering through the enmed program an integrated educational and research medical program with a focus on innovation dr roderic pettigrew executive dean of enmed said this rapid response by moreno and his team to develop a use-inspired solution in the 3d printed diffuser serves as a perfect example of the programs concept in action engineers are great at solving problems that benefit society and the health care delivery system right now is very much in need of help with problem solving as we struggle with this pandemic and all of its associated challenges pettigrew said enmed has risen to the occasion right here in houston to serve people in need were working with our colleagues at houston methodist hospital in order to devise practical solutions to real problems on the front lines of treating covid-19 patients although the concept being utilized for the diffusers is not new this is among the first times it has been locally 3d printed and delivered on this scale
976,anticipating that this shortage is likely not unique to houston methodist moreno and his team are making the stereolithography (stl) file for the 3d-printable design publicly available at no cost on the enmed website people will be able to go to the site download those stl files and then print these spacers for their local hospitals as well if they find that they have need for it moreno said
977,additionally the team has designed an alternate smaller 3d-printable device designed for areas that may be more resource limited this device is essentially an inhaler interface that allows one to use a common plastic water bottle as the diffuser chamber moreno said his team as well as several others throughout the texas a&m university system have worked tirelessly to make sure they would be able to deliver the diffusers to patients in need as soon as possible as an aggie biomedical engineer and mechanical engineer working in this biomedical space times like these are when we really want to rise to the challenge moreno said right now there are patients that are using these spacers or diffusers and were very hopeful about addressing future problems as well this is just what we do as aggie engineers
978,as more than 20 000 students transition into an online learning environment the quality of the education students receive in the texas a&m university college of engineering continues to be of utmost importance engineering personnel have stepped up in many ways to make the transition as easy as possible the engineering studio for advance instruction & learning (esail) has been conducting seminars on using applications such as mediasite for lecture capture google classroom ecampus and zoom along with other applications like packback which encourages students to ask and answer open-ended questions each faculty member conducts their online teaching with their preferred methods dr sunay palsole assistant vice chancellor for engineering remote education said the initial goals were to introduce and train faculty on the various technologies available to them during this transition introduce them to best practices using evidence-based approaches (research and faculty panels) and guided pedagogy the process loosely follows three steps: create course content deliver course content and assess learning faculty seem to be adapting reasonably well overall palsole said the kinds of questions we are getting now also speak to their adopting the technology and thinking about how to creatively engage the students and assess learning shayla rivera director of engr[x] and professor of practice in the college of engineering teaches engr 482 engineering ethics she said everyone teaching the course brainstormed to decide the best teaching approach for the students each team recorded lectures using lecture capturing which they showed to students live via zoom allowing students to connect with faculty if they had questions or comments followed by a comprehensive discussion using packback so the result is that our students still attend class at the appointed time and have open discussions about what is presented rivera said so far i am exceedingly impressed with the attendance and the participation of our students
979,palsole said for course creation some faculty choose to come in to the classroom they might have been using for lecture capture using mediasite these lectures are processed captioned and then delivered in ecampus or in some cases on-course sites they have built some faculty use zoom to deliver live lectures that are recorded closed captioned and shared with the students either on ecampus google docs or other modalities other faculty like rivera use the mediasite desktop recorder or zoom (or other tools such as camtasia) to create the lecture content and distribute it engineering was better positioned than most i think for the transition palsole said we have a great team in esail and engineering it has been fantastic in provisioning the technologies needed by the faculty to make the change and providing the necessary support any issues that come up is dealt with fairly quickly by the administrative teams in place and even in this rapid move to online i think we have done well overall junior industrial distribution student anjali dhanani said that while her professors have chosen various ways to teach their classes they have a common goal all my professors and my lab instructors are trying to help us any way they can as they are going the extra mile to be more accessible to us during this time and making sure we understand key concepts in the curriculum she said dhanani said that while learning online cant replace the hands-on approach she had in her regular classroom instruction she has seen advantages to online learning which has even seemed to bring the faculty closer to the students most of my professors have changed how they teach she said for example one of my professors would only just go through the content and answer the couple questions and end the lecture now he has become more conversational getting to know us asking about our dogs in the background or why our background looks like were in hawaii what has happened currently has impacted us all one way or another the professors have adapted in a way that i feel we have all gotten even closer to becoming an aggie family even though all classes are online rivera agrees that their perspectives have changed as teachers she said everyone has had to work together and support each other in order to succeed they had to reassess what needed to be in the curriculum going forward which made them take a deeper look at the material since they were not going to be face to face with students they also discussed how to be more engaging and become better lecturers personally i see this moment in time as a great ‘correction of sorts she said a time when we are all having to look into areas we had not considered before in our teaching we are adapting and looking for ways to help our students participate more and feel more included these are ideas we tend to leave behind when routine sets in sometimes so i see the wake-up call to be the best we can all be for our students and for ourselves this feeling of connection is one that exists throughout the college of engineering which has set up numerous online programs and other opportunities for students education along with a covid information site to provide the latest updates i think it is great that the college of engineering has created competitions/programs online now and made many of their in-person workshops into webinars this will definitely help students to continue applying the knowledge they are learning and help with professional development dhanani said i am one of the many students who had their internships pushed back or canceled because of covid-19 and because of this i know we are all trying to get back up and show companies we are an asset to them and the college is helping us do just that i could not be more grateful that as aggies we always have each others back
980,dr jodie lutkenhaus axalta coating systems chair holder of the william and ruth neely faculty fellowship and professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been appointed to serve a three-year term on the board on chemical sciences and technology (bcst) of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine the bcst acts as an advisory board bringing together the top minds in chemistry and chemical engineering to provide the us governments decision-makers with the highest quality scientific and technical advice the main aim of the bcst is to bring together information and experts to find solutions to scientific issues relating to chemistry and chemical engineering to ensure that the us remains on the cutting edge of the field this is just the latest in a long line of honors and recognitions for lutkenhaus including being named a chancellor edges fellow and a texas a&m presidential impact fellow 2019 and 2018 respectively in 2017 she was invited to participate in the world economic forum's young scientists program selected as kavli frontiers of science fellow and named an acs rising star
981,scientists in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university are developing new ways to advance the field of regenerative medicine and cancer treatment they are developing a 2d nanosheet that is 1 000 times smaller than a strand of hair dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor has developed a new class of 2d nanosheets called molybdenum disulfide that can adsorb near infrared (nir) light and modify cell behavior these nanosheets are an emerging class of materials that have shown distinct physical and chemical properties due to their unique shape and size recently some nanosheets have been explored for biomedical applications due to their light-responsive ability despite strong potential gaharwars research is entering new territory as few studies have investigated their cellular compatibility and none have explored their ability to modulate cellular functions using light to explore the possibility of controlling the cell response via light gaharwars research group has synthesized an atomically thin nanosheet that can adsorb nir light and convert it into heat nir light can penetrate deep inside the tissue compared to other types of light including ultraviolet and visible light and can be used to stimulate natural biological repair mechanisms in deep tissue due to the high-surface area of nanosheets they can stick to the outer membrane of cells and transmit a cellular signal to the nucleus thereby controlling their behavior some of the nanosheets are also eaten by the cells and can influence cellular functions from inside light-responsive biomaterials have a strong potential for developing the next generation of noninvasive precise and controllable medical devices for a range of biomedical applications including drug delivery cancer therapy regenerative medicine and 3d printing gaharwar said
982,his research was recently featured in the journal proceedings of the national academy of sciences in collaboration with dr irtisha singh assistant professor in the department of molecular and cellular medicine of the texas a&m health science center gaharwars team used a next-generation sequencing technique to decipher the effect of light and/or nanosheets on the gene regulation of cells picture a cell as a blank canvas and gene regulation as the paint that turns the canvas into something unique or interesting for stem cells that would mean determining what kind of cell they will be such as muscle bone etc slight agitations in gene expression either from light or these nanosheets can significantly affect the functions of these cells such as movement reproduction and expression global gene expression profiles of cells reveal that light stimulation of the nanosheet can have a significant influence on cellular migration and wound healing they demonstrated that cancer cells treated with a nanosheet and light are not able to move freely which is good news this is important as cancer spreads in the body by moving from one tissue to another the combination of the nanosheet and light may provide new approaches to control and regulate cellular migration and functions the team found that the nanosheets bind to a cell surface receptor known as an integrin a simple protein with a sugar attached these integrin proteins are important in normal cell functioning by providing information to cells about its surroundings if these proteins are covered by nanosheets they cannot tell the cells to move around effectively stopping the cells for an indefinite time gaharwars research is funded by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering of the national institutes of healths directors new innovator award
983,a texas a&m university team of scientists and engineers is leading the development of a device that can be used to rapidly identify antibodies produced by human b cells that can neutralize infection by sars-cov-2 the causative agent of covid-19 as we all see from the unfolding covid-19 pandemic when a new viral threat emerges there are neither therapeutics nor vaccines available developing new therapeutics and vaccines is extremely difficult time-consuming and costly and possible mutation of viruses makes it extremely challenging the team led by dr paul de figueiredo associate professor in the college of medicine and dr arum han professor and presidential impact fellow in the department of electrical and computer engineering in collaboration with dr julian leibowitz a coronavirus expert and professor in the college of medicine; and dr mike criscitiello immunologist assistant dean for research and graduate studies and professor from the college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences received a national science foundation rapid response research (rapid) grant to pursue this work the difficulty of developing therapeutics and vaccines against emerging viral threats can also be obviously seen from the fact that we still do not have therapeutics or vaccines against two previous major viral outbreaks namely sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003 and mers (middle east respiratory syndrome) in 2012 where no fda-approved vaccine or therapeutic exist said han some of the most promising strategies to combat these types of viruses include the use of pathogen-specific neutralizing antibodies (nabs) these are molecules produced by human b cells that can bind to invading viruses and neutralize their capability for infection identifying nabs is a first step toward developing therapeutics and vaccines han explained that conventional approaches for identifying nabs are extremely time-consuming inefficient and costly due to the billions of potentially unique b cells in the human body that produce antibodies to find those that neutralize a specific viral infection such as sars-cov-2 a very large percentage of the billions of cells have to be tested one at a time to see whether the antibody they produce prevents infection this pursuit is essentially like finding a needle in a haystack and cannot be easily performed using current technology enter the microfluidic lab-on-a-chip device prescient (platform for the rapid evaluation of antibody success using integrated microfluidics enabled technology) this hunt for neutralizing antibodies takes place at the sub-microscopic level in reaction vessels that are more than a million times smaller than a cup of coffee (this device) utilizes droplet microfluidics technology where millions of such pico-liter-volume bioreactors each containing unique antibody-producing cells are generated and each of the cells in the pico-liter bioreactors are tested one at a time to assess whether they produce antibodies that can prevent infection han said this entire process can be conducted at very high speed up to hundreds of tests per second so far the team has successfully built a prototype device and tested its feasibility using the hepatitis virus a type of coronavirus and demonstrated that antibodies produced by a single cell could neutralize infection of the virus within the pico-liter-volume bioreaction chamber this work has now been accepted by the journal lab on a chip and will be published in an upcoming issue as the ongoing covid-19 crisis unfolds the team is currently working to repurpose the prescient microfluidic device to rapidly identify neutralizing antibodies against the current pandemic the team hopes that once neutralizing antibodies are discovered they can then be quickly utilized to develop therapeutics and vaccines to combat covid-19
984,if youre familiar with iron mans arc reactor or the tesseract in marvel movies you may recognize the eerie blue light emitted by these fictional energy sources popular culture and science fiction have taught us that advanced nuclear gadgets tend to release an intense blue or green light while this certainly helps establish the other-worldly aesthetic that pervades science fiction you may be surprised to learn that some reactors actually do radiate a unique light blue color water-cooled power reactors are contained in a pressure vessel and are one of the most common types of reactors found around the world some water-cooled research reactors such as the triga (training research isotopes general atomics) reactor at the nuclear engineering and science center (nesc) are operated at atmospheric pressure and look like a big swimming pool bathed in blue light this glow is the result of cherenkov radiation which occurs when free electrons travel faster than the phase velocity of light in a medium such as water its the equivalent of a sonic boom except with light and not sound its also the focus of texas a&m university postdoctoral researcher jason hearnes work the blue light that you see is proportional to the radiation density hearne said by positioning a camera toward the core to examine how much blue light is present i can discover the power density in different parts of the reactor as well as the total power of the reactor
985,because the amount of visible blue light in a given area corresponds with the amount of power scientists can measure not only the total power of a reactor but the power in various parts of the reactor as well this power profile determination can help quickly detect anomalies in a reactor such as flux tilts or the approximate size and location of a blockage in a coolant channel as an additional instrumentation system for a reactor this method of data analysis allows scientists to better increase optimization efforts and reduce the likelihood of reactor failure so far hearnes work has been computer-model based using whats known as the monte carlo n-particle (mcnp) transport code monte carlo simulations are used across a variety of fields to predict the multiple outcomes of a process when there are many unknown variables statistically we know how a particle will behave at any point in time hearne explained mcnp uses random numbers to simulate what one particle does and then another and then another then we have millions of particles and we can find an average and that helps us understand how the triga reactor would behave under certain circumstances hearne soon hopes to begin experimental implementation of his cherenkov project using the triga reactor at the nesc his research proves that reactor safety does not have to be compromised for power and that despite the stigma reactors are becoming more efficient effective and secure by the day
986,with technology always evolving health care has to adapt as well using telehealth to reach patients who cannot easily travel to a physical clinic or hospital a senior capstone design team in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university developed a new phone app to help diagnose neurological issues our application is sort of a first test to see how your vision is doing and see if that's manifesting as a symptom of a larger issue matthew armstrong said our assignment is to design something that can be deployed remotely it's our job to narrow down the problem statement enough to a tangible opponent
987,the team worked with the university of texas southwestern medical center to design a low-contrast visual acuity test currently these tests take the letter test seen in any eye doctors office but adjust the shade of the letters instead of black the letters are at 25 percent grayscale contrast the standard for low contrast visual acuity testing grayscale letters are harder to distinguish against a white background for certain neurological deficits including multiple sclerosis this eye test can help doctors diagnose conditions there are no versions of this test for phones nor is there an app to test vision in this way outside of a clinic while that put the team on the cutting edge of this type of project it brought its own challenges as well the team had to configure the camera app on a phone to run their program effectively along with learning a coding system they had not used before in class despite the challenges the team celebrated milestones along the way and recognized the larger impact of their work joseph mcmahan said their goal of changing the landscape can be easily applied to their jobs after graduation
988,i think in the long term this will help significantly improve our skills when we go into the workforce because we have a different mindset going in mcmahan said we can say ‘hey why don't we try approaching it this way which has never been done before it gives us that motivation and that insight as opposed to sitting down and going through the same old scenarios other team members including andrew purnadi and austen kaul agreed that the two-semester project prepared them well for life after graduation we come up with our own deadlines we have to come up with our own plan purnadi said having to plan out everything and to essentially take charge of the project is a really good experience since we're about to enter the workforce careers don't end in a semester kaul said you don't do your three months of it and then say ‘okay well i got my grade in this class and im done no your job is your job and you're going to stick to it until the design is actually finished
989,dr nk anand executive associate dean in the texas a&m university college of engineering was awarded the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) james harry potter gold medal the formal presentation of the award will take place during the asme 2020 power conference in august anand who is also associate director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) a regents professor and the james m and ada sutton forsyth professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering received the award for outstanding contributions as a teacher of thermodynamics and related topics and as a researcher who has advanced the state-of-the-art design of alternate refrigerant condensers cooling strategies for electronic packages and aerosol transport lines i am honored and humbled by this recognition i thank my family teachers mentors and colleagues for their continued support and inspiration anand said anand's research focuses on the development and application of computational techniques to study turbulent flows and particle transport in nuclear power applications his research has been recognized through several honors and awards most recently having received a university level faculty distinguished achievement award for administration from the association of former students at texas a&m other honors include being inducted into the kansas state university engineering hall of fame receiving an outstanding graduate teaching award and being named a distinguished alumni and tees fellow anand was also named a fellow of asme which has 120 000 members and is the oldest professional engineering society in the world he has served as an associate technical editor of the associations journal of heat transfer and currently serves as a member of the editorial board of numerical heat transfer the james harry potter gold medal was established in 1980 in honor of james h potter it recognizes eminent achievement or distinguished service in the science of thermodynamics and its application in mechanical engineering
990,the family and friends of alan v thompson have established the alan v thompson 70 endowed memorial scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university alan thompson graduated from texas a&m with a degree in agricultural engineering in 1970 he and his high school sweetheart mary were married after his freshman year and spent 52 years together before his passing the couple had three children together matthew amy and michael both matthew and amy followed in their fathers footsteps and graduated from texas a&m in 1994 and 1998 respectively during the course of their marriage alans job as a civil engineer moved them from state to state eventually landing them back in texas texas a&m left a mark on his career and our lives as the aggie network is wide and the love of the school reaches many mary said mary explains how education was top priority to alan he always thought learning something new every day was the most important thing to do in ones life he never passed up an opportunity to learn something new in fact he often went and took classes to continue learning education and civil engineering were both extremely important to alan through his work and volunteer efforts we wanted to establish a way to pay his legacy forward for young engineers who want to gain a quality education and need a little help along the way said mary after moving to boerne texas in 2015 alan taught water resources engineering to seniors at the university of texas at san antonio for four summers water and wastewater engineering were his passions and he always took the time to mentor and assist his fellow engineers and those new to the field mary said his desire was to make others better and give the best of himself our hope is for his legacy to carry on through this endowed scholarship alans brother doyle previously worked for the texas a&m foundation before he retired mary explained how it was doyle who suggested that they honor alans memory by creating a scholarship with texas a&m engineering we would like to further the education of young aspiring civil and environmental engineering students at texas a&m mary said this gift will serve to expand opportunities not only for these young professionals while at a&m but also as they enter the professional ranks through the wide-reaching contacts they will make through the aggie network and ultimately through paying it forward in the future themselves
991,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
992,several petroleum engineering students from texas a&m university placed high in the society of petroleum engineers (spe) gulf coast regional student paper contest hussain albahrani won first place in the phd division and will represent texas a&m in the spe international student paper contest later this year ahmed elkady took second place in the regional master's division gabrielle joubran and steven winn took second and third place respectively in the undergraduate division
993,the spe gulf coast contest regional competition held in april was virtual due to travel restrictions and pandemic fears in contrast the local harold vance department of petroleum engineering student paper contest in january was live and very well received by both industry judges and faculty hundreds of students had the opportunity to gather on campus give their technical presentations before judges and peers receive questions and feedback on their research and have the chance to listen and interact on a large scale regional paper competitions are usually far smaller only featuring top students who take first and second place in local undergraduate master's or phd divisions yet there is still a chance to receive feedback and hear other student presentations going to an online format meant regional organizers had to narrow contestant experiences down to a minimum albahrani elkady and joubran took the time to share their thoughts on competing virtually and the student paper contest in general by answering a few questions q: what was it like to compete remotely as compared to the live competition held on campus joubran: we only logged in during our specific time and we were not allowed to listen in on other people whereas on campus we listened to others elkady: i definitely prefer the in-person contest like the one we had in the department but obviously a remote contest was the preferred choice due to the pandemic albahrani: i felt less stress and nervousness than with the in-person presentations in the local competition spe did a great job in planning as i was able to communicate my research both audibly and visually without a glitch the discussion with the judges was also smooth i was able to interact with them clearly elkady: i suffered from some technical difficulties the judges couldnt hear three minutes from my presentation recording although i prepared it beforehand and it didnt have any problems albahrani: spe informed us that the quality of the presentations was not a part of the evaluation process which i believed balanced things q: did you get more feedback from the judges or less elkady: i received questions about my work but unlike the in-person contest i didn't get feedback or recommendations joubran: the questions i got from the judges weren't as technical as the questions i got when i presented on campus albahrani: i have to say that the questions i received during our school local competition prepared me very well for the discussion with the judges in the regional competition as they were very similar and focused on the same points q: will this experience help you in your future albahrani: participating in the competition has definitely been a rewarding experience not only was i provided with an opportunity to present and validate the new ideas of my research to different panels of industry experts but i was also able to test my performance under pressure joubran: i feel like the contest is a valuable tool because it allows you to practice public speaking and present over a technical topic i had a lot of practice while at texas a&m these experiences have helped me become more confident when i am speaking in front of others and help me better express my ideas in a work setting elkady: i gained a lot of experience and self-confidence from participating and being asked my research details i was directed to some adjustments and additions that will hopefully improve and strengthen my work q: what are your hopes for your career joubran: i am going to graduate in december 2020 and i hope to secure a full-time job by then albahrani: i also will be graduating in december 2020 since i'm a sponsored student the validation i received from my participation in the competition gives me more support to present my research to the management of my sponsoring company saudi aramco as for my career i anticipate working in research and development for the foreseeable future elkady: i hope to graduate this summer i plan to continue doing graduate studies by joining the phd program in petroleum engineering and to eventually achieve my dream of being a successful researcher and professor
994,sharli nucker has been honored as one of the 2020 presidents meritorious service award recipients for texas a&m university nucker serves as administrator in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering where she acts as chief of staff recipients of the prestigious award have demonstrated their commitment to the aggie core values of excellence integrity leadership loyalty respect and selfless service i am very happy to have recruited sharli in the department more than five years ago said dr andreas polycarpou mechanical engineering department head her contributions to the department have been substantial and i am very thankful for all her hard work to make our department better nucker and the other honorees will be recognized at a ceremony on august 10 at 10 am in the memorial student center bethancourt ballroom all university employees are welcome to attend the ceremony along with a reception following
995,two doctoral students in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university won prestigious graduate fellowships this spring rebeca gurrola received a national science foundation graduate research fellowship while ciera cipriani won a nasa space technology graduate research fellowship gurrola will work with materials science and engineering assistant professor dr patrick shamberger on developing energy-efficient electronic circuits that emulate neurons in the brain i am especially drawn to energy materials research as it has repercussions in all fields and to all in society regardless of their social standing said gurrola cipriani who wanted to be an astronaut as a child will work under the supervision of materials science and engineering assistant professor dr emily pentzer on 3d printing low-mass materials to lighten the load on spacecrafts i am grateful for the opportunity to merge my passions for materials science 3d printing and space said cipriani
996,the french society of nuclear energy was founded to support the french nuclear industry and research programs as part of their effort to support and recognize nuclear scientists the society awards the jean burgois prizes every year to the best phds in fields related to nuclear energy visiting assistant professor dr mauricio e tano was the recipient of one of these awards in 2019 this highly competitive prize distinguished tano as an outstanding researcher during his doctoral studies tanos phd dissertation explored the design of molten salt reactors (msrs) a gen-iv type of nuclear reactor unlike other reactors msrs use a liquid nuclear fuel consisting of a molten salt while this allows for innovative use it also complicates the reactors design which must now be thought of in terms of other fields such as thermal hydraulics and chemical species transport tano developed and experimentally validated a new series of coupled models that allowed for more efficient design and study of msrs his scientific developments will help nuclear engineers better understand the coupled multiphysics phenomena in msrs thus leading to the significant improvements in design and safety standards
997,the united states army research laboratory is lending support to a texas a&m university research project investigating potential improvement of ballistic performance of armor materials the project led by dr justin wilkerson assistant professor and james j cain 51 faculty fellow ii in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering focuses on identifying what damaging effects could be caused by particular flaws known as vacancies in the atomic structure of aluminum wilkersons research paper on the topic evolving structure-property relationships in metals with nonequilibrium concentrations of vacancies was recently featured on the cover of the journal of applied physics the paper was co-authored with wilkersons former postdoctoral advisee dr sara adibi although similar research has been conducted by dr celia reina and coworkers from the california institute of technology wilkersons study delves deeper into the subject by calculating the effect of changes due to vacancies over time on the materials mechanical properties mechanical behavior of these materials could not be understood via the lattice kinetic monte carlo simulations alone which was what had been done prior to this said wilkerson to take the next step forward we made use of supercomputing facilities to conduct a suite of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations atoms are arranged in a highly ordered pattern referred to as a crystal lattice and if an atom is missing from a perfect lattice structure this defect is called a vacancy at high temperatures the vacancies can come together forming vacancy clusters wilkerson said a large concentration of vacancies in a material may be generated under shock loading which could impact ballistic performance metrics including spall strength the effect of vacancies on the mechanical behavior of materials on short timescales such as microseconds has remained largely unexplored said wilkerson even on such short timescales we find that vacancies may also play a significant role in the high-temperature failure of metals subject to very high tensile pressures a prospective idea from the findings is that it may be possible to use this knowledge to improve the ballistic performance of next-generation armors for the us army now that we better understand the importance of this mechanism to ballistic performance the next step is to develop material processing strategies that slow vacancy production rates in shocked materials said wilkerson visit the journal of applied physics to read the full research article
998,american nuclear society (ans) executive director and ceo craig piercy visited texas a&m university recently to hear from texas a&m ans chapter students in the department of nuclear engineering new to his position as ceo piercy wanted to hear from students about how the organization could improve and better support the individual chapters he sat down with ans student president ihsan yuksel to discuss how work done at the corporate level affects constituents yuksel: thank you for coming here to meet with us its a pleasure to have you here i know that youre visiting many ans chapters at universities across the united states why did you choose texas a&m as your first stop piercy: texas a&m nuclear engineering is the largest nuclear engineering department in the nation i have a fascination with the state of texas because theres a certain economic and demographic vibrancy that you dont find many other places in the country texas a&m students in particular have a level of excitement and enthusiasm that you dont find elsewhere since i became ceo ans has been reorganizing how we do things our goal is to create an organization that is more supportive of the next generation of scientists and i think that begins with texas a&m
999,yuksel: what are some of your other goals for ans what do you hope to change piercy: one of our priorities is to focus on improving external communication surrounding nuclear exposure specifically low-dose radiation and its impacts at their core many nuclear issues are driven by a fear of radiation we want to provide factual information to the public to increase the literacy on nuclear energy when we see stories in the media that are factually incorrect we want to do a better job of confronting those stories and changing that narrative to inform the public about the benefits of nuclear energy but thats not an easy task to undertake yuksel: right its quite challenging how do you suggest we do that where do we even begin piercy: it really begins with the individual members of the society as some point in our lives each of us will be called on as experts to share our knowledge about nuclear science everyone should be prepared to openly discuss with their community about low-dose radiation and why people shouldnt worry as much as they do
1000,i also think it begins in the classroom i dont feel that ans has a proper set of visuals be it a powerpoint or an infographic that explains the different doses of radiation teachers lack suitable classroom materials to discuss things like radiation exposure thats something im hoping to change yuksel: its also a conversation that should be had with the media on a national level there was a widespread sense of fear after fukushima that some would say was linked to ineffective reporting do you ever see us getting to the point where nuclear scientists are on national news explaining whats actually happening after a disaster or crisis piercy: thats where i want us to be id like us to have a group of people with varied experience in different nuclear fields to face the public in the wake of a nuclear event and you know they cant all look like me the younger generation of scientists – they are scientists of all ethnicities all beliefs its people with tattoos and people who identify as lgbtq thats the future thats who we want to resonate with its been an historical challenge within the nuclear industry to represent what america looks like and its one that im hoping to overcome yuksel: how can we as texas a&m students in the nuclear engineering department leverage our resources to support the ans objective piercy: you guys are already doing a lot you have a very motivated student body and everyone is extremely active in supporting the university the program and the surrounding community in the short-term i would benefit from your feedback what are we doing right or wrong how can we improve and provide you with better materials and support for community outreach things like that but really keep doing what youre doing yuksel: absolutely thats great to hear thank you again for meeting with us today we hope youve enjoyed seeing texas a&m piercy: yes its been a pleasure
1001,who are you going to be during the covid pandemic how has covid-19 impacted the health care industry are these impacts permanent these questions and more were addressed by five members of the texas a&m university department of biomedical engineerings external advisory board as they teamed up to host a virtual panel titled covid-19 and the medical device industry outlook: what you need to know in late april conducted through zoom the panel discussed how covid-19 has impacted their jobs as well as answered pre-submitted questions from students covid-19 has forever changed the us and the world landscape said panel moderator jack richards patent attorney at trop pruner and hu no industry has been left untouched in particular the health care industry has been profoundly impacted even with new remote workspaces many of the panelists said that its business as usual for their companies firings have not happened due to covid-19 although they have heard of people being furloughed at other companies much of the industry does have a hiring freeze but most seem to be honoring (or delaying start dates) jobs already offered i think it's going to pick up really rapidly because we do have testing now said jill almaguer senior project manager in the information systems division at memorial hermann healthcare system in houston we have in-house testing for covid-19 and all of our patients will get screened coming in so if you're involved in any kind point-of-care testing devices then you're going to be very busy professional growth during covid-19 panelists offered advice on how students can continue to grow their knowledge and skills while social distancing and/or sheltering in place jeff summers senior vice president of quest medical recommended that students interested in the biomedical industry should educate themselves in three different areas: innovation technology and leadership richards suggested taking this time to learn new skills such as working with arduino boards an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software thats inexpensive and learning the programming is essentially free almaguer followed with suggestions for students to experiment with making phone apps for medical devices browsing online was also encouraged whether its learning about different types of jobs biomedical engineers can pursue or watching ted talks that may lead to future reading material with many industries now working remotely face-­to-face interactions have been severely reduced panelists were asked how students should reach out to develop or maintain network contacts all panelists encouraged students to reach out either through email online or through resources like the biomedical engineering society linkedin or job posting boards for those who have had job or internship opportunities revoked almaguer encouraged students to stay in touch with that company the changing biomedical landscape summers and kevin boyle senior vice president of research and development in becton dickinson interventional said their workers are on rotating schedules of being in the office with checks being done to ensure people stay healthy and socially distant in the office and labs it was very disruptive in the beginning just trying to figure out how do we adapt boyle said now that we've adapted i'd say that we're back at 100% productivity working this way but then we're not 100% effective because we're not able to do everything that we need to be able to do in terms of going out to customers jacqueline havelka co-founder of inform ai a startup based in the texas medical center said venture capital funding cycles have become more uncertain but new government and private funding has also become available for covid-19 related projects when you have a startup you're trying to extend your runway however you can havelka said covid has provided us a lot of great potential opportunities because there is billions of dollars of covid money that has come onboard from outlets like nsf nih etc we're looking at actually modifying our current product line to meet some of those challenges as many startups have done while many changes are likely temporary panelists said they can already see how some of adaptations may turn into permanent changes some adaptions they discussed were how job training and how the delivery of medicine will happen as more industries and clinics adopt tools such as telehealth summers said he expects to see macro-economic changes as well in the 30 years after the us came out of world war ii there was an enormous amount of innovation and macro-economic changes in the us and the world summers said i think we're going to have something very similar to that because people have been forced to do things very very differently and conform to a brand new way of living with a lot of unknowns whether graduating in may or starting a new year in biomedical engineering at texas a&m panelists encouraged students to continue learning and growing havelka said the advisory board will continue to work toward making sure biomedical engineering students have job opportunities internship opportunities etc she encouraged students to stay the course and added that career paths for many take twists they did not expect but looking back those turns can make for a more enriching experience richards ended the panel encouraging students to continue to network when and where they can the medium used to network may change over the years but the need to network never changes he said so get the contact information use it and best of luck to you all
1002,the world may be connected by oceans but its people are connected by the airline industry with his eyes on the sky rushi patel then a sophomore in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university signed up to compete with fellow engineering students from across the nation in the boeing innovation challenge their ultimate goal: to design solutions to real-world problems faced by the commercial airline industry through ingenuity and creativity introduced to ocean engineering by department head dr sharath girimaji and interested in pursuing a position within the naval architecture field for patel both the sky and the sea have always held a certain intrigue i really enjoy working with the architectural part of mechanics sort of like a civil engineer said patel so a previous interest in aerospace led me to see an opportunity to possibly work with structures in the boeing innovation challenge plus im pretty good at solidworks (a computer program) and that was heavily needed so it was a good way to implement my skill in the first round of the challenge patel worked with fellow texas a&m student and mechanical engineering sophomore rami ayari
1003,however advancing to the final round of the competition brought with it another challenge: getting reassigned to a new team comprised of students from other universities that had never met before grouped based on their interest in ideas submitted from the first round the student teams put their minds together in a hackathon-style event in mukiteo washington it was a really great experience said patel we worked with two other students from case western university and they had a lot to offer in their own right we were able to work together as a team extremely well for instance while i took care of all the 3d modeling they created models by coding in python so we combined our strengths to maximize our team's potential patel and his teammates focused their efforts on designing a delivery track for commercial flight food carts that hang from the ceiling rather than having to be pushed by airline stewards throughout the entire event the team interacted with boeing experts including a mechanical engineer in their innovation center at the end of the event they presented their ideas to a panel of boeing judges i think the main lesson that i have learned is to keep it simple said patel there were some areas in our idea where we went too in-depth and that kind of ruined our presentation when it came to clarity and conciseness in addition to gaining vital industry interdisciplinary and communication experience through the competition patel also was able to network with industry leaders and get an inside look into the company through a tour of boeings innovation center and labs returning to his studies of the sea with an aerospace competition under his belt the advice patel would offer his fellow students resonated for both national competitions like the boeing innovation challenge as well as local events like aggies invent always make sure to interact with the experts that way you can grow your connections and give yourself a better chance of landing an internship said patel also dont be afraid to think outside the box judges like ideas that are creative
1004,one senior design team in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university had to crawl before they could walk while designing an orthotic to help children move easier working with texas childrens hospital the team designed an orthotic device that will help children with foot-ankle malalignments some patients as young as six months old the younger children are treated for these malalignments the less risk of damage later on in life current orthotics are either generalized pieces designed for adults or customized devices that take lots of time and money to make because it involves shipping a mold of the foot to a company the team had to develop a plan and prototype that landed at the perfect intersection of timely and customizable another aspect of their project is a business plan that explains costs associated risks and anticipated profit margins its been a lot of trial and error a lot of different testing said emily burrows our sponsor is very ambitious i think that pushes us and challenges us more and gives us that drive to be successful theyve been helpful and clear on what they want the team said they had a fun time watching how their project progressed over the last two semesters as they had to take knowledge from the classroom and try to apply it to processes they had little experience in: 3d scanning software manipulation and 3d printing on a medical-grade scale on top of that the covid-19 pandemic caused the students to find novel ways to complete their project
1005,"the roughest first draft of their design involved a gopro a stick and a shoebox although it was an intimidating challenge it meant that every moment of progress and success was a milestone to celebrate along the way from finding out that they could use an xbox kinect as a scanner to applying for a $50 000 grant with this project the scope is big and theres so many things but weve worked from bookends in a testament to our work ethic isabelle agurcia said theres multiple times that weve used our resources beyond what probably normal teams do youre not being asked to reinvent the wheel; youre just being asked to add something new to the wheel i think thats something that weve really taken into this capstone understanding that and thats what weve found with our collaborations"""
1006,the process of outfitting a patient with an orthotic would involve a patient coming in the clinic and their foot and ankle being scanned on a stand once the scan is complete software will allow clinicians to virtually place an orthotic design over it to make sure it is customized then the orthotic can be 3d printed overall the process is expected to take just a few hours the team visited the orthopedic surgeons office in houston to learn more about the setting the office sees about 25 patients a day ryan shepherd said that day helped provide context for the impact of their project they were showing us all the different types of orthotics that they had and there was a little boy probably about three years old they brought him over and showed us his little orthotic and it was really impactful to see how important that was for his life and important our senior design project was shepherd said it put a face to what you were working on looking back over the last two semesters the team members said the project has always been about making a change not the grade in the class javier eraña said he had not experienced a group project quite like the senior design throughout college this is something where i really learned to rely on other people and know i can count on them erana said we build on one another; we help each other in everything anywhere you work in the future youre going to be working in a group essentially and this is the first real team where i feel like ive learned a lot in that aspect there are so many things you can go into so this project has allowed us to specialize a little bit more corbin petersheim said this is the standard by which ill judge future teams going forward
1007,lynn and bill crane have established the lynn 84 and bill crane 83 department head chair in computer science and engineering at texas a&m university the cranes leveraged the matching opportunity from the texas a&m presidents office in order to revise their original contribution made in 2015 to create the department head chair their gift will be used to support the department heads priorities in teaching research professional development and other departmental activities both lynn and bill graduated from texas a&m with computer science degrees bill received the distinguished former student award from the computer science department in 2014 and also serves on both the college and department advisory councils this experience has given him an up-close look at whats happening within the department i continue to be encouraged by what i see in the department and in the college even still im trying to contribute to build an even better computer science department whats been most exciting for me to see in the past few years has been dr (m katherine) banks inclusion of computer programming in the general engineering curriculum that all engineers complete computer science is fundamental for modern engineering its like math its a core skill there isnt a modern engineering discipline that doesnt have a heavy use of computers bill said a departments chair position is a prestigious honor and attracts the worlds best and brightest professionals to that department it signifies to the world that the department is flourishing and benefits not only the department head but faculty and students as well establishing this chair for the department of computer science and engineering will allow the department head more options to direct funding to department needs bill said the first recipient of the lynn 84 and bill crane 83 department head chair in computer science and engineering is dr scott schaefer schaefer was named head of the department in 2019 he received a bachelor's degree in computer science/mathematics from trinity university in 2000 and his masters and doctoral degree in computer science from rice university in 2003 and 2006 respectively his research interests include graphics geometry processing curve and surface representations and barycentric coordinates schaefer received the günter enderle award in 2011 and a national science foundation career award in 2012 his research has been used by various companies including pixar nvidia microsoft and adobe im happy to see dr schaefer as the first recipient of our chair im really impressed with him bill said dr schaefers vision for the future of the department has made me excited to see whats to come ive seen personally that hes a bright and capable leader hes also very passionate about texas a&m and thats important to me
1008,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
1009,who dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and assistant director of energy digitization of the texas a&m energy institute what xie and his team are collaborating on a project to release a first-of-its-kind cross-domain open-access data hub to track the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on electricity markets in the us the coronavirus disease-electricity market data aggregation (covid-emda) integrates cross domains of data including electricity sector public health covid-19 case data weather data cellular phone location data and satellite imaging data into a compact format and is updated daily to capture the evolving dynamics why it's important due to social distancing protocols and many americans working from home there has been a significant change in electricity consumption this tool allows the team to analyze the scope of this change and better assess how to move forward there is still uncertainty on how the gradual reopening of states will impact the electricity sector the goal of this research is to provide a timely open-access data resource accompanied by rigorous analysis to aid the power community in making scientifically informed decisions in this situation this data hub provides a unique opportunity for a data-driven scientific approach to tracking and measuring the short-run impacts of covid-19 on the power sector and it also supports other interdisciplinary research xie said the team the development of this data hub comprises of a team of graduate students and postdocs at texas a&m
1010,find detailed information on the covid-emda github
1011,rocc 83 and mark semmelbeck 83 have established the stephen holditch 69 endowed scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering at texas a&m university when deciding where to attend college mark visited several schools my dad graduated with degrees in engineering and geology from the university of tulsa and recommended i think about a school with a strong science and engineering curriculum he said one of the primary selling points for a&m was that my high school sweetheart had already moved to college station the semmelbecks established this scholarship in honor of marks late professor and friend dr steve holditch i had dr holditch for a class as a junior and really enjoyed the class and him mark said when i decided to stay for graduate school dr holditch offered me a research grant and helped me come up with a research topic
1012,i received my masters and phd degrees studying under dr holditch and i worked for 13 years for his consulting firm sa holditch and associates mark said steve and his wife ann were always opening their home to roc'c and i during our student and employee seasons of life mark said he still has close friends from his time working for dr holditch and that he owes much of his success to the time spent working for him he was a friend and mentor throughout my career and i worked to emulate his leadership style in the companies i started and ran later in my career additionally the semmelbecks wanted to support the petroleum engineering department at texas a&m texas a&m's petroleum engineering department has always been at or near the top in rankings worldwide mark said i believe the reason for this is because the school works hard to train engineers both in the basics of how the business should work and also teaches them how to identify ways in which it could work better the semmelbecks hope their gift will have a profound impact on its recipients i hope that students who benefit from this gift will find a profession they can truly be proud of and that they can make significant contributions to mark said
1013,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact reagan chessher senior director of development
1014,the est inc brad l martin '88 scholarship has been established to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university the inspiration behind this gift is to honor brad martin ests director of operations in texas in addition they aim to assist outstanding civil engineering students at texas a&m with their education expenses and obtain their civil engineering degrees
1015,in 2016 est incs president mike vahabzadegan hired texas a&m civil engineering graduate brad martin mike decided to expand his full-service engineering company operations to texas he hired brad to be est's director of texas operations brad had recently retired from txdot after a 28-year career texas regional director kelly selman said brad was the first employee in texas and est inc wanted to honor him and the other aggies on staff through this scholarship mike is impressed with the quality of work from the nine aggie engineers currently working at est and would like to be a part of developing more selman said
1016,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1017,rocc 83 and mark semmelbeck ‘83 have established the rocc 83 and mark semmelbeck 83 excellence endowment this endowment will be used to support the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m university mark and rocc said the purpose of their endowment is to advance the work of the college of engineerings development of a world-class entrepreneurship program for aggie engineers many of my aggie engineering friends started their own businesses to provide skills and products developed with aggie spirit knowledge and wisdom mark said i believe the combination of an engineering degree from texas a&m and the desire to start and grow a business is one of the most rewarding professional paths a person can embark on mark said his mentor and advisor in petroleum engineering dr steve holditch was also an entrepreneur his world-class engineering company sa holditch & associates is where i started my engineering career he said steve's motto of ‘i always reserve the right to get smarter is exactly the attitude that results in aggie engineers being leaders in their disciplines and companies all over the world mark and rocc hope that participants in the engineering entrepreneurship program will gain skills to make better products and better companies our engineering school is one of the best in the world it will also be a school that changes the world for the better mark said a part of that will come from graduates who participate in these programs
1018,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education
1019,in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university sugar and mike barnes have established a major endowment to support the general operations of the department in recognition of their generous donations that exceed $10 million the department has been named the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering an event commemorating the naming will take place in september
1020,"with this wonderful gift mike and sugar have placed themselves among texas a&ms leading visionary philanthropists theres something very special about a naming gift by willingly lending their names to this important endowment they have demonstrated the importance of a former student giving back to students of the future said michael k young president of texas a&m were all very grateful that their extraordinary generosity will continue to elevate an already excellent department barnes was named a distinguished alumnus by texas a&m and the association of former students in 2016 for excellence in his profession and meaningful contributions to texas a&m and the community this honor has only been bestowed upon 303 aggie graduates since 1962 barnes received his bachelors and masters degrees in industrial engineering and his doctoral degree in operations research all from texas a&m he was the second doctoral graduate from the department of industrial and systems engineering in 1968 the departments doctoral program began in the mid 1960s under dr aw wortham who served as barnes doctoral advisor while a student at texas a&m barnes served as president of alpha pi mu and has been a member of tau beta pi since 1964 early in his career barnes represented texas a&m as an expert consultant to the assistant postmaster general in washington dc and was an instructor of maintainability engineering at red river army depot he began his corporate career at rockwell international where he worked for 33 years becoming senior vice president and chief financial officer during his tenure at rockwell he was awarded the leonardo da vinci annual award given to an outstanding engineer working at rockwell after his retirement in 2001 barnes began serving on the board of four new york stock exchange-listed companies barnes has been recognized as an outstanding alumni by the college of engineering and the department of industrial and systems engineering in 2009 the texas council of industrial engineering department heads awarded barnes its inaugural lifetime achievement award mike and sugar barnes care deeply about texas a&m and ensuring a top-quality engineering education for generations of students to come said dr m katherine banks college of engineering vice chancellor and dean we deeply appreciate their generous support and are proud to have barnes name affiliated with our industrial and systems engineering program the barnes family previously endowed a department head chair and professorship in the department and have funded professorships and labs at texas a&m through the rockwell foundation they have also hosted fundraising events at their homes in southern california and texas to support texas a&m and texas a&m athletics ""sugar and i have been fortunate in our business careers and are honored to be recognized as supporters of texas a&m and its world-class engineering college said barnes we have benefitted from mentors and the quality education and moral compass acquired at texas a&m we are proud to join the many other benefactors who have and will continue to give back to this wonderful institution"" his family includes his wife sugar son wm bradley 90 and two grandsons wm alexander and wm luke note: due to texas a&m's covid-19 guidelines the event commemorating the naming of the department will be moved to spring 2021"
1021,john deere is well known for tractors machinery and a particular shade of green which can be seen mowing lawns and plowing fields across the world behind the scenes john deere also cultivates the minds of many students through internships including those for industrial engineering students zach reece who graduated in may interned with john deere last summer and learned how manufacturing and engineering connect reece had a previous internship in construction project management but had not worked in manufacturing before since his internship with john deere he has accepted a role in manufacturing as an industrial engineer associate at lockheed martin where he will put his his industrial engineering education to work
1022,while he was not always an industrial engineering student reece is glad he transferred to industrial engineering i came across isen by accident after i learned more about business and entrepreneurship i made the switch to the department and loved it ever since reece said joining isen is the best decision i made in my collegiate career i loved both my classes and my professors and i couldn't imagine what my life would be like if i wasn't in isen we spoke with reece about his experience as an intern with john deere and how his industrial engineering education has prepared him for the future
1023,q: what was it like working for john deere a: john deere provided me with the internship of a lifetime i lived in waterloo iowa with 120 other interns and met some truly exceptional people two of my roommates worked in the same facility with me and we all got great exposure to heavy equipment assembly like tractors and other machinery now i wont say i can build a tractor by myself after my time at john deere but i am confident enough to try to if i have some help
1024,q: what were you doing on the job during your internship a: i worked in the operations department which includes the first-line supervisors of the assemblers for the 8r tractors assemblers are the individuals that put the tractors together my first week there was spent walking the production line and building a mind map of the assembly process you arent expected as an intern to come for three months and command a group of workers so instead i provided support by automating data analysis i struggled with excel macros for weeks but everything finally clicked within my last days of the internship my favorite parts of the job were getting to know the operators there were 50-75 operators within my department and being able to see the different aspects of manufacturing
1025,q: what did you learn from your internship a: since i worked so closely with the production line i learned the relationship between the operators and the supervisors in a union factory last summer john deere experienced a lot of disruption due to changes in trade regulations and product development it was amazing to learn how to react in a constantly changing environment and it prepared me for whatever happens in my next role
1026,q: you recently graduated congrats! what will you be doing as new graduate a: i really enjoy manufacturing dr elwany and researchers in his lab have helped me deepen my passion for additive manufacturing and 3d printing i have accepted a position with lockheed martin that exposes me to a holistic manufacturing experience and i can foresee specializing designs for additive manufacturing most importantly i have thoroughly enjoyed my time in industrial engineering the greatest decision i have made in my collegiate career was switching into industrial engineering none of this would have been possible if i hadnt made that choice while its unfortunate that commencement is postponed i appreciate the time i have to thank those that have helped me make it this far including many of my professors
1027,researchers in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university are working on an entirely new way to detect blood clots especially in pediatric patients unlike what a biology textbook may show blood vessels are not straight cylinders they are tortuous meaning they have complex curves spirals and bends when the blood reaches these curves it makes changes to its fluid mechanics and interactions with the vessel wall in a healthy person these changes are in harmony with the tortuous microenvironment but when diseased these environments could lead to very complex flow conditions that activate proteins and cells that eventually lead to blood clots dr abhishek jain assistant professor said a big challenge in medicine is the medical devices used to detect clots and assess anti-blood clotting drug effects are entirely chemistry-based they do not incorporate the flow through the naturally turning and twisting blood vessels which are physical regulators of blood clotting jain said therefore the readouts from these current static systems are not highly predictive and often result in false positives or false negatives to approach the problem from a new angle researchers in jains lab at texas a&m designed a microdevice that mimics tortuous blood vessels and created a diseased microenvironment in which blood may rapidly clot under flow they showed this biomimetic blood clotting device could be used to design and monitor drugs that are given to patients who suffer from clotting disorders jain said he can see several applications for the device including critical care units and military trauma care units it can be used in detection of clotting disorders and used in precision medicine where you would want to monitor pro-thrombotic or anti-thrombotic therapies and optimize the therapeutic approach jain said
1028,after developing the device the team took it into the field for a pilot study working with dr jun teruya chief of transfusion medicine at texas childrens hospital and baylor college of medicine the team coordinated with clinicians to test the device with pediatric patients in critical care whose heart and lungs were not working properly these patients were in need of an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ecmo) machine which provides cardiac and respiratory support in exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide a common complication in ecmo is blood clotting so patients are administered anticoagulants to prevent clotting however ecmo machines are also known to eat clotting proteins and platelets which puts anticoagulated patients in further risk of bleeding anticoagulated pediatric patients on ecmo are especially prone to bleeding current chemically based blood clotting tests are expensive time-consuming can be unreliable and require a skilled technician jains teams tortuosity based microfluidic system doesnt require expensive chemicals is quick with results within 10-15 minutes uses low blood sample volume and is easy to operate the margin for error is essentially zero for these patients jain said therefore its imperative that all the tests not just clotting tests must work and provide clinicians with quick and reliable information about their patient so they can provide the best care possible by having the opportunity to test their system with real patients jain said his team was able to demonstrate that their design could detect bleeding in anticoagulated patients with low platelet counts which can help guide doctors to make better evidence-based clinical decisions for their patients the study was recently published in natures scientific reports journal for jain and his team the next stage is continued clinical studies to compare their approach to standard methods and hopefully demonstrate key performance advantages this project was funded by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering of the national institutes of health the texas a&m engineering experiment station and baylor college of medicine
1029,today the texas a&m university system announced the name of its landmark five-acre campus in houston texas at the prominent intersection of holcombe blvd and main st near the texas medical center setting a new standard for collaboration in engineering medicine research and education is the first all-new mixed-use campus for the texas a&m system in houston: texas a&m innovation plaza the texas a&m system initiated the new campus by acquiring and renovating an 18-story office building at 1020 holcombe to be the home for enmed a unique two-degree program that provides students the chance to earn a masters degree in engineering from texas a&m university and a medical degree from the texas a&m college of medicine the enmed building will open later this year complementing the academic research discovery and innovation missions of the enmed program texas a&m innovation plaza will provide a welcoming secure and vibrant experience to the campus population and visitors alike with generous green spaces and lifestyle amenities not commonly found in the texas medical center area with the groundbreaking scheduled in late 2020 the a&m systems public-private partnership (p3) developer is bringing an additional investment of $401 million to fulfill unmet needs with two complementary towers totaling an additional 19 million square feet enmed is just the first example of innovation that the texas a&m system intends to bring to the texas a&m innovation plaza said chancellor john sharp we are excited to have such a visible location in the texas medical center scheduled to be delivered in june 2022 is a 19-story 714-bed student housing tower that will overlook a scenic plaza flanked by a large garage with retail and dining as well as convenient affordable parking for 2 800 vehicles texas a&m medical students and prairie view a&m university nursing students will be given priority for housing but students from other institutions could fill open slots if available scheduled to be delivered in january 2024 is a 17-story 515 000-square-foot integrated medical building that will be built atop the 13-story parking structure with generous efficient floorplates and robust building technologies this integrated medical building will be ideally suited for medical clinical biomedical tech and office use accessible via main st holcombe blvd and fannin st texas a&m innovation plaza is also adjacent to the metro texas medical center station providing convenient connectivity via bus and light rail service to the texas medical center museum district and downtown houston the developer for the p3 projects is medistar corporation american triple i partners founded by texas a&m alum henry cisneros is part of the financing team about the texas a&m university systemthe texas a&m university system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $63 billion the system is a statewide network of 11 universities; a comprehensive health science center; eight state agencies including the texas division of emergency management; and the rellis campus the texas a&m system educates more than 151 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year system-wide research and development expenditures exceeded $1 billion in fy 2019 and helped drive the states economy
1030,while the covid-19 pandemic continues there is a need to look ahead for innovative new ways to make public buildings safer for both visitors and employees dr zheng oneill of the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and a team of texas a&m university researchers are seeking to develop a smart ventilation control system with grant support from the national science foundation (nsf) oneill who serves as associate professor and j mike walker '66 faculty fellow ii in the department is partnering on the project with dr qingsheng wang associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering as well as her postdoctoral research associate dr yangyang fu and her doctoral student xing lu the goal of the project is to investigate the viability of a smart ventilation control system that could operate with a normal mode and an emergency pandemic mode as needed for common public buildings such as offices classrooms and retail stores during the outbreak period of the pandemic to maintain essential activities some public buildings such as retail stores and essential government facilities have to remain operational critical employees are required to work inside these public buildings oneill said with proper measures the built environment could help minimize the potential for covid-19 infection including smart and enhanced heating ventilation and air-conditioning (hvac) design and operations higher humidity levels surface cleaning and hygiene specification spatial configuration etc she said the social-economic impact generated by covid-19 has the potential to be mitigated by the implementation of the proposed smart ventilation control system increasing the resilience of hvac systems and possibly reducing the infection risk even during times of global pandemic these buildings are designed and operated in normal conditions by default oneill said the fundamental question is with the current hvac equipment and systems in existing public buildings can we do something with a transformative and smart ventilation control by diluting the air in a space with cleaner air from outdoors to reduce the infection risk of an individual occupant
1031,scientists in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university are leading research in developing new biomaterials to advance the field of 3d bioprinting functional tissues dr akhilesh k gaharwar associate professor has developed a highly printable bioink as a platform to generate anatomical-scale functional tissues this study was recently published in the american chemical societys applied materials and interfaces bioprinting is an emerging additive manufacturing approach that takes biomaterials such as hydrogels and combines them with cells and growth factors which are then printed to create tissue-like structures that imitate natural tissues one application of this technology could be designing patient-specific bone grafts an area that is gaining interest from researchers and clinicians managing bone defects and injuries through traditional treatments tends to be slow and expensive gaharwar said that developing replacement bone tissues could create exciting new treatments for patients suffering from arthritis bone fractures dental infections and craniofacial defects bioprinting requires cell-laden biomaterials that can flow through a nozzle like a liquid but solidify almost as soon as they're deposited these bioinks need to act as both cell carriers and structural components requiring them to be highly printable while providing a robust and cell‐friendly microenvironment however current bioinks lack sufficient biocompatibility printability structural stability and tissue‐specific functions needed to translate this technology to preclinical and clinical applications to address this issue gaharwars research group is leading efforts in developing advanced bioinks known as nanoengineered ionic–covalent entanglement (nice) bioinks nice bioinks are a combination of two reinforcement techniques (nonreinforcement and ionic-covalent network) which together provide more effective reinforcement that results in much stronger structures
1032,once bioprinting is complete the cell-laden nice networks are crosslinked to form stronger scaffolds this technique has allowed the lab to produce full-scale cell-friendly reconstructions of human body parts including ears blood vessels cartilage and even bone segments soon after the bioprinting the enclosed cells start depositing new proteins rich in a cartilage-like extracellular matrix that subsequently calcifies to form a mineralized bone over a three-month period almost 5 percent of these printed scaffolds consisted of calcium which is similar to cancellous bone the network of spongy tissue typically found in vertebral bones to understand how these bioprinted structures induce stem cell differentiation a next-generation genomics technique called whole transcriptome sequencing (rna-seq) was utilized rna-seq takes a snapshot of all genetic communication inside the cell at given moment the team worked with dr irtisha singh assistant professor at the texas a&m health science center who served as a co-investigator the next milestone in 3d bioprinting is the maturation of bioprinted constructs toward the generation of functional tissues gaharwar said our study demonstrates that nice bioink developed in our lab can be used to engineer 3d-functional bone tissues in the future gaharwars team plans to demonstrate in vivo functionality of the 3d-bioprinted bone tissue gaharwars research is funded by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering of the national institutes of healths directors new innovator award a national science foundations award and an x-grant from texas a&m university
1033,jeanne m and robert p stelzer 74 have established the jeanne m and robert p stelzer 74 endowed scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university robert earned his degree in electrical engineering in 1974 robert worked for the international business machines corporation where he was an advisory programmer before retiring in 2001 robert and jeanne have two children together they are a part of the heritage a&m legacy society that honors individuals and families who have made planned gifts to benefit texas a&m
1034,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
1035,beth and brian l schultz 90 have established the beth and brian schultz 90 endowed scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at texas a&m university brian earned his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from texas a&m in 1991 he currently works for wild rose foods in the portland oregon area as the vice president of operations and has been in that position for two years during his time at texas a&m brian was involved with the american society of mechanical engineers and was also a fish camp counselor
1036,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact reagan chessher senior director of development
1037,education is like a game of connect the dots instructors are tasked with connecting the dots between education and application and classes and career explaining why certain information is taught and how those lessons can be applied in a future career is the key to helping many students find meaning in their academic careers
1038,"sharing her passion for education with students dr amanda wood an instructional associate professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston is transforming education with a holistic approach and inviting everyone to consider an ocean engineering degree she is determined to prove that anyone with creativity and drive can become an ocean engineer albert einstein had a famous quote where he said ‘it's not that i'm so smart it's just that i stay with problems longer said wood i think thats the point its going to take work but you can do it and i think that a lot of times students need to hear that they need to have that someone – either a parent a friend or mentor – encouraging them and saying ‘you can do it i have confidence in you so how does one draw lines between the dots in academia by showing how they connect when i was a student the professors could be very dry and monotone said wood i was unable to see the fundamental relationship between each of my courses i want to encourage and share my knowledge with students and say ‘this is why you should love engineering"""
1039,to accomplish this wood approaches education like research – trying new teaching strategies and integrating technology tools into her material to keep students both engaged and excited she takes the time in each of her classes to explain to students that like athletes engineers have to train their brains through practice and problem solving to prepare to perform at the highest levels and succeed throughout class she reiterates that growth comes from overcoming challenges and makes it a point to relate the lessons to the students future careers – explaining why they are learning what they are and helping them see the bigger picture created when all the dots are connected
1040,this is why youre learning vectors wood tells her students in class youre learning this because its needed this is what youre going to use it for not only in this class but in later classes this is how it applies to the real world i think that helps them to see it in a global context or rather in a holistic way her mentorship does not stop at lectures wood strives to relay information to students in ways that are both friendly and understanding embracing digital media as a means of supplementing the content she creates videos and textual modules for her students giving them the ability to listen fully in class and have resources that are effective for all learning types and levels as such her holistic method of teaching welcomes both students who have always dreamed of being engineers and those new to the degree again i did not understand or see the relationship between lessons until i started to go to work and when i went back to get my masters degree said wood i had to connect the dots myself and that can be the problem for students some of them may just throw up their hands and walk off and say ‘i can't do this but know that you can do it yes for some it takes more work than others but how much work you are willing to put into it is what you're going to get out of it just like an athlete so pen in hand and dots ready wood implores students to figure out how to learn while they are in college and to determine how best to teach themselves now so that they can pick up training once their careers begin learning does not stop when you get your degree said wood it continues especially if you want to grow and improve and have professional development
1041,miniature devices notably those that bulge out from 2d surfaces like pop-up greeting cards have seamlessly found their way into pressure-sensing and energy-harvesting technologies because of their ability to be frequently stretched compressed or twisted despite their force-bearing abilities it is still unclear if repeated physical stress can damage the working of these miniature devices particularly if there is already a defect in their construction using tiny pressure-sensing structures shaped like tables texas a&m university researchers have found that repeated pushes on the tables flat surface do not cause the structures to fall apart even when the compressive forces are extreme instead these tiny devices including those with slight defects were resilient continuing to remain functional by bending their legs in proportion to the applied force the researchers said their findings published in the february issue of the journal extreme mechanics letters have direct implications on the longevity of technologies that incorporate miniature devices like soft wearable electronics stretchable solar cells and pressure-sensing socks miniature devices like pressure sensors need to faithfully convey the strength and a change in compressions for many applications sensors need to be very small to capture changes in pressure at a high enough resolution thus miniature devices based on the japanese paper-cutting and folding technique of kirigami offer an excellent solution borrowing the principles of kirigami a design of the miniature device is first etched on a 2d surface then an inward push from the design boundary makes the structure pop up other times the 2d print is stretched or twisted to reveal a more intricate 3d design regardless of the final use kirigami-based devices must face continuous distortions to their shape a phenomenon engineers refer to as deformation part of the appeal of using kirigami structures is that they can be repeatedly deformed for extended periods of time said dr andreas a polycarpou professor and department head in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering but any kind of imperfection in these structures might impact their final performance that is their ability to be continuously deformed to investigate how defects might influence the function of kirigami devices polycarpous team led by kian bashandeh graduate student in the college of engineering and a primary author of the study designed a set of experiments using tiny pressure sensors consisting of a flat surface supported by four legs these structures buckle if pressure is applied from above
1042,for their study the researchers repeatedly pressed down on the table-like structures using a diamond flat punch probe their sample included structures with slight defects such as a small crack on one of the four legs or one slightly thinner leg to test the performance of these structures over time they recorded how these structures behaved under repeated compressions using an electron microscope and measured the distance by which the legs bent polycarpous team found that for both defect-free and defective kirigami structures the compression caused the structures to stiffen or resist the downward force over time however even when compressive forces were extreme the structures reached a steady-state and were able to recover from the repeated blows from the diamond punch the researchers said the results of their cyclic compression experiments suggest that systems with an assembly of kirigami devices can remain functional for a long period of time even if some of the devices within them have defects for most applications including pressure sensing its not one but multiple miniature devices working in tandem intuitively one would think that small defects in any one of the kirigami structures would be catastrophic for a system made with many of such structures said polycarpou we now have evidence to show that they do not so if one is using smart socks to measure how pressure is distributed during gait our results suggest that the miniature pressure sensors will still work remarkably well even if they are slightly defective other contributors to this research are dr mohammad humood from the texas a&m mechanical engineering department; dr jungkyu lee from bruker nano surfaces minnesota; dr mengdi han dr yonggang huang and dr john a rogers from northwestern university illinois; yulin cui and dr yan shi from nanjing university of aeronautics and astronautics china funding for this study was provided by the hagler institute for advanced study at texas a&m where rogers and huang are hagler faculty fellows
1043,the covid-19 pandemic has forced people to adjust their everyday lives including college students as texas a&m university adapted to an online learning environment this spring one aggie tradition for seniors was altered as well – graduation with no safe way to hold in-person ceremonies for thousands of graduating seniors the university made the decision to postpone the spring commencement however that didnt mean texas a&m wouldnt celebrate this landmark achievement of its students the university challenged the colleges to find creative ways to celebrate their spring graduates in a virtual setting until a traditional commencement could safely take place the college of engineering devised a plan to honor aggie engineers in virtual graduation recognition celebrations customized for each of the colleges 15 departments as an acknowledgment of the students years of study and status as degree candidates each of the colleges departments compiled a presentation for their individual celebrations using youtube premieres the recognition included video messages from the chancellor university president provost the student body president department heads and porter garner from the association of former students who welcomed graduates to the aggie network they also featured recognition of each graduate by degree designation personal notes of encouragement from faculty and advisors and photo scrapbooks made from student contributions documenting their experiences at texas a&m the presentations went live on friday and saturday may 8-9 with each department assigned its own time for viewing each of the college of engineerings 2 359 graduates was recognized and the live feeds were viewed more than 3 000 times over the weekend we hope our engineering students and their families and friends enjoyed seeing them individually acknowledged in our virtual recognition ceremony said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering despite the pandemic prohibiting the university from holding traditional commencement exercises at this time we felt it important to publicly acknowledge our students commitment to their studies as they completed their final semester as aggie engineering students all graduates will be welcome to return to texas a&m to walk in a future commencement exercise when the university is able to return to this important tradition
1044,having an iv put in your arm is not a pleasant experience if it moves for some reason the fluid will leak into the tissue instead of the vein through extravasation which can be painful now imagine being an infant and not knowing how to express that pain in an effective way except for how babies do best crying a senior capstone design team in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university developed a detection system to reduce the tears shed and help the workload on nurses checking on these hospitalized infants the team worked with texas childrens hospital to design and prototype an extravasation detection system that senses changes in temperature swelling and leakage at the insertion site and alerts the attending nurses if it is able to efficiently monitor that iv site the nurses wouldnt have to constantly worry about it said daniel wang i feel like they are still going to check during rounds but this device can act as a backup system for them if something were to happen
1045,because the device will mainly be used on babies developing a tool without choking hazards was a challenge as the team was told anything that can fit through a toilet paper tube will cause an issue making sensors that are small enough but also spread out enough to actually diagnose the symptoms was an issue said nolan rizzo the symptoms may not be just at the insertion site they could appear somewhere else we have to design a dressing thats the proper size to not only fit on a really small babys arm but also big enough to have a range of area to diagnose the symptoms unlike previous projects in their coursework capstone projects require students to work together on the same need statement for two semesters during the first semester teams conceptualize and plan their designs while the second semester is mainly for developing a tangible prototype they present at the end of the semester emily zagrzecki said having the opportunity to gain new skills in prototyping was a highlight for her
1046,my favorite thing to do is hands-on projects so just getting to build it has been really exciting zagrzecki said every time something works we get so excited and its cool to see it all get pieced together even after spring break when all texas a&m courses moved to an online/distance format due to covid-19 jim machek senior design instructor said he was impressed with the students ability to adapt and still complete prototypes all seniors in the department take part in the capstone program which allows them to put their classroom skills and knowledge to the test on a real-world project the senior capstone allows students the chance to reflect on how far theyve come since starting in the engineering program for lauren kwiatkowski even finding her way to biomedical engineering was an adventure i was a little lost senior year of high school kwiatkowski said i ended up printing out information on every major and then crossing out the ones i wasn't interested in i thought biomedical engineering was the perfect intersection of biology the human body and engineering and here we are
1047,doctors and nurses across the country are experiencing occupational burnout and fatigue from the increased stress caused by the covid-19 pandemic a team of researchers and medical professionals at texas a&m university and houston methodist hospital are working together to fight two afflictions: covid-19 and the mental strain experienced by medical professionals in an article recently published in the journal anesthesia & analgesia dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering and colleagues at houston methodist hospital outline the effects of fatigue and burnout on intensive care unit (icu) workers and the steps that can be taken to mitigate these symptoms the covid-19 pandemic exacerbated an already existing problem within our health care systems and is exposing the pernicious implications of provider burnout sasangohar said health care workers are experiencing added stress from multiple areas many of them are working longer shifts and experiencing more loss of life the lack of personal protective equipment (ppe) and training on how to use new equipment causes many professionals to question if they have been exposed this leads to fear that they could infect their family and loved ones in addition to those fears there is anxiety surrounding job security to reduce the spread of infection many states have stopped elective procedures and consequently many health care professionals have been laid off or had their hours reduced sasangohar and the research team documented four major areas of stress with the goal of identifying mitigation strategies to reduce burnout among these life-saving workers the four areas identified by the researchers include occupational hazards national versus locally scaled responses process inefficiencies and financial instability the symptoms health care workers need effective ppe readily accessible and available to ensure their safety and that of their patients getting the necessary equipment has been challenging due to the low numbers of ppe and ventilators in the us strategic national stockpile and delays getting equipment into local areas this slow response which has caused some providers to reuse ppe past the point of safety and warranty protections can contribute to anxiety in providers minimizing occupational hazard is the most important criteria to assure that our health care workforce is fully equipped and assured to be safe in order to face the battle against this virus said dr bita kash professor of health policy and management in the texas a&m school of public health and director of the joint center for outcomes research at houston methodist hospital the process to secure assistance from federal authorities has been cumbersome and slow for providers many requests for additional ventilators and ppe are not being met these uncertainties about when assistance will arrive has resulted in widespread anxiety among providers process inefficiencies have also contributed to fatigue and burnout due to misinformation or conflicting information given between different specialties while one subspecialtys professional organization recommends a certain guideline another specialty could recommend something else which leads to confusion
1048,anxiety and worry about future career prospects and the overall economy can also lead to provider burnout elective surgeries have been canceled or delayed causing financial stress on some physicians others not directly affected by financial hardship may be worried about loved ones or their own family and how they will weather a coming economic recession prescription for the future while this is the first world-wide pandemic in many years there will be more working together local researchers health care professionals and government officials can prepare for future pandemics and subsequent waves of the covid-19 pandemic houston methodist hospital has already begun learning from this pandemic and making changes to be more resilient in response to the current crisis and prepared for similar crises in the future in response to the pandemic houston methodist hospital adapted their policies and focused on constant and responsive communication from leadership to their employees proactive and positive responses have allowed the hospital to adapt quickly during the pandemic and reduce employee stress overall this success has led to recommendations for future preparations the researchers recommendations to reduce provider burnout and fatigue: pandemic plans should include guidance for relevant industries to quickly transition into producing needed medical supplies national and regional disaster mitigation plans to help shorten the time needed to provide necessary equipment and testing provision of adequate numbers of test kits and ppe training on disaster management and response for medical professionals relaxing licensing restrictions for individuals licensed outside their state of residence creating a medical reserve corps of these licensed individuals using wearable sensors to monitor health care workers mental health and provide simple ways to mitigate anxiety and stress there is much to learn from the response to covid-19 said sasangohar in our approach we used a multi-disciplinary systems approach to learn not just from failures and shortcomings but also from successful adaptations and improvised interventions at the individual team and system levels to improve our resilience while icu workers in houston have weathered many storms including hurricanes ike and harvey the covid-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to already challenging work the areas identified by the researchers can help make this work safer more effective and reduce burnout in these critical roles
1049,"dr stacey lyle whose career and work focuses on the art of smart design joined the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university as an associate professor of practice lyle holds a dual appointment between the college of engineering and college of geosciencesas a licensed professional and liberal arts social geoscientist he brings the unique perspective of protecting humans and the environment while increasing profits by creatively solving problems while addressing social issuesexperiential and transformational learning is what lyle likes best about teaching giving students real-world problems to teach complex theories and apply new technology allow students to master the knowledge and skills to be future engineers or the next generation of engineering scientist he said todays students are challenged with the applications of infinite information readily available to guide our designs we aren't just preparing students for the workforce but we are delivering students who will bring new innovative ideas to improve human lives on earth""his hope is that students will learn how their designs can be used beyond just permitting and construction""civil engineering designs are now used to create virtual worlds that ensure human safety and reduce the cost to maintenance "" lyle said ""we must build a foundation and inspire tomorrow's engineers to be global leaders""lyle is also currently building solutions for the texas department of transportation and for the offshore safety industry where engineering design plans automatically populate massive databases and create 3d visualization interactive gamification tools these tools help to reduce the publics burden of construction cost and potentially save lives by providing a facility management and safety simulatorhe said fusing computer-aided design geographic information systems and building information modeling helps engineers understand and model the existing environment it also quantifies all-known data to facilitate creative design and visualize the current or proposed world for collaborative thinking and sustainability""the art of 'smart design' in civil engineering is to understand and share our existing environment and create innovative designs while utilizing all available information at the 'touch of a finger' to ensure human safety and reduce our impact on the earth "" he saidlyle has industry experience working in construction and management as a surveying team lead at bp american production company inc and nasa developing a locally-launched payload that returned to earth""i worked with a team of highly motivated and intelligent engineers at nasa to locally launch a rocket carrying my designed mapping payload "" he said ""i feel like i can encourage students to investigate innovative deep learning methods to solve complex problems as a part of a valuable team to ‘get-it-right because you only get one chance to launch that rockets payload"""
1050,allowing users to create objects from simple toys to custom prosthetic parts plastics are a popular 3d printing material but these printed parts are mechanically weak a flaw caused by the imperfect bonding between the individual printed layers that make up the 3d part researchers at texas a&m university in collaboration with scientists in the company essentium inc have now developed the technology needed to overcome 3d printings weak spot by integrating plasma science and carbon nanotube technology into standard 3d printing the researchers welded adjacent printed layers more effectively increasing the overall reliability of the final part finding a way to remedy the inadequate bonding between printed layers has been an ongoing quest in the 3d-printing field said dr micah green associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering we have now developed a sophisticated technology that can bolster welding between these layers all while printing the 3d part there is a full description of their findings in the february issue of the journal nano letters plastics are commonly used for extrusion 3d printing known technically as fused-deposition modeling in this technique molten plastic is squeezed out of a nozzle that prints parts layer by layer as the printed layers cool they fuse to one another to create the final 3d part however studies show that these layers join imperfectly; printed parts are weaker than identical parts made by injection molding where melted plastics simply assume the shape of a preset mold upon cooling to join these interfaces more thoroughly additional heating is required but heating printed parts using something akin to an oven has a major drawback if you put something in an oven it's going to heat everything so a 3d-printed part can warp and melt losing its shape green said what we really needed was some way to heat only the interfaces between printed layers and not the whole part to promote inter-layer bonding the team turned to carbon nanotubes since these carbon particles heat in response to electrical currents the researchers coated the surface of each printed layer with these nanomaterials similar to the heating effect of microwaves on food the team found that these carbon nanotube coatings can be heated using electric currents allowing the printed layers to bond together to apply electricity as the object is being printed the currents must overcome a tiny space of air between the printhead and the 3d part one option to bridge this air gap is to use metal electrodes that directly touch the printed part but green said this contact can introduce inadvertent damage to the part hence the team collaborated with dr david staack associate professor in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering to generate a beam of charged air particles or plasma that could carry an electrical charge to the surface of the printed part this technique allowed electric currents to pass through the printed part heating the nanotubes and welding the layers together with the plasma technology and the carbon nanotube-coated thermoplastic material in place texas a&m and essentium researchers added both these components to conventional 3d printers when the researchers tested the strength of 3d-printed parts using their new technology they found that their strength was comparable to injection-molded parts the holy grail of 3d printing has been to get the strength of the 3d-printed part to match that of a molded part said green in this study we have successfully used localized heating to strengthen 3d-printed parts so that their mechanical properties now rival those of molded parts with our technology users can now print a custom part like an individually tailored prosthetic and this heat-treated part will be much stronger than before the primary author of this research is dr c brandon sweeney a former texas a&m materials science and engineering student in greens laboratory he is the head of research and development and co-founder at essentium other contributors to this research include dr blake r teipel ‘16 and dr bryan s zahner ‘14 from essentium; dr martin j pospisil 19 dr smit a shah 19 and muhammad anas from the texas a&m chemical engineering department; and matthew l burnette from the texas a&m mechanical engineering department this work is supported by funds from the national science foundation
1051,the college of engineering at texas a&m university is home to more than 20 percent first-generation undergraduate students here is a conversation with luis sanchez a sophomore in general engineering at texas a&m about his experience as a first-generation college student q: whats it like to be a first-generation college student a: i feel like my experience as a first-generation student might be a little different than most ive always really done what i have to do ive always had the mentality of ‘okay you know youre going to do this and you know you want to go to college and you know you want to have a good job that can sustain you because i come from a low-income family so its been different i know i want to have that extra step to my parents education so ive always had the mentality of ‘i know i have to do this so i have to push through this regardless of what im going through but sometimes i feel a little discouraged or a little doubtful and i remind myself ‘okay youre doing this and youre a first gen you should be proud it helps me push through – reminding myself that im a first gen and seeing that all my family is looking up to me and telling me ‘you can do this even though they dont understand exactly how it is because they didnt go through registration of classes or the struggle of studying q: what student organizations are you involved in a: i am a mentor for the century scholars program another club that i am in is the energy club for the century scholars program each section is like a class we have a section leader and there are four other mentors i am one of them what we do in the class is just show all the incoming freshmen the resources that texas a&m has and also give them guidance and tips on how to get through different situations during the first year we go out with our mentees at least once a month to get involved with them and build a bond with them and introduce them to the new lifestyle (of being a college student) since most of them are first-generation students q: why are you interested in the department of electrical and computer engineering a: i chose electrical engineering because im really passionate about the environment and sustainability i want to go into the energy industry and renewable energy sources in hopes of expanding solar and the wind turbines to more neighborhoods and cities so that we wont have to rely so much on fossil fuels q: what advice would you give to other first-generation students a: i would tell a first gen that its definitely doable regardless of your parents or everyone else who youve seen that hasnt gone to a university there are resources and people that can help you and because other people have gone through it they can help you through it as well sanchez is a member of the zachry leadership program which is a joint program between the college of engineering and the zachry group that provides students with a broader and deeper level of personal awareness and enhanced leadership skills
1052,although the taxing effect of covid-19 on academic institutions and students has been widespread industry judges were impressed with the virtual presentation of student projects at the annual engineering project showcase at texas a&m university close to $15 000 was awarded at the 2020 engineering project showcase which featured more than 180 teams showcasing the projects of nearly 1 000 engineering students these projects included capstone design projects from engineering departments across the texas a&m college of engineering and multidisciplinary team projects such as those focused on entrepreneurship aggies against covid-19 the aggie_challenge program and student design competitions project themes ranged from water energy health space exploration and others it is amazing to see the innovative solutions our students were able to develop while working remotely due to covid-19 said magda lagoudas executive director for industry and nonprofit partnerships furthermore i cant thank our industry judges enough for dedicating their time to judge the videos and provide great feedback to teams this event would not be possible without industry engagement over 150 industry judges signed in to the project showcase virtual platform to view project videos and supporting documentation the judges comments provided students with real-world feedback on the use of engineering methodologies for the development of the solution consideration of cost and feasibility and overall presentation to a potential sponsor this is the eighth year for the showcase a signature event for the college of engineering the event is made possible by the generous support of industry silver sponsors of the event were baker hughes daikin emerson jacobs and shell bronze sponsors were viasat and national instruments the full list of 2020 winners can be found on the engineering website
1053,quentin a baker arrived on the texas a&m university campus in 1974 with one goal in mind; to become a mechanical engineer his experiences as an aggie have shaped his life and played a significant role in his success the lessons that texas a&m instilled in baker is why he strives to provide the same opportunities and experiences for current students in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering when you go through undergrad your blood turns maroon said baker i had the chance to speak at a seminar and reconnect with the university and i realized how much i missed it i then had the inspiration and desire to give back to the institution that helped me make my way through life
1054,baker who serves as president of baker engineering and risk consultants inc is heavily involved with students on campus he frequently speaks at seminars and recently funded two capstone projects companies who arent taking advantage of the opportunities to have those interactions with students are missing a great time baker said it's wonderful to sit with the students and exchange thoughts and ideas its a chance to learn how they're doing and for us to feed off their energy as a member of the department of mechanical engineerings industry advisory council (iac) baker has an avenue to ensure that students are prepared for their careers i get to have interactions with faculty learn what's being done in terms of curriculum and give feedback on what industries need from the students said baker its been a very rewarding experience and i will continue to be involved because of that
1055,in addition baker and his wife jana created the jana and quentin a baker faculty fellowship currently the recipient of this fellowship is dr lesley wright an associate professor my wife and i created the endowment so that there would be funding to help with the attraction and retention of high-quality faculty said baker dr wright is the first recipient i recently met with her to learn what she is doing and had the chance to see her laboratories it is great to make that connection and see how our endowment is actually being put to use in 2018 baker was awarded the outstanding alumni award by the college of engineering for his various contributions to the university and specifically the mechanical engineering department he hopes that his work inspires other alumni to contribute to texas a&m the industry advisory council is trying to get alumni and companies more connected to support the department we want to show our alumni the cutting-edge work that a&m is doing baker said the industry advisory council created a fund at the foundation that is managed by the council the councils mechanical engineering advancement fund is a great way for alumni to support the me department since 100% of the funds go to department advancement faculty support and student scholarships with oversight from the council if you would like to donate please visit the mechanical department's giving page
1056,in a recent article published in the february issue of the journal sensors researchers at texas a&m university have reported a technology that might help people with gout disease monitor their symptoms better they said their minimally invasive biosensor system may hold the key to future point-of-care therapies centered around personal management of gout and possibly other conditions finding more ways to help patients reduce their risks of gout attacks is an important clinical need that hasnt been looked at in detail said dr mike mcshane department head and professor in the department of biomedical engineering in the future biosensor technology such as ours can potentially help patients take preemptive steps to reduce the severity of their symptoms and lower their long-term health costs from repeated lab visits gout is a painful joint disease that affects over 8 million americans patients with gout tend to have higher levels of urate salts circulating in their bloodstream a condition called hyperuricemia these urate crystals then diffuse out of blood vessels and accumulate in the space between joints the salt deposits then cause excruciating pain and in advanced cases a deterioration of joints and bones
1057,for gout diagnosis physicians often use clinical criteria like the frequency of painful incidents location of pain and the severity of the inflammation but for a definitive diagnosis the fluid between the joints is examined for the presence and quantity of urate crystals these laboratory tests can be expensive and time-consuming due to factors such as equipment and labor costs also the researchers said frequent visits for laboratory testing can be difficult for elderly gout patients however levels of circulating urate can be kept in check with medications additionally avoiding or minimizing the consumption of foods rich in urates like red meat and seafood can also help in managing blood urate levels maintaining low levels of urate is critical for mitigating gout symptoms said tokunbo falohun a graduate student in the college of engineering and the primary author of the study and so we wanted to create a technology that is reliable and user-friendly so that patients can easily self-monitor their blood urate levels urate reacts with oxygen in the presence of an enzyme called uricase to form allantoin the researchers used this knowledge to develop a system where urate levels could be indirectly monitored using benzoporphyrins a known sensor for oxygen benzoporphyrins are complex molecules that have unique optical properties that are valuable in the design of optical biosensors when hit by light from an led benzoporphyrins get energized and after a short time lose their excess in stages and finally emit light but oxygen atoms can affect the amount of time or lifetimes of benzoporphyrins in an energized state through collisions oxygen atoms can take away some of the excess energy from the benzoporphyrins and so if there are fewer oxygen atoms there are lesser that bump into benzoporphyrins and the lifetimes of benzoporphyrins proportionately increase the researchers reasoned that when urate levels are high benzoporphyrins lifetimes must be higher since more oxygen is used up to make allantoin based on this rationale mcshane and falohun set up a technology to measure benzoporphyrins lifetimes their technology consisted of two main components: an optical device to both produce light and collect emitted light from benzoporphyrins; and a biocompatible hydrogel platform for encapsulating uricase and benzoporphyrins to mimic conditions within the body the researchers put the pieces of hydrogels which were thin discs millimeters in diameter in saline-filled chambers receiving a steady flow of oxygen and continually maintained at 37 degrees celsius in each chamber they then put in different levels of urate an external computer connected to the optical system calculated and reported the lifetimes of the benzoporphyrins
1058,the researchers found that when they switched on the led light as predicted the urate levels in each chamber directly affected the lifetimes of the benzoporphyrins that is if there was more urate there were fewer oxygen atoms available for collisions and consequently the lifetimes of the benzoporphyrins were higher although the lifetime values faithfully followed urate levels mcshane and falohun said that additional experiments need to be done to ensure long-term stability of their optical biosensor system so that the technology is suitable for future clinical use however they noted that their biosensor system demonstrates the feasibility of using the technology for personal management of gout since the hydrogels are small enough to be inserted just below the skin at a site near oxygen-carrying blood vessels furthermore they said the optical system can be easily connected to any standard computer and that their software is designed to report urate levels in a user-friendly manner thus gout patients will be able to measure their urate levels precisely and as often as they need to from a global health perspective we need to empower people to make informed decisions about their health and well-being in that regard our system is a step toward building biomedical technologies for continuous and more frequent monitoring of disease symptoms said mcshane this work is supported by the national science foundation and the texas a&m university diversity fellowship
1059,dr roderic i pettigrew a phd and md who is the robert a welch professor in the college of medicine and professor of biomedical engineering in the college of engineering at texas a&m university has been elected into the american academy of arts and sciences the honorific academy one of the nations oldest was founded in 1780 by john adams george washington thomas jefferson and benjamin franklin to recognize remarkable people working to advance the public good members are categorized into five classes; however pettigrew has joined under the prestigious new interclass category which identifies members recognized in more than one class i have always been drawn to the intersection and convergence of the physical sciences life sciences and engineering said pettigrew who also spent 15 years as the founding director of the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering my ultimate research goal is to eliminate heart attacks and strokes the way to do that is by integrating a range of disciplinary techniques that is through transdisciplinary research pettigrew hopes to develop a beyond the state of the art mri system able to see the wall of the coronary artery in fine detail pushing the limits of mri physics to the maximum point that is tolerated by the human body such a scanner which could help eliminate heart attacks would be unique in the world he said pettigrew is also collaborating with dr john cooke at houston methodist hospital to study the problem of cell aging and its stimulation of atherosclerosis using a human progeria model we are studying the behavior of endothelial cells at the cellular and molecular level he explained this includes understanding the biomechanics of cells the impact of aging at the cellular level and the impact of molecular therapies such as delivering the gene that codes for telomere length we are studying the mechanogenomics of rapidly aging cells and the response to molecular therapies telomeres are protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that protect against the effects of cell aging or cell senescence every time cells divide and chromosomes get reproduced they lose some protective coating defects resulting from the protective caps wearing away over time can cause cellular dysfunction identifying how to restore that coating can return cells to a more functional state given that one of the major factors leading to heart disease is cell senescence pettigrew is interested in understanding and modulating this process through investigating progeria cells and why they behave differently pettigrew also serves as executive dean for the engineering medicine (enmed) collaboration between texas a&m and houston methodist hospital in which students study a blended engineering and medicine curriculum to earn both md and me degrees in only four years enmed has emerged from a movement that recognizes the inherent value in merging engineering and medicine with the biological and physical sciences pettigrew said traditionally weve separated these areas as individual disciplines but in life there are no boundaries enmed graduates called physicianeers will be conceptually fluent in multiple scientific languages such as engineering and medicine so that they better understand life processes and are trained to innovate and invent solutions across the whole health care landscape the goal is to transform the health care ecosystem so that we all have good health through the entirety of our lives said pettigrew since its founding 240 years ago the american academy of arts and sciences has welcomed many distinguished members that span across history and include exceptional names such as john f kennedy martin luther king jr toni morrison charles darwin albert einstein winston churchill akira kurosawa and nelson mandela pettigrew will join their ranks in cambridge massachusetts on friday oct 9
1060,ethan morse graduating senior in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was presented the 2020 texas a&m student employee of the year award this prestigious award is only given to two students annually and represents hard work leadership and dedication morse works for the aggiefab nanofabrication facility which is a shared nano/microfabrication facility on campus one quote from his nomination letter reads ethan has a tremendous work ethic that is driven by his passion to learn about wafer fab processing he has become a valuable part of the aggiefab team and contributes like a full-time staff member q what was your role in the aggiefab nanofabrication facility and what were your responsibilities a i served as a student technician helping to support the labs full-time staff members upkeep and operation my main responsibilities included training and advising new lab users; maintaining repairing and installing equipment; and improving the labs facilities and documentation q has being an electrical engineering major helped you in your position at aggiefab a my electrical engineering degree has absolutely helped my position learning in the classroom about how computer chips and devices are made allowed me to better understand how the tools in the lab operate my degree was also helped by my position getting to work on high-tech mechanical and electrical systems gives hands-on experience that most students dont have the opportunity to experience q what does this award mean to you a it means a great deal to me its nice to be recognized by my full-time aggiefab co-workers/friends as it shows they thought enough of me and my contributions to nominate me for this q what are your future career goals/aspirations a i will start work for texas instruments this september as an equipment engineer in one of their chip factories i hope to stay in the semiconductor industry for a majority of my career and become a manager or technical leader at a company
1061,gertrude and paul campos ‘62 have established the gertrude and paul campos 62 scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university paul was a member of the corps of cadets and graduated from texas a&m with a degree in aerospace engineering in 1962 he is now retired but worked as a senior project engineer for the aerospace corporation paul and gertrude currently reside in humble texas
1062,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
1063,dr william bill hyman was known to students and colleagues as a soft-spoken but intensely thought-provoking teacher and mentor during a career that reached into five different decades he served the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university in various roles from new professor to academic program director to interim department head through his consistent commitment to excellence he influenced nearly every student and gave back to the department in many important ways after his death on july 31 2019 his legacy continues to live on hyman was born on december 13 1945 and grew up in the bronx he earned his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the cooper union and his master of science and doctor of science degrees from columbia university he moved to texas with his family in 1972 to join the new bioengineering program at texas a&m where he would spend almost 40 years until his retirement in 2011
1064,hyman was recently called as a former faculty member during the 2020 aggie muster ceremony his research focused on medical devices addressing issues concerning design us food and drug administration (fda) regulations clinical engineering and the interaction of system safety and human factors this was a unique research direction within bioengineering which was a new subfield of engineering at the time amitabha rakshit was hymans first doctoral student at texas a&m when hyman was himself a new professor in the program in 1973 rakshit started at texas a&m in the newly-formed bioengineering program which at the time was housed in the department of industrial systems until becoming a separate department in 2002 rakshits first impression of hyman was in the classroom during a biomaterials course he was teaching in my entire life i havent had another professor who was as well organized in his notes rakshit said he would put things up on the board in a logical manner and it was a pleasure to follow his line of thinking the age difference between the two was small as hyman had just finished his doctoral degree and rakshit was beginning his rakshit approached him and said hyman was happy to act as his advisor as a guide he was excellent and toward the end of my time at texas a&m he had become a good friend rakshit said dr saurabh biswas now associate professor of practice in the department also attended hymans classes as a graduate student he recalled that hyman was practical in the classroom and used many real-world examples when he taught including world events and case studies from the fda those examples made his classes much more interesting versus sitting through material that otherwise could be considered boring biswas recalled that practical teaching style and inclusion of recent events as case examples made his courses popular because students could immediately see the relevance of the concepts some of hymans accolades included: university teaching excellence award: texas a&m university (2009 2010) lifetime achievement award american college of clinical engineering (2009) meritorious service award astm international (2005) charles c crawford service award texas a&m engineering college of engineering (2005) fellow biomedical engineering society (2005)
1065,hyman contributed to the foundation for current success in several important ways he was instrumental in preparing the program to be the first in the region to obtain abet accreditation which provides assurance that a college program meets the quality standards of the profession he then became the interim department head when the department first became independent in 2002 he was instrumental in making the proposals to form the new department and also in making the shift from bioengineering program – which was broader in scope – to the department of biomedical engineering which now had a more clear emphasis on medical and clinical applications dr brandis keller currently an instructional assistant professor in the department first met hyman when she transferred to texas a&m in college station from texas a&m at galveston during her undergraduate studies he was department head by then and when keller continued her education at texas a&m for her masters degree hyman also became her advisor scholarship stands on the shoulders of giants and he truly was someone who provided wisdom and inspired you to not only think about the field but also to have fun while questioning the more open-ended conversation topics swirling around contemporary topics of biomedical engineering keller said hymans engagement with students did not end when they graduated rakshit ended up in colorado after graduation and worked as an entrepreneur with several startup companies the professional relationship that had started between the two continued to grow and hyman became a consultant for some of rakshits company projects in my career he influenced me in more ways than i expected i maintained his way of being very organized about writing or presenting rakshit said you dont find that in a textbook i was able to emulate how he presented and some of things he talked about along with helping former students hymans practices and influence on curriculum have lasted well past his retirement biswas said he developed a culture of looking at medical device design beyond just technical design stressing the importance of quality and regulatory practices to be taught as well that was something he was passionate about that he was a biomechanics person he was very focused on these issues biswas said in our department the reason that we have these certificates in regulatory and all of this emphasis on quality i would say he was a primary driver of that people remember hyman as a genuine approachable person with an immense sense of humor keller said he knew how to take weighty subjects and develop assignments to make them lighter and engaging for students for a bonus activity in the biomaterials course he allowed one act of creativity that somehow related to biomedical engineering which turned out examples of art (painting watercolor marker) music poetry and acting keller said his warm nature encouraged true expression and he never left anyone out in fact prior to his departure from texas a&m i met with him and he handed over a piece of the artwork that was from my class which i keep in my office to this day even after his death hymans legacy will continue to live on in the department through the endowed dr william hyman scholarship fund outstanding current and future biomedical students will receive support in a program that hyman set up for success
1066,"engineering students can still have a highly impactful summer experience despite the fact that covid-19 resulted in the cancellation of many internships the student engineers' council (sec) leadership took action when many of their student peers began to lose internships they developed the sec-directed internship at the beginning of april there was a poll circulated through sec members asking the status of their summer internships unfortunately around 27% of the internships sec members had were canceled at first we wanted to provide something for our members to improve the circumstance however the sec is the representative voice of students within the college of engineering said kiersten potter president of the sec for that reason it was our responsibility to provide this thinking to the rest of the college with that we expanded our efforts by coordinating with engineering entrepreneurship and the career center to get the ball rolling on this initiative the internship aims to provide students within the college of engineering a framework to develop relevant skills with defined deliverables to include in their resumes – despite the cancellation of an official internship an official internship is not necessary to have high levels of impact said potter we are simply here to provide a framework organize accountability mechanisms and highlight the incredible resources the college of engineering already has to offer registration and a recording of the informational are available on the sec website now through may 11 this opportunity is available for all undergraduate and graduate students the sec is prioritizing students who have had canceled/rescinded job offers covid-19 disrupted our normalcy and the learnings i have had in the zachry leadership program (zlp) directly played into the development of the sec-directed internship said potter zlp has equipped me to know how to properly respond to abrupt change i reflected on the situation i asked myself if there are ways i can help or use the skills and abilities to address my peers needs and how can i best utilize the incredible people and resources around me to respond then we acted ""aggies are taught to lead a life of selfless service sec saw this opportunity as a way to selflessly serve the college so we took action "" said potter"
1067,for the first time in the teams history the women in engineering (we) vex-u robotics team at texas a&m university won the excellence award qualifying for the 2020 vex world championship at the regional vex robotics competition on feb 22 the excellence award is the highest award presented at the regional competition this award is presented to a team that exemplifies overall excellence which is determined by the teams design teamwork robot skills and overall program although the team advanced to the world championship the event has been canceled in response to covid-19 receiving the excellence award is a huge honor for any team and we worked extremely hard for it said maddie foster project manager it meant a lot to see all our hard work pay off and knowing we are representing women in engineering made it even more worthwhile shawna fletcher we director said that its important that students are in charge and work to make the team a success there are many first- and second-year students with little to no previous experience who get involved and hone their skills by learning from other students said fletcher melissa zhang programming team lead and computer science junior said that the team plans to continue giving students a hands-on experience to improve their technical skills and aim for the world championship again next year we planned to redesign the robot for worlds in order to make up for all the shortcomings we observed during regionals zhang said next year we hope to create a better autonomous routine for the competition and for skills
1068,"in the months leading up to the regional competition foster said that the team spent half of their meeting time collaborating and sharing ideas between the programming and mechanical sub-teams spending time sharing ideas and giving each other feedback and support allows us to grow together and be better as a whole foster said their team is broken into two main components: a mechanical and programming team this allows the teams to effectively build a robot that meets the teams designed robot requirements and allow the robot to perform desired actions being in such a collaborative environment every team member knows that they can ask anyone for help without hesitation foster said our leaders this year really connected with the new members and it was great seeing them grow with the team"""
1069,this years game was named vex-u robotics competition tower takeover robots were designed to stack cubes on the field into towers or score them into a teams respective goal zones the objective of the game is to attain a higher score than the opposing team this competition encouraged the team to learn new things at first i was overwhelmed by the number of members i needed to teach and spent a lot of the time walking around and solving any technical problems that occurred zhang said this made me realize the importance of planning ahead especially when it comes to a large team zhang said that vex-u robotics changes the game annually to push students to create new solutions robots and strategies to conquer the new challenges given for our team this translates into giving women hands-on experience to improve their technical skills in problem-solving programming and translating ideas to reality by building the robot zhang said the team has done a terrific job improving from year to year said fletcher winning the excellence award was the icing on the cake and the college is proud of all they have accomplished even though worlds was canceled the team is moving forward and already planning for next year these students are dedicated and deserve recognition contact weoutreach@tamuedu for more information on we or the vex-u team
1070,nothing ventured nothing gained thats the motto that alejandro morales a junior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university has always lived by following the moral of his own story his most recent adventure had morales embarking on a semester-long study abroad program to the australian defence force academy to broaden his horizons as a student member of the corps of cadets and an engineer and unknowingly to join the academys water polo team it was definitely a fun experience and since i've been back i've been talking to sophomores and juniors in the corps of cadets and telling them it's a great opportunity said morales if i could do it again i probably would i made really good friends we still chat to this day which is a bit tough because i think theyre 17 hours ahead of us but it was really worth it and it definitely changed the way i am as a person
1071,this global journey started as many seldom do – in a freshman math course while in class morales met a couple of australian exchange students in cadet-like uniforms for the remainder of their time in texas they found time to hang out with each other and become good friends we kept in touch and in the fall semester of my sophomore year i got an email about a corps of cadets spring exchange said morales i talked to them about it and asked ‘what do you think should i go and my friend was like ‘dude you're going have a blast so i sent in the application after an interview with the commandant of the corps of cadets morales was on his way to australia morales added that without that initial friendship he probably never would have applied for the program it was with the help from his faraway friends too that he was able to get the syllabi needed to piece together transfer credits and finalize his schedule but with help from around the world and within the department he was able to step onto a nearly 20-hour flight to the academy
1072,soon after he took a dive into water polo having never played before and not being a strong swimmer morales was unexpectedly and suddenly recruited by his friend from the math class i joined and spent about the first month drowning before finally learning how to properly float said morales recruited once more by the water polo team he participated in a defence force tournament – playing against fellow military academy teams from malaysia singapore and more while their team did not place the new venture was enriching all the same but things were not all fun and water polo games for morales while he was abroad in addition to overcoming culture shock and language barriers he had to balance his athletics with academia
1073,i had i think 35 contact hours a week said morales so every week i had 35 hours in a lecture hall a lab a recitation and a study session and since it is a military academy we also got to do the parades anzac day was a really cool experience i got to go on military drills it was really interesting without an ocean engineering department to call his home morales was placed in civil engineering and oceanography while in australia but that didnt stop him from testing the waters in labs and research partaking in things such as developing unmanned vehicle technology alongside ocean engineers in the navy and sailing through jervis bay on patrol boats to test water properties and how plastic travels in surface and sub-surface currents he pushed onward in his pursuit of new horizons despite the challenges he faced morales summoned his intrinsic motivation to power through the semester – leaving australia with good grades fond memories and lifelong friends you have to trust in yourself said morales even if the going gets rough just remember that you still got some left in you and you can still pull through
1074,two faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering were selected to receive a 2020 distinguished achievement award for research from texas a&m and the association of former students they were among 24 outstanding members of the universitys faculty and staff to be honored the 2020 recipients from the college of engineering were dr yu ding professor department of industrial and systems engineering; and dr helen l reed regents professor department of aerospace engineering the university-level distinguished achievement awards were first presented in 1955 and have since been awarded to more than 1 000 professionals who have exhibited the highest standards of excellence at texas a&m in recognition of their achievements each recipient receives a cash gift an engraved watch and a commemorative plaque in lieu of an in-person ceremony honoring recipients the university is formally celebrating their accomplishments through other channels
1075,spoiling foods souring wine and worsening wounds have a common culprit a process called oxidation although the ill effects of these chemical reactions can be curtailed by the action of antioxidants creating a sturdy platform capable of providing prolonged antioxidant activity is an ongoing challenge researchers at texas a&m university might have solved this problem with their new antioxidant mats made from an intertwined network of ultra-fine strands of a polymer and an antioxidant found in red wine the researchers said these mats are strong stable and capable of delivering antioxidant activity for prolonged periods of time our innovation is that we have fine-tuned the steps needed to spin defect-free ultra-microscopic fibers for making high-performing antioxidant mats said adwait gaikwad a graduate student in dr svetlana sukhishvilis laboratory in the college of engineering and a primary author of the study each fiber is intermolecularly linked to several antioxidant molecules and so the final mat which is made of millions and millions of such fibers has enhanced antioxidant functionality a description of their study is in the february issue of the journal acs applied materials & interfaces although oxidation is a common natural phenomenon left unchecked this chemical reaction can be detrimental for example in alcoholic beverages too much oxidation leads to the formation of acetaldehyde from alcohol altering the drinks taste color and aroma in the body oxidative stress causes a buildup of free radicals that can harm healthy cells and body tissue however oxidative reactions can be kept in control by the action of antioxidants these compounds readily combine with ambient oxygen or donate electrons to neutralize charged radicals of the many antioxidants a molecule found in red wine called tannic acid is particularly attractive because it is also antibacterial and antiviral the researchers said these remarkable properties are due to the presence of groupings of atoms called polyphenols within tannic acids molecular structure polyphenols are natural organic compounds that are also known for their antioxidant properties said hanna hlushko also a graduate student in sukhishvilis laboratory and a primary author of the study turns out that the tannic acid is replete with these polyphenol motifs which make it an efficient binding partner to many molecules and a great scavenger of free radicals in past studies antioxidants were blended into synthetic mats put simply in this technique mats are made by first mixing a polymer and antioxidants together and then flattening them into a sheet but the researchers said these mats have lower functionality because the surface area for antioxidant activity is limited and so to increase the surface area for antioxidant activity they created an antioxidant mesh made with ultrafine fibers of polymer and tannic acid thus each strand of this mesh-like mat could contribute to antioxidant activity furthermore unlike the earlier blending technique they chose a polymer that could hold on to molecules of tannic acid by making hydrogen bonds thereby increasing the overall strength of the final mat
1076,to make these fibers the researchers filled a syringe with tannic acid a polymer called polyvinylpyrrolidone and a combination of solvents then as they squeezed the mixed polymer-antioxidant solution out of the syringe they applied a voltage of 16 kilovolts between the tip of the syringe and a spinning drum collector located a short distance away this extremely high voltage pulled the polymer into nanofibers as it traveled from the syringe to the collection drum at the end of the spinning process they had an interwoven nanofiber mat when the researchers examined these mats under a high-power electron microscope they found that the nanofibers were without any defect that could compromise the mats mechanical properties also they showed that these mats are stable at the ph of water and can provide sustained antioxidant activity by releasing tannic acid continuously for around 20 days they also noted that the hydrogen bonds between polyvinylpyrrolidone and tannic acid increased the strength of their mats by up to 10-fold more than mats spun from polyvinylpyrrolidone fibers alone thus the nanofiber design made the mats mechanically strong and yet gave them cloth-like flexibility to wrap around objects we have created antioxidant mats with a high surface area robust mechanical properties and the ability to provide long-term antioxidant protection said gaikwad also the release of tannic acid is on-demand the hydrogen bonds hold the antioxidants in the material until there is an external stimulus like ph these properties make our mats suitable for diverse applications from bandages for wound-healing to inner linings of containers for food storage gaikwad and hlushko contributed equally to this research other contributors include parvin karimineghlani and dr victor selin from the texas a&m department of materials science and engineering this work is supported by the national science foundation and the texas a&m engineering experiment station
1077,in a surgery suite its all hands on deck to give the patient the best care possible however using an endoscope a tube with a light and camera attached to it can sometimes take away some of that mobility a problem a team of seniors in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university worked to solve with their final capstone project during procedures a surgeon will use an endoscope to get better views of the surgery site currently the surgeon or a technician will hold it taking away a set of hands from the surgery itself the capstone team developed a holder that can keep the endoscope absolutely still during the process current holders are cumbersome or expensive barriers that lead to surgeons just going back to holding the tool themselves the team of five students prototype not only is easy to use but also is more accessible within a hospitals budget their sponsor was dr deepak mehta pediatric ear nose and throat surgeon with texas childrens hospital in houston throughout the process of meeting with mehta over the last two semesters the team had to take big ideas from him and develop a tangible engineering concept and design translating the doctors needs into engineering concepts was an interesting challenge said madeline franke
1078,it was really cool to speak both ‘languages said franke who plans to go to medical school after graduation i feel like im really prepared to be able to work with engineers and to have that more technical mindset and know what things are possible and what things are just asking too much as a doctor i want to speak to engineers with the knowledge of what they can do and whats possible after months of designing and prototyping the final product was an aluminum arm that can clamp and lock to both the surgery table and the endoscope with a ball and joint arm that can move easily to help the surgeon get the scope where they need it camille felgenhauer said she has new respect for the smaller details of a larger project this project is on the smaller scale since we are just catering to our surgeon but the bigger impact of this is its going to cut down on procedures and its going to allow him to work on more patients at the end of the day and help those kids that need it felgenhauer said its those small details that make the bigger picture worth it bailyn piecewicz said she prefers the two-semester project to previous shorter timelines you get to know each other and your strengths and weaknesses more and then you know how to delegate the tasks more efficiently she said plus because you have a longer period to work on the project you get to see it develop more the end product is hopefully a lot better than if it was in a shorter time frame a semester can make a world of difference
1079,the team also recognized their device will hopefully lead to easier integration and translation in the workplace as a manual device imaad vaid said the cost is much lower than some current electronic devices and does not require a specialized technician the nurses or technicians can set it up and the doctor can come in and immediately start using it vaid said sterilization will be easier as well because weve designed it so it wont need to be (steam sterilized) nearing the end of their capstone the students said they can see ways working on the project has impacted them and can be applied to their lives post-graduation quentin bartkowiak who is pursuing employment in industry said working in a productive team dynamic has prepared him for team environments in the future weve learned how to be more efficient and how to use each other for their skills and what each other brings specifically to the team bartkowiak said working as a team it will help me grow in my work experience and my career just by learning to work with people whether we have a great team like this or teams that arent so functional in addition teams have received training in remote team operations due to the covid-19 pandemic as teams finish up their projects they have risen to the challenge of remote work said jim machek professor of practice and instructor of the capstone course our designs and production are being completed as scheduled
1080,"manqing shao a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university was awarded a 2020-21 texas water resources institute (twri) graduate student grant funded by the us geological survey (usgs)shaos project was one of six to be selected for the grant she will research the effects of evaporation from different future climate change scenarios on water reservoirs specifically 12 primary reservoirs in the upper trinity basin which supplies water to about a quarter of the texas population including the dallas-fort worth metroplextexas regional water planners consider projected water demand and reservoir sedimentation when evaluating future surface water availability but not the impacts of climate change on hydrologic conditions and reservoir evaporation losses shao saidin texas around 67% of the available surface water comes from reservoirs in 2011 during the worst one-year drought on record for the state the net evaporation loss from 188 major water supply reservoirs in texas was 583 million acre-feet which is greater than the states highest annual municipal water use of 497 million acre-feetthis research and framework will provide modeling tools data and information that water resources managers and regional water planners can use to evaluate future long-term trends in water availability it will also allow for the development of regional drought planning and response strategies and informed decisions on methods to conserve the storage of individual reservoirsclimate change is also projected to intensify short- and long-term drought risk across the united states according to shao understanding how climate change could impact texas surface water availability mainly through changes in reservoir evaporation is essential for developing new strategies in response to potential water shortages""it is tremendously encouraging to be awarded this fellowship many thanks to twri and usgs for noticing the potential of this proposed research "" she said ""i appreciate the guidance and help from dr huilin gao dr gang zhao dr nelun fernando and dr john zhu i will work hard on this research on texas water resources"""
1081,dr siddarth misra has been recognized by both the society of exploration geophysicists (seg) and the society of petrophysicists and well log analysts (spwla) with international awards misra associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university will be the honored recipient of the j clarence karcher award from the seg and the young professional technical award from the spwla the j clarence karcher award is given in recognition of significant contributions to the science and technology of exploration geophysics by a young geophysicist of outstanding abilities each year only two young geophysicists are chosen from faculty and researchers in prominent universities and companies located all over the world the young professional technical award celebrates leadership dedication and services to the petrophysics community this award is given based on international peer recognition misra is avidly involved in petrophysical research and data-driven modeling and machine learning he has been a consultant on these subjects for two major companies and has also served as a wireline field engineer much of misras work is featured in the book machine learning for subsurface characterization which he wrote with co-authors hao li and jiabo he my research and teaching align well with the missions of spwla and seg said misra the two awards show the impact of my research on both the petrophysics and geophysics communities they are important accomplishments that help me promote the world-class petrophysical geophysical and subsurface data analytics work being conducted in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m the awards will be presented to misra during annual events held by each society later this year
1082,dr terri estes '78 has established the richard d estes '78 scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineering at texas a&m university richard estes passed away in august of 2015 and is survived by his wife terri and their children terri established the scholarship with the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering in honor of richard because it was the department he graduated from both terri and richard graduated from texas a&m in 1978 terri graduated with a degree in biology and richard with a degree in civil engineering richard then went on to earn his mba at the university of arkansas
1083,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president of development
1084,george '60 and ruby lee sandars have established their second scholarship the george '60 and ruby lee sandars endowed scholarship ii this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the sandars decided to establish this gift with texas a&m to make a difference in students lives our desire is to help students gain a quality education george said god has blessed us in so many ways that we wanted to share that blessing and help others their goal is for this scholarship to have a major impact on its recipients and help them graduate from texas a&m it will help students to complete their education and even though it is a small amount every little bit helps george said george was drawn to texas a&m by the corps of cadets the fighting texas aggie band and the fact that it is a state-supported school george comes from a long line of aggies and joined those ranks when he earned his degree in mechanical engineering in 1960 from texas a&m he and ruby lee have two children who also graduated from texas a&m stephanie who graduated with a degree in biomedical sciences in 1991 and geoffrey with a degree in construction science in 1993
1085,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
1086,dr karan watson regents professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as a 2020 recipient of the bevlee a watford inclusive excellence award presented by the women in engineering proactive network this impactful award honors those who actively support and bolster the success and inclusion of women of color in engineering at the undergraduate graduate and professional levels it feels great to be recognized and appreciated said watson for a long time i have wanted people to have better access and inclusion to engineering – men and women – but especially underrepresented groups this award recognizes not only striving to make organizations more inclusive of women but also of women of color and when you're a double minority or triple minority depending on identity elements it's a really lonely place and it's an empty place sometimes so i am pleased to have worked in that arena adding that she is humbled to be selected for the award when so many great people are also working toward inclusivity in engineering and education watson explained that her passion for embracing diversity and inclusion started long before she became a professor when she was an undergraduate student women made up less than 4% of the engineering student body while that has changed watson is determined to continue to increase that representation and invite new ideas backgrounds and perspectives into engineering for years watson has done this by taking an active role in recruitment and leadership – reaching out to women of all ethnicities as a mentor guide and resource she has worked diligently to seek out students to apply and enroll in engineering encouraging them to take the next step in their educational journey and helping them navigate the opportunities and support available to them once they see a door open its them not me that does great things said watson looking ahead watson will continue her pursuit to keep opening doors and inviting people to step across the threshold into engineering with each new mind and perspective innovation grows and education expands making her cause a vital one for the future of research and ingenuity our works not done she said so if more people want to work in this arena to make engineering more inclusive of everybody – and especially of women of color – let's do it
1087,giok kwa and david l boothe '80 have established the giok kwa and david l boothe '80 scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university david graduated from texas a&m with a degree in engineering technology in 1980 he recently retired after working as a geophysicist at exxonmobil exploration for 40 years he and giok currently reside in houston texas
1088,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president of development
1089,"bobbye and jerry britsch '75 have established the bobbye j and gerald h britsch '75 scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at texas a&m university jerry decided to attend texas a&m because he had heard about the quality of the engineering program and the corps of cadets i was interested in aviation and thought i might want to join the air force after graduation he said my studies in mechanical engineering and four years in the corps taught me the benefit of setting goals and being perseverant while he was a student in texas a&m engineering jerry said he was very impressed and appreciative of the mentoring and support he received from the faculty being in the corps in the mid-1970s and studying engineering at the same time was very demanding i distinctly remember help sessions being offered by faculty members in the department to aid in understanding course material i was having difficulty with he said i have never forgotten this meaningful gesture of concern jerry and bobbye hope that their gift to texas a&m engineering will have a positive impact on students we hope our gift will be a motivating force for a young person to be able to complete their education in this rigorous and demanding field of study jerry said as for the inspiration behind their gift jerry said we felt a strong desire to give back to the school that had shaped my life and my career as an underclassman i had been given a scholarship through mechanical engineering and wanted to help students who are in the corps of cadets seeking a degree in mechanical engineering"" jerry and bobbye currently reside in texas and have two sons travis and justin justin followed in his father's footsteps and graduated from texas a&m in 2002 with a degree in mechanical engineering"
1090,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact reagan chessher senior director of development
1091,a team of students from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university recently placed fifth nationally in the annual student american society of civil engineerings geo-institute geochallengethe competition requires students to use engineering principles to build a model stable earthen structure the texas a&m team was one of only 20 teams chosen to compete nationally in the finals in late february in minneapolis minnesota at geo-congress 2020members of the geowall team began work in november 2019 to design the mechanically stabilized earth retaining wall using paper reinforcement taped to a poster board wall facing
1092,"""we purchased sandbags different construction tools plywood etc constructed a sandbox with plywood and began work on our design "" said prince kumar a civil engineering doctoral student and captain of the texas a&m geowall teamthe engineering students submitted their design report and were selected to compete in the national finalskumar said the team had several strategies going into the competition including building their wall multiple times working through minor mistakes and being positive""we were fully prepared and very excited for the final competition "" kumar said ""it was our great honor to represent aggies at the national finals competition and we feel proud"""
1093,"this year's team included kumar undergraduate students jessica escobedo and bridget le and doctoral student muhammad ali falak drs anand puppala and marcelo sanchez served as faculty advisors for the team and worked closely with them in the eventkumar said in addition to the competition students were able to meet students from other universities attend lectures by experts and broaden their professional networks and connections""this is a great opportunity for students to attend a world-class professional engineering conference "" he said encouraging other students to get involved with geowall ""it's a golden opportunity to represent texas a&m at a national level""the texas a&m chapter of the geo-institute provided funding for the team to compete at this year's geo-challenge ""geo-institute chapter offers a wide range of other opportunities aimed at improving professional and personal attributes for students "" falak said who serves as the vice president for the texas a&m chapter ""students and former students who are part of this chapter have proven themselves to be leaders team players and outstanding geotechnical professionals we expect a lot more students in the future to be part of our student organization""the texas a&m geo-institute student chapter acknowledges the support from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering to attend this competition yue chen serves as the current president of the geo-institute student chapter which is supervised by dr sanchez"
1094,a typical nuclear reactor uses only a small fraction of its fuel rod to produce power before the energy-generating reaction naturally terminates what is left behind is an assortment of radioactive elements including unused fuel that are disposed of as nuclear waste in the united states although certain elements recycled from waste can be used for powering newer generations of nuclear reactors extracting leftover fuel in a way that prevents possible misuse is an ongoing challenge now researchers with texas a&m engineering have devised a simple proliferation-resistant approach for separating out different components of nuclear waste the prescribed one-step chemical reaction described in the february issue of the journal industrial & engineering chemistry research resulted in the formation of crystals containing all of the leftover nuclear fuel elements distributed uniformly the researchers also noted that the simplicity of their recycling approach makes the translation from lab bench to industry feasible our recycling strategy can be easily integrated into a chemical flow sheet for industrial-scale implementation said dr jonathan burns research scientist in the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear engineering and science center in other words the reaction can be repeated multiple times to maximize fuel recovery yield and further reduce radioactive nuclear waste the basis of energy production in nuclear reactors is thermonuclear fission in this reaction a heavy nucleus usually uranium when hit by subatomic particles called neutrons becomes unstable and tears apart into smaller lighter elements however uranium can absorb neutrons and get progressively heavier to form elements like neptunium plutonium and americium before once again splitting and releasing energy over time these fission reactions lead to a buildup of lighter elements in the nuclear reactor but roughly half of these fission products are deemed neutron poisons they also absorb neutrons just like used nuclear fuel leaving fewer for the fission reaction eventually bringing the energy production to a halt hence used fuel rods contain fission products leftover uranium and small quantities of plutonium neptunium and americium currently these items are collectively considered nuclear waste in the united states and are destined to be stowed away in underground repositories because of their high radioactivity nuclear waste is a two-pronged problem said burns first almost 95% of the starting material of the fuel is left unused and second the waste we produce contains long-lived radioactive elements neptunium and americium for example can persist and radiate for up to hundreds of thousands of years scientists have had some success with separating uranium plutonium and neptunium however these methods have been very complex and have had limited success at separating americium furthermore burns said that the united states department of energy requires the recycling strategy to be proliferation-resistant meaning that plutonium which can be used in weapons must never be separated from other nuclear fuel elements during the recycling process to address the unmet needs of nuclear waste recycling the researchers investigated if there was a simple chemical reaction that could separate all the desirable used nuclear fuel chemical elements together from earlier studies the researchers knew that at room temperature uranium forms crystals in strong nitric acid within these crystals uranium atoms are arranged in a unique profile a central uranium atom is sandwiched between two oxygen atoms on either side by sharing six electrons with each oxygen atom
1095,we immediately realized that this crystal structure could be a way to separate out plutonium neptunium and americium since all of these heavy elements belong to the same family as uranium said burns the researchers hypothesized that if plutonium neptunium and americium assumed a similar bonding structure with oxygen as uranium then these elements would integrate themselves into the uranium crystal for their experiments they prepared a surrogate solution of uranium plutonium neptunium and americium in highly concentrated nitric acid at 60–90 degrees celsius to mimic dissolving of a real fuel rod in the strong acid they found when the solution reached room temperature as predicted that uranium neptunium plutonium and americium separated from the solution together uniformly distributing themselves within the crystals burns noted that this simplified single-step process is also proliferation-resistant since plutonium is not isolated but incorporated within the uranium crystals the idea is that the reprocessed fuel generated from our prescribed chemical reaction can be used in future generations of reactors which would not only burn uranium like most present-day reactors but also other heavy elements such as neptunium plutonium and americium said burns in addition to addressing the fuel recycling problem and reducing proliferation risk our strategy will drastically reduce nuclear waste to just the fission products whose radioactivity is hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands of years dr jeffrey d einkauf from the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for nuclear security science & policy initiatives also contributed to this research this research is sponsored by funds from the united states department of energy
1096,mary jane and dr john t baldwin 64 have established the mary jane and dr john t baldwin 64 endowed chemical engineering scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at texas a&m university the baldwins are also contributing to the jack e brown building fund where the chemical engineering department is housed the funds will be used to purchase benches that will be named the baldwin benches and be placed in the building for chemical engineering students to use john was a first-generation college student with a family that supported the university of texas however once he visited the texas a&m campus he knew thats where he wanted to go i worked at a grocery store through high school and junior college and a customer advised me that i should check out texas a&m john said after a visit i was sold and never considered any other school john also went on to earn his doctoral degree at texas a&m i was literally scared to my bones of failure at texas a&m and studied around the clock i was awarded several scholarships and after graduation i stayed for graduate school and received a phd four years after my bs he said following in his footsteps two of his three children have become aggies john said he was inspired to establish this gift because of his time at texas a&m both as a student and a senior lecturer after 27 years in the chemical engineering technology and software development and management industry i returned to texas a&m as a senior lecturer in chemical engineering he said during the 20 plus years that i was in this position i gathered an increased appreciation of the chemical engineering students and decided i wanted to support the program as much as i can thus the reason for the gift for the students ultimately john hopes that his gift will be able to strengthen the quality of the chemical engineering program at texas a&m
1097,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
1098,deepa and thomas j mireles '94 have established the deepa and thomas j mireles '94 scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering at texas a&m university thomas earned his bachelor's degree in 1994 and his masters degree in 1995 both in petroleum engineering during his time at texas a&m thomas was also a part of the society of mexican american engineers and scientists he currently works for murphy oil corporation and the family resides in houston
1099,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
1100,cecilia and robert bob d harrison have established the in memory of mr and mrs jd harrison scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university growing up bob said he was very interested in science-related topics and that was why he chose to pursue a degree in chemical engineering he was drawn to texas a&m for its strong reputation in engineering and science and the co-op program that provides industry experience before graduation texas a&m is a highly recognizable brand and produces graduates with an emphasis on self-initiative and ability to relate to others he said i am most interested in encouraging future students in chemical engineering who have the ability and motivation to complete their degrees but may need some financial support students chose to pursue college degrees for many different reasons and have a broad mix of interests abilities and motivation however my priority is to offer financial support for these highly motivated and qualified students he said cecilia and bob were inspired to establish this scholarship in memory of bobs parents mr and mrs jd harrison had three daughters in addition to bob and all four children have college degrees; three of which are from texas a&m my parents raised us with an expectation that we would further our education and attend college they saved and sacrificed to support and encourage us to pursue our fields of interest bob said this is the harrisons first scholarship in chemical engineering and it wont be the last time they support students pursuing a college education it is my intent to continue to fund the education initiative beyond this initial scholarship bob said
1101,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
1102,a conversation with dr mitty c plummer 65 on the establishment of the dr mitty c plummer 65 scholarship in nuclear engineering at texas a&m university q what drew you to attend texas a&m a i had a friend in high school named wayne smith whose father (james richard smith 49) had attended texas a&m that family encouraged me to apply to take the entrance exam and to apply for financial assistance the odessa a&m club awarded me the opportunity awards scholarship and it was just enough money to make me think i could get through college q how has texas a&m impacted your career a without texas a&ms influence i truly doubt that i would have had what you might think of as a career after receiving my bachelors in electrical engineering i stayed on at texas a&m with an atomic energy commission fellowship to earn a phd in nuclear engineering in 1970 my first jobs were in the nuclear field but it became clear to me that the nation was not committing to nuclear power i was able to use the broad engineering and math background that a&m had provided me to go into self-employment doing mechanical testing of various types at age 50 i thought it was time to begin passing forward some of the knowledge i had accrued to a new generation of engineers by becoming a professor of engineering technology and helping to establish a new college of engineering at the university of north texas q what inspired you to establish the dr mitty c plummer 65 scholarship a i began giving scholarship money to students in the newly established undergraduate program in nuclear engineering shortly after leaving texas a&m as a new program it had no established scholarships or awards i also have historically given to another scholarship fund called the sweat equity scholarship which benefits students who work really hard to get through texas a&m without the opportunity award scholarship that i was given i am certain that i would not have attended texas a&m and life would have been much more difficult for me my goal is to make it easier from a financial perspective for a student to attend texas a&m the gift of oil royalties will enable that string of gifts to continue long after i am gone i hope my gifts have the same beneficial effect on the lives of aggies as the gifts of my predecessors had on me q what kind of impact do you hope your gift will have a i hope that the recipients will feel encouraged and be enabled to complete their education after graduation i hope they pay it forward to another generation of aggies i hope that the example of generosity first shown to me by the odessa a&m club in 1961 is contagious compelling and continuous q what is special to you about texas a&m a texas a&m offers degrees that change lives by enabling the person who obtains a texas a&m degree to contribute to others and to society on a much larger scale when you survey texas in particular you see it is texas aggies who historically found oil and gas deposits improved care of the big cattle herds and crops built the nuclear power plants laid out the roads and drove many other important industries in texas thats why i chose texas a&m as a place to give my money to i didnt want a lack of money to make it impossible for someone to attend or to complete a degree
1103,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact reagan chessher senior director of development
1104,dr freddie witherden assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university was named in the 2020 forbes 30 under 30 list for europe he was honored in the science & healthcare category this internationally prestigious list includes the top bright young leaders in business and society and their achievements from thousands of nominations only 30 are chosen to be named on one of 10 lists covering industries from art and culture to finance to technology its fantastic to be recognized like this said witherden if someone had told me five years ago that my name was going to find its way onto the 30 under 30 list there is simply no way i would have believed them those lists are for rock stars not quixotic graduates on average it takes researchers 15 clicks to access the full text of a journal article sometimes that includes having to go through archives like jstor or pre-print repositories such as arxiv or institutional depositories this rabbit hole not only leads to frustration but also a loss of time and efficiency which is where witherdens 30 under 30 recognition comes into play to alleviate the frustration witherden co-founded kopernio a web browser extension that helps researchers access full published journal articles with a single click it was featured in an article in the guardian kopernio was co-founded by dr ben kaube who was also named in the forbes 30 under 30 list for europe we decided to start kopernio after finishing our phds at imperial college london where it became clear how much time we were spending trying to access journal articles said witherden around this time it also became apparent to us that not all institutions can afford to subscribe to the vast number of journals and so obtaining an article may not be as simple as going to a publishers website as witherden explained he and kaube saw this as an opportunity to help the researching community at large by automating the procedure of finding articles we are delighted but not surprised that dr witherden was mentioned in this prestigious list said dr sharath girimaji department head for the department of ocean engineering it is a fitting recognition of his incredible talent and hard work he brings the same level of creativity and intensity to the department every day we have an excellent group of young faculty members and i look forward to exciting times ahead for the ocean engineering department
1105,six students associated with the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university have been awarded a place in the national science foundations (nsf) graduate research fellowship program (grfp) the grfp recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in nsf-supported science technology engineering and mathematics disciplines pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees all students said they were honored by the recognition
1106,initially i was filled with joy excitement and disbelief that i had been awarded such a prestigious fellowship daniel prasca-chamorro said after the initial rush i was hit with a subsequent surge of motivation that further fueled my ambition to fulfill the mission of the nsf to promote the progress of science and to advance national health i am very grateful for all the professors and mentors that have helped me along my way lois wampler said texas a&m has really provided me with a stellar educational background and an environment i found conducive to academic success the award provides financial support to the students as they continue their biomedical engineering path a research journey unique to each of them
1107,i discovered my passion for tissue regeneration i was absolutely intrigued to discover its potential to treat numerous life-threatening and debilitating diseases including organ failure acute injury and congenital defects sarah jones said for students like amanda rakoski they can point to instances in their past that led them down the biomedical path rakoskis twin sister was diagnosed with autism as a child which rakoski said changed her own role from sibling to teacher to help ease the challenges on her sisters daily life i decided at a young age that i wanted to pursue a career like biomedical engineering that could make her life not about a disability but transform it into just a different way of seeing and interacting with the world rakoski said
1108,a significant part of the grfp application is an explanation of current research as well as its impact outside of the lab setting the nsf encourages students to think about and demonstrate how their work has potential for broader impacts on society jones develops synthetic regenerative structures to use in bone repair specifically at the end of bones due to injury or conditions such as osteoarthritis her team worked to design a plug that helps treat these diseases that limit movement prasca-chamorros research utilizes organ-on-a-chip technology to understand the inflammation and infection cycles of lung pathology in cystic fibrosis patients rakoskis focus in her undergraduate lab was developing a better 3d tissue-engineered model for breast cancer she designed a plan for a cancer trap a material implanted in the body that attracts metastatic cancer cells and traps them
1109,thomas tigner researches bioinstructive and immunomodulatory hydrogel platforms for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine wampler was investigating the biomechanics of the lower body after total knee arthroplasty a surgery designed to assist with osteoarthritis in the knee a disease that affects nearly 30 million people and inhibits movement with even simple daily tasks
1110,physics graduate student kassie marble is advised by biomedical engineering professor dr vladislav yakovlev her research involves investigating methods of improving 3d photolithography structures which can be used in tissue engineering among other fields the grfp provides a stipend for students in their research which tigner said gives him the financial freedom to explore the research questions he finds most interesting on a more personal note reception of the fellowship shows that i can put together a research plan that is recognized by established researchers across the nation tigner said i think this has provided me with good feedback about my professional development at this stage of my career in research
1111,along with the financial support marble said the grfp enables her to dedicate time to sharing her research concepts with the public i hope to lead a group of undergraduate students from a variety of majors (physics chemistry biology and engineering) in developing brand new physics demonstrations for local communities as a part of the texas a&m's discover explore and enjoy physics and engineering mentorship program next year marble said
1112,kathryn j sarpong has established the junkins family distinguished lecture series endowment in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university distributions from this endowment will be used to support associated expenses of an annual lecture by a prominent researcher in the field of dynamical systems and/or control systems with a focus on aerospace engineering after growing up in college station then getting her undergraduate degree out of state sarpong wanted to come back to texas to pursue her veterinary degree at texas a&m i was drawn to a&m by the phenomenal vet school beautiful campus and quality of education she said sarpongs dad dr john junkins the inspiration behind this gift and an aerospace engineering professor at texas a&m has always been passionate about bringing the brightest minds to the university and encouraging them to pursue their degree at texas a&m sarpong explained how that has been junkins vision for years hes a great aerospace engineer and always wanted to do something even bigger for the university and our entire family could not be more proud of him she said sarpong hopes this endowment for an annual lecture series will help students become well-rounded and well-educated the idea of universities being places of great thought and influencing young adults to think larger than themselves is a broad and daunting task she said the thought behind the endowment is that academic fields may not always line up with real-world experience as a student taking the opportunity to listen to a lecture from a professional in industry might open up a students mind to the connections between fields outside of their respective major junkins in addition to being a distinguished professor and regents professor holds the royce e wisenbaker chair he is the director of the hagler institute for advanced study and a member of the national academy of engineering
1113,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kevin mcginnis director of development
1114,texas a&m university was built upon a tradition of leadership and fellowship and dr john j koldus iii exemplified these qualities during his tenure at the university to honor him the john j koldus iii faculty and staff achievement award was created to recognize outstanding service shayla rivera was a recent recipient of this prestigious honor the award was created by the division of student affairs and is given to an outstanding faculty or staff member who exhibits a strong interest in student growth education and unity the recipient through guidance leadership and personal interest has gone beyond occupational requirements to enhance students' experiences at texas a&m and subsequently the rest of their lives rivera director of engr[x] and professor of practice in the texas a&m college of engineering was nominated for her numerous accomplishments and impact on students at texas a&m she has an energy that moves mountains every time i watch her speak i just know i'm in the presence of extraordinary said ritika bhattacharjee an undergraduate student in the department of chemical engineering i've worked with her to create three projects/programs from scratch brainstorming and then executing them with her i'm only a sophomore here which shows the tremendous speed at which she works and the amazing amount of trust she has in her students very simply i think meeting professor rivera was one of the best things that happened to my academic career and it accelerated my personal growth immensely she is a living inspiration rivera said she was honored by the award texas a&m has always been in the business not only of providing a solid education but of helping our students discover the exceptional nature they already possess and i love being part of that process said rivera rivera and other recipients were recognized for their accomplishments by the division of student affairs at a ceremony in may
1115,allison godfrey 19 was one of the first students to graduate with the newly formed concept creation and commercialization (c3) certificate presented by engineering entrepreneurship at texas a&m university this certificate was modeled for students to gain skills as a self-starter and learn entrepreneurial expertise q: what opportunities do you think the c3 certificate has opened for students a: i believe this program has allowed students to utilize their engineering skills in a different way by giving them the platform to be bring their ideas to life and the support they need start a business it has also given them a look into the business/startup world and taught them how to be a successful leader and pioneer in a company q: from your experience how has this certificate shaped your academic pursuits a: my experience with this program has made me aware of my strengths and skills that i would have never known if i was just taking engineering classes i learned how to pitch and sell an idea how to inspire a team powerpoint and presentation skills business and financial planning etc these are all skills that i would not have been exposed to in my engineering coursework and i am glad i was able to learn early in my college career because i was able to directly apply these skills to my internships and part-time jobs more than i did my engineering knowledge q: how do you think the engineering entrepreneurship program will improve to help other students expand their innovativeness a: as the program grows i believe students will be given more opportunities to bring their designs to life through rapid prototyping and fabrication along with more resources for mentorship to guide them through the beginning stages of starting a company as more classes encourage prototyping or business modeling students will have more opportunities to develop a design iterate and pitch – therefore expanding their innovativeness q: how has being one of the first recipients of this certificate impacted your future and how you view yourself a: i am so grateful to have started this program early in my college career because it has truly made me realize what i enjoy doing and helped me develop critical skills that i couldnt develop in my mechanical engineering courses i learned that i love pitching ideas and presenting to investors about a project i am passionate about after presenting countless times through this program i also developed powerpoint skills that i am constantly being praised on along with communication skills to convey a point efficiently and concisely these passions and skills i learned are what made me realize i wanted to go into management consulting rather than an engineering job i realized i wanted to solve problems in companies and present solutions to upper management utilizing my presentation and communication skills i developed in this program if i hadnt taken these entrepreneurship classes i would probably be working as an entry level engineer right now and not have realized my true passions i am so grateful for this opportunity to grow outside of my engineering coursework and truly discover what i enjoy doing q: what are some things you wish future students knew about the certificate a: i wish students knew how applicable the certificate is to people that may not want to start a company anytime soon or even start a company at all everything we learn can be applied within an existing company such as how to be a better leader or manager how to develop an idea or product within a company or even fundamental intellectual property knowledge you are learning more than just how to start your own company but you learn the fundamentals of how to succeed as a leader within any organization q: is there anything else that you would like to add a: i would encourage every engineer to take the entrepreneurship hour class at some point in their college career that class completely changed me and my ambitions inspiring me to be an entrepreneur and dream bigger dreams every entrepreneurship class i took was my favorite class of that semester since it gave me a platform to think and learn outside of the engineering curriculum and use different parts of my brain and skill set i could not be more grateful for professors boehm and donnell for constantly mentoring and encouraging me over the past three years it was a pleasure to learn from such highly respected and accomplished men that i know i will stay in contact for years to come for more information on the c3 certificate visit the c3 certification website
1116,three faculty and one staff member from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering were recently recognized by the college of engineering at texas a&m universitydr huilin gao an associate professor in the department was selected as a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) faculty fellow which recognizes long-term outstanding research performance
1117,dr amy epps martin professor in the department and a researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute was recognized with the williams brothers construction engineering fellow contributions award which recognizes faculty with continuing contributions to the field of engineering including outstanding accomplishments in teaching research scholarship professional service and student interaction
1118,dr ali mostafavi assistant professor in the department was recognized with the dean of engineering excellence award – assistant professor level which recognizes faculty members who excel in all three major pillars of academia: teaching research and service/engagement
1119,d'anne crain who works as senior administrative coordinator in the undergraduate student services office was awarded with the staff excellence award which recognizes outstanding service and performanceall award recipients will receive a commemorative award piece and cash award and will be recognized at next years faculty and staff awards banquet
1120,stacy bush lyon 94 and larry r bush have established the bush family scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university lyons journey at texas a&m began a bit differently than the average aggie having been accepted and registered for classes at another institution she was prepared not to attend texas a&m however during the late summer before her freshman year she finally received her acceptance letter and knew that was where she wanted to go while i was at fish camp my parents called and said they met charles brown 61 on their cruise that owned (what was at the time) the university tower and that they would find me a spot to move into lyon said so i came home from fish camp on saturday packed up some stuff and headed to college station the next day on monday which also happened to be the first day of school i registered for classes it all happened so quickly i didn't have time to think
1121,lyons father larry r bush is not an aggie but felt that texas a&m was the perfect place to establish this scholarship due to his daughter's connection with the university and his own involvement with industrial distribution growing up hopefully with the high cost of education we can help an engineering student financially he said additionally lyon and bush wanted to establish this scholarship with texas a&m because of the many experiences lyon had during her time there and how they impacted her life i did three study-abroad programs the professors on the programs were so engaging funny and supportive those programs helped shape and grow my character i learned to adapt to new environments cultures people and situations lyon said many of my stories that i tell my children coworkers or friends were because of my college experience we want to give someone who works hard and has a good heart a chance to attend the best university there is and get a little help financially lyon graduated from texas a&m with her degree in industrial distribution in 1994 as the first aggie in her family her son austin will start at texas a&m in this fall studying engineering
1122,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
1123,edward h shackelford '77 has established a scholarship in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university the edward h shackelford '77 scholarship will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineeringin high school shackelford said he was very interested in building infrastructure and initially looked at the architecture program at texas a&m i visited with the dean in the college of architecture about what to expect during the five years of academic life and in real life he said after that meeting i walked across the street to visit with professor jones in the civil engineering department and i was hooked from there shackelford felt that texas a&m fit his personality and his life the best compared to other texas universities i was used to the more structured environment since i grew up in a military family both my mother and father served in wwii my father continued to serve until 1971 in the united states air force in the security service branch he said while at texas a&m shackelford said he appreciated that his professors taught him the theory of civil engineering as well as the practical and real-life applications i also greatly valued the tough love the professors brought to the classroom in letting the students know it was time to get their act together and decide whether they were here for a purpose he said shackelford was inspired to establish this gift by his own experiences at texas a&m as well as the motivation to honor his parents' military service my education and my career of 46 years has allowed me to be involved in some very significant projects in the houston metro area he said i felt the time was right to give back to the university that established my foundation my endowment honors my parents' service by making this endowment available to those with a military background and who are interested in civil engineering and/or water resources said shackelford shackelford said his hope is that his scholarship will offer more students the chance to attend texas a&m i hope this endowment will assist the students with their college expenses and set them on a career path that is as rewarding and fulfilling as mine was he said the goal is for them to be able to share with their family and friends the impact they made in enhancing their community
1124,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development or patrick wilson assistant director of development
1125,a paper authored by dr joseph sang-ii kwon assistant professor; dr arul jayaraman professor and head of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university; and dongheon lee a doctoral candidate in kwons research group; was selected as an editor's choice paper in the may 2020 aiche journal in the paper titled identification of cell‐to‐cell heterogeneity through systems engineering approaches the researchers offer a new methodology to study a complex problem individual cells in genetically homogeneous populations exhibit a significant degree of heterogeneity in their responses to an external stimulus essentially within groupings of the same type of cells individual cells can exhibit different responses to stimuli current approaches to studying this problem have relied on an individual‐based population model (ibpm) where probability density functions (pdfs) are given to model parameters of the ibpm to capture the cell-to-cell heterogeneity however there is a lack of a systematic methodology to estimate the pdfs from experiments specifically it is difficult to identify which model parameters are heterogeneous and once identified it is computationally expensive to estimate their pdfs moreover because of the experimental limitations and nonlinearity of models not all parameters' pdfs are identifiable to deal with the limitations of the current ibpm the authors utilized process systems engineering concepts to develop a new methodology rather than identifying and estimating pdfs of every parameter only those parameters whose pdfs are identifiable were estimated once these parameters were determined an artificial neural network model was developed to find an empirical relation between these parameters and output pdfs to reduce computational costs of the parameter identification process
1126,dr amir asadi and his team have developed a new manufacturing process for hybrid polymer composites – a vital component in the aerospace automotive marine and defense industries this new process will produce super-strong composites to be used in load-bearing mechanical components in various industry sectors across the nation
1127,asadi is an assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university and his project is funded by the national science foundation my research is like tailoring asadi said you put fabrics together and sew them to make something out of it with the desired properties and level of performance in your mind these nanomaterials are the nanothreads carbon fiber reinforced polymer (cfrp) composites the most commonly used in the aerospace industry are able to withstand the highest load-to-weight ratio which makes them highly desirable for aerospace and defense applications unfortunately the current cfrps are expensive – both in carbon production cost and time needed to manufacture them – and have reached a plateau in their strength capabilities additionally while studies suggest that integrating carbon nanotubes into cfrps can overcome these strength limitations the process includes invasive treatment that leads to uneven distribution of the nanotubes and damaging carbon fibers that can actually counterproductively weaken the final product
1128,in response to this asadi and his team have established a new method of manufacturing that utilizes cellulose nanocrystals in place of chemicals time- and cost-ineffective processes the new process enables the production of nanostructured hybrid cfrp composites at a large scale with desired structure and performance with fewer processing steps asadi said along with reducing the time and expense associated with making these composites the process opens the door for more customizable materials
1129,"right now we have very large and bulky materials and we start to cut them and make something out of them "" said asadi ""if we achieve this process successfully we can start to build complex structures from the nanoscale we would be able to engineer structures from the bottom to the top so this is exciting for me because first of all you are mimicking nature and second of all you can create structures with desired properties without wasting any material"
1130,the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic has led to such a stark shortage of personal protective equipment (ppe) that health care professionals have resorted to wearing trash bags as makeshift gowns many people have come up with their own unique forms of protective gear to enforce social distancing from t-shirt masks to shields made out of pool floats in hopes of mitigating these obstacles texas a&m university researchers dr david staack and dr matt pharr from the college of engineering and dr suresh pillai from the college of agriculture and life sciences began studying ways to recycle ppe through radiation they teamed up using the food technology facility for electron beam and space food research and the plasma engineering and non-equilibrium processing laboratory on the texas a&m campus prior to covid-19 a large portion of staacks research already focused on medical device sterilization and decontamination staack pillai and pharr were working on a similar medical device sterilization project funded by the department of energy that identified how polymers and plastics are changed when directly exposed to electron beams or gamma rays so when the pandemic struck it wasnt difficult for the research team to shift their focus to begin sterilizing and recycling ppe like surgical masks and gowns face shields and most importantly n95 respirators
1131,there are two components of an n95 mask that determine its functionality: filtration and fit the n95 mask is composed of microscopic pores meant to filter out contaminants such as dust and fumes down to about 03 microns combined with an electrostatic charge on the non-woven polypropylene fiber for nanoscale particle trapping the mask is capable of filtering 95% of particles 300 nanometers in size if worn properly designed to fit snuggly around the nose face and chin the mask can prevent germs from escaping through the sides of the mask when speaking or breathing as part of their research staack and his team sent brand new n95 masks and other ppe through their radiation recycling process at the electron beam facility while they found that the mechanical properties of the equipment were not damaged ie the n95 masks surgical masks gowns and face shields were all still able to be worn appropriately the n95 mask no longer filtered 95% of particles the radiated masks ended up going from filtering 95% of particles 300 nanometers in size to only filtering between 50% and 60% of particles a few hundred nanometers in size said staack the sallie and don davis 61 career development professor in mechanical engineering thats still a lot better than a homemade mask made from a t-shirt for perspective a strand of human hair is approximately 80 000 to 100 000 nanometers in diameter additionally some of the electrostatic filtration of the n95 mask is lost from a day of wear hence the disposable nature and while the first option is to immediately reach for a brand-new mask each day pandemics like ones caused by covid-19 can quickly lead to a stark shortage in ppe for health care professionals of course ideally we would want to use brand new ppe right elaborated staack but when thats not around whats the best backup strategy a popular one has been to create homemade masks out of t-shirts but dr mike moreno dr john criscione and dr sarah brooks at texas a&m have shown that t-shirt masks only filter about 10% of particles it also doesnt conform well to the face leaving germs and contaminants likely to enter and escape making recycled ppe a viable second-place strategy so what does ppe recycling look like in the real world
1132,ideally a hospital would box up their used ppe and send it to a radiation facility to be recycled rather than disposing of them the electron beam facility is divided in half; one side is designated for contaminated equipment and the other is for clean equipment post-recycling if the hospital is local a delivery truck will arrive at the facilitys loading dock on the contaminated side the boxes of ppe would be loaded onto a conveyer belt moving at three feet per minute and be transported throughout the facility to be radiated the box passes under a 10-million-electron volt beam and radiates the box with a dose of 25 kilojoules per kilogram –a typical food and drug administration-recommended (fda) dose for medical device sterilization this completely sterilizes anything on or within the box by breaking dna and rna bonds preventing any living organism from reproducing the box then travels to the clean side of the facility where a new truck transports the treated material back to the hospital it came from and the ppe can be redistributed within the hospital electron beam irradiation is a common proven and fda-approved method of medical device sterilization irradiation by electron beam gamma and x-ray methods account for approximately 50% of the market of all medical devices sterilized worldwide the electron beam facility is already equipped for industrial use and based on staacks research is able to process and recycle 10 000 masks an hour theres still some logistical issues were working through said staack can we do it safely can masks be distributed to someone other than the original user these are the questions were researching now so that if something happens in the short term like another wave of covid-19 were ready and if something happens in the long term were more knowledgeable about it there are approximately 50 to 100 electron beam facilities in the united states alone staacks goal is to be able to share the teams results and distribute this critical information around the world so that everyone is better equipped to tackle a global pandemic
1133,dr michael johnson was recently recognized with two awards from the american society for engineering education (asee) he received both the frederick j berger award and the prestigious national engineering technology teaching award having received his bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from michigan state university and his masters and doctoral degrees from the massachusetts institute of technology johnson has called texas a&m university his home since august 2007 in addition to a passion for education johnson professor and associate department head for undergraduate studies in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution conducts research on computer-aided design methodology and cost modeling and analysis of product development and manufacturing systems his multitude of honors awards and publications stand in testament to his dedication for furthering education and engineering technology named in honor of the long-time executive director and sponsor of the city university of new yorks tau alpha pi branch the frederick j berger award recognizes both programmatic and individual excellence in engineering technology education – celebrating both the accomplishments of the department and individual recipient i was the advisor for the texas gamma chapter of tau alpha pi and served as tau alpha pi national president johnson said i really appreciate the legacy of frederick berger and what he has meant to the engineering technology community established to identify the nations more influential educators in the applied engineering and/or engineering technology education the national engineering technology teaching award honors leaders in education who have demonstrated enhanced learning experiences that have enabled students to excel its goal is to celebrate individuals whose love of teaching has inspired them to go above and beyond what is expected of faculty in and out of the classroom to motivate students to strive to better themselves and make the world a better place i am honored to win a national teaching award in engineering technology where there are so many dedicated and excellent teachers johnson said i would like to thank dr reza langari for nominating me the engineering technology council the engineering technology division and the journal of engineering technology who funds the award i would also like to thank my colleagues and students who wrote support letters for me
1134,dr matthew yarnold assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university received the 2020 milek faculty fellowship award from the american institute of steel construction (aisc)he received the fellowship for his proposal to numerically and experimentally evaluate the behavior of steel hot rolled asymmetric i-beams for future production in the united states each year aisc selects a promising university faculty member for the four-year $50 000-per-year awardthe national recognition that comes from the aisc milek fellowship will have a lasting impact on my future career yarnold said receiving the fellowship is truly an honor this has been a goal of mine for many yearsyarnolds research has the potential to benefit the steel industry through further expansion of steel floor systems many buildings in the united states are built with reinforced concrete and steel beams the idea is to manufacture hot rolling asymmetric i-shapes which structurally can be more efficient and allow for shallower depths using conventional composite floor systems if successful in this research yarnold said this method could become a standard in building design and constructionwe are exploring everything from their manufacturing and how they would behave during construction to their performance in a fully constructed building he saidyarnolds research includes structural steel behavior bridge engineering the experimental assessment of structural systems novel techniques for structural health monitoring and engineering education he has extensive experience with the experimental testing of structural systems and has led research projects for the national science foundation state departments of transportation and private engineering firms he is an active member of several national committees through the american society of civil engineers and the transportation research boardyarnold has more than 15 years of structural engineering research and design experience he began his career at lehigh university where he received his bachelors and masters degrees following graduation he accepted a position with the engineering firm ammann & whitney where he contributed to more than 15 bridge design and rehabilitation projects while also obtaining his professional engineering license after a successful career as a consultant he returned to academia and completed his doctoral degree at drexel university he joined the department in 2017
1135,clara cliver graduated with the novel concept creation and commercialization (c3) certificate that has allowed her and her peers to hone their entrepreneurial skills cliver explains how being one of the first recipients has set her apart and become a part of who she is q: did you have a specific awakening when you realized the c3 certificate was the perfect fit for you a: when i first found out about the engineering entrepreneurship program i decided to get involved slowly by taking the one-hour seminar class each speaker came in and shared their successes and failures as an entrepreneur there was something in each speaker that i identified with and saw in myself it became clear to me that i had this entrepreneurial spirit and should continue to develop it through the certificate q: what sense of accomplishment has this certificate given you as one of the first recipients a: there is a sense of excitement that comes with being one of the first recipients but the most exciting thing for me is to be able to watch this program grow it is extremely young and will only continue to develop the huge benefit i received from this program will be nothing compared to the benefit of it in the coming years i am looking forward to seeing the aggie entrepreneurs and businesses that come out of this program q: how would you describe your overall experience with engineering entrepreneurship a: absolutely incredible getting involved in the engineering entrepreneurship program was the best thing i did during college it gave me a community of other entrepreneurial-minded students that i did not find in my major the professors and other entrepreneurs i have in my network because of this program is invaluable q: what would you recommend to other students that are interested in the certificate a: get the certificate i was able to work with my advisors and get my c3 classes to count toward my degree plan as a result i was able to graduate earlier than i had expected so definitely work with your advisors to see how you can double-dip for credits q: what type of students do you think should pursue the certificate and what first steps should they take to see if its right for them a: i think there is benefit in this certificate for everyone but i believe students who go beyond the technical components of a design and look at the big picture of their design and its impact on the customer market environment etc should definitely get the certificate to see if the certificate is right for you i would suggest taking the seminar class first it is a really easy way to be exposed to what entrepreneurship is without having a huge commitment to ones schedule q: how has this certificate impacted your passion for your major a: as an industrial engineer my job is to make things better faster and cheaper this certificate reinforced my ability to do that through learning and practicing skills such as customer interviews this certificate not only helped me become an entrepreneur but it has made me a better engineer q: is there anything else that you would like to add a: getting the c3 certificate does not mean you have to want to start your own company this certificate showed me that i can apply my entrepreneurial spirit within a company however the best benefit this certificate gave me is the confidence that if i ever want to start a company i know the basics of what needs to happen choosing to get this certificate opened up great opportunities for my future which is exactly what an entrepreneur does – they seize opportunity see more information on the c3 certificate
1136,the texas a&m university student chapter of the society of women engineers (swe) earned the 2020 adair affiliated student organization of the year in recognition of their work and contribution to the university and community the adair award honors one organization on campus annually that embodies the aggie values both in their mission and in the ability of their leadership to mentor and positively influence their members president and biomedical engineer gabby adame said that her organization has constantly strived for improved growth within the organizations programs and their membership while swe is one of the largest engineering organizations on campus we want to have a bigger impact beyond that adame said in aiming for this the organization has held outreach programs professional development events hosted diversity career fairs and held leadership retreats this year adame decided to establish a new officer position dedicated to helping freshmen through the entry-to-a-major process and their freshman mini-conference throughout this year my main focus has been to develop our officer team to become better leaders and better people adame said while this is a hard task i believe that it is our duty to ensure that our leadership team becomes even better than they were before
1137,vice president and chemical engineering student gabi hernandez said that their main focus in helping swe stand out was to try new things and take risks on events that may or may not be successful i was absolutely ecstatic when i heard that swe won the adair award hernandez said i am so proud of everyone on the executive team the officer team and all of our members who give so much to swe so the organization can positively impact students inside and outside of swe starting next fall hernandez will assume the role of president and hopes to emphasize development for the members professionally academically and personally to prepare them for leading with integrity in their journey through college and into their career to do this she wants to establish a leadership development program for upperclassmen to help them transition into the professional world i remember joining as a freshman three years ago and thinking that the organization was already so large that i could not even imagine much more growth hernandez said since then swes membership and various programs have grown a lot the largest being our outreach programs adame knows that every organization has its strengths and weaknesses and she is incredibly proud to have been a part of the last four years her organization has made a lot of changes within the past year alone and said that her members should each feel great joy in knowing that they were able to innovate their positions and create outstanding programs i think it was perfect timing for our organization and while i had a distinct vision for where i wanted the year to go it was great to see how everyone interpreted my hope for a better organization into their programs adame said interested in joining swe visit the swe website for more information you can also send an email to membership@swetamuorg​ to get on their listserv or ask questions
1138,porous rock containing oil and natural gas are buried so deep inside the earth that shale operators rely on complex models of the underground environment to estimate fossil fuel recovery these simulations are notoriously complex requiring highly-skilled operators to run them these factors indirectly impact the cost of shale oil production and ultimately how much consumers pay for their fuel researchers at texas a&m university have now developed an analytical procedure that can be used in spreadsheets to predict the amount of oil and gas that can be recovered from newly drilled wells by modeling the pattern of oil and gas flow from older wells in the same drilling field the researchers said they can now accurately forecast the rate of oil and gas flow for newer wells a framework that is quicker and easier to use than complicated reservoir simulations in the oil and gas industry professionals use sophisticated reservoir simulators to get a sense of how much hydrocarbons can be recovered from the layers below the earths surface these simulations are very useful but extremely time-consuming and computationally intense said dr ruud weijermars professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering we can now do the same kind of predictions as these simulations in a spreadsheet environment which is much faster saving a lot of time and cost for shale operators without loss of accuracy the researchers described their findings in the march issue of the journal energies shale rocks containing oil and gas are crammed within layers that are between 3 000 and 14 000 feet underground to access these fossil fuels holes are first drilled vertically into the ground with the help of high-powered drills to reach the shale rock layers the drill bit then moves in horizontally parallel to the shale deposits when the rocks surrounding the horizontal borehole are forced to crack by hydraulic fracturing they begin to release valuable oil and natural gas molecules which then rush into the borehole and rise up to storage tanks at the surface before the drilling operation begins a 3d model of the reservoir is generally created to predict the amount of oil that can be recovered from the wells these models consider the permeability of rocks underground geography and seismic features among other parameters with these inputs in place the model virtually tiles the reservoir into small blocks or cells and then simulates the flow of oil through these individual blocks based on the difference in pressure on the different faces of the block these simulations can run from hours to days to weeks depending upon the number of blocks within a grid said weijermars so if the reservoir model has a billion cells you would have to compute how these billion cells behave and interact to know what the resulting oil flow will be to circumvent these complicated mathematical computations weijermars and his team focused their attention on the flow of oil within a single cell in an existing well first they calculated the flow of oil from the fracture site into the single cell using physics-based equations by assuming that all the flow cells within a well are identical they were able to scale up and obtain the oil flow rate for a period of several months time­ using an analytical procedure called decline curve analysis
1139,the researchers then compared the predictions made by their method against those of the simulations and found that the two matched very well however unlike complex simulations the researchers said their spreadsheet-based analysis was much quicker once the researchers modeled the flow rate from an existing well they could predict and improve the behavior of new wells by tweaking some aspect of the flow cells such as the height length or spacing of hydraulic fractures and between wells furthermore they noted that this type of analysis could be done before drilling the new wells so that oil and gas recovery from the lease region can be maximized the researchers also said that unlike reservoir simulations that require highly trained professionals to run them their spreadsheets can be used by technicians with very little training shale operators need to cut costs tremendously because of low global prices of crude oil however they also need to forecast and improve the performance of the new wells that they plan to drill said weijermars we have tested our spreadsheet-based flow-cell analysis against sophisticated reservoir simulators in a series of studies and the flow-cell model does a great job this is good news for shale operators our technique helps them cut costs and is also much faster other contributors to this research include kiran nandlal dr aadi khanal and dr fatih tugan from the petroleum engineering department this article is part of a series of papers published by weijermars and his team on fractured well performance this research was funded by the crisman-berg hughes consortium and startup funds from the texas a&m engineering experiment station
1140,a team of five students in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university worked over two semesters to find new and adaptable solutions to infant ear deformations where all the material is there just not in the right place as their senior capstone project the team collaborated with an external sponsor to solve a real-world problem effectively it might to some people just be considered a cosmetic procedure but it actually can cause a huge psychological toll on that child as they're growing up in severe cases it can lead to hearing loss said team member ivanna arizpe that's something that we want to limit and resolve the problem before anything can cause them harm the teams goal was to 3d print a personalized treatment plan to create alternative devices to the generic products on the market which arent exactly fit for infants time is of the essence for these devices as an infants ear is only malleable for about the first three months after birth after that the problem would likely need plastic surgery to fix
1141,but before they could create the device the team first had to develop ways to scan mold and 3d print the ear effectively the team ran into the challenges including finding ways to effectively scan an ear and create a process that health professionals will feel comfortable using we need to find a way to make this process easy and manageable for doctors to do so they're not scared to approach this treatment plan said kyle robinson the learning curve is very quick weve really made it a focus because even if we come up with the best device it's not going to ever be accepted if doctors have no idea how to use it to help address the learning curve the team developed a standard operating procedure for technicians to enable them to troubleshoot issues along the way the team also found ways to celebrate their progress they kept every version of their molds and scans using a variety of products not formerly designed for medical devices such as fish-tank sealant and modeling clay their first successful 3d-printed ear became a sort of mascot the team called ear-nesto unlike most capstone projects the team worked with two sponsors from texas childrens hospital dr sarah frommer and dr yi-chun carol liu who submitted similar need statements
1142,darby ballard said interacting and building relationships with both sponsors made a world of difference throughout the project the sponsors offered their thoughts and opinions but left much of the projects concept to the students you can never forget that part of engineering is creativity being able to take something from concept to prototype and integrating your own twists on that in the way that you want i think that aspect is something that i was starting to forget prior to this project ballard said thats one of the reasons i wanted to do engineering because you do get to be imaginative with what you create having outside sponsors gave the team the chance to travel and meet with an actual patient even having the opportunity to scan an infants ear for reference meagan makarczyk said they received positive reactions from their sponsors and other physicians when they demonstrated their modeling software this is the application of our education and seeing it and being successful with it helps me know that in the future wherever whatever i do with my life i will be able to achieve something like this because i've already seen results makarczyk said jacob rodriguez said he could already see how the skills gained from the project can apply to life after graduation being a part of this project gave me a better idea of what to expect because studying medical devices in class is one thing but if you have a hands-on experience you get more of an idea of how to apply your skills in the real world and how to work better with the team rodriguez said weve gotten to see how a medical device we make can help people live better lives thats a pretty rewarding experience
1143,mechanical engineering former student dr sung-hwa jeung has been awarded the 2020 burt newkirk investigator award by the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) jeung who graduated in 2017 with his doctoral degree from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was recognized for his contributions in the area of dampers in rotordynamics and collaborative engineering while at texas a&m jeung was advised by dr luis san andres mast-childs chair professor in the department dr jeung in spite of his young age has made notable and permanent contributions to the field of fluid film lubrication and rotordynamics of turbomachinery san andres said he epitomizes the modern engineer scholar he is truly innovative moving inventions into commercial engineered applications in little time and with minimum resources he can do more with less and will envision an opportunity where other only see problems or limitations recipients for the award must be under the age of 40 a member of asme and have made notable contributions to the field of tribology in research or development as evidenced by important tribology publications jeung is the third graduate from san andres group to be selected for the award in the last 20 years previous recipients include tae-ho kim in 2013 and sergio diaz in 2003
1144,henry bartell zachry jr ‘54 was a lot of things to texas a&m university distinguished and outstanding alumnus corps of cadets hall of honor member and avid supporterzachry who passed away june 10 at age 86 leaves a legacy of extraordinary leadership service and support for the college of engineering he was a significant force in the construction industry as the leader of the­ infrastructure company hb zachry company which was initially founded by his father and fellow aggie hb pat zachry sr 22bartell zachry was outstanding in every aspect an accomplished engineer wise leader and humble man of integrity said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering he leaves a legacy that will impact many including this university and the field of civil engineering he embodied the core value of selfless service and he will be deeply missed by all who knew himzachrys unwavering support of the university led him to fund two president's endowed scholarships in memory of his father he and his family company and foundation also created faculty chairs professorships and fellowships and funded many scholarships for exceptional civil engineering studentsin 2005 the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering was named in honor of the zachry familyborn in 1933 zachry grew up learning the values of hard work and civic responsibility he lived in san antonio for most of his life after graduating from high school zachry followed in his father's footsteps and enrolled at texas a&m where he studied civil engineering and was a member of the corps of cadetsafter college he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the united states air force having received his pilot's license at 16 he trained as a fighter pilot which only heightened his lifelong love of airplanes he was honorably discharged in 1957 then returned to san antonio to join hb zachry companyduring his 65-year tenure with hb zachry company he did not seek individual recognition but preferred collaborating as part of a team in terms of the zachry company's global reach and stability his accomplishments can be measured objectively in the numerous industry awards he received for excellence in management and construction and in his induction into the texas business hall of fame in 2000 zachry's definition of success had little to do with traditional business measureshe was a beacon of steadiness; his analytical mind and his unshakable patience provided stability at home at work and in his many civic endeavors zachry gave unselfishly to his family and business and devoted a significant amount of time serving the community state and nationzachry is survived by his wife of 60 years mollie; son john and his wife laura; son david and his wife karen lee; daughter anne rochelle and her husband jeff; daughter ellen carrie and her husband chris; and grandchildren bart joe and will zachry; sam olivia and henry zachry; david thomas mollie lindsey and sallie rochelle; and john elizabeth and andrew carrie he is also survived by his sisters mary pat stumberg and suzanne word and his brother jim zachry and his wife nancy as well as numerous nieces and nephews
1145,each year engineering students from all over the united states gear up for the national science foundations (nsf) research experiences for undergraduates (reu) program and other research internships this year started off no different as students prepared their applications received acceptance letters from the programs of their choice and were eagerly awaiting their internships but as the covid-19 pandemic began to grip the nation campuses around the country shut down and most reu programs came to a screeching halt in the midst of the chaos caused by covid-19 texas a&m universitys online research experiences for undergraduates program or o-reu began to take shape so that students didnt miss out on this important opportunity a regular residence-based reu program takes around a year to set up and organize and we had basically two months time to set up our online reu program said dr michael demkowicz associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering we were reinventing the wheel for a fully remote version of the reu program in very little time the scale of the undertaking was unprecedented unlike traditional reu programs that admit around 10-15 students the texas a&m o-reu program planned on accepting four times that number in addition to finding mentors to guide students through their research projects schedule seminars and organize other training opportunities demkowicz and his team had to raise funds for more than $250 000 to support the students advertise the program collect applications and review them on an accelerated timeline the initiative to create o-reu started in the department of materials science and engineering and grew into a college-wide program to students whose reu programs had been canceled news about o-reu offered a ray of hope my original summer internship got canceled said matthew kuner from the georgia institute of technology but i was drawn to the prospect of the o-reu program because i would be given a research position that was essentially guaranteed which is tough to find in today's climate
1146,demkowicz recalled that when they first opened up the application process they had around a half dozen applications but soon the applications started to pour in the flow of applications grew exponentially he said the rate at which applications were coming in was much greater than what we could actually process based on the availability of research mentors and students research interests demkowicz and his team accepted a total of 58 students into the o-reu program about a third of them were applicants previously accepted into texas a&m reus and the rest were new applicants from all over the country the o-reu program is one of the pioneering programs conceived and deployed this summer at texas a&m said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director in the texas a&m engineering experiment station associate vice chancellor for engineering research and professor in the department of aerospace engineering we wanted to give an opportunity to undergraduates from around the nation to work with multidisciplinary research groups and get a unique experience in conducting research remotely it was such a great opportunity that when briteny fang from the university of texas at austin heard about being accepted in the o-reu program her parents assumed that this fully paid fully remote internship must be a scam i actually had to arrange a teleconference call to speak with her and reassure her that i'm never going to ask her for her credit card number and that we are actually launching the o-reu program demkowicz recalled in addition to taking a deep dive into research students attend seminars hone their technical communication skills and network with scientists within and outside of texas a&m in particular two national laboratories los alamos national laboratory and sandia laboratories are supporting and mentoring o-reu students these unique aspects of the o-reu program are in place to make students better prepared for graduate school the way the o-reu has been laid out also gives me the chance to work on my presentation skills and provides more things to showcase for my graduate school applications said advika chasetti a student from the university of north texas for the faculty who are mentoring students the o-reu program is an opportunity to interact with students who might apply to the college of engineerings graduate programs also by adapting the reu program to an online platform the organizers have put the spotlight on research areas such as artificial intelligence computational modeling theory and data-driven topics in science and engineering that do not involve laboratory experimentation it is a unique moment students found themselves with their summer plans canceled while witnessing our society's reliance on science and engineering to get our world out of this crisis said dr dilma da silva associate dean of faculty success and professor in the department of computer science and engineering the o-reu program enables students to engage in research projects remotely providing them with a community to support their learning and a roadmap to explore new ideas in addition to nsf other sponsors of the o-reu program include the center for research excellence on dynamically deformed solids the texas a&m nasa university leadership initiative the texas a&m national laboratories office the texas a&m institute for data science the texas a&m high performance research computing center los alamos national laboratory and sandia national laboratory
1147,o-reu adapts elements of a traditional reu program into a fully online format with no residence requirement it started within the department of material sciences and engineering and expanded to the college of engineering like traditional reus texas a&ms o-reu program is designed to give undergraduates real-world working experience in scientific research this year the o-reu program received over 200 applications from a diverse set of students from around the country the 58 students who were selected for the program will each receive a stipend of $5000 for their work over the summer in addition to research experience under the guidance of a mentor o-reu students will participate in numerous enrichment activities such as online lectures professional development seminars in technical communication and workshops on preparing graduate school applications please visit https://oreuengrtamuedu/ to learn more about the o-reu program
1148,who dr haitham abu-rub professor and managing director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station smart grid center at texas a&m university at qatar what abu-rub and his team are collaborating on a project to combine hybrid renewable energy sources such as solar and wind with different energy storage technologies the goal of this project is to develop a control technique that can manage all components (sources loads etc) in the microgrid in harmony it means that the developed control technique not only ensures stability but also efficient use of resources is guaranteed a microgrid is a localized group of electricity that can connect with the power grid but can also disconnect and function on its own if needed (islanded) microgrids are the building blocks of the smart grid and they play a crucial role in energy conservation and the power reliability efficiency and quality of power systems this project is set apart from others because the teams focus is on developing a control and management strategy for multiple microgrids – grid-connected or islanded – and also considers realistic inputs of hybrid renewable energy sources into the grid the idea is to increase the integration of renewable energy sources within the microgrids and to reduce their reliance on the main electric grid to do this the team is implementing an internal energy exchange algorithm the effectiveness of the proposed control and management system is that it is online real-time and dynamic abu-rub said the project is funded by qatar national research fund why its important this project has numerous social health economic and environmental benefits such as the expansion of renewable energy sources achieving a more energy-efficient power grid a low carbon foot print the creation of new jobs and more a multinational team with high experience are partnering in this research which makes it very interesting abu-rub said the team the research team also includes dr miroslav begovic department head and carolyn s & tommie e lohman ‘59 professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university; dr sergio vazquez and dr leopoldo garcia franquelo from the universidad de sevilla in electronics engineering; and dr sertac bayhan senior scientist at qatar environment and research institute
1149,although most broken bones can be mended with a firm cast and a generous measure of tender loving care more complicated fractures require treatments like bone grafting researchers at texas a&m university have now created superior bone grafts using primitive stem cells they found that these cells help create very fertile scaffolds needed for the bone to regenerate at the site of repair the researchers said these grafts could be used to promote swift and precise bone healing so that patients maximally benefit from the surgical intervention there are several problems that can occur with orthopedic implants like inflammation and pain also they can loosen requiring revision surgeries that are often more complicated than the original surgery to put in the implant dr roland kaunas associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering and a corresponding author on the study so by speeding up the bone healing process our material can potentially reduce the number of these revision surgeries the researchers have published their findings in the june issue of the journal nature communications each year around 600 000 people in the united states experience delayed or incomplete bone healing for some of these cases physicians turn to surgical procedures that involve transplanting bone tissue to the repair site these bone grafts have generally come from two sources: the patients own bone from another location on the body called autografts or highly-processed human cadaver bones however both types of bone grafts have their share of drawbacks for example autografts require additional surgery for bone tissue extraction increasing the recovery time for patients and sometimes chronic pain on the other hand grafts derived from cadaver bone preclude the need for two surgeries but these transplants tend to be devoid of many of the biomolecules that promote bone repair grafts from cadaver bone have some of the physical properties of bone and even a little bit of the biological essence but they are very depleted in terms of their functionality said dr carl gregory associate professor at the texas a&m health science center also a corresponding author on the study what we wanted to do was engineer a bone graft where we could experimentally crank up the gears so to speak and make it more biologically active previous studies have shown that stem cells particularly a type called mesenchymal stem cells can be used to produce bone grafts that are biologically active in particular these cells convert to bone cells that produce the materials required to make a scaffolding or the extracellular matrix that bones need for their growth and survival however these stem cells are usually extracted from the marrow of an adult bone and are as a result older their age affects the cells ability to divide and produce more of the precious extracellular matrix kaunas said to circumvent this problem the researchers turned to the cellular ancestors of mesenchymal stem cells called pluripotent stem cells unlike adult mesenchymal cells that have a relatively short lifetime they noted that these primitive cells can keep proliferating thereby creating an unlimited supply of mesenchymal stem cells needed to make the extracellular matrix for bone grafts they added that pluripotent cells can be made by genetically reprogramming donated adult cells
1150,when the researchers experimentally induced the pluripotent stem cells to make brand new mesenchymal stem cells they were able to generate an extracellular matrix that was far more biologically active compared to that generated by mesenchymal cells obtained from adult bone our materials were not just enriched in the biological molecules that are required to make the chunky part of bone tissue but also growth factors that drive blood vessel formation said gregory to test the efficacy of their scaffolding material as a bone graft they then carefully extracted and purified the enriched extracellular matrix and then implanted it at a site of bone defects upon examining the status of bone repair in a few weeks they found that their pluripotent stem-cell-derived matrix was five to sixfold more effective than the best fda-approved graft stimulator bone repair assays using the gold standard of grafts like those administered with the powerful bone growth stimulator called bone morphogenic protein-2 can take about eight weeks but we were getting complete healing in four weeks said gregory so under these conditions our material surpassed the efficacy of bone morphogenic protein-2 by a longshot indicating that it is a vast improvement of current bone repair technologies the researchers also said that from a clinical standpoint the grafts can be incorporated into numerous engineered implants such as 3d-printed implants or metal screws so that these parts integrate better with the surrounding bone they also noted that the bone grafts will also be easier to produce and hence are advantageous from a manufacturing standpoint our material is very promising because the pluripotent stem cells can ideally generate many batches of the extracellular matrix from just a single donor which will greatly simplify the large-scale manufacturing of these bone grafts said kaunas other contributors to this research include dr eoin mcneill dr suzanne zeitouni simin pan andrew haskell michael cesarek daniel tahan bret clough qingguo zhao christopher kung dr fei liu and mayra garcia from the texas a&m health science center; lauren dobson and dr brian saunders from the texas a&m college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences; and dr ulf krause from the university hospital muenster germany this research is funded by the national institute of arthritis and musculoskeletal and skin diseases an investigator-initiated award from the cancer prevention research institute of texas and an x-grant from the texas a&m presidents excellence fund
1151,as the covid-19 pandemic puts more demands on research many engineers have found ways to adapt their current projects to help solve these problems jose wippold doctoral student in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is adapting the high-throughput microfluidic sensor that he has developed to expedite the process of looking for neutralizing antibodies that can prevent covid-19 for his doctoral work wippold works in the multidisciplinary nanobio systems lab in the department of electrical and computer engineering directed by dr arum han his project has been working on developing a system that can rapidly detect neutralizing antibodies molecules that can block the infection of host cells by viruses using a droplet microfluidics-based lab-on-a-chip approach called the platform for the rapid evaluation of antibody success using integrated microfluidics enabled technology or prescient this platform allows human b cells encapsulated within a water-in-oil emulsion droplet to be scanned on a device the size of a credit card it will look for those particular b cells that produce infection-neutralizing antibodies at a speed of 10s to 100s per second much faster than what conventional tools can perform wippold said prescient as a project started about four years ago as a means to combat emerging viral threats he saw how his work could easily shift to help develop vaccines and immunotherapeutic agents for covid-19 because discovering and identifying a neutralizing antibody to fight the virus and prevent infection is the first step in such countermeasure development prescient can quickly perform this test on a large number of samples which can help speed up the process to further understand covid-19 and what antibodies may be able to fight against it
1152,i truly believe prescient has the chance to accelerate our neutralizing antibody discovery process and rapidly take it to a level that is capable of combating emerging viral threats wippold said wippold is supported by a department of defense graduate smart scholarship and wanted to join the army research laboratorys biotech group to work in sensors and electronic devices he said he appreciates the high levels of support expertise and access to unique equipment provided through the partnership since restrictions have been put in place to limit the spread of covid-19 wippold said he can continue to work in the lab but follows new guidelines he wears a mask and gloves at all times in the lab and meticulously and repetitively decontaminates surfaces in the lab among other adaptations wippold said this hasnt deterred him; the pandemic has only renewed his motivation to continue pushing the boundaries of biotechnology medicine and patient health with a new generation of advanced technologies for me personally the current pandemic has highlighted exactly why we need a platform like the one i have been developing over the last four years wippold said also the need for immediate therapeutics has opened up opportunities to apply my biochip into potentially aiding the discovery process for sars-cov-2 neutralizing antibodies
1153,dr cynthia hipwell is bringing her innovation business process experience to the classroom hipwell tees eminent professor in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering has developed a new course called developing an innovation mindset and has plans for a new program to better prepare doctoral students for industry called impact r&d (innovation mind and skillsets for performance acceleration in complex technology research and development) these programs will teach students how to improve their personal innovativeness understand system and business impact adapt to complex technology landscapes move more quickly with agile and iterative experimentation and manage teams for improved creativity and innovation based upon corporate and national lab interest these programs are also being rolled out into workforce development modules and will be part of a texas a&m engineering experiment station invent certificate offered in partnership with the engineering entrepreneurship program hipwell established the innovation tools and entrepreneurial new technology (invent) lab at texas a&m university where she and her team are pursuing the development of tools and methods capable of delivering faster higher-impact innovations and feasibility studies that indicate commercial viability using her wealth of experience in nanotechnology tribology sensors and actuators hipwell and her team are working on numerous projects in the invent lab including improved understanding of the finger-device interface for the optimal performance of haptic (touch-based) devices models and characterization tools to examine friction and adhesion in robotic locomotion and dexterous manipulation functions and the pursuit of high-resolution flexible tactile sensors and actuators to be used in robotic and haptic human-machine interface applications before accepting a faculty position in the mechanical engineering in 2017 hipwell worked 21 years as a technology and business process innovator developing industry-leading technologies as well as new tools and methods to accelerate the pace of technology development and increase business impact hipwell is a fellow of the national academy of inventors and a member of the national academy of engineering she was also a recipient of texas gov greg abbotts 2017-18 governors university research initiative grant
1154,"in petroleum engineering circles the word unconventional typically applies to oil and gas reservoir classification but it could also define enrique losoya's educational and internship experiences at texas a&m university as a doctoral student in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering losoya has passionately explored the idea that a multidisciplined approach to science and math in each engineering discipline develops a better understanding of all disciplines and how they relate to each other this theory is why he was open to developing simulation or visual modeling software for machine-guided drilling deep underground and using this same knowledge of math science and soil properties to assist in lunar landing simulations for nasa growing up losoya grew up in playa del carmen mexico where he helped with his dad's handicraft business the income sent him to an academically ranked high school where he studied math and science yet losoya believed he would follow in his father's footsteps a local businessman who admired losoyas parents for their work ethic and hopes for their sons future financed his college education ""i am the first in my immediate family to graduate college "" said losoya ""i was always into computers and making little robots in high school so i wound up with a bachelor of science in mechatronics engineering from modelo university"""
1155,"aggie impressions while a student at modelo losoya came to the mechanical engineering department at texas a&m on an international undergraduate summer research experience he had the opportunity to work on an exciting robotics project but it was his aggie doctoral mentor who truly impressed him ""he was doing fancy math and simulations "" said losoya ""it was so exciting he would grab a pencil and a piece of paper and start explaining i wanted to be just like him someday"" petroleum engineering path after graduation losoya pursued a masters degree in petroleum engineering because mexico was encouraging oil and gas development he was excited to discover the top-ranked petroleum engineering department was at texas a&m since his bachelor's degree was not in petroleum engineering losoya had to take a few courses in the subject his first semester to catch up ""mechatronics mixes electronics programming robotics and mechanical engineering "" said losoya ""taking petroleum courses taught me how the industry works and i found drilling engineering was the way to go for me because it's more mechanical"""
1156,"academic track losoya chose dr eduardo gildin associate professor and class of 1975 dvg developmental professor as his advisor because gildin with a background in aerospace and mechanical engineering had similar passions for machine systems and unique skillsets in data usage that aligned with his ideas ""i believe a drilling engineer for the future needs to know programming and data science to be able to generate new ideas and optimize whatever processes are in companies "" losoya said ""i'm not a conventional petroleum student and i needed a mentor who was compatible with that during his time as a master's student losoya impressed gildin with his research and growing leadership potential in spring 2017 losoya led a team of students to first place in an automated drilling competition known as drillbotics the team created a sensing and control system design that led to a patent application and gildin encouraged losoya to enter the phd program that year internship experiences in the summer of 2017 losoya accepted an internship with intuitive machines (im) which provides autonomous system solutions to other companies at im he was tasked with creating the downhole torque and drag and power pressure models needed for a clients drilling simulator trainer ""downhole conditions have sustained vibrations high g-force accelerations and magnetic interference explained losoya we had to eliminate this noise in the data and filter it to estimate the positioning of the drill bit in real-time for the simulations it was quite a challenge but the client was happy with the results"" im hired losoya the next summer for a project from nasa involving a reusable lunar lander system when he had doubts about his abilities to help they assured him his knowledge would come in handy ""i realized there were a lot of similarities with this project and my drilling research "" he said ""i used an open-source numerical simulation engine i was working on for drilling and the same skills from the previous internship to develop simulations of the forces and gravity and soil dynamic interactions the lunar lander would experience on the moon automated drilling armed with a better understanding of modeling dynamics generating artificial data sets and simulated data losoya was ready for the next challenge: helping his advisor on an autonomous drilling project with e-spectrum for the department of energy they created a system that gathers data during actual drilling processes to accurately simulate real-time conditions underground this way drilling operators can react faster to issues encountered downhole the system features machine-learning capabilities meaning drilling in the future could be guided by the system with minimal human oversight ""the ultimate goal is automating the overall drilling process for safer and consistent operations "" losoya said ""we have the processing capacity and mature technology to automate drilling under harsh environments now nasa is talking about drilling on mars"" finding overlap from underground to outer space losoya is keeping his mind open to future possibilities he has also become the same encouraging aggie mentor he admired years ago ""don't underestimate the opportunities a&m gives you "" said losoya ""try to attend two or three different department seminars the more you go to these presentations the more you realize there are strong fundamental overlaps in engineering and science it's the sum of the concepts and methods in these specializations that lead to innovative ideas that overcome most engineering challenges"""
1157,when babies are born with complications such as cardiovascular issues that require surgery their other systems especially the kidneys need support in the neonatal intensive care unit babies receive this support through peritoneal dialysis which helps soak up and remove waste through a series of tubes however this process is currently done by hand something that a team of five students in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university aimed to change the team worked with texas childrens hospital during their senior year to develop an automated system nurses who do this procedure manually visit the infant every 45 minutes to complete the process making it labor-intensive an automated machine would save time and labor and allow the nurses to act as a second pair of eyes from our research we haven't found an automated infant peritoneal dialysis machine everything has been for ages three and up for automated dialysis said dean villanueva from the research so far we think it's going to be one of the first automated versions of the infant peritoneal dialysis
1158,challenges brought the team back to the drawing board several times such as temperature control working with new coding software and making the equipment easy to use each time by assisting each other and playing to their skills the members came up with innovative solutions there were a lot of components that we didn't know coming into this how many components that we're going to be manipulating and creating said marissa heintschel i think we've broken it up pretty well between our team using our strengths and advantages to the best of our abilities this is the first class where we have full discretion over everything said ashwin mukund a lot of classes have guidelines and ‘okay if this goes wrong you can go to a teacher you can go to someone but this class its really all on us to go reach out to whatever we need to reach out on and try to fix our problems ourselves
1159,at the end of the two-semester project the team members reflected on the lessons they had learned olivia moss said the support from their sponsor has been invaluable not only to help with the project itself but also learning how to communicate with other fields outside of engineering while she can give us answers it's not the same way an engineer would deliver the answer so there has been a learning curve moss said it's been really good because she cares and she has really high expectations for us which has been good others like stacy nuñez discussed how the skills theyve gained would help them in their future careers i am going into a clinical engineering role where i'll be working with doctors going into surgeries etc nuñez said i think it's helped me learn how to work effectively in a group because i'll be working with other engineers and to be able to dynamically talk about problems and solutions
1160,nada kortam is a senior in the department of electrical and computer engineering she is a member of the international student mentors association and the founder and president of the engineering at galveston student association kortam shares her passion for helping others and her experiences of being an international student as well as a student who originally started her academic career at texas a&m university at galveston q how did you get involved in the international student mentors association a one of my friends last spring told me about her involvement with the international student mentors association she invited me and my roommates to get together with her and her mentee and her mentee was really nice; she was from norway i just thought it was really cool that you get to have someone that is not from the us and you get to mentor them throughout that semester i applied that day and later got an interview with them and was accepted last semester i had a mentee; he was from india and a graduate student in mechanical engineering it was really fun to just get to know someone not living here and get to know about his culture he watched his first american football game here at (texas) a&m it was just really cool mentoring someone from outside of the us q where are you from originally a i am originally from egypt we moved to the us in 2011 i didnt really have someone to help me through the transition because its literally like a culture shock i wish someone was there for me so thats one of the reasons why i did it too when i moved here i didnt speak english very well i just kind of had to learn by myself but people from other countries who already speak english dont have that much of a transition q what led to your decision to establish the galveston student association a i started as a freshman in galveston and then transferred to college station as a sophomore my friends and i were just sitting one day in the galveston library and i said i think it would be cool if we just started a club that unites us over here and helps people who are from galveston to transition to the college station campus because we didnt really have someone to ask we officially started the club last semester because it took some time to get adjusted and see how we could help other students we have community events in college station for anyone who is here now to attend and we also always try to communicate with the people in galveston through the professors last semester we also did a panel in galveston to hear their questions and we answered them to the best of our ability q why did you choose to study computer engineering a at the beginning of my freshman year i wanted to study just electrical engineering and then once i came here and attended department information saturday and did more coding i realized i wanted to do computer engineering because it combines electrical engineering and computer science i like programming but i didnt like programming to the point where i wanted to do straight-up computer science – same with electrical engineering i didnt want to do all hardware; i wanted to do a mix of both i just thought it was interesting to understand both levels and how they communicate with each other im happy with my decision i really like coding but i also really like the hardware i didnt realize how much i liked hardware until i started this major q what is one piece of advice you would give to an international student coming here for the first time to texas a&m a i would say dont be scared of the changes people behave differently based on the environment they are in dont try to change too much to fit in because there are people like you everywhere dont change your values or morals because you see someone doing something else also try to understand where people are coming from especially so they can also understand where you are coming from q what is one piece of advice you would give to a student starting in galveston but transitioning here to college station a i would say manage your time better because classes here are farther away from each other know how to get to class and take buses if you need to dont get scared of the sizes of the classes and try to make relationships with your professors and go to office hours also try to utilize as many resources as you can and find a good group of friends a lot of people will already have a group of friends because they established that freshman year but also keep your galveston group kind of close and try to keep up with them as much as you can even though you will be in different majors my roommates also went to galveston and we are the best of friends because we went through the same experience together and no one else did
1161,"mohammad aghababaei a structural engineering doctoral research assistant in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university was recently awarded the oh ammann research fellowship from the american society of civil engineers (asce)the fellowship is given to a member of asce to promote the creation of new knowledge in the field of structural engineering this award includes a stipend for aghababaeis research which focuses on recovery modeling for risk-based community resiliencethe main objective of this research is making communities more resilient against hazards threatening their normal status he said receiving this award is a great recognition of my efforts and research work i feel honored by this award i also feel the responsibility to continue working meticulously on that topic and have a major impact in the advancement of the civil/structural engineering fieldduring his doctoral studies aghababaei has contributed to various research projects including developing a framework to generate recovery models for businesses in lumberton north carolina after hurricane matthew in 2016 he validated and calibrated an analytical approach to developing functionality fragility models using a longitudinal recovery dataset after the 2011 joplin missouri tornado he also conducted a longitudinal field study after hurricane harvey in port aransas texas to identify vulnerabilities and recovery patterns and collected time-sensitive damage data of full-scale shake table tests conducted on the world's largest shake table (e-defense) in miki city japan using lidar technologyaghababaei who works under the supervision of assistant professor dr maria koliou has published five peer-reviewed journal papers including in-press manuscripts and presented his research at several conferences and symposiums""there is still a need to develop a comprehensive framework of a community encompassing all of its components and systems including households businesses lifelines and other main components considering the engineering and social attributes of the recovery to make quantitative decisions to enhance the community's resilience "" he said ""the frequency of natural disasters in the us has increased in the past few decades and people are suffering from the direct consequences of such disasters and long periods of recovery in their aftermath""aghababaei was part of a team that conducted a field study one month after hurricane harvey""i observed closely how difficult living in the affected communities was "" he said ""as an engineer i believe i am doing my part by using my expertise through this research to address such difficulties and problems of today's societies additionally as a student this research is one of the state-of-the-art research areas within civil engineering and it definitely strengthens my background for my future career""after finishing his doctorate aghababaei plans to continue his professional career in a research-oriented position in either academia or the civil engineering industry"
1162,a team of researchers led by the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is looking to help scientists combat the secondary effects of covid-19 using artificial intelligence (ai) by participating in an open challenge called ai cures the team is led by dr shuiwang ji principal investigator and associate professor in the department and includes students lei cai meng liu and limei wang hosted by the abdul latif jameel clinic for machine learning at the massachusetts institute of technology ai cures aims to contribute to the development of new antibiotics to fight emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria through machine learning in a recent study published in the lancet scientists observed that a large number of nonsurviving adult patients who were severely ill with covid-19 developed a secondary bacterial pneumonia infection due to significantly depleted lung function new antibiotics are desperately needed to fight the emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria that causes bacterial pneumonia but developing them can take several years and cost more than $1 billion the participating teams have been tasked with developing an ai model that can predict if a molecule will be positive or negative for bacterial pneumonia and then be used to identify new antibiotics jis team proposes using advanced deep learning and machine learning methods for graph neural networks to achieve this covid-19 is one of the most contagious pandemics weve experienced and it has resulted in a great loss of human life said ji developing new drugs can be an effective way to control the virus and researchers from all over the world have gotten involved to achieve this ai cures provides a platform that brings researchers together to develop ai tools for drug discovery and as computer scientists it is our honor to contribute to the development of a new drug our lab has accumulated many technologies to analyze the properties of molecules which can be helpful to this project the challenge started in march and the team began work on the project in may
1163,dr ali erdemir has joined the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university as a tees eminent professor a member of the national academy of engineering erdemir comes to texas a&m from argonne national laboratory where he served as a distinguished fellow and senior scientist he received his bachelors degree from istanbul technical university in metallurgical engineering and his masters and doctoral degrees in materials science and engineering from the georgia institute of technology his current research is directed toward the development of novel tribological technologies for a broad range of applications in manufacturing transportation and other energy conversion and utilizations systems erdemir is looking forward to the impact he will have in the department not only to continue his research but also to expand his interaction with students i feel that i might even be more effective by not only pursuing what i do best which is research but also by interacting with students and maybe passing on my expertise my passion and my knowledge to the young generation so that hopefully they can also become very successful in their future erdemir said an internationally recognized researcher erdemir has served as president of the international tribology council and the society of tribologists and lubrication engineers he has published more than 300 papers holds 23 us patents and has generated more than 18 000 citations
1164,michael frassica is pursuing his doctoral degree in biomedical engineering at texas a&m university he said he was drawn to the research area because he was interested in the crossover of medicine with chemistry and biology i wanted to find a way to utilize those fields to solve macro-level problems in the field of medicine frassica said his research focuses on treating osteochondral defects such as loss of tissue in the knee with templated hydrogel scaffolds to aid in regeneration we aim to provide an off-the-shelf synthetic device that can repair damaged osteochondral tissue without the limitations of current surgical approaches frassica said in doing so we can stop these defects from progressing to osteoarthritis and eventual total knee replacement
1165,frassica said since he started school at texas a&m he gained more skills in time management communication and collaboration ive enjoyed the access to equipment facilities and high-level personnel in the department and across the entire university frassica said the department provides a lot of collaborative opportunities between labs and research and also through coursework and seminars the department really tries to get you and faculty together as much as possible to foster that collaboration as an out-of-state student frassica said he was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the transition to texas a&m went texas a&m itself is built to take in anybody from anywhere its home in and of itself the transition is a lot easier than i think anybody could ever imagine it would be frassica said after he completes his doctoral degree frassica said he plans to pursue research and development either in academia or industry so far one of his biggest takeaways has been to stress the importance of time management most graduate students run their own schedule and his advice is for students to come in ready to accomplish a diversity of tasks be prepared to solve a wide variety of problems across several different topics and fields if youre excited about doing something like that then its definitely the right place frassica said
1166,the recipients of the texas a&m university college of engineerings 2020 faculty and staff awards were recently announced and will be recognized at next years faculty and staff awards banquet new employee awarderin bandza (materials science and engineering) key contributor awardcheryl kocman (industrial and systems engineering) engineering team awardyordanos bisrat winson chun-hsin kuo jing wu wilson serem stanislav verkhoturov rene yeargan-stutt and andrew mott (materials characterization facility) staff excellence awardanna budvitis (engineering academic and student affairs)christina escamilla (aerospace engineering)dana ethridge (tees fiscal office)d'anne crain (civil and environmental engineering)eric gonzalez (texas a&m center for applied technology)michaela catalena (alumni relations and events)seth sullivan (engineering academic and student affairs) presidents meritorious service awardsjules henry (materials sciences and engineering)sharli nucker (mechanical engineering) faculty awards dean of engineering excellence awards assistant professor level daniel alge (biomedical engineering)ali mostafavi (civil and environmental engineering) associate professor level akhilesh gaharwar (biomedical engineering) professor level james caverlee (computer science and engineering)john hurtado (aerospace engineering) engineering teaching awards george armistead jr '23 faculty excellence teaching award -- micah green (chemical engineering)college of engineering excellence in teaching award -- farzan sasangohar (industrial and systems engineering) engineering service awards william keeler memorial award-service -- thomas blasingame (petroleum engineering) and prasad enjeti (electrical and computer engineering) engineering outstanding contributions awards charles w crawford distinguished award -- debjyoti banerjee (mechanical engineering)williams brothers construction engineering fellow contributions award -- amy epps martin (civil and environmental engineering)william o and montine p head memorial research fund -- eduardo gildin (petroleum engineering) and guofei gu (computer science and engineering) instructional faculty teaching awards mina rahimian (electrical and computer engineering)catherine sliva (petroleum engineering)evan vestal (engineering technology and industrial distribution) college of engineering faculty fellow awards eugene webb faculty fellow -- alaa elwany (industrial and systems engineering) and tracy hammond (computer science and engineering) tees faculty fellow awards diego donzis (aerospace engineering)huilin gao (civil and environmental engineering)ranjana mehta (industrial and systems engineering) tees young faculty fellow awards joseph kwon (chemical engineering)zhangyang atlas wang (computer science and engineering)
1167,kathy and mike havel '76 along with metro custom plastics have established the kathy and mike havel '76 scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in multidisciplinary engineering technology - stem education track from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university having always enjoyed working with his hands and learning how things worked mike knew he wanted to enter a career field that would allow this a degree in engineering technology from texas a&m was a perfect match for my interest and career path he said this led to a 38-year career at metro custom plastics a plastic injection molding company where he is currently president mike and kathy hope that their gift will lead to more manufacturing jobs in both texas and the us our country has a great need for employees that can work with their hands and minds but one of our biggest challenges as a us manufacturer is finding trained craftsmen tool makers and technicians mike said the inspiration behind their gift is about future teachers this scholarship is intended to help educate future teachers that can teach shop and technology classes in texas high schools mike said the new multidisciplinary engineering technology degree with a stem educator focus encompasses courses from both the college of engineering and the college of education and human development and prepares graduates to teach at the secondary education level the havels come from a long line of aggies having a total of 18 aggies within their extended family kathy and mikes two children christy 03 and andy 05 and their daughter-in-law lindsey 05 also graduated from texas a&m mike is a current active member of the engineering technology and industrial distribution advisory board and both kathy and mike are on the dean's development council for the college of education and human development
1168,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
1169,dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr arul jayaraman head of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university the appointment was effective june 1 jayaraman has served as the interim department head since june 2019 and served as acting department head from march–may 2019 prior to that he served as associate department head director of the graduate program and chair of graduate admissions and recruiting jayaraman is currently the holder of the ray b nesbitt endowed chair and a texas a&m university presidential impact fellow he also serves as the director of the integrated metabolomic analysis core facility he was elected fellow of the american institute of medical and biological engineering in 2015 jayaramans research focuses on studying the role of the intestinal microbiota specifically the diverse array of molecules produced by them as mediators of human health and medicine jayaramans research has led to several breakthroughs in the understanding of intestinal microbiota in 2018 jayaraman and his collaborators found that a high-fat diet significantly changes the composition and function of the intestinal microbiota and that this change has a direct link to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease jayaraman and collaborators at tufts university have identified a role for the gut bacteria in converting phthalates into toxic molecules that are linked to neurological disorders more recently jayaraman and dr pushkar lele assistant professor in the department of chemical engineering uncovered a previously unknown property of gut microbiota-produced molecule leading to a better understanding of how microbial communities form in the gut
1170,dr yuri makogon an esteemed researcher who retired from texas a&m university in 2008 passed away on may 26 makogon discovered natural gas hydrate deposits in nature in 1965 authored over 270 scientific papers wrote eight books and held 29 patents he was a world-renowned expert on gas hydrates and an astute research scholar of the water-gas phase behavior in the earths stratum his career in oil and gas education and research spanned 60 years in 1995 makogon became a faculty member in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m he established a hydrate research lab recently rededicated as the yuri f makogon gas hydrate and source rock petrophysics laboratory his work helped to expand the knowledge of many important physical gas hydrate properties but his presence and interaction with fellow faculty made a difference beyond academics
1171,he was the humblest scientist i know said dr ding zhu when mentioning his accomplishments which were extremely significant he always smiled and replied ‘i am just an experimentalist nothing big yuri makogon was a most remarkable man said dr john lee his scholarship was renowned worldwide but perhaps less well known was his humanity he personally helped me achieve international recognition for my achievements which paled when compared to his he opened doors for me that would have been closed without his assistance he was kind and gentle to all we will miss him very much yuri makogon was a wonderful person and scientist said dr david schechter he had true passion for his work and was widely celebrated as a result he loved working in his hydrate lab which was meticulously maintained ill always remember the passion he exuded when he was showing the most recent photos of the complex hydrates he created in his lab yuri was also a kind and gentle soul with a subtle but hilarious sense of humor that he delivered with a sparkle in his eyes he was a great aggie we will miss you yuri he is the most recognized scientist this department has ever had said dr dan hill and he was a cheerful pleasant colleague to all makogon received the heritage award acknowledging his personal cooperative and lifelong achievements in the oil and gas industry during the 2016 offshore technology conference the previous year he received the presidents star of success award from the russian academy of natural sciences on his 85th birthday
1172,biomedical engineering seniors had a capstone design experience like no other this year when the second semester of their two-semester project was suddenly changed by the covid-19 pandemic despite the new challenges the student teams were recognized for their accomplishments instead of coming back to campus after spring break all classes and projects were moved online at texas a&m university this included the senior design projects teams had to find new ways to communicate and prototype what they could to complete their assignments many of which came from industry and clinical sponsors at the end of the spring semester the college of engineering hosts an engineering project showcase to allow students to present their projects for judging this also had to change to a virtual landscape leading to the students developing videos to showcase their projects design team artificial urethral sphincter for incontinence (artifink) composed of sarah jones hunter lyon brandon worth gilberto flores reyes and sarah swift won second place overall in the showcases senior capstone category in total 140 teams competed in that category within the department of biomedical engineering they placed first out of 30 teams the teams goal was to design a minimally invasive low-cost patient-controlled urethral sphincter to give women control of their bladders over two million women suffer from obstetric fistula a hole in the bladder caused by obstructed labor or poor labor and delivery care even if repaired 20% of these women experience urinary incontinence a medical condition in which the person is unable to control the release of urine from their bladder there is currently no viable treatment option for the condition which leads to social isolation and poor quality of life furthermore over 200 million women suffer from urinary incontinence worldwide derived from non-fistula causes view the team's video presentation here two teams tied for second place in the department: hemostatic applicator tip composed of priyanka ambati ryan davis abby pandey carson bristo and emma giunta sponsored by cryolife test stand biopsy seal composed of amanda rakoski annalie krone daniel praia-chamorro kendahl lyle and seth reine sponsored by dr duncan maitland professor in the department of biomedical engineering
1173,at texas a&m university academic advisors are an essential part of the success and development of students the texas a&m college of engineering is fortunate to have many exceptional advisors as seen by the large number of recipients of the recent connected awards presidents award for academic advising and university advisors and counselors (uac) awards the inaugural connected awards sponsored by the office for student success recognizes an individual and an advising team for notable advancement utilizing eab navigate in supporting student success eab navigate is a comprehensive technology that brings together administrators faculty advisors and staff to support students from enrollment to graduation and beyond for the college engineering and academic student affairs advising received the connected team award team members include edwin aguilar randal allison anna budvitis robert carlisle adrian garza bb gaytan alison hecker analicia leiva laura olivarez tammy thomas nick toliver and shelby wallace the presidents award for academic advising is given to individuals who embody exceptional academic advising these individuals possess strong conceptual knowledge of fundamental and novel advising theories as well as relational skills that provide effective academic advising the recipients from the college of engineering are eileen hoy academic advisor in the department of biomedical engineering and laura olivarez assistant director of freshman engineering academic advising services the annual uac awards recognize individuals who embody the spirit of caring compassionate skillful advisement and genuine concern for the welfare of individual students katie bryan academic advisor in the department of electrical and computer engineering was the recipient of the uac excellence in graduate advising award for the college i cannot express how proud i am of our outstanding advisors and how pleased i am with this wonderful news said dr mark weichold senior associate dean regents professor and executive director of the halliburton engineering global program each of these advisors plays a critical role in fostering student success from our first-year students through our graduate students the awards that these individuals are receiving are among the most prestigious awards that the university bestows for advising these awards are well-deserved recognition of the outstanding work that our advisors carry out to the benefit of our students
1174,"natalie coleman an undergraduate student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university was recently awarded the prestigious national science foundations (nsf) graduate research fellowshipcoleman who graduates in august with a bachelors degree and will enter the department's phd program in the fall will continue her research on social inequalities and risk disparities associated with service disruptions caused by natural hazards the fellowship provides three years of support for the graduate education of recipients including a $34 000 annual stipend and a $12 000 cost-of-education allowance fellows have access to a wide range of professional development opportunities throughout their graduate careersgiven the interdisciplinary nature of the research i can integrate the physical and social vulnerabilities to have a bigger picture of the hardships experienced by communities coleman said i am passionate about incorporating a more human dimension into the civil engineering perspective to ensure that members of a community have access to infrastructure services during extreme eventsfor coleman her research is personal she had friends and family who were impacted by hurricane ike and hurricane harvey and saw firsthand how their backgrounds affected their ability to withstand and recover from disastersher work focuses on the societal impacts of infrastructure service disruptions on different social subpopulations in a community it investigates whether the social characteristics of a community can influence the disaster experiencein my research i have statistically analyzed information from empirical surveys online sources and national databases the findings created theoretical frameworks spatial maps and models to potentially help emergency planners community leaders and utility managers understand the social impacts of these service disruptions coleman said this can bridge the gap between disaster research policy and practice for infrastructure resilience using this information infrastructure systems can be restored and prioritized based on the needs of the communityas a civil engineering student coleman strives to build and maintain communities by applying the lessons she's learned in the classroom to real-world problems infrastructure systems are vitally important to communities because residents continuously depend on the services from the systems""my interdisciplinary research has allowed me to combine my knowledge in civil engineering and social sciences to tackle grand challenges facing our society "" she said ""research has also allowed me to meet collaborate with and mentor so many brilliant people working in infrastructure resilienceas an undergraduate student coleman participated in several research projects with the urban resilience lab she completed her undergraduate thesis on social inequalities and risk disparities in power communication water and transportation outages caused by hurricane harveywith the research grant coleman will continue her work in the urban resilience lab and hopes to help other students find their passions for research""i hope to give back to the scientific community by mentoring the next generation of students "" she said ""my undergraduate research experiences allow me to encourage students who would not have imagined themselves as researchers""coleman said as an undergraduate researcher she was fortunate to work with faculty advisor and associate professor dr ali mostafavi and her doctoral mentor amir esmalianeach year the nsf recognizes the work of the country's most outstanding graduate students across disciplines in science engineering and mathematicsestablished in 1952 the fellowship program was designed to recognize and provide support to students in nsf-supported engineering technology science and mathematics disciplines helping produce subject matter experts who can make significant contributions to teaching research and innovations it has funded more than 50 000 fellowships since its inception"
1175,dr chabum lee was awarded the 2020 blackall machine tool and gage award from the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) lee who serves as assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university received the award for his paper titled precision cutting tool wear monitoring method by knife-edge diffraction interferometry the award is given for the best current original paper or papers presented before or published by the asme during the two calendar years immediately preceding the year of the award i feel honored and happy for such recognition of the award lee said this award gives a lot of inspiration to continue doing what i am doing and a positive confirmation that what i am doing is worthwhile in fact the machine tool metrology area receives less attention and only a small number of researchers in the us are investigating this area i will take that compliment to do even better from now on according to award guidelines the honored paper should clearly demonstrate that the science and engineering technologies outlined in the paper resulted in a significant contribution to the manufacturing processes and systems for the design or application of machine tools gauges dimensional measuring instruments or new manufacturing technologies and metrology approaches lee will have the option to be presented with the award at either the 2020 asme international mechanical engineering congress & exposition in november or at the 2021 manufacturing science and engineering conference in june 2021
1176,the engineering management program at texas a&m university formerly engineering systems management prepares students for careers in leadership roles giving them the tools to manage engineering and technical organizations this flexible program allows for various study modes including completing the program fully online we spoke with two current students about the program and why they chose texas a&m and the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering for their graduate degrees
1177,emma partridge 17 21 partridge is currently a mechanical engineer at lockheed martin aeronautics and is in the online engineering management program she graduated from texas a&m with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering in 2017
1178,lilly pharmakis ‘21 pharmakis is currently an assistant program manager at triumph aerospace structures and is in the online engineering management program she has a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and another in mathematics
1179,q: what drew you to the engineering management program partridge: i was looking for a program where i could gain more knowledge in systems engineering project management as well as the business operations the courses in the program will help me become a more well-rounded engineer and allow me to advance my career to leadership and management roles pharmakis: i had researched various mba programs at different schools but nothing felt quite right in either the school or the degree i wanted to gain more knowledge in business but i wasn't ready to let go of engineering as my background is in mechanical engineering when i came across the engineering management program i knew i had found the right fit q: what has been your favorite part of the program so far partridge: i have been able to apply knowledge i've learned from my courses to tasks i'm working on in my current role in addition some of my work experience has also helped reinforce concepts being taught by some of my professors it's interesting to see the areas of my courses that have benefited me in my job and vice versa pharmakis: my professors have been incredible they are always so excited to hear about the real-world successes and challenges i experience at my job on more than one occasion my professors have been eager to help me create solutions that i could apply to my work that also correlated to the information we were learning about in class i have really been able to understand how to apply these concepts to my industry something that i think is so hard for professors to achieve in other programs q: what do you hope to do after earning your masters degree partridge: after earning my degree i hope to remain in a technical position but in a more leadership-type role where i can be leading larger projects or managing a program pharmakis: i decided to do the business specialization for this program so i will graduate with a business certificate as well as a masters degree i hope to take the new knowledge i'll gain about business and industrial engineering and apply it to my current role in aerospace design and manufacturing eventually moving into program management q: how have you benefitted by being able to do the program completely online partridge: i enjoy the flexibility that online classes allow you to have i have the ability to move through the class at my own pace by watching the lectures at times that are convenient for my busy schedule as a student working a full-time engineering job the online classes have allowed me to continue gaining valuable industry experience while earning my degree at the same time pharmakis: this program allows me to be a student in my free time so i never feel that i need to sacrifice my work for school or vise-versa since i travel quite a bit for my job it's really great to be able to take advantage of plane rides to squeeze in a lecture or finish homework q: do you have any tips for students taking online courses partridge: i find it helpful to build a schedule for myself for the next week or two for when i'm going to watch my lectures do homework and study and make sure i stick to it pharmakis: it's very important to prioritize your time when taking an online course because you aren't seeing a professor in class to remind you about a deadline or a test that's around the corner it's especially important if you are juggling other responsibilities as well such as work or a family do you think the engineering management program is right for you find more information about the program online
1180,"a team of engineering students from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university finished second in a virtual student design competition held in april by the water environment association of texas (weat)the team was tasked with creating a plan to improve the central wastewater treatment plant (wwtp) in pflugerville texas the six-member team began work in december 2019 to develop alternatives and final recommendations for expanding the wwtp in three separate phases and consider impacts to sludge production hydraulics operations maintenance requirements and costs and the probable construction costs for each stagetrishla rajkumar jain served as team leader for the competition and said the shift to online operations due to the covid-19 pandemic was a challenge""we put in a lot of effort for this competition and were disheartened when we realized it would not be possible to present at the texas water conference "" she said ""nonetheless this competition gave us a great opportunity to learn""the team researched and produced a 62-page presentation for the competition outlining their proposal of design alternatives to construct new facilities required for expanded capacity rehabilitate existing facilities and convert from a chemical nutrient removal facility to a biological nutrient removal facility and upgrade the existing solids-handling facilitiesteam members include graduate students heet patel temidayo sangoyomi kanal kalpeshkumar pathak mohneesh nayal sanjivani gondode and jainthe association of environmental engineering students at texas a&m funded the team's participation in the competition the team was partnered with professional mentors david jackson from freese & nichols keval satra from hr green inc and jason bybel from k friese + associates and also by faculty member dr shankar chellam the j walter ""deak"" porter '22 and james w ""bud"" porter '51 professor in the departmentweat is a member association of the water environment federation weat hosts the texas water conference annually"
1181,subtle variations in the architecture of the 22 bones of the skull give each one of us a unique facial profile hence repairing the shape of skull defects in the event of a fracture or a congenital deformity calls for a technique that can be tailored to an individuals face or head structure in a new study researchers at texas a&m university have combined 3d printing biomaterial engineering and stem cell biology to create superior personalized bone grafts when implanted at the site of repair the researchers said these grafts will not only facilitate bone cells to regrow vigorously but also serve as a sturdy platform for bone regeneration in a desired custom shape materials used for craniofacial bone implants are either biologically inactive and extremely hard like titanium or biologically active and too soft like biopolymers said dr roland kaunas associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering in our study we have developed a synthetic polymer that is both bioactive and mechanically strong these materials are also 3d printable allowing custom-shaped craniofacial implants to be made that are both aesthetically pleasing and functional a detailed report on the findings was published online in the journal advanced healthcare materials in march each year about 200 000 injuries occur to bones of the jaw face and head for repair physicians often hold these broken bones in place using titanium plates and screws so that surrounding bone cells can grow and form a cover around the metal implant despite its overall success in aiding bone repair one of the major drawbacks of titanium is that it does not always integrate into bone tissue which can then cause the implant to fail requiring another surgery in advanced cases thus biocompatible polymers particularly a type called hydrogels offer a preferable alternative to metal implants these squishy materials can be loaded with bone stem cells and then 3d printed to any desired shape also unlike titanium plates the body can degrade hydrogels over time however hydrogels also have a known weakness although the pliability of hydrogel-based materials makes them good inks for 3d bioprinting their softness compromises the mechanical integrity of the implant and the accuracy of printed parts said dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering to increase the stiffness of the hydrogel the researchers developed a nanoengineered ionic-covalent entanglement or nice recipe containing just three main ingredients: an extract from seaweed called kappa carrageenan gelatin and nanosilicate particles that both stimulate bone growth and mechanically reinforce the nice hydrogel first they uniformly mixed the gelatin and kappa carrageenan at microscopic scales and then added the nanosilicates gaharwar said the chemical bonds between these three items created a much stiffer hydrogel for 3d bioprinting with an almost eight-fold increase in strength compared to individual components of nice bioink next they added adult stem cells to 3d parts printed with nice ink and then chemically induced the stem cells to convert into bone cells within a couple of weeks the researchers found that the cells had grown in numbers producing high levels of bone-associated proteins minerals and other molecules in aggregate these cell secretions formed a scaffold known as an extracellular matrix with a unique composition of biological materials needed for the growth and survival of developing bone cells
1182,when the scaffolds are fully developed the researchers noted that the bone cells could be removed from the scaffold and the hydrogel-based implant can then be inserted into the site of skull injury where the surrounding healthy bones initiate healing over time the 3d printed scaffolds biodegrade leaving behind a healed bone in the right shape the idea is to have the bodys own bone repair machinery participate in the repair process said kaunas our biomaterial is enriched with this regenerative extracellular matrix providing a fertile environment to naturally trigger bone and tissue restoration the researchers explained that the 3d-printed scaffolds provide a strong structural framework that facilitates the attachment and growth of healthy bone cells also they found that developing bone cells penetrate through the synthetic material thereby increasing the functionality of the implant although our current work is focused on repairing skull bones in the near future we would like to expand this technology for not just craniomaxillofacial defects but also bone regeneration in cases of spinal fusions and other injuries said kaunas other contributors to this study include dr candice sears eli mondragon zachary richards dr nick sears and dr david chimene from the texas a&m department of biomedical engineering; and eoin mcneill and dr carl a gregory from the texas a&m health science center this research is funded by the national institutes of health and the national science foundation
1183,a team of students from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university recently placed fifth in the mitre corporations 2020 embedded capture the flag (ectf) competition they competed against 19 universities from across the nation and were the first to represent texas a&m at an ectf competition the members of the team included justin metzinger (senior) andrew chin (senior) and jonathan saenz (junior) dr martin carlisle professor of practice in the department served as the teams faculty advisor beginning in january the semester-long competition was designed to help students develop practical skills that can be applied to securing critical systems such as medical devices internet of things devices smart grids and mobile devices unlike traditional capture the flag competitions it focused on securing embedded devices which are special purpose computers like ipods alexa and smart locks and included a design and build phase in addition to the attack (hacking) phase which made it a unique experience this year participants were challenged to design a secure audio rights management module for a next-generation multimedia player on the digital cora z7 which is a small low-powered computing device during the attack phase the system had to be able to prevent the other teams from using the player to play pirated music creating a clone of the player for use in another region playing audio files that have been tampered with playing illegally acquired music and stealing the users credentials from the device
1184,"in their design the team came up with a scheme for encrypting the data that would run fast enough to meet the timing constraints of the device and also protect the songs on the player from being played by unauthorized users to ensure that the songs could not be maliciously tampered with they used a cryptographic hash function which is an algorithm used to verify if a piece of data has been changed the team stored a cryptographic function of the password of the device instead of the password itself to protect it from being extracted during the attack phase the texas a&m team had the greatest success in creating corrupted songs that would still play on the other teams devices ""i will cherish and remember this competition for years to come because of the knowledge and security-minded perspective gained said saenz although it was challenging it was one of the most rewarding experiences that allowed me to see how the different skills gained from my courses at texas a&m can play a major role in the security field"" the competition ended with a virtual awards ceremony in may"
1185,dr walter buchanan professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has been selected to receive the 2020 national society of professional engineers (nspe) engineering education excellence award
1186,nspe is an organization for professional engineers established in 1934 that seeks to build public recognition for the profession as well as ensure ethical accountability and unity for professional engineers all over the world this national award recognizes engineering faculty who have demonstrated the ability to link engineering education with professional practice the recipients must be licensed and have a faculty appointment in an accreditation board for engineering and technology (abet) accredited engineering program buchanan joined the texas a&m faculty in 2005 he received his bachelor of arts juris doctorate and phd from indiana university as well as a bachelor of science in engineering and master of science in engineering from purdue university buchanan is a fellow of the american society for engineering education (asee) the institute of electrical and electronics engineers as well as nspe and abet his previous honors include the asee james h mcgraw award asee frederick j berger award nspe outstanding service award and the international conference on engineering and computer education award i would like to thank dr reza langari for his ongoing professional service support said buchanan
1187,eileen hoy began her pursuit of helping students while working toward her masters degree in the early 80s when she decided to earn a certification to teach high school while she was not able to complete the coursework upon graduation she did teach high school science in louisiana on a temporary certificate while teaching i spent a lot of time working with and talking to students individually on topics other than science and their coursework we discussed personal issues decisions they were making about coursework going to college working after high school what careers they wanted hoy said hoy and her family moved to the bryan/college station area in 1994 and she looked to continue teaching however because she had not completed her original certification coursework that effort was unsuccessful after moving through different jobs she started working for the department of biochemistry and biophysics at texas a&m university as the stockroom manager after a couple of years the departments advisor position opened up hoy applied and was hired and she continued to grow her love of working with students and helping them navigate new knowledge there is so much especially at the university level that can remain uncovered unless they really research or have someone help them find those hidden opportunities that can make a real difference in a students career path/life hoy said i love seeing the changes they make and the process of maturing as they progress through the years to graduation hoy joined the department of biomedical engineering as an undergraduate academic advisor in december 2018 she said she likes that the department has a family feel despite being part of a large university i do feel very comfortable and enjoy working with the faculty and staff hoy said getting to know the students coming into the department for the first time and spending the next three years with them is amazing hoys exceptional academic advising has been recognized many times she was a recipient of the 2020 presidents award for academic advising and the 2019 commitment to students award from the student chapter of the biomedical engineering society hoy feels she received those honors because throughout her career she has continued the strong work ethic both her parents demonstrated in their lives anything i do big or small has an effect on the student hoy said i make every effort to make certain that what i do makes that effect a positive one i do make mistakes but i try my best to make them right being selected for these awards is awesome but i dont do what i do for any award i do it for the students they deserve it
1188,imagine needing a part to fix something in your home but not being able to go out to the store to get it like those unable to go to the store to get something for a home repair project astronauts and inhabitants of future space missions will face a similar dilemma while living in space habitats or will they researchers at texas a&m university along with seven universities and three industry partners are working to make this problem solvable with on-demand metal additive manufacturing through the habitats optimized for missions of exploration (home) institute their work will allow space inhabitants to manufacture parts as needed with or without a human operator texas a&m has been working in the additive manufacturing of metallic parts for close to seven years which fits into nasas space technology research institutes goal of manufacturing metallic parts in microgravity said dr alaa elwany associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering imagine a part such as a gear fails on the space habitat rather than transporting an enormous amount of spare parts initially to the habitat the majority of which might not even get used we can simply send a digital model of that part and manufacture it on site through 3d printing elwany said additive manufacturing is challenging on earth and these challenges multiply when there is low gravity the research done by texas a&m will enable printing in microgravity and testing of parts to ensure they are able to perform effectively this research is a part of nasas in space manufacturing initiative and will be used in future missions including habitation on the moon and mars the funding provided by nasa to texas a&m will be used to support doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers the home team includes the university of california davis in partnership with the university of colorado boulder carnegie mellon university the georgia institute of technology howard university texas a&m and the university of southern california collaborators in industry include sierra nevada corporation blue origin and united technology aerospace systems
1189,gerald gerry grogin 47 has established the gerald gerry grogin 47 endowed excellence fund in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university distributions from this generous endowment will be used to support mechanical engineering students in the american society of heating refrigerating and air-conditioning organization grogin was born in bryan texas in 1926 having grown up in the town and being around aggies his entire life he was inspired to attend texas a&m and follow in his fathers and uncles footsteps i hope and pray that the students who attend this university will love the traditions the fellowship and the admiration that i have for texas a&m grogin said grogin hopes that his gift has a positive impact on the department i hope that the students in the organization in which my endowment will support believe in texas a&m and will cherish this gift as well as the university as much as i have he said grogin said he has been contemplating giving back to texas a&m for some time i have decided with everything going on in the world to go ahead and give back while i am still working and not getting any younger he said grogin graduated with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and later went on to join polar air corporation in 1971 where he spent most of his career polar air is a heating and air conditioning company located in houston and his successful career in this field is what led him to support the students in the american society of heating refrigerating and air-conditioning organization
1190,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
1191,texas a&m university corps of cadets member and engineering student seth dopp ‘22 was the highest-ranked graduate of his 181-member class at the marine corps officer candidate school (ocs) at quantico virginia this summer as a result of finishing first in his class he is also the recipient of the commandants trophy presented by the commandant of the marine corps dopp had the highest combined leadership academic and physical fitness average during his six-week session as a result he received the commandants trophy which is presented to the candidate with the highest composite average in the platoon leaders class a junior at texas a&m dopp is pursuing a bachelor of science in industrial distribution he is a member of company p-2 where he serves as a platoon sergeant and the outfit training sergeant in addition to being a member of the corps of cadets dopp is enrolled in the marine corps platoon leaders class a program that among other requirements calls for participants to complete a six-week summer training session in quantico brig gen joe e ramirez jr commandant of the corps of cadets said such recognition of cadet dopp is well-deserved describing his finishing first in his ocs class as a very prestigious honor for a future marine officer ramirez said dopp is the third texas a&m cadet in the past six years to win the commandants trophy – a true testament to the caliber of the cadets who are in the corps at texas a&m following graduation from the university dopp said he will commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the united states marine corps
1192,kelly (christy) 99 and cory simmons have established the kelly 99 and cory simmons deans scholar award their generous gift will be used to provide one or more scholarships to high school seniors who excelled academically have demonstrated outstanding leadership are entering their freshman year and who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the texas a&m university college of engineering kelly visited texas a&m in high school for an honors student summer invitational as a national merit scholar finalist kelly was considering many different options when it came to which college she wanted to attend however after that first visit she knew it was where she would attend my mom came to pick me up that summer and i said mom im going to texas a&m kelly said my mom responded and said i could go if i got a scholarship kelly did receive a scholarship to attend texas a&m which ultimately inspired her to give back to the university i set it as a goal for myself that i would pay that generosity forward and do for someone else what my donor did for me she said kellys time at texas a&m was a guiding hand into the life and accomplishments she has today it wasn't until a few years into college that i even realized the opportunities that a degree in engineering would open up in my life she said for me a degree in engineering from texas a&m gave me the means to give back another memory that continues to stick with her was her experiences with one of her professors dr dan hanson dr hanson was the type of professor that would do anything for his students from holding office hours at 6:30 in the morning to helping me with car trouble he was truly an amazing man kelly said kelly also said she felt that donating to education was the most impactful way to help students education is able to change someones life and opportunities its great to donate in other ways as well but i felt that this was the best way to impact students lives she said kelly hopes this scholarship will help students who would otherwise not financially be able to attend college we see such a need right now for scholarships and we want these students to believe they can succeed regardless of finances she said we hope our scholarship sets these students up for success and that they know there are people that believe in them and will motivate them to be the best they can be since she had been able to attend texas a&m because of scholarships kelly was able to become very involved with many other facets of college life i got to be really involved in yearbook service opportunities and professional organizations; which are the kinds of things that employers and internships look for she said without a financial burden these scholarship recipients can have those same opportunities kelly graduated from texas a&m in 1999 with a degree in chemical engineering she and cory have a 10-year-old son and they hope that he grows to love texas a&m as much as they do
1193,a deans scholar award can be established as an endowment of $100 000 or by committing to a four-year contribution of $4 000 each year for a total of $16 000 if you are interested in supporting the deans scholars award program or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1194,darryl and bettye heath and their family have established the bettye and h darryl heath 84 deans scholar award distributions from their generous gift will be used to provide one or more scholarships to high school seniors entering their freshman year and pursuing an undergraduate degree in the texas a&m university college of engineering these students receiving the awards have excelled academically and have demonstrated outstanding leadership potential the recipients of these deans scholar awards will have exclusive opportunities to participate in annual meetings with the dean lecture series leadership development and a mentorship program with select former students and senior engineering students as a first-generation college student and the first aggie in his family darryl saw texas a&m as an opportunity to attend a school that had a great engineering program and given his strong interest in math and science it was a natural fit for him although he had an offer to attend the air force academy darryl thought texas a&m was a better fit due to its culture traditions and proximity to home darryl said it wasnt until many years after graduating that he realized the profound impact the engineering curriculum had on his career i probably didn't really fully comprehend it until 10 years into my career that the things i had learned in my industrial engineering courses were being used in my everyday career with the client companies i served while at accenture he said darryl said the impact from not only being a graduate of the college of engineering but being a part of the larger aggie network in general is indescribable from the support network who want aggies on their team in addition to the relationships i was able to form by being an aggie to the recognition of the degrees being a part of the aggie family is absolutely special he said darryl and bettye have been financial supporters of texas a&m for many years but feel that the university thrives when its former students give back in other ways as well i love texas a&m and i love being able to give back but a&m also benefits from its former students when they give back in time and talent darryl said the texas a&m college of engineering had a direct influence on my life and my career so when the dean approached me and asked if we were interested in establishing this scholarship to recruit top students i believed in the idea right away darryl said the goal of this scholarship is to continue to support excellence in the quality and rankings of the college of engineering while providing a path for recruiting the best and brightest students i think this scholarship promotes a cycle of texas a&m building great engineers and sending great graduates and leaders out into the world he said darryl and bettye hope their scholarship will encourage freshman recipients to focus on their grades and find the specific track that is right for them the freshman year is very important especially in the college of engineering motivating freshman engineers to keep their grades up and keep them excited about the program as they find their departmental path are some of the major goals of the scholarship he said darryl graduated from texas a&m in 1985 with a degree in industrial engineering and currently sits on the college of engineerings advisory council darryl and bettye have been married for over 34 years and have four adult sons three of whom are also graduates of texas a&m additionally bettye is in the final stages of completing her doctoral degree from southern methodist university
1195,a deans scholar award can be established as an endowment of $100 000 or by committing to a four-year contribution of $4 000 each year for a total of $16 000 if you are interested in supporting the deans scholar award program or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1196,recently the us department of energy (doe) announced the selection of the latest electricity advisory committee (eac) members an important component of the does strategy to improve its research and development portfolio and program activities among the members selected is dr mladen kezunovic from the texas a&m university college of engineering kezunovic regents professor and the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering was selected for a second term to serve on the committee each member is appointed by us secretary of energy dan brouillette for a two-year term members of the eac are from state governments regional planning entities utility companies cybersecurity and national security firms the natural gas sector equipment manufacturers construction and architectural companies nongovernmental organizations and other electricity-related organizations during their term the eac members will advise the doe on current and future electric grid reliability resilience security sector interdependence and policy issues they will periodically review and make recommendations on doe electric grid-related programs and initiatives including electricity-related research and development (r&d) programs and modeling efforts members will also identify emerging issues related to electricity production and delivery and advise on federal coordination with utility industry authorities in the event of supply disruptions and other emergencies kezunovic who also serves as the site director of the power engineering research center a consortium of 40 industry and 13 university members said serving on the committee his first term was rewarding because of their potential impact and it was a learning experience one always learns when serving with a group of distinguished experts in this case over 30 with diverse business backgrounds he said the eac members are also briefed by doe on the major initiatives which gives unique insights in to the doe r&d portfolio kezunovic looks forward to the opportunity of serving another term and hopes to bring this experience into his next term he adds that the committee has very active subcommittees that are preparing several panels and work products that he hopes could have major impacts i am making personal contributions to the discussions and various activities which makes it particularly gratifying he said i feel honored and humbled with the opportunity to serve the doe in this capacity being the only academic on the committee the office of electricity (oe) which oversees the eac provides national leadership to ensure that the nations energy delivery system is secure resilient and reliable oe works to develop new technologies to improve the infrastructure that brings electricity into homes offices and factories and the federal and state electricity policies and programs that shape electricity system planning and market operations
1197,t cells are the immune soldiers at the frontlines of the battle with infiltrating pathogens that seek to cause disease a new study published in nature biomedical engineering describes a novel label-free imaging technique that can differentiate active t cells from those off duty the method developed by scientists at the morgridge institute of research in wisconsin could help assess t cell involvement in immunotherapies for cancer treatment or autoimmune diseases dr alex walsh corresponding author on the paper and assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering was an assistant scientist at the morgridge institute before joining texas a&m university in a healthy individual most t cells are in a quiescent state theyre inactive but ready and waiting for the signal to join in active combat against an invading virus or bacteria we wanted to test if our imaging technology could tell the difference between the quiescent t cells and activated t cells walsh said t cells have a metabolic switch that regulates their activity said dr melissa skala principal investigator at the morgridge institute and associate professor of biomedical engineering at uw-madison most methods for characterizing t cells are antibody-based such as flow cytometry or immunohistochemistry these require staining with antibodies or contrast agents a process that is destructive to the cells alternatively walsh and skalas method detects autofluorescence from molecules within the cell that naturally emit light when imaged by a microscope paired with an infrared laser this label-free process is non-damaging and doesnt alter the behavior of the cell the technique could be adapted to image cells in a plate or dish tissue samples or even in vivo imaging of a complete organism it's super novel skala said most people aren't using these techniquesyou don't see a lot of autofluorescence studies in immunology to validate their approach the researchers acquired blood samples from healthy donors isolated the t cells and measured autofluorescence of molecules that are involved in cellular metabolism we kept some of the t cells in their quiescent state and then we added antibodies to a group to activate them walsh said images of the quiescent cells versus the activated cells revealed differences in metabolic function most notably through a change in one type of molecule autofluorescence in the activated t cell populations they also observed that active t cells were slightly larger in size than quiescent cells the activation protocol and imaging capabilities will be useful for manufacturing cells used in immunotherapies said skala these re-engineered t cells are often co-cultured with other cells like cancer cells to test their reactivity the autofluorescent approach provides an attractive way to perform those experiments by imaging the same cells across multiple timepoints in a way thats non-damaging we showed that you can resolve temporal changes with our imaging technique walsh said we were able to see changes in the imaging endpoints within minutes after adding the activating antibodies walsh adds that it would be difficult to see these dynamic changes using flow cytometry since the time required for staining and incubation make it difficult to capture multiple timepoints while this new technique offers many advantages over traditional methods there are still limitations for one autofluorescence imaging isnt very sensitive we arent relying on really specific labels were relying on the metabolism of the cells skala said thats only going to get you so far in differentiating the cell types additionally the technique requires experienced people to perform the microscopic imaging and analyze the data said walsh
1198,through the contribution of several benefactors the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has established the edgar sanchez-sinencio and yolanda f de sanchez chair named for distinguished professor and ti jack kilby chair professor dr edgar sánchez-sinencio and his wife a longtime mentor sanchez-sinencio director of the analog and mixed-signal center has supervised 60 masters and 58 doctoral students he is the co-author of several books and many research publications he has received numerous honors among the highest being an honoris causa doctorate by the national institute for astrophysics optics and electronics mexico as well as a darlington award for his work on high-frequency filters an institute for electrical and electronic engineers fellow and life fellow sanchez-sinencio has stayed active in his field his research interests include energy harvesting techniques power management and medical and environment applications sanchez-sinencio has been a professor and researcher in the texas a&m college of engineering since 1984 lawrence loh 91 a contributor to the edgar and yolanda sanchez endowed chair said that he was different from most professors he encountered edgars style as a professor and advisor was very warm and kind loh said he opened his home and family to his students especially to those who were far from their own home when we gathered in his small office we were a family and he was the head leading us into excellence
1199,and that sanchez-sinencio did many of his advisees and students have gone on to be prominent members of the academic and corporate communities dr sanchez has so many distinguished and high-achieving alumni willing to acknowledge his guidance and continue the tradition of excellence of this group by contributing to this gift i hope hes very happy loh said i see this chair as an opportunity to share the benefits we received from dr sanchezs guidance we want those benefits to be inherited in the analog and mixed-signal center by students and in extension by all of humanity through the discoveries they make there lohs fellow classmate and contributor sterling smith 93 echoed this desire it is my hope that the edgar sanchez-sinencio and yolanda f de sanchez chair will carry forward long into the future the spirit of both teaching and research excellence and the selfless love that edgar and yolanda have shared with their students and colleagues over the years he said they are a true embodiment of the aggie spirit
1200,another contributor to the chair is silicon labs with whom sanchez-sinencio enjoyed a fruitful relationship for much of his career silicon labs is proud to support the edgar sanchez-sinencio and yolanda f de sanchez chair at texas a&m said tyson tuttle chief executive officer at silicon labs for over 15 years we have funded dr sanchezs research in analog and mixed-signal circuits and have directly benefited from the talented engineers produced by texas a&m this chair honors dr sanchezs lifetime of research contributions and enables his legacy to continue in the electrical engineering department we look forward to continuing our close relationship with texas a&m to celebrate his career and academic excellence as well as the establishment of the new endowed chair the electrical and computer engineering department held a virtual recognition event via zoom over 180 friends and supporters attended the event
1201,numerous former colleagues and students spoke at the event detailing their relationship with sanchez-sinencio and how his work affected them and other students during his tenure congratulations were echoed in english and spanish the event concluded with a toast by dr miroslav begovic electrical and computer engineering department head to sanchez and his wife who were given commemorative champagne flutes in acknowledgment of their contribution to the department an endowed chair is the highest academic award the college can bestow on a faculty member and distributions from the edgar sanchez-sinencio and yolanda f de sanchez chair will be used to support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the holder in addition to the endowed chair the yolanda and edgar sanchez endowed scholarship was also established by former student wenjun sheng and another donor who wishes to remain anonymous this endowment will be used to support students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering
1202,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
1203,dr ruihong huang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was selected to receive the national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award one of the most prestigious awards given to up-and-coming researchers the grant provides funding to support promising integrated research and education huangs five-year career project aims to create document-level event graphs that identify the relationships (eg temporal and causal relations) between events mentioned anywhere in a document in order to better contextualize real-world events and interpret how and why they happened thus better supporting various event-oriented applications events tend to be described in a complex relationship with other events said huang for example a news article describing the events of a protest without information on why it was launched would be considered incomplete it has been observed that the events described in various natural language texts (news articles manuscripts blogs etc) play a large role in forming a cohesive story and their presence is tightly related to the overall structure of a document and how its organized with the number of documents describing real-world events growing larger on a daily basis document-level event graphs which are models used to filter and structure information about the events described in text are in high demand however building them requires identifying the relationship between the events even if they are sentences away which causes multiple technical challenges in addition current event extraction methods rarely focus on how the events relate to each other and mainly focus on extracting isolated events with no context huangs research is focused on extracting events and understanding event-event relations from natural language text which is the key to carrying out various analytical tasks such as predicting future events detecting misinformation and other attempts to validate events managing extreme events answering complex questions and generating concise text summaries for analysis and to help the government companies and general public with improving situational awareness reducing information overload and assisting with timely decision-making during this research i will study correlations between events and the way in which an entire document is organized in order to overcome the fundamental difficulties in identifying event-event relations posed by the long distance between event mentions and the range of different words used to describe them said huang the integration of research with education will also play a role in this career project in addition to supporting her current and future research the funds will also go toward the teaching and training of future researchers in advanced information extraction views and methods as well as to outreach efforts to expose high school and undergraduate students to computer science and natural language processing research read more about huangs research and objectives in her nsf abstract
1204,a paper by dr jodie lutkenhaus professor and axalta coating systems chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as the winner of the 2019 molecular systems design & engineering (msde) outstanding early career paper award the award-winning paper design of multifunctional supercapacitor electrodes using an informatics approach was co-authored by dr raymundo arroyave professor presidential impact fellow and chancellor edges fellow from the department of materials science and engineering in the paper the research team examined the selection and design of supercapacitor electrodes for application in structural energy and power according to lutkenhaus the research is focused on two properties in particular the goal is to design supercapacitors that are both electrochemically superior and mechanically robust the challenge is that these two properties are often at odds with each other and the route to maximizing both is not immediately clear therefore informatics were employed to tease out which composition would provide the best combination of these properties specific to electrodes containing reduced graphene oxide aramid nanofibers and carbon nanotubes she said by employing informatics principles to the research lutkenhaus and the team were able to develop a greater understanding of the relationship of the different materials and the resulting energy storage and mechanical properties the research project was one of the first to result from texas a&ms national science foundation-sponsored data-enabled discovery and design of energy materials program (d3em) which blends materials science informatics and engineering design theory lutkenhaus said her participation in the d3em program led directly to this breakthrough we teamed up with professor raymundo arroyave (d3em program director) to apply data science to an afosr-sponsored (air force office of scientific research) project out of our lab i think it is a great example of what results when scientists and researchers step outside of their comfort zone as this research is a direct result of the cross-discipline d3em program lutkenhaus said that msde was the perfect place to publish the results molecular systems design & engineering is a great venue for materials informatics and design research because the editors and the reviewers understand and appreciate this emerging field in other venues it can be harder to publish because the cross-disciplinary effort may not be holistically considered more information on this research and the msde outstanding early career paper award can be found on the molecular systems design & engineering blog
1205,dr mahmoud el-halwagi professor and holder of the bryan research and engineering chair in chemical engineering in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) computing in chemical engineering award the prestigious award presented by the computing and systems technology division of aiche recognizes outstanding contributions in the application of computing and systems technology to chemical engineering el-halwagi who also serves as managing director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations gas and fuels research center is internationally recognized for his pioneering contributions to the fundamentals and applications of sustainable design of industrial processes through systems integration and multiscale optimization in 2017 he published the second edition of his widely used textbook sustainable design through process integration: fundamentals and applications to industrial pollution prevention resource conservation and profitability enhancement el-halwagi has written two other textbooks co-edited 10 books and co-authored about 500 refereed papers and book chapters he is also an aiche fellow and a recipient of the aiche sustainable engineering forum research excellence award the national science foundation's national young investigator award and many university-level research and teaching awards
1206,garrett jares and hannah stroud doctoral students from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have each received a 2020 national science foundation (nsf) graduate research fellowship this prestigious fellowship provides financial support to outstanding graduate students in science technology engineering and mathematics who are pursuing a research-based degree nsf graduate research fellows are part of an elite group who have gone on to become leaders in industry and education
1207,since his undergraduate senior capstone project jares has been working in the vehicle systems & control laboratory (vscl) with dr john valasek director of vscl and holder of the thaman professorship while his undergraduate degree in computer science focused heavily on cybersecurity jares work within vscl has revolved around developing embedded systems for unmanned air systems and overseeing the operation of the engineering flight simulator laboratory combining his undergraduate knowledge and his experience in vscl to investigate cybersecurity for air and space vehicles jares doctoral dissertation will investigate cyberattacks that are designed to take control of an aircraft by targeting the vehicles sensor data this research will help identify and better understand the vulnerabilities in current systems and develop safeguards against such attacks jares is also a recipient of the crawford & hattie jackson foundation scholarship the edward c clay '47 memorial scholarship and the 2018 lechner graduate fellowship
1208,like jares stroud also received her undergraduate degree from texas a&m hailing from buffalo new york her undergraduate research as a member of the multifunctional materials and aerospace structural optimization (m2aestro) lab motivated her to pursue graduate studies her graduate research includes developing unconventional applications of aerospace skills coursework and educational activities and utilizing these concepts to explore applications in biomedical devices and fabric development focusing on complex structural modeling of knitted shape memory alloy structures which are the building blocks of shape-shifting fabrics for her fellowship she proposed augmenting her current work by developing new tools to allow efficient analysis and design of functional patterned fabrics stroud is also highly involved in department initiatives such as the pitch up! competition camp soar activities and demonstration development for the physics and engineering festival stroud is advised by dr darren hartl assistant professor and dr kristi shryock associate department head and frank and jean raymond foundation inc endowed instructional associate professor
1209,in a new study researchers from texas a&m university and industry have designed a smart technology that can help utility companies better serve communities affected by blackouts the researchers said their single device works by improving energy delivery between home solar-power systems and the electrical grid our innovation lets solar energy consumers be less dependent on the external power grid the same technology also allows the utility company to control energy distribution which is particularly useful during power outages caused by storms and other natural disasters said dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering so it's a win-win scenario for both the consumer and the utility company the study was published online in the institute of electrical and electronics engineers journal of emerging and selected topics in power electronics in april over the last decade a sharp drop in the cost of solar panels has encouraged more households to adopt solar power systems in these homes the current generated by rooftop solar panels is fed into an inverter before the electricity is ready for residential use and charging solar backup batteries another set of power electronics connects the solar panels and the batteries back to the grid these connections ensure that homes are always connected to the grid as long as the grid is functional during the day homes consume more solar energy and any excess energy is supplied to the grid at night homes draw electricity from the grid the researchers noted that these conventional systems have many disadvantages any voltage fluctuations in the grid due to damage to the power lines or overloading affects connected devices in homes also they said the current injected into the grid from solar-powered homes can have certain irregularities known as harmonics affecting the quality of the power within the grid the researchers explained that another pertinent problem is there is little that a utility company can do to limit the amount of grid electricity consumed by solar-powered homes this drawback is particularly harmful during natural disasters where other communities or essential services like hospitals need energy support currently there's no system in place to regulate or limit energy consumption said dr prasad enjeti ti professor iii in analog engineering in the department of electrical and computer engineering end users with solar-powered systems continue drawing electricity from the grid because utility companies have no way of controlling it unlike the conventional solar-powered systems that involve many electronics to connect back and forth from the grid the researchers put together a single device called the power electronics intelligence at the network edge or pine this device which is installed outside a home has three main connections: one going to the home one to the utility grid and another to the solar panels and batteries pine can control the flow of electricity in any one of these directions this device is like an intelligent energy router said enjeti it regulates the grid voltage integrates solar energy which is locally produced and intelligently manages and routes the energy in all directions the researchers designed this device to also be programmable so that an authorized external user like the utility company can control the amount of grid electricity reaching solar-powered homes enjeti said pine systems installed at different homes can also be programmed to communicate with each other and with the distribution operator to test if the pine networks will operate as envisioned the researchers built a hardware prototype and conducted extensive computer simulations of a mixed neighborhood in which some homes had pine systems and others did not the hardware performance along with simulations revealed that the homes with the pine system had a cleaner stable voltage at the grid level the injected voltage from these homes was also stable because the pine system was regulating that as well
1210,pine systems can dynamically and in real-time inject different voltage support to the utility grid so the utility companies need not spend millions in buying capacitor banks to support the voltage across the feeder lines said xie during power outages pine allows homes to be self-sufficient and use their solar power efficiently the technology also allows the utility company to wirelessly instruct pine systems to limit the grid current to solar-powered homes and redirect it to other affected areas pine technology is co-invented by enjeti xie and dr p r kumar regents professor and distinguished professor in the electrical and computer engineering department and the college of engineering chair in computer engineering other contributors to this research include jorge ramos-ruiz in the department of computer science and engineering; dr bin wang from the national renewable energy laboratory and dr hung-ming chou from dominion energy this research was funded by consejo nacional de ciencia y tecnologia the national science foundation and the united states department of energy
1211,dr chanan singh regents professor and irma runyon chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2020 foreign fellow of the chinese society for electrical engineering (csee) csee fellow is the highest professional distinction in the society it honors those who have made extraordinary accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology or practice in power engineering or made outstanding contributions to the progress of society and the organization and development of csee csee is a nonprofit non-governmental academic and professional organization of scientists and engineers in the electrical engineering field among this years cohort are three us national academy of engineering members including singh singhs research interests lie in the areas of reliability and security of electric power systems theory and applications of system reliability integration of renewable energy sources and the reliability of cyberphysical systems
1212,the united states department of energy (doe) is supporting a texas a&m university college of engineering project to improve the cybersecurity and energy efficiency of commercial buildings the securing grid-interactive efficient buildings through cyber defense and resilient system project led by dr zheng oneill received $35 million from the does building technologies office to research develop and demonstrate a real-time advanced building-resilient platform through multi-layer prevention and adaption mechanisms texas a&ms partners on the three-year project include raytheon technologies research center drexel university arizona state university pacific northwestern national laboratory and northwestern university as part of the project a hardware-in-the-loop – a simulation technique that is used in the development and testing of complex real-time embedded systems – and a local testbed in texas will be developed to help explore and demonstrate potential approaches to cybersecurity and energy efficiency in a real physical space both on the texas a&m campus and off the team is currently searching for potential building partners to deploy their cyber defense and resilient system (cydres) for limited field testing once in the third year of the project the proposed cydres system will accurately identify cyber threats in real-time and offer immediate defense against malicious network activity oneill said in addition the fault detection diagnostics and prognosis and cyber-resilient control scheme will enhance grid-interactive efficient building tolerance to both cyber-related and physical faults while maximizing the potential energy savings and load flexibility and maintaining occupant satisfaction cydres will be prototyped and tested in a hardware-in-the-loop and real building environment the resulting test data will be used to inform the building community and support the technology transfer to the industry oneill associate professor and j mike walker '66 faculty fellow ii in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering said current building automation systems (bas) are designed and operated with little consideration of cybersecurity challenges leaving many building systems vulnerable to attack this is of special concern for emerging grid-interactive efficient buildings (geb) which if attacked could result in especially adverse consequences ranging from energy waste and occupant discomfort to equipment downtime and disruption of grid operations current physical behavior-based anomaly detection methods employed by building automation systems fail to differentiate cyberattacks from equipment or operational faults oneill said such distinction is critical in ensuring the appropriate automated mitigation via control response of cyber threats and providing actionable recommendations to facility managers a special initiative of the doe gebs are expected to improve the amount and timing of energy use making an overall building more energy efficient by outfitting them with next-generation sensors controls connectivity and communication in hopes of giving occupants more control in managing comfort and productivity while simultaneously reducing energy costs the doe also hopes smarter buildings can provide benefits to the electric grid including enhanced reliability and resilience the project will streamline the cutting-edge network analyzer and control algorithms for cybersecurity into commercial building automation systems products and expedite the transfer of the latest technologies to benefit building owners building automation companies and utility companies oneill said the market size of the intended end user of this technology is all commercial buildings with bas in the us oneill said the primary annual energy savings anticipated across the country by 2030 is approximately 086 quads – a unit of energy equal to 1 quadrillion british thermal units which is often used to describe national and world energy resources – according to an estimation using doe scout tool in 2019 the us was estimated to consume a total of 1002 quads according to the us energy information administration by the projects conclusion oneill said she expects to see cydres effectively monitoring detecting and responding to cyberattacks and physical system faults the does building technologies office has a roadmap to advance the role that gebs can play in modernizing the power grid the security intelligence and resilience of the building automation systems directly affect the performance and market adoption of geb technologies in the same doe program oneill is also participating another geb project led by drexel university called hardware-in-the-loop laboratory performance verification of flexible building equipment in a typical commercial building in addition to the primary mission of the project oneill hopes to see a multidisciplinary collaboration on the project with researchers from around the texas a&m campus in further pursuing research in the area of smart buildings and cities
1213,a new faculty member in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university recently received a multi-million dollar grant to support groundbreaking cancer research in may dr tanmay lele received a $5 million recruitment of established investigators grant from the cancer prevention and research institute of texas (cprit) to further knowledge about cancer and how it progresses leles research focuses on mechanobiology the mechanical aspects of biology where he works to understand how cells sense external mechanical forces as well as how they generate mechanical forces and how these mechanical forces impact cell function in cancer both cellular mechanical forces and the mechanical properties of resisting cellular structures go awry these errors cause abnormalities in cell structure a particularly striking feature of cancer cells is the highly irregular and/or distended shape of the nucleus the nuclei in normal tissue have smooth surfaces but over time the surfaces of cancer nuclei become irregular in shape lele said now why nobody really knows were still at the tip of the iceberg at trying to figure this problem out but nuclear abnormalities are ubiquitous and occur in all kinds of cancers breast prostate and lung cancers pathologists study biopsies and note abnormalities in the shape of the cell and its nucleus to grade the severity of cancer lele and his team are computerizing the analysis of nuclear shapes to research the cause of abnormal cancer structures using photos of nuclei and cells in human tissue taken by a pathologist leles team has developed a computational algorithm to measure the degree of irregularity in the nucleus with the algorithm the team can run statistical analyses of the abnormalities and search for correlations between the extent of the irregularity changes to genetic or molecular signatures in tumors and ultimately patient outcomes leles research aims to help the medical community develop new knowledge of human cancers and how they progress to better diagnose and manage cancers understanding the mechanisms behind the abnormalities can help develop therapies to better treat cancers by targeting the nucleus like any other basic field we are trying to make discoveries with the hope that they will have long-term impacts on human health lele said lele will have two laboratories one in college station and one in the texas a&m health science centers institute of biosciences & technology in houston the cancer grant from cprit is a collaborative effort with dr michael mancini and dr fabio stossi from the baylor college of medicine he said he is looking forward to collaborating with researchers in both college station and houston lele received his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from purdue university before coming to texas a&m he served as the charles a stokes professor of chemical engineering at the university of florida at texas a&m in addition to being in biomedical engineering he will be a joint faculty member in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering all my career has been spent in chemical engineering departments but my research is also now in the biomedical space lele said the move to texas a&m was an opportunity for me to also be part of a different culture if you will of research being in the biomedical engineering department in addition to the chemical engineering department brings new opportunities to collaborate with researchers who have closely shared research interests
1214,"in march texas a&m universitys society of automotive engineers (sae) aero design team took first place in the 2020 sae aero design east competition in lakeland florida this achievement is one texas a&m has only seen once before in its 10-year history competing the competition intended to immerse students in real-world engineering situations challenged teams from across the globe to design and optimize an aircraft to meet a specified set of configurations and mission requirements this years objective was to design an aircraft to successfully take off within 100 feet while carrying a payload of steel and soccer balls the more payload an aircraft was effectively able to carry the higher the score in addition to the set of rules teams received an equation that allowed them to determine how much they could score on any given flight which helped to inform the design process from the get-go we determined that we were going to understand and use that equation to make sure we werent just setting an arbitrary design goal for ourselves said jack kassing 20 an aerospace engineering major and team director we spent two weeks before we ever started designing doing calculations"" after meticulously analyzing the equation and variables in their control the texas a&m team farmers flight confidently opted for a small wingspan design despite larger wingspans being the more efficient option in prior years of this design competition"
1215,im not sure i fully appreciated how strange it was until we got to competition and saw the other planes said kassing it was by far the smallest wingspan most teams designed to the limit which was 10 feet farmers flights aircraft was roughly half that size and quickly attained speculation from the other teams and judges when they arrived in florida despite others confusion the team was well versed in the parameters and knew a small wingspan held the most potential however reaching that potential required an untapped commitment from texas a&ms sae team preparing for takeoff because they were working with a design unlike any previous sae aircraft the team was limited on what knowledge they could use from prior experience their unconventional design also meant being unable to fully rely on what simulation software could tell them so to best work through their designs the team logged an impressive 11 trips to the runways at the rellis campus to conduct a series of flight tests it was an aerodynamic challenge to maximize the amount of lift we could get out of a small wingspan aircraft so the flight tests were all about refinement said john blausen 21 a mechanical engineering major and the teams chief engineer farmers flights first nine flight attempts were unsuccessful challenging the team to face one problem after another
1216,"it was tough but ultimately it was that challenge that allowed us to outperform the others in competition said blausen devoting hundreds of working hours to their design after every flight gave the team a well-rounded knowledge of their aircraft the constant reevaluation of their design also offered members a practical experience that translated to and from the classroom sae improved my learning experience because i had real-world examples in front of me that gave me context for what they were teaching me in class said blausen i was learning equations that i could go home and apply to the work on our aircraft overcoming turbulence together although their hard work paid off pursuing a design that demanded extensive testing required a team of students willing to pick back up time and again and put in the effort to understand and adjust their aircraft for kassing and blausen keeping up morale was as intentional and imperative as the refinement of their design ""a project like this does not happen unless everybody's engaged in it "" said kassing ""i think john and i did a good job of stepping right back into it after a crash and saying ‘ok lets pull up our sleeves and fix the problem and go out and do it again"
1217,"in addition to the leadership from kassing and blausen the team found motivation in their advisors' support ""the biggest impact our advisors had was motivating the team "" said blausen ""brad worsham and scott mcharg took time out of their weekends to come and fly for us i think that their commitment to do that every single week and sometimes twice a week was really motivating to the members"" farmers flight made continuous changes in the grueling months leading up to competition and with only a month left managed to complete 10 consecutive successful flights locking in their confidence ""it was a symbiotic relationship between shooting very high and having a team drive and organization that was able to make that happen "" said kassing coming in for a smooth landing from december to march the team ended up building a total of five aircrafts plus a wind tunnel model and prepared three aircrafts for competition"
1218,i think most people knew that texas a&m came to compete but they might have been caught off guard that ours performed as well as it did said blausen despite the doubt their small-winged aircraft received from teams and judges farmers flights perseverance leading up to competition equipped them with everything they needed to succeed this year we did numerous flight tests so we knew exactly what conditions our plane could fly in said blausen we had the experience and the confidence to push the limits and as a result by the end of day one wed already scored enough to win this years win pulled texas a&ms sae aero design team out of a six-year slump as gratifying as the victory was for the team their takeaways extend beyond a first-place award to see people grow from being not too self-assured about the things theyre designing to stepping in at competition and suggesting solutions was amazing said kassing the value behind seeing our team gain confidence in engineering and the intuition which that practical experience builds is incalculable farmers flight competed against teams from india czech republic poland brazil mexico china and canada along with placing first overall farmers flight received first place in mission performance and second place in oral presentation learn more about texas a&ms sae design team and the annual sae aero design competition
1219,"four faculty members of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university were recently recognized with international awards from the society of petroleum engineers (spe) dr dan hill regents professor and noble chair was awarded honorary membership the highest honor given by the spe for a lifetime of technical and service contributions ""it is particularly humbling to receive this award in light of the company in our department i am joining "" said hill referring to colleagues dr w john lee dr akhil datta-gupta dr thomas blasingame and dr jeff spath who also hold honorary memberships dr hisham nasr-el-din was awarded the anthony f lucas gold medal for his distinguished achievement in the identification and development of new technology and concepts the award comes with an automatic distinguished membership dr yucel akkutlu professor and rob l adams '40 professor in petroleum engineering will receive the lester c uren award this honor recognizes his high achievements in petroleum engineering technology he will also receive distinguished membership jointly with the award ""it is truly a privilege "" said akkutlu ""this puts me on a shortlist of names with significant technical contributions to our field i feel in debt to my department my former academic supervisors and all my students for supporting me"" dr marcelo laprea-bigott professor of engineering practice will receive distinguished membership due to his distinctive achievements in both the petroleum industry and the academic community i'm very grateful for my rewarding career and feel fortunate to be part of this fantastic department at texas a&m "" said laprea-bigott ""we push each other to perform and work toward achieving excellence together"" ""these are all very significant achievements "" said dr jeff spath department head ""i'm very proud of each of them and i'm proud to be part of such a distinguished and recognized faculty"" the recipients will be recognized during the spe annual technical meeting and conference held virtually in october 2020 because nasr-el-din passed away on july 3 his award will be accepted posthumously by his family"
1220,"three doctoral students from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university won first place with their paper in the 2020 excellence in highway safety data award competition jointly administered by the federal highway administration (fhwa) and the institute of transportation engineers (ite)their award will be announced during the 2020 virtual ite annual meeting and their paper will be published in the ite journal later this yearthe paper titled safety criteria for selecting a smart corridor: random forest using hsis data from washington state proposed a two-step selection method with a machine learning algorithm to identify safety criteria for helping practitioners in selecting a corridor ready to implement smart technologies also known as a smart corridormy team and i are deeply honored to receive this award we are very proud of winning first place in the competition we believe that we represent not only ourselves but also texas a&m university said xiaoyu sky guo lead author civil doctoral student focusing on transportation and a graduate assistant researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) we are the first aggies winning this award and we hope this prestigious award gives us the recognition that can inspire other studentsyongxin peng also a graduate assistant researcher at tti and chaolun ma also contributed to the research of the paper all three students are active members of the texas a&m ite student chapterguo said she has wanted to compete for this award since she first learned of it in 2018 and shared her idea with peng and ma yongxin specializes in working with spatial and geographical data and chaolun is a very knowledgeable peer in the area of machine learning she said while we reviewed papers and gathered pieces about safety criteria for roadways many papers and reports by dr dominique lord came up and we found him to be an expert in the area of safety dr lord is very friendly and encourages collaboration and communication so it was not very hard to invite him to be our faculty advisorlord professor and ap wiley faculty fellow in the department worked with the three students from the beginning and reviewed their paper before submissionguo said conducting the research in a short time frame and communicating efficiently with her team impacted her as a student""leading a team to win a national competition/award boosted my confidence and highlighted my achievement "" she said ""it truly helps me believe that i am on the right track in pursuing an academic career i believe teamwork and team management is critical in the engineering field these days the gains from leading a team and knowing how to collaborate with others are sometimes more important than my gains from a piece of workthe excellence in highway safety data award which was created in 2016 encourages university students to use highway safety information system data with the intent of introducing potential future highway safety professionals to useful quality safety data the application of appropriate research methods to derive recommendations and the practice of using data to make decisions that advance highway safety"
1221,radiation portal monitors are used around the world to detect the illegal transportation of radioactive material at border crossings and points of entry these portal monitors utilize scintillating detectors composed of polyvinyl toluene (pvt) plastic to screen vehicles and cargo for gamma-ray emissions that would indicate the presence of radioactive materials unfortunately the pvt plastic has a tendency to fog over time due to exposure to temperature and humidity fluctuations rainbow suh a graduate student with the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) is part of a research team led by nsspi deputy director dr craig marianno looking into solutions to the problem of pvt fogging this work is sponsored by the united states department of energys national nuclear security administration (nnsa) according to suh recent studies confirmed pvt is susceptible to specific environmental changes and can cause radiation monitoring activities to slow down or cease if left unchecked pvt fogging represents a change in opacity that can lead to reduced light collection in the photomultiplier tube of the detector suhs work has led to the development of an opacity monitoring system capable of observing changes in opacity in deployed detectors suh says this remote system is necessary to determine the state of health of pvt detectors and extend the operational lifetime as part of the ongoing effort to combat nuclear and radiological smuggling suhs final design consists of an array of multiple light-emitting diodes (leds) as a light source an optical sensor and a microcontroller board for data capture and transmission suh prototyped and tested the system for feasibility at texas a&m university on a small scale and then performed testing on full-scale pvt panels in an environmental chamber at oak ridge national laboratory tested over multiple hours of extreme temperature cycling the system was able to register opacity changes in the pvt detector the testing demonstrated not only the ability of the system to monitor the opacity of the pvt over time it also demonstrated the ability of the hardware to resist extreme environmental conditions
1222,this system could be deployed to monitor the health of pvt in detectors at points of entry around the world to ensure that the detectors continue to work as intended to prevent radioactive materials from being smuggled across borders this work has been concluded and the design of the system was very successful as an engineer i could not have asked for a better challenge as a basis for my masters thesis from the very beginning my work felt important and the impact it would make was clear suh said having successfully defended her thesis suh will be graduating with a masters degree in nuclear engineering with a specialization in nuclear nonproliferation from texas a&m this summer she previously earned her bachelors degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m with minors in physics and mathematics she has participated in multiple international experiences including the 2019 international nuclear facilities experiences in the netherlands germany and austria and an externship to france switzerland and austria regarding nuclear waste management she was recently selected as a fellow in the nnsa graduate fellowship program
1223,dr amy epps martin professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and a researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute has been named one of 20 women of asphalt to watch in 2020the list includes women in leadership positions influencers thought leaders and newcomers to the asphalt industry all have demonstrated success in the asphalt industry affected positive change served as a mentor and given back to their community i am honored and humbled to be recognized by my peers as one of the 20 women of asphalt to watch in 2020 i strive to continue to be a role model of integrity excellence and balance in all that i do epps martin saidduring her more than 22 years in civil engineering epps martin said among the most significant achievements in her career is the positive impact she has had on approximately 1 800 students including mentoring 42 graduate students she is also an accomplished researcher her work is balanced between fundamental theory and practical science and led to the development of performance-based specifications for asphalt pavement materials national guidelines for the design and construction of specialty asphalt mixtures as well as the development of sustainable and durable asphalt materialsin 2019 she was elected a fellow of the american society of civil engineers and to the board of directors as director-at-large for the association of asphalt paving technologistswomen of asphalt is a national coalition supporting women in all aspects of the asphalt industry through mentoring education and advocacy and by encouraging women to seek careers in the asphalt industrylisten as she passionately discusses her pride in educating and elevating future women in the industry
1224,cell phone batteries often heat up and at times can burst into flames in most cases the culprit behind such incidents can be traced back to lithium batteries despite providing long-lasting electric currents that can keep devices powered up lithium batteries can internally short circuit heating up the device researchers at texas a&m university have invented a technology that can prevent lithium batteries from heating and failing their carbon nanotube design for the batterys conductive plate called the anode enables the safe storage of a large quantity of lithium ions thereby reducing the risk of fire further the researchers said that their new anode architecture will help lithium batteries charge faster than current ­­commercially available batteries we have designed the next generation of anodes for lithium batteries that are efficient at producing large and sustained currents needed to quickly charge devices said juran noh a material sciences graduate student in dr choongho yus laboratory in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering also this new architecture prevents lithium from accumulating outside the anode which over time can cause unintended contact between the contents of the battery's two compartments which is one of the major causes of device explosions their results are published in the march issue of the journal nano letters when lithium batteries are in use charged particles move between the batterys two compartments electrons given up by lithium atoms move from one side of the battery to the other on the other hand lithium ions travel the other direction when charging the battery lithium ions and electrons go back to their original compartments hence the property of the anode or the electrical conductor that houses lithium ions within the battery plays a decisive role in the batterys properties a commonly used anode material is graphite in these anodes lithium ions are inserted between layers of graphite however noh said this design limits the amount of lithium ions that can be stored within the anode and even requires more energy to pull the ions out of the graphite during charging these batteries also have a more insidious problem sometimes lithium ions do not evenly deposit on the anode instead they accumulate on the anodes surface in chunks forming tree-like structures called dendrites over time the dendrites grow and eventually pierce through the material that separates the battery's two compartments this breach causes the battery to short circuit and can set the device ablaze growing dendrites also affect the batterys performance by consuming lithium ions rendering them unavailable for generating a current noh said another anode design involves using pure lithium metal instead of graphite compared to graphite anodes those with lithium metal have a much higher energy content per unit mass or energy density but they too can fail in the same catastrophic way due to the formation of dendrites to address this problem noh and her teammates designed anodes using highly conductive lightweight materials called carbon nanotubes these carbon nanotube scaffolds contain spaces or pores for lithium ions to enter and deposit however these structures do not bind to lithium ions favorably
1225,hence they made two other carbon nanotube anodes with slightly different surface chemistry one laced with an abundance of molecular groups that can bind to lithium ions and another that had the same molecular groups but in a smaller quantity with these anodes they built batteries to test the propensity to form dendrites as expected the researchers found that scaffolds made with just carbon nanotubes did not bind to lithium ions well consequently there was almost no dendrite formation but the batterys ability to produce large currents was also compromised on the other hand scaffolds with an excess of binding molecules formed many dendrites shortening the batterys lifetime however the carbon nanotube anodes with an optimum quantity of the binding molecules prevented the formation of dendrites in addition a vast quantity of lithium ions could bind and spread along the scaffolds surface thereby boosting the batterys ability to produce large sustained currents when the binding molecular groups are abundant lithium metal clusters made from lithium ions end up just clogging the pores on the scaffolds said noh but when we had just the right amount of these binding molecules we could ‘unzip the carbon nanotube scaffolds at just certain places allowing lithium ions to come through and bind on to the entire surface of the scaffolds rather than accumulate on the outer surface of the anode and form dendrites noh said that their top-performing anodes handle currents five times more than commercially-available lithium batteries she noted this feature is particularly useful for large-scale batteries such as those used in electric cars that require quick charging building lithium metal anodes that are safe and have long lifetimes has been a scientific challenge for many decades said noh the anodes we have developed overcome these hurdles and are an important initial step toward commercial applications of lithium metal batteries other contributors to this research include jian tan from the mechanical engineering department; and digvijay rajendra yadav peng wu and dr kelvin xie from the materials science and engineering department this research is funded by the national science foundation
1226,"deborah 83 and kenneth delano jr ‘84 have established the deborah 83 and kenneth delano jr 84 deans scholars award this award will provide one or more scholarships to full-time incoming freshman students who have excelled academically demonstrated outstanding leadership and are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university as first-generation aggies deborah and kenneth each decided to attend texas a&m for a multitude of reasons deborah chose texas a&m because it was an excellent engineering school for the study of computer science because of my degree and experience gained through the years i have been able to secure work easily no matter where we have lived she said similarly kenneth chose texas a&m because he wanted to go to a university with an outstanding engineering program and stay in texas because of the lower tuition costs texas a&m fit the bill and helped me pay my college expenses with a scholarship "" he said deborah and kenneth wanted to establish this scholarship with texas a&m for a few reasons texas a&m was our home for more than four years we had some professors who really cared that we learned and we made good friendships deborah said we also both received scholarships to assist in achieving our goal of getting our education and now we want to give that gift to others since they got married deborah and kenneth have wanted to give back to texas a&m and help others get a college degree in engineering we have established several scholarships in the college of engineering at texas a&m and are always looking for new areas that can benefit from financial assistance and which we feel are good programs deborah said thus this scholarship the deans scholar award was established to aid select freshmen achieve the goal of becoming an engineer the students we have met who have received our scholarships are truly exceptional people texas a&m has helped them grow and given them the foundation to succeed in life and in their careers kenneth said deborah and kenneth hope their gift will help increase the number of engineers around the world texas a&m will provide them the opportunity to learn and make a difference in new fields with growth and improvements in existing fields deborah said the delanos have two children cynthia and michael and although neither are aggies they hope their grandson braydon will attend texas a&m in the future"
1227,a deans scholar award can be established as an endowment of $100 000 or by committing to a four-year contribution of $4 000 each year for a total of $16 000 if you are interested in supporting the deans scholars award program or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1228,as the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge worldwide there is an urgent need for anything that can bring us closer to a vaccine or treatment that will protect people from future infections sars-cov-2 (also known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) is the virus that infects cells and causes the coronavirus disease in humans researchers could theoretically eliminate the threat of the coronavirus if they can discover how to prevent this virus from binding to cells in the first place preventing this binding is easier said than done but the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) has received funding from the national institute for innovation in manufacturing biopharmaceuticals (niimbl) to help find a way to do just that nctm is producing spike proteins to identify antibodies that can attach to the sars-cov-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain and prevent the virus from binding to key sites thus obstructing the virus from entering and infecting human cells there are hundreds of virus-fighting antibodies in plasma and using recombinant spike proteins is the fastest way to detect the correct ones we need to fight covid-19 said dr zivko nikolov professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering at texas a&m university and director of nctm
1229,nctms strategy is derived from what happened with dr kent brantly who survived ebola then donated his plasma to help others recover as well doctors and scientists identified antibodies in his blood that could recognize the ebola virus and prevent it from multiplying further in patients similarly nctm researchers are making versions of covid-19 spike proteins that can be used to measure antibody responses to the sars-cov-2 virus spike proteins in order to aid in the recombinant development of these antibodies in the future nctms spike proteins will also be useful once a covid-19 vaccination is available beyond screening convalescent plasma the spike proteins will be needed to determine if protective responses are being generated in response to the vaccination how long responses persist and if having antibodies to the spike protein provides a person with immunity such that they can safely return to the workplace without fear of reinfection said tees research scientist dr susan woodard nctm is collaborating with the army research lab (arl) whose research affiliates have been studying coronavirus spike proteins since 2013 the most promising constructs designed by arl partners have been shared with nctm to produce more proteins the proteins that nctm makes in cell culture will be provided to arl and they will work with houston methodist hospital to use the purified material in serology assays to screen donors for convalescent plasma therapy arl will also use nctms proteins to screen monoclonal antibodies that neutralize the virus the purified spike proteins are important for determining the strength of antibodies present in recovered covid-19 patients and antibodies made against the spike proteins are expected to prevent the virus from binding to and infecting human cells i am excited to scale up the effort to produce spike proteins and to deliver hundreds of milligrams of purified proteins to collaborators at the arl houston methodist hospital the us department of commerces national institute of standards and technology and niimbl nikolov added i truly believe nctm is uniquely qualified to respond to the education training and applied research needs of texas a&m university and the broader community this work was performed under financial assistance award 70nanb20h037 from the u s department of commerce national institute of standards and technology
1230,the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) is a first-of-its-kind multi-disciplinary workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center located at texas a&m university in college station texas the nctms workforce development mission is to provide education training and outreach programs to produce a highly skilled workforce for the vital us and global pharmaceutical industry
1231,dr hae-kwon jeong professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2020 institute award for excellence in industrial gases technology by the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) this award recognizes an individual's sustained excellence in contributing to the advancement of technology in the production distribution and application of industrial gases jeongs research focuses primarily on chemical purification and separation specifically jeong and his research team have developed a novel membrane-based method to separate light olefins from paraffins this method utilizes metal-organic frameworks as the membrane material especially zeolitic-imidazolate frameworks (zif) which are composed of metal ions (usually zn2+ or co2+) and imidazole-derived organic linkers traditionally zif membranes while quite effective in olefin- paraffin separations have been quite expensive to produce however jeong has developed a method that drastically reduces the effective thickness of the zif membranes while increasing the membrane area drastically reducing the cost of production jeong says his research group is focused on refining and scaling up the production of the membranes currently my group has been developing innovative strategies for large-scale production of tunable zif membranes for custom gas separations jeong hopes the award will lead to wider adoption and more research in the area of zif-based separations this recognition will certainly draw more interest from both academia and industries finally jeong acknowledged his supporters and contributors i would like to thank my academic advisor dr michael tsapatsis at johns hopkins for his training and guidance also i want to thank my former and current students and postdocs for their hard work lastly i'm indebted to the department for the support
1232,dr hisham nasr-el-din professor and holder of the john edgar holt endowed chair passed away on july 3 2020 he leaves behind a legacy of service respect professionalism and kindness not soon forgotten in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university nasr-el-din was the recipient of many accolades during his lifetime from the department college and university as well as numerous society of petroleum engineering (spe) honors that highlighted his distinguished achievements over a long career in industry and academia most recently he was named winner of the prestigious anthony f lucas gold medal award from spe of which he was also a distinguished member as well a prior recipient of the spe faculty award but perhaps one of the most significant honors and the one that defines why he was such a beloved faculty member was the 2017 student employment impact award he received from texas a&m nasr-el-din maintained eight scientific research laboratories in the petroleum engineering department his student researchers in those labs numbered from 20 to over 40 per year he worked tirelessly to provide financial support for all of them by seeking out graduate research assistantships student assistant positions and funding from industry partnerships and consulting work these efforts enabled his students to work on real-world problems in the laboratory and collaborate with industry leaders earning advantages for them that led to internships and permanent employment after graduation most importantly nasr-el-din ran his research group as if part of a company drawing on his 20 years of experience as a researcher for saudi aramco attendance was taken every morning researchers reported to their offices or labs during the day and were held to standards of laboratory safety equal to or higher than those in industry he read all of their daily reports and responded with answers or guidance so his students would have realistic expectations ample experience and practice fulfilling the level of expectation industry would demand yet this same professor who demanded respect and professionalism from his students also served them with kindness often called dr hisham by his students who dubbed themselves hishams army he was humble and approachable but a firm and realistic mentor his door was always open to those with questions regarding research or life and he organized his student workspaces to encourage those from different cultures to mingle with and learn from one another since his death countless tributes have poured in over social media following the hashtag #hishamstrong colleagues and current students and former students have already begun supporting causes important to him including establishing memorial graduate funding and a campaign to provide clean water wells in his name to needy communities in the middle east something he cared deeply about remarks left by those who knew him memorialize his life in the best way possible dr hisham is a true example of a professional who was passionate about his work he definitely transferred that attitude to all his students in a personal sense he saw a chance to help and never hesitated to do so wrote dr ahmed rabie he fought for me supported me professionally and personally he was so patient humble wise wrote former student khatere sokhanvarian everyone's life needs a shining light that paves the way to unimaginable opportunities and circumstances dr hisham nasr-el-din was that light in my life wrote current student raja ramanathan he had the highest of manners an inspirational soul that sparked enthusiasm planted resilience and discovered passion a petroleum engineering guru with unfathomable professional generosity wrote current student ahmed elkady my world was a much better place when i had him in it he was more of a mentor than a boss: firm but with gentle guidance wrote gia alexander nasr-el-dins staff editor he was a paragon of humility in a state of greatness we are bidding farewell to a distinguished world-renowned scientist a prodigious researcher a gifted teacher a great educator a true gentleman and a shining example to all of us wrote dr george moridis to say that he will be missed is an understatement he was a kind man with a big heart and a giant in our discipline wrote dr eduardo gildin i have been honored and humbled to have served beside him wrote dr jerome schubert dr nasr-el-din by far outperformed everyone else on every imaginable metric he was beyond doubt our department's greatest engineer and educator wrote dr ruud weijermars now he will be allowed to rest from a meaningful and fruitful life his memory and legacy lives on
1233,researchers in the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory are working to develop a drone with the ability to morph while in flight to better fit its mission for example shortening and lengthening the wing for efficiency and speed to begin their work they turned to the expertise of researchers at texas a&m university for assistance with the complex analysis and design stage
1234,tackling part of this first step a team led by dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering developed a novel fluid-structure interaction algorithm this vital tool will provide the army research laboratorys researchers with a streamlined means to analyze the interaction between fluid and air flows and flexible or adaptable solid structures in their pursuit of a transforming drone in aerospace a really common problem that we have to consider is the interaction between fluid flows and the solid structure that your vehicle is comprised of said hartl that analyzing of how the fluid pushes and deforms the structure and how the changing shape of the structure changes fluid flow in a simultaneous way is what is known as fluid structure interaction take an airplane for example its design is largely based on aerodynamics and should stay stiff and not change shape mid-flight however if the wings were allowed to lengthen on longer international flights the design would need to go back to square one because the shape change alters how the air is flowing around the original design interacts with the actual physical structure of the plane when you decide to morph a structure it completely changes how the flow is acting which changes how the pressure pushes on the structure which changes how the structure works said hartl fluid-structure interaction in morphing vehicles is much more complicated because motion is intentional so that's why we leaned into this problem; we needed a better way to solve fluid-structure interaction traditionally fluid-structure interaction is analyzed by running individual fluid and structural codes one at a time updating the pressure one increment at a time to see how it affects the structure and then updating the structural shape to see how it affects the pressure this impacts the design process because if any aspect of the design is changed the expensive fluid-structure interaction scheme has to be redone this could take days of computation going back and forth to find the sweet spot for design
1235,to fix this hartl and his team developed an algorithm that substantially cuts down the computational cost by simultaneously running analyses for various pressures and structure shapes and then using mathematical tools to stitch together two matching solutions the ability to map the intersections of various pressure and structure points grants researchers the ability to design redesign and morph their structures as they please without needing to constantly run additional analyses cutting down the time it takes to produce this new design from days to a few runs hartl said the concept is exciting i know that up until this point weve basically been unable to do serious design studies on morphing aircrafts because of this computational expense problem said hartl frankly this is one reason why there's not a lot of morphing airplane solutions the only way to have done this in the past was to design build and test and one primary problem with structures that can move is that wrong answers quickly lead to catastrophic failures the team is comprised of collaborators from the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory and texas a&m this is an example of the potential of having army futures command and the army research laboratory integrated with texas a&m said hartl this algorithm and idea are only a couple years old and their team was able to harvest it and use it because they were here they were the first ones to hear and see about this new way of solving a problem and immediately began applying it to their work
1236,for more information view the teams publication uncoupled method for massively parallelizable 3d fluid-structure interaction analysis and design
1237,despite the abundance of renewable energy sources like solar and wind the main hurdle in fully utilizing them in power generation and other potential uses is their intermittence and unpredictability solar energy is only available during the day and wind energy depends on daily weather patterns to investigate efficient ways to tap into these natural resources the department of energy has awarded a three-year grant of $15 million to dr patrick shamberger and a team of faculty from texas a&m university with this funding shamberger will direct his efforts in discovering and developing phase-change materials that can be used to both store heat during times when solar energy is readily available and release heat on demand this project comes from the realization that storing energy in the form of thermal energy in phase-change materials is a far more efficient and cost-effective form of energy storage said shamberger assistant professor in the department of materials science and engineering the targets of our program are less than $15 per kilowatts per hour which is lower than the cost of storing that energy as electricity in a battery as their name suggests phase-change materials change their physical state in response to heat that is they convert from solid to liquid when they store heat and liquid to solid when they release their stored energy moreover these phase-change materials can be designed to be reheated and cooled many thousands of times without compromising their functionality building heating and cooling account for over 30% of the total residential electricity demand by using phase-change materials excess heat above a certain set temperature can be stored maintaining the ambient temperature at a constant value during the day at night this heat stored in these materials can be used for keeping homes warm and for other purposes thus these materials can directly contribute to reducing a complete dependency on the power grid for electricity he said however state-of-the-art commercial phase-change materials used in regulating building temperature are dominated by paraffins these wax-like materials have a number of deficiencies including flammability low energy storage density and low thermal conductivity these drawbacks have limited the use of paraffins to store thermal energy in buildings as an alternative approach the team of researchers will investigate the use of inorganic salt hydrates to store thermal energy these compounds are cheaper and store more energy per unit volume but they too have their own set of limitations that need to be addressed before they are a viable option inorganic salt hydrates require a comprehensive suite of associated technologies to reduce their inherent limitations like supercooling and material corrosion said shamberger this team of outstanding researchers is really built around addressing different aspects of advancing salt hydrate eutectics from ‘candidate materials to commercially feasible alternatives to accomplish the goal of reversibly storing thermal energy in buildings in that regard the team will focus on the discovery and testing of new inorganic salts using a combination of experiments and computational modeling stabilizing these compounds through the use of a hydrogel matrix and microencapsulation and improving the thermal conductivity of these salts by embedding them into a carbon-based matrix among other aims in the coming years as solar and wind energy change the landscape of how consumers use energy to power their homes and businesses a heightened emphasis on efficiently utilizing these energy resources without boosting costs is likely with this grant shamberger said the team of texas a&m researchers will be able to make important strides in the area of renewable energy storage and conversion using phase-change materials this funding will be instrumental in shaping next-generation technologies that will enable the use of energy more productively and efficiently by providing an alternate source of electrical energy at the demand site said shamberger shamberger shares the award with dr svetlana sukhishvili and dr emily pentzer from the department of materials sciences and engineering dr jonathan felts and dr choongho yu from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and dr charles culp from the department of architecture at texas a&m university
1238,four interdisciplinary projects led by researchers in the texas a&m university college of engineering will share $7 million in funding from round 3 of texas a&ms x-grants program an initiative of the 10-year $100 million presidents excellence fund these interdisciplinary projects have the potential for significant advances in areas such as cancer and covid-19 therapies natural disaster response and mitigation novel space management mental health migration behaviors water quality and improvements to the efficiency of current technologies said dr mark a barteau vice president for research titles and team leaders for each of the four engineering projects are: texas a&m lunar surface experiments program dr jeffrey bullard professor department of materials science and engineering and zachry department of civil and environmental engineering disaster city digital twin: integrating machine and human intelligence to augment flood resilience dr ali mostafavi assistant professor zachry department of civil and environmental engineering engineering nanomedicine for non-invasive cancer therapy dr shiren wang associate professor wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering integrated nanophotonics for next-generation internet of things (iot) dr zi jing wong assistant professor department of aerospace engineering the round 3 funded projects represent 80 faculty members and other researchers from eight colleges agriculture and life sciences architecture engineering geosciences medicine pharmacy science and veterinary medicine the texas a&m health science center and the qatar and galveston campuses there were 142 one-page proposals submitted to the program 43 of which were chosen for preliminary proposals twenty-two were selected to submit final proposals
1239,high blood pressure is the single biggest risk factor for heart disease stroke and other health problems the only way to know if youre at risk is to have it checked often while one in three american adults has high blood pressure about 20% of people are unaware that they have it because it is largely symptomless researchers at texas a&m university hope to help remedy this with a wrist-worn system that monitors blood pressure during sleep
1240,dr roozbeh jafari a professor in the biomedical engineering computer science and engineering and electrical and computer engineering departments and his team have received a $36 million grant from the national institutes of health (nih) to create a system a user can wear all night while they sleep for constant readings blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of arteries as the heart pumps blood high blood pressure also referred to as hypertension is when that force is too high and begins harming the body if left untreated it will eventually cause damage to the heart and blood vessels regular blood pressure monitoring systems use a mercury-based (or the digital equivalent) inflatable cuff-based sphygmomanometer many factors can affect blood pressure readings like caffeine stress and exertion and most people do not have theirs checked outside a doctors office there is a significant need to understand how blood pressure fluctuates throughout the day and night said jafari nobody knows that and there's really no technology that can capture this continuously jafari said there is a value to measuring blood pressure continuously in the natural context of the users environment especially during sleep without being disturbed by the instrument but the nature of the current cuff device allows for only infrequent measurements and its somewhat invasive nature and associated discomfort prohibits additional nocturnal measurements the objective of this research a collaborative project with the yale school of medicine is to create an unobtrusive wrist-worn cuffless blood pressure monitor for measurement and identification of nocturnal nondipping hypertension (when theres a smaller decrease in nocturnal arterial blood pressure) the research which began initially about three years ago includes extensive validation with state-of-the-art ambulatory blood pressure monitors at nighttime in the presence of varied treatment models
1241,their proposed technology will be able to provide a wealth of information to physicians help identify certain short-term dynamics and variations of blood pressure and allow effective monitoring of response to medication among other things nighttime blood pressure is actually a really good indicator for the health of the cardiovascular system jafari said at nighttime typically the body itself shows its true behavior you and i can get stressed out we can have a relaxing time and you could be very active physically right all those specific stimuli will impact the blood pressure but at nighttime you don't have that so you're sort of having a baseline another significance of nighttime blood pressure is that you don't have a lot of movement the movements themselves introduce a significant amount of noise and challenges with respect to capturing clean signals jafari said nocturnal measurements would obviously provide additional prognostic value in identifying risks but despite these benefits no wearable noninvasive device for continuous blood pressure monitoring exists on the market simply because none have been reliable enough to be considered clinical grade the researchers set about developing a robust and reliable blood pressure monitor that uses bioimpedance sensors (a measure of how well the body impedes electric current flow) and for the first time demonstrates clinical-grade reliability they use sensors that measure pulse-wave velocity (pwv) along with several other derivatives for cardiovascular parameters including heart rate and blood volume changes in arteries which correlate with the blood pressure the system will incorporate a hardware design to localize the underlying vascular system of the body and focus on arterial sites for enhanced accuracy the device will include a motion sensor to take into account the users movements and the contact quality and reliability of the measurements advanced machine learning techniques leveraging both general and personalized models will be developed to convert bioimpedance measurements to blood pressure
1242,researchers hope to validate the system and analytics in both a healthy patient cohort and a hypertensive cohort learning the impact that nocturnal nondipping hypertension and anti-hypertensive treatments have on pwv and other correlated cardiovascular and blood pressure estimates jafari said that while they have been working on their device for the past three years with a previous nih grant with the new funding they will begin two new phases of the project at texas a&m where they will create novel techniques and methods will refine their prototype design and continue testing it so the next version will be fully wearable and effectively would look like a smartwatch jafari said once we have that we are going to start the evaluation of that technology on a cohort of human subjects the last phase of the project will be at the yale school of medicine where they will do extensive testing on hypertension patients who are on different medications eventually their hope is that after decades of relying on the inflatable cuff-based technique this new system could represent a significant change in how blood pressure is measured we still have more battles to fight but i think the likelihood of success at this point is very high jafari said our objective actually is to build a system that can work for anyone even somebody who has absolutely no problem with blood pressure but the ultimate objective is to enable anybody and everybody to have this kind of technology at their disposal other collaborators on the project include dr harlan krumholz and dr erica spatz yale school of medicine; dr melissa grunlan department of biomedical engineering; dr tom ferris department of industrial and systems engineering; and dr bobak mortazavi department of computer science and engineering
1243,dr aakash tyagi professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been appointed holder of the zachry teaching professorship i in the college of engineering the endowed chair appointment was effective june 1 the professorship was established to strengthen the preparation of students in the college for effective careers in business and industry through seminars internships etc by involving professors of practice from those sectors in the teaching program who are in a unique position to leverage their contacts in industry tyagi joined the department as its first professor of practice in 2014 after 20 years of service at intel he received his doctorate in computer engineering and masters in electrical and computer engineering from the university of louisiana at lafayette and his bachelors degree in electronics and communication from the kamla nehru institute of technology his research interests include hardware verification secure computing and high-performance computing architectures
1244,the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) is paying tribute to dr je-chin han for his lifetime of service to engineering with a 2020 asme honorary membership according to the announcement the award recognizes han the marcus c easterling 30 chair professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university for his eminent achievement and distinguished service in the area of heat transfer through inspiring leadership through education and through research particularly for pioneering experiments in gas turbine blade cooling technology development that have had major impacts on increasing operational durability performance and efficiency one of the societys highest honors the award recognizes distinguished service that contributes significantly to the attainment of the goals of the engineering profession the honor was first awarded in the asmes founding year 1880 and is awarded each year to up to five honorees i am humbled and honored to be elected to the asme honorary member list said han i wish this recognition will increase our mechanical engineering faculty reputation and enhance the visibility of texas a&m university i thank my family graduate research assistants colleagues and mentors for their continued support and inspiration a formal presentation of the award is planned to take place monday november 16 during the asme mechanical engineering congress & exposition
1245,col rosendo ross guieb has been named the first executive director of the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) effective today guieb moves from the senior staff of army futures command (afc) to the new role of managing the bcdc a complex being built on the 2 000-acre rellis campus in bryan texas to help accelerate military innovation ross will be integral to our program and will keep serving our country in this new role said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories for the texas a&m university system and dean of engineering his experience will help ensure that the strategic partnership between afc and the texas a&m system remains perfectly aligned
1246,guieb will manage the vision goals and execution strategies of the bcdc while working to expand relationships with other key stakeholders in national defense innovation he will work alongside dr john e hurtado deputy director and chief technology officer of bcdc who better to lead this critical national defense initiative said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system ross understands the challenges of modernization inside and out he will be instrumental as we assist the army with next-generation battlefield readiness
1247,to learn more see the announcement about guieb's appointment as executive director and the story of his background on the bcdc website
1248,over the last few years there has been a significant increase in the use of twitter to share updates seek help and report emergencies during a disaster social media platforms can be instrumental for keeping track of events like damage to personal property or injuries during natural disasters however algorithms keeping track of social media posts to signal the occurrence of natural disasters must be swift so that relief operations can be mobilized immediately a team of researchers led by dr ruihong huang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has developed a novel weakly supervised approach that can train machine learning algorithms quickly to recognize tweets related to disasters because of the sudden nature of disasters theres not much time available to build an event recognition system said huang our goal is to be able to detect life-threatening events using individual social media messages and recognize similar events in the affected areas the researchers described their findings in the proceedings from the association for the advancement of artificial intelligences 34th conference on artificial intelligence texts on social media platforms like twitter can be categorized using standard algorithms called classifiers this sorting algorithm separates data into labeled classes or categories such as how spam filters in email service providers scan incoming emails and classify them as either spam or not spam based on its prior knowledge of what spam and non-spam messages are most classifiers are an integral part of machine learning algorithms that make predictions based on carefully labeled sets of data in the past machine learning algorithms have been used for event detection based on tweets or a burst of words within tweets to ensure a reliable classifier for the machine learning algorithms human annotators have to manually label large amounts of data instances one by one which usually takes several days sometimes even weeks or months the researchers also found that it is essentially impossible to find a keyword that does not have more than one meaning on social media depending on the context of the tweet for example if the word dead is used as a keyword it will pull in tweets talking about a variety of topics such as a phone battery being dead or the television series the walking dead we have to be able to know which tweets that contain the predetermined keywords are relevant to the disaster and separate them from the tweets that contain the correct keywords but are not relevant said huang to build more reliable labeled datasets the researchers first used an automatic clustering algorithm to put them into small groups next a domain expert looked at the context of the tweets in each group to identify if it was relevant to the disaster the labeled tweets were then used to train the classifier how to recognize the relevant tweets using data gathered from the most impacted time periods for hurricanes harvey and florence the researchers found that their data labeling method and overall weakly-supervised system took one to two person-hours instead of the 50 person-hours that were required to go through thousands of carefully annotated tweets using the supervised approach despite the classifiers overall good performance they also observed that the system still missed several tweets that were relevant but used a different vocabulary than the predetermined keywords users can be very creative when discussing a particular type of event using the predefined keywords so the classifier would have to be able to handle those types of tweets said huang theres room to further improve the systems coverage in the future the researchers will look to explore how to extract information about the users location so first responders will know exactly where to dispatch their resources other contributors to this research include wenlin yao a doctoral student supervised by huang from the computer science and engineering department; dr ali mostafavi and cheng zhang from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering; and shiva saravanan a local high school student (who is currently attending princeton university) that interned in the natural language processing lab at texas a&m this work is supported by funds from the national science foundation
1249,a researcher at texas a&m university is launching a project to better understand how light can affect neurons in the brain dr alex walsh assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering recently received a grant through the air force office of scientific researchs (afsor) young investigator research program the grant supports walshs research to better understand why neurons in the brain are affected by infrared light we know that the infrared light induces a thermal gradient so it heats the neurons it happens very fast within milliseconds and changes the neurons electrical signals walsh said but we dont know how one hypothesis is that the stimulation affects the ion channels in neurons but responses are observed even in cells that lack light- and heat-sensitive channels with the air force grant walsh will pursue research to test if theres a relationship between infrared light and cellular metabolism if the infrared light is impacting how cells produce energy it could be modulating the neurons activity because ion channels need energy to function we use infrared lasers and fiber optics to deliver the infrared light on top of the cell and then use electronics to shape the pulses of the light to be milliseconds in duration walsh said we can apply pulse trains or single pulses
1250,walsh said one challenge that has limited the broader field of studying infrared lights impact on cells is that optimizing parameters is difficult everyone uses different laser sources wavelengths and pulse parameters so comparing studies across different labs is challenging walsh said her lab has applied for a grant to buy multiple laser sources for a head-to-head comparison of different wavelengths rather than using just one which can make replicability difficult being able to stimulate neurons to control cell behavior could have a wide variety of applications in the healthcare field walsh said many diseases ranging from seizures and pain management to heart arrhythmias could be treated by stimulating neurons to turn off another application involves turning the neurons on to interact with medical devices current prosthetic devices are integrated with the brain through electrical stimulation but there are limitations that impact the precision of the connection there may be times we want to stimulate neurons for man-machine interfacing if you have a machine like an artificial leg and you want to be able to control it the infrared light could be a precise way to tune biological responses walsh said she is also interested in learning if infrared light impacts other cell types as this may provide a light-based technology to control cell function
1251,"blue whirls – small spinning blue flames that produce almost no soot when they burn – have attracted great interest since their discovery in 2016 in part because they represent a potential new avenue for low-emission combustion now a team of researchers at the university of maryland (umd) and texas a&m university has identified how these intriguing whirls are structured their findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal science advances on august 12 the team includes now-graduated umd aerospace engineering doctoral students joseph d chung and xiao zhang working with dr elaine s oran tees eminent research professor at texas a&m and previously dr glenn l martin professor in umd's a james clark school of engineering and dr carolyn r kaplan of the department of aerospace engineering at umd using high-performance computing methods at the university of maryland's deepthought2 cluster and other computer systems the researchers showed that a blue whirl is composed of three different flames – a diffusion flame and a premixed rich and lean flame – all of which meet in a fourth structure a triple flame that appears as a whirling blue ring the researchers also found that vortex breakdown – a fluid instability that occurs in swirling flows – enables the blue-whirl structure to emerge ""the flame and flow structure revealed by the simulations serves as a fundamental base to further investigate how to create the blue whirl in a more controlled way "" said zhang ""it leads pathways to answering more complex questions"" ""examples of such questions are: how can we create blue whirls on different scales can we bypass the transitional sooty dangerous fire whirl stage and create the stable and clean blue whirl directly the newly developed algorithms and models also provide great exploring tools to find these answers "" chung said blue whirls were initially discovered in 2016 by oran working with dr michael gollner previously with the department of fire protection engineering and now at the university of california berkeley and dr huahua xiao previously in the department of aerospace engineering at umd and now at the university of science and technology in hefei china at the time they were investigating the behavior of a known phenomenon – the fire whirl also known as fire tornado – when it occurs on a water base ""blue whirls evolve from traditional yellow fire whirls "" oran said ""the yellow color is due to radiating soot particles which form when there is not enough oxygen to burn the fuel completely ""blue in the whirl indicates there is enough oxygen for complete combustion which means less or no soot and is therefore a cleaner burn we now know that blue whirl will burn all of the fuel available as it exits a burner or from a surface "" she said support for the new study was provided by grants from the national science foundation the army research office the army research laboratory the minta martin endowment funds in the department of aerospace engineering at the university of maryland and the tees eminent professorship at texas a&m computations used in the new study were performed on the university of maryland deepthought2 cluster thunder from the air force research laboratory and stampede2 from the texas advanced computing center"
1252,as oran – also once an a james clark distinguished professor while at umd – explained this research has potential applications in several industries including military aerospace and environmental for example the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement aims to utilize fire whirls as a cleaner alternative to oil spill cleanups what i'm hoping now that we know the structure of the blue whirl is that we will learn more about how to control the vortex breakdown process connected to the reactive flow oran said for example suppose we could learn enough about the particularly sensitive points in a fire whirl so that if a fireman saw a big fire whirl he would know where to put in a hose of water to extinguish it or in aerodynamics controlling the nonreactive vortex breakdown but now we have the tools and the focus to learn more and it all came from this little little fire dr xiao zhang will soon join oran at texas a&m as a post-doctoral researcher in the aerospace engineering department
1253,as new infectious diseases emerge and spread one of the best shots against novel pathogens is finding new medicines or vaccines but before drugs can be used as potential cures they have to be painstakingly screened for composition safety and purity among other things thus there is an increasing demand for technologies that can characterize chemical compounds quickly and in real time addressing this unmet need researchers at texas a&m university have now invented a new technology that can drastically downsize the apparatus used for raman spectroscopy a well-known technique that uses light to identify the molecular makeup of compounds raman benchtop setups can be up to a meter long depending on the level of spectroscopic resolution needed said dr pao-tai lin assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and the department of materials science and engineering we have designed a system that can potentially replace these bulky benchtops with a tiny photonic chip that can snugly fit within the tip of a finger in addition lin said that their innovative photonic device is also capable of high-throughput real-time chemical characterization and despite its size is at least 10 times more sensitive than conventional benchtop raman spectroscopy systems a description of their study is in the may issue of the journal analytical chemistry the basis of raman spectroscopy is the scattering of light by molecules when hit by light of a certain frequency molecules perform a dance rotating and vibrating upon absorbing the energy from the incident beam when they lose their excess energy molecules emit a lower-energy light which is characteristic of their shape and size this scattered light known as the raman spectra contains the fingerprints of the molecules within a sample typical benchtops for raman spectroscopy contain an assortment of optical instruments including lenses and gratings for manipulating light these free-space optical components take a lot of space and are a barrier for many applications where chemical sensing is required within tiny spaces or locations that are hard to reach also benchtops can be prohibitive for real-time chemical characterization as an alternative to traditional lab-based benchtop systems lin and his team turned to tube-like conduits called waveguides that can transport light with very little loss of energy while many materials can be used to make ultrathin waveguides the researchers chose a material called aluminum nitride since it produces a low raman background signal and is less likely to interfere with the raman signal coming from a test sample of interest
1254,to create the optical waveguide the researchers employed a technique used by industry for drawing circuit patterns on silicon wafers first using ultraviolet light they spun a light-sensitive material called nr9 onto a surface made of silica next by using ionized gas molecules they bombarded and coated aluminum nitride along the pattern formed by the nr9 finally they washed the assembly with acetone leaving behind an aluminum waveguide that was just tens of microns in diameter for testing the optical waveguide as a raman sensor the research team transported a laser beam through the aluminum nitride waveguide and illuminated a test sample containing a mixture of organic molecules upon examining the scattered light the researchers found that they could discern each type of molecule within the sample based on the raman spectra and with a sensitivity of at least 10 times more than traditional raman benchtops
1255,lin noted since their optical waveguides have very fine width many of them can be loaded onto a single photonic chip this architecture he said is very conducive to high-throughput real-time chemical sensing needed for drug development our optical waveguide design provides a novel platform for monitoring the chemical composition of compounds quickly reliably and continuously also these waveguides can be easily manufactured at an industrial scale by leveraging the already existing techniques to make semiconductor devices said lin this technology we believe has a direct benefit for not just pharmaceutical industries but even for other industries like petroleum where our sensors can be put along underground pipes to monitor the composition of hydrocarbons other contributors to this research are megan makela from the department of materials science and engineering; and paul gordon dandan tu cyril soliman dr gerard coté and dr kristen maitland from the department of biomedical engineering this research is funded by the national science foundation precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) engineering research center
1256,calvin t ladner pe ‘80 who served on the advisory council for the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university passed away aug 18 due to complications related to the coronavirus he was 62 ladner was the president ceo and chairman of the board of directors of lja engineering inc one of the largest and most successful employee-owned multi-discipline civil engineering firms in the united states after graduating from texas a&m with a bachelors degree in civil engineering ladner began his engineering career as an intern for the texas department of transportation in 1982 he joined winslow & associates and one of his first projects was a new master planned community called the woodlands after a merger between winslow & associates and lichliter jameson & associates in 1987 and then a later corporate integration with rust engineering in 1994 ladner led a spin-off of lja engineering & surveying inc to keep the name in perpetuity and honor the original founders at 39 years of age in 1997 ladner took the reins of lja engineering as president over the next 23 years lja grew from 40 to 1 200 employees and expanded from one office to 36 offices across the south they added multiple new engineering and consulting service lines and rose in the national engineering rankings from 381 to 65 on the engineering news-record top 500 ladner loomed large throughout the industry by reputation and ljas amazing achievements while under his leadership he was an example for everyone he met especially to other leaders on how to grow future and up-and-coming employees how to selflessly serve clients and how to operate a best place to work fast growth engineering firm ladner is survived by his wife sandy; his son stuart daughter-in-law dana and grandson lucas; his daughter caroline and her partner andrew; as well as many dearly loved family members treasured friends and respected colleagues the funeral service will be live streamed on forest park westheimer funeral home's facebook page at 10 am on thursday sept 3
1257,due to covid-19 higher education institutions around the world have had to adapt to meet the needs of their students virtual classrooms have become a necessity not just an option navigating virtual zoom classes as a student can be frustrating and difficult to stay organized every zoom session requires an identification code and password which can become overwhelming if you have multiple meetings one after another additionally this information is often buried in an email and difficult to find when needed at texas a&m university department of engineering technology and industrial distribution junior jonathan samuel realized quickly that there had to be a unified solution to these problems using his knowledge of programming with embedded systems and digital electronics samuel created a browser extension called zoom utils
1258,his extension is an intuitive faster way to keep track of notify and launch zoom meetings encompassed in one application instead of students having to manually look through their emails for their classes or even create bookmarks that dont directly open the zoom application zoom utils allows students to input their classes just once and the extension takes care of the rest there is also a built-in system to detect zoom links allowing zoom utils to add them to the extension for greater accessibility for students while samuel created the extension on his own he maintains that he could not have done it all alone i have enlisted the help of a few of my fellow aggies as well as my friends back home to try to spread the extension around and help more students says samuel at my internship at dell i made use of similar technology and applied many of those solutions and knowledge to this project furthermore working at provost it specifically the web content management team who builds many of the sites for the university has helped me to grow in learning about accessibility as well as web development in my day-to-day work which has really influenced the way i made the extension
1259,this extension is not only useful for students but can even help people who might be not used to the zoom application such as small children and the elderly with its auto-join function once you set up zoom utils the computer can automatically join users who may not know how to use zoom
1260,to use the extension visit zoomutilscom or go to your web browsers add-on store and install zoom utils for free
1261,dr tracy hammond professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was recently named the director of the institute for engineering education and innovation (ieei) the appointment is effective sept 1 and she will devote 40% of her effort to lead the ieei i am thrilled at the opportunity provided to me by the college of engineering hammond said i look forward to bringing our already excellent faculty to even greater heights ieei is a center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) its mission is to serve as a focal point and academic resource for engineering education research for faculty and administrators in order to advance the practices of engineering education in the texas a&m university system and worldwide hammond is also director of the sketch recognition lab and chair of the engineering education faculty at texas a&m she is an international leader in engineering education and her background includes degrees from columbia university and the massachusetts institute of technology (mit) including a masters degree in anthropology from columbia and a doctoral degree in computer science from mit she has received several awards for her contributions to the texas a&m engineering program and her professional field including the 2011 charles h barclay jr ‘45 faculty fellow award and the 2020 tees faculty fellow distinction she has also earned multiple educational teaching and best paper awards hammond is an international leader in activity recognition (focusing on eye body and sketch motions) haptics intelligent fabrics smartphone development and computer human interaction research her publications on the subjects are widely cited and her engineering education research has positively impacted learning across k-12 and is part of the engineering curricula at georgia tech texas state university san jose state university letourneau university texas a&m and several high schools her work has also been featured on the discovery channel and other national and international news sources additionally she has received over $13 million in research funding including 28 engineering education research grants with 13 of these from national science foundation engineering education directorates
1262,"as members of the student engineers' council (sec) saw their peers struggling with obtaining summer internships or having their internships canceled due to the covid-19 pandemic kiersten potter sec president had an idea within a few weeks and with the help of rodney boehm they developed a plan to provide engineering students with an exciting opportunity to participate in an internship program remotely i wanted students to be comfortable with changing the way that they think potter said even though i [the student] dont have anything structured to do i can still make a tangible impact by taking my own initiative this sheds new light on engineering entrepreneurship and shows students a different side of engineering they are not typically exposed to"" what started as a simple idea by potter for the sec's members developed into a program that spread across the college of engineering with nearly 350 students involved boehm the director of the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m university played a significant role in turning this idea into a reality as a mentor and professor of practice with 35 years of industry experience boehm understood the importance of summer internships we jumped in with both feet boehm said we found a way in literally three weeks to put together a 12-week summer program that included a mixture of training as well as practical teamwork activities the internship is split into four phases: application training teamwork and presentations the application process began in april when students filled out questionnaires to determine their internship status strengths and a project statement during training students attended daily mandatory sessions for six weeks plus 30 hours of elective sessions these ranged from personal development courses to guest speakers from companies across texas the training sessions were essentially built to target four different focus areas which are relevant work experience oral and written communication teamwork and interpersonal skills and creativity and problem solving potter said in the teamwork phase students were split into over 70 different teams they began working for companies with a mentoring professor of practice we professors of practice have used our experiences in running companies and in various roles in other companies to tailor the student experience to be as much like an internship in a company as we can possibly make it boehm said we can help them see what their jobs will look like inside a company mark semmelback vice president of sentry technologies has utilized texas a&m interns for over 15 years he expressed a need for students to help with market research for several of his companys products when the sec internship came to fruition this became an excellent opportunity for interns to see a different aspect of engineering our goal for the teams was to learn how to look at a product how to categorize what does that product do and then go out and look for applications for that product semmelbeck said both of the teams have come up with close to 10 potential new applications for our hardware the teams have a zoom meeting once a week to collaborate on ideas and receive instructions although this is not a traditional internship it provides insights into the engineering industry weve been able to give these teams real-life projects that were working on that look at the growth of the company into a new area semmelbeck said a lot of engineers wont even be exposed to that in their jobs for several years to have that early on gives students a much fuller view of what a company needs from them over a longer time period nick tann a senior computer engineering major is one of the students working with sentry after his summer plans were canceled he decided to apply for the sec internship it ended up being the best replacement that was available for those who had their internship canceled tann said i wanted to gain some experience and i didnt get that opportunity i found a way to do it and i went with it tann was the team lead and coordinated meetings between his team members boehm and semmelbeck his favorite part of the project was researching markets for sentrys products he said it was an unexpected part of the program but an essential part of understanding the engineering industry tanns testimonial to this program's usefulness was accompanied by dozens of others sent to potter students will complete their internship by creating a presentation to convey what they have learned another critical aspect of the sec internship is the research component working with texas a&ms department of education an ongoing study has taken place to determine these kinds of programs' success at skill development boehm said the research can demonstrate to other schools how the program was implemented and demonstrate its effectiveness the layout and design of this program sparked interest in other universities such as purdue university and the university of texas at austin we believe through this experience our students have developed an entrepreneurial mindset boehm said we see this as a critical skill for all students that are engineers and we hope that this program continues on next year our students are telling us that theyre enjoying this program so much we want to be able to offer it next summer and to a whole new set of students"
1263,inspired by the same modeling and mathematical laws used to predict the spread of pandemics researchers at texas a&m university have created a model to accurately forecast the spread and recession process of floodwaters in urban road networks with this new approach researchers have created a simple and powerful mathematical approach to a complex problemwe were inspired by the fact that the spread of epidemics and pandemics in communities has been studied by people in health sciences and epidemiology and other fields and they have identified some principles and rules that govern the spread process in complex social networks said dr ali mostafavi associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering so we ask ourselves are these spreading processes the same for the spread of flooding in cities we tested that and surprisingly we found that the answer is yesthe findings of this study were recently published in nature scientific reportsthe contagion model susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (seir) is used to mathematically model the spread of infectious diseases in relation to flooding mostafavi and his team integrated the seir model with the network spread process in which the probability of flooding of a road segment depends on the degree to which the nearby road segments are floodedin the context of flooding susceptible is a road that can be flooded because it is in a flood plain; exposed is a road that has flooding due to rainwater or overflow from a nearby channel; infected is a road that is flooded and cannot be used; and recovered is a road where the floodwater has receded the research team verified the models use with high-resolution historical data of road flooding in harris county during hurricane harvey in 2017 the results show that the model can monitor and predict the evolution of flooded roads over timethe power of this approach is it offers a simple and powerful mathematical approach and provides great potential to support emergency managers public officials residents first responders and other decision makers for flood forecast in road networks mostafavi saidthe proposed model can achieve decent precision and recall for the spatial spread of the flooded roads
1264,if you look at the flood monitoring system of harris county it can show you if a channel is overflowing now but theyre not able to predict anything about the next four hours or next eight hours also the existing flood monitoring systems provide limited information about the propagation of flooding in road networks and the impacts on urban mobility but our models and this specific model for the road networks is robust at predicting the future spread of flooding he said in addition to flood prediction in urban networks the findings of this study provide very important insights about the universality of the network spread processes across various social natural physical and engineered systems; this is significant for better modeling and managing cities as complex systems the only limitation to this flood prediction model is that it cannot identify where the initial flooding will begin but mostafavi said there are other mechanisms in place such as sensors on flood gauges that can address thisas soon as flooding is reported in these areas we can use our model which is very simple compared to hydraulic and hydrologic models to predict the flood propagation in future hours the forecast of road inundations and mobility disruptions is critical to inform residents to avoid high-risk roadways and to enable emergency managers and responders to optimize relief and rescue in impacted areas based on predicted information about road access and mobility this forecast could be the difference between life and death during crisis response he saidcivil engineering doctoral student and graduate research assistant chao fan led the analysis and modeling of the hurricane harvey data along with xiangqi (alex) jiang a graduate student in computer science who works in mostafavis urbanresilienceai labby doing this research i realize the power of mathematical models in addressing engineering problems and real-world challenges this research expands my research capabilities and will have a long-term impact on my career fan said in addition i am also very excited that my research can contribute to reducing the negative impacts of natural disasters on infrastructure servicesthis research is funded by national science foundations crisp 20 type 2 project in which mostafavi is the lead principal investigator
1265,three aggie engineers have been selected as recipients of the distinguished alumnus award the highest honor bestowed upon a former student of texas a&m university fewer than one-tenth of one percent of the universitys 527 000 former students will be recognized with this prestigious award the 2020 recipients from the college of engineering are: • mike hernandez iii 83 industrial distribution • weldon jaynes 54 industrial technology • tim leach 82 petroleum engineering since the inception of the award in 1962 only 303 former students have been recognized with the distinguished alumnus award awarded jointly by texas a&m and the association of former students this honor recognizes those aggies who have achieved excellence in their chosen professions and made meaningful contributions to texas a&m and their local communities we are proud of these wonderful former students and all of their accomplishments and contributions said president michael k young they are all deserving of the highest honor bestowed upon our alumni we look forward to joining the association in recognizing their achievements
1266,hernandez is the owner and ceo of d&m leasing one of 2019s top 100 places to work rated by the dallas morning news among the fort worth business press top 5 privately held companies and dealer raters top leasing company in america he founded the brownsville scholars program at texas a&m and is president and founder of the hernandez foundation which has provided significant support to schools and scholarships and has supported ventures that boost opportunities in cameron county in 2019 gov greg abbott appointed him as a member of the texas a&m university system board of regents he was recognized as one of fort worths top ceos in 2014; in 2016 he was named brownsvilles person of the year and in 2017 he was rio grande valleys citizen of the year honorable mention he is a member of the advisory committee for texas a&ms mcallen campus and lt gov dan patricks advisory committee on workforce training
1267,jaynes was chairman ceo and majority shareholder of priester supply co which he spent more than 40 years building into a prominent southwest us regional distributor for electric and gas utilities he also created repcom international a national telecommunication company he is a past president (now called chair) and trustee of the 12th man foundation who helped start its major gifts department a recipient of its e king gill award and member of its diamond champions council he has created the mr and mrs l weldon jaynes 54 sul ross scholarship the weldon jaynes 54 presidential endowed scholarship and a texas a&m corps of cadets scholarship jaynes is a texas a&m lettermens association hall of honor inductee and a past director of the fort worth a&m club he and wife judy give time and support to trinity united methodist and first baptist church in arlington mission arlington and the md anderson cancer center
1268,leach is the founder chairman and ceo of concho one of the energy industrys leading companies and vice chairman of the texas a&m system board of regents leach has supported texas a&m projects including the zachry engineering education complex eb cushing stadium leach teaching gardens and memorial student center renovation; he has supported the association the 12th man foundation and the george and barbara bush foundation and created a scholarship professorship and chair in petroleum engineering he is a petroleum museum hall of fame honoree and a member of the all-american wildcatters association his service to texas a&m and his community includes serving as president of the board of the scharbauer foundation on the midland college foundation board of directors and midland memorial foundation board of governors as a former member of the association of former students board and as an emeritus member of texas a&ms college of engineering advisory council the association of former students honored the 2020 recipients in the july-august 2020 issue of its texas aggiemagazine nominations for the 2021 distinguished alumnus award will be accepted through oct 2
1269,the aggies against covid-19 virtual competition began in april teams of students competed against one another to develop innovations that would help in the fight against covid-19 the top 10 teams automatically qualified to take part in the national science foundation (nsf) i-corps site program – a program that provides resources and funding to further the commercialization of student products a team of nine students from various backgrounds created the coro-no uv-clave and placed in the top 10 out of 71 teams marianela cintrón and john karako from the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering were part of this team i thought this was a great way to get involved and make a difference with everything that was happening said cintrón i pulled a group of friends together who were interested and we created a solution to the mask shortage
1270,the coro-no uv-clave is a light chamber that resembles an oven placing an object in the chamber such as a mask quickly and efficiently sanitizes that object by using uv-c lighting the team completed their project and placed in the competition but realized that their product was no longer an original this is when the nsf i-corps site program provided an opportunity for the team's creation to evolve through engineering entrepreneurship and adaptations to their original product by the time we finished the design and presented it during the competition there were tons of products like this already on the market said karako (nsf i-corps site) reached out after we placed in the top 10 and offered to fund changes to the project and four of us decided to continue working on it the team of four includes karako cintrón tyler hope and jerry reiger hope is working toward a double major in biochemistry and genetics and reiger is a geographic information science and technology major their revised product is called sterilight
1271,according to karako the primary change from their original invention is stopping the use of uv-c in exchange for another light source far uv-c this change eliminates potentially harmful radiation that is associated with uv-c lights as cintrón also pointed out far uv-c has a broader range of materials it can sanitize sterilight construction is ongoing and the team is conducting research developing the product and looking for other areas their concept can be used in with the help of the nsf i-corps site program their most recent prototype aims to sanitize objects and areas that are constantly being touched we are hoping that once we complete our design it can be implemented in k-12 and colleges so that the fear of transmission through using community objects such as crayons or lab supplies is diminished said cintrón along with schools another effective use could be in stores stores may sanitize their credit card readers every 30 or 60 minutes karako said many people go through in 60 minutes and obviously you cant clean it after every person if we have a constantly cleaning light then its a hotspot thats being constantly cleaned karako and cintrón are working with their team to create a final prototype of sterilight and contacting local institutions to determine how to improve their product they will receive a certificate of completion from the program potentially qualifying the team for an additional $2500 through the help and guidance of the nsf i-corps site program they hope to demonstrate their inventions entrepreneurial potential and aid in the battle against covid-19
1272,the texas a&m university system appropriated $603 million today to build the nations largest enclosed hypersonic testing facility as well as an autonomous vehicle testing site at the george hw bush combat development complex the bush combat development complex (bcdc) is being built on the rellis campus as part of the a&m systems agreement with the us army futures command based in austin the complex will provide an ecosystem to accelerate research and technology development to modernize the us army of the total expenditures $378 million will be spent on the innovation proving ground (ipg) an outdoor testing site for autonomous vehicles ipg construction is expected to start next summer and be completed a year later also $225 million will be spent on the ballistic aero-optics and materials (bam) test range a hypersonic and laser testing facility bam construction is scheduled to begin in february with substantial completion expected by october 2022 for more information see the a&m systems press release
1273,the bush combat development complex located on the 2 000-acre rellis campus includes a full complement of facilities equipment and instrumentation learn more about all of the bcdcs planned facilities and capabilities
1274,interdisciplinary collaboration spurs innovation – bridging different perspectives and expertise to produce the best possible product to celebrate this union of ideas engineering academic and student affairs and the department of ocean engineering launched the inaugural educating smart marine aggies robotic technologies (esmart) competition in spring 2020 this new semester-long competition in galveston challenged student teams to put their innovation creativity and communication skills to the test to create race and present a remote-controlled water vehicle capable of racing around a floating marker and returning to shore it was headed by dr paul mario koola ocean engineering professor of practice and assistant director of the first-year engineering program in galveston and dr jay porter professor and associate dean for engineering at texas a&ms galveston campus dr sharath girimaji ocean engineering department head also played a pivotal role in the creation of the program which was inspired by previous student competitions held in galveston learning in engineering happens best when one is self-motivated said koola esmart enabled students to play with ideas to produce designs that when built and tested taught them something that cannot be gained by just reading books and taking exams
1275,taking advantage of the waterfront location on the galveston campus the competition was designed to take to the water using a small section of the shoreline to have the student-made water crafts battle waves and currents on their way around a floating marker the ocean engineering department is on two campuses one at college station and one at galveston said koola the galveston campus provides tremendous learning opportunities for students being in close proximity to the ocean esmart is a means to give students a first-hand opportunity to develop technologies related to the oceans and determine their interest in pursuing a career in this field as porter expressed proudly while the kickoff competition was disrupted and transitioned online due to covid-19 students from across all departments rose to the challenge to compete virtually for the monetary prizes esmart was intentionally designed right from the start to provide an experience like no other for our galveston students taking advantage of this unique location said koola this year we could not get wet but the student spirit is so strong i believe we will come back much stronger in the coming years the first-place team even shared their design asking us to ‘please give this to the next batch with the hope the next batch will take this competition to an even higher level this makes me truly proud of this batch of students who understand how humanity has progressed by building off on the knowledge generated by those who went before us taking home first place in the inaugural challenge was a team comprised of at the time of the competition general engineering sophomore rong xu general engineering freshman saini ye general engineering sophomore jiaze cai general engineering sophomore jiawei zhang general engineering sophomore yuezhou kang ocean engineering senior skylar bayman and oceanography graduate student chenxi ma
1276,my main takeaways from this competition were leadership and friendship said xu through esmart i learned how to make a schedule for the whole process how to make appointments for meetings how to make sure every member was available and how to be efficient as a team additionally i made friends who have the same interest as me from other teams through esmart that i might have classes with or solve problems with in the future xu also explained that as a general engineering student esmart also provided him an opportunity to both apply his knowledge to a physical experiment and to experience how to work within a team dynamic on an engineering project as such he learned how important it was to trust his teammates consider other perspectives and find and apply everyones strengths for example xu took the lead on coding for his team the second-place team consisted of then general engineering sophomore botong deng computer science undergraduate linjian leo yang and general engineering sophomore wenhui li the third-place team included ocean engineering junior michael alan thiel ii general engineering sophomore robin henriquez marine engineering technology junior seth andres and general engineering freshman sriramkumar krishna kumar despite the changing tides caused by the covid-19 pandemic in the spring the leaders of the esmart program are hopeful in its future and are excited to bring together students on campus once more when it is safe like a celebratory reunion they are looking forward to the future of interdisciplinary innovation the excitement of this first batch of esmarties as i call them is what drives us to provide our students with opportunities that are unique to the galveston campus – a time in their life they will remember forever said koola as long as dr porter is here to back us esmart will live on
1277,visit here for more information or to get involved with esmart
1278,dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr lewis ntaimo head of the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university the appointment is effective sept 1 ntaimo is currently a professor and has served as the interim department head since jan 1 he joined the department in 2004 as an assistant professor his research interests include mathematical models and algorithms for decision-making problems involving data uncertainty and risk in the general area of stochastic optimization systems and process modeling and optimization and computer simulation he is a member of the institute for operations research and the management systems (informs) and the institute of industrial and systems engineers (iise) he served as the president of the informs minority issues forum for 2018-19 and was the informs 2018 tutorials chair and the informs 2019 george nicholson prize chair he is the associate editor of the informs journal on computing iise transactions iise transactions on healthcare systems engineering and is on the editorial board of the journal of global optimization ntaimo earned his phd in systems and industrial engineering masters degree in mining and geological engineering and bachelors degree in mining engineering all from the university of arizona
1279,as the new semester begins one director in the college of engineering is hoping to attract a new cohort of students to an engineering sector hes passionate about subsea engineering ronald ledbetter director of subsea engineering at texas a&m university is an expert in subsea engineering systems and offshore field development he spent more than four decades working in the oil and gas industry and hes excited for the opportunity to train future engineers who will solve many of the problems the industry is currently facing on aug 21 ledbetter will host a virtual information session that is open to anyone interested in learning more about the two graduate degrees offered at texas a&m focused on subsea engineering a master of engineering in engineering and a master of science in interdisciplinary engineering ledbetter has invited two industry leaders to join him for subsea 101 theyll provide an overview of what a career as a subsea engineer entails karl schnakenburg a subsea engineering advisor in the oil and gas industry and mark carter a retired subsea engineer with more than 31 years of experience will be offering their expertise during the half-day eventim thrilled that mr schnakenburg and mr carter will be joining us ledbetter said they are industry-recognized experts in their field and this is a tremendous opportunity for our students to have the chance to speak directly with both of these men and hear their perspectives of the oil and gas industry and their careers schnakenburg said he is excited for the opportunity to talk to students from texas a&m this is such a niche market and this is a good opportunity to share what we do he said i think students will gain a broader understanding of what subsea engineering is about and whether this fits within their interestsschnakenburg said while the energy industry is shifting to renewable sources this shift will take many decades in the meantime he believes many offshore oil and gas projects will continuewhile many subsea engineers work in the oil and gas industry they are not limited to that industry alone we study structures corrosion soil mechanics subsea control systems and many other aspects that are relevant to almost any type of offshore construction or development he said most envision offshore wind farms and other facilities that will help power our future world carter agreed that subsea engineers are still in great demand subsea fields are very attractive in terms of productivity and therefore economic return he said it is not the only way to produce lots of oil and gas but it is one of the leading methods and has been spreading to offshore basins worldwide i foresee the need for these resources long into the futurea relatively new profession schnakenburg said subsea engineering offers many unique opportunities and technical challenges the profession may take you almost anywhere on the planet and it may with a bit of luck provide opportunities and applications in other future offshore businesses he said subsea 101 is open to all engineering students and is not limited to students at texas a&m for more information about the event and to register visit the event website
1280,as with many seniors graduating from texas a&m university biomedical engineering student amanda rakoski has much to look forward to as she prepares for her upcoming graduate program at the prestigious johns hopkins university next fall over her time at texas a&m she has definitely had many achievements including becoming involved in the clare boothe luce (cbl) program the biomedical engineering society president and the tamu orchestra clubs vice president among all of them rakoski has found that her commitment in the clare boothe luce program has truly enhanced her educational passions the clare boothe luce program offers women monetary support to grow as researchers and find projects that hold value to them for rakoski this was her 3d cell culture model for breast cancer she was able to utilize different chemistries and bio-instructive peptides in gels to emulate breast cancer cell behavior and develop a model for breast cancer that can be used to test different drugs i am eternally grateful as the program has given me the opportunity to pursue research and has only strengthened my passion to earn my phd in the future rakoski said as one of eight students on campus to be in the clare boothe luce program this semester she wants to become someone who could shape the program and be an example to other women to show what they could do in their time at texas a&m being awarded something for my enthusiasm for research as i contribute to my field of biomedical engineering has shown me that research is a career option rakoski said i want to support other women to find their passion in research as well following her success she has also been admitted into the national science foundation graduate research fellowship program that supports graduate students by granting them over $35 000 in the realms of scientific innovation additionally in this endeavor to make research her career rakoski applied to 12 graduate programs because rakoski said she felt that she did not stand a chance among so many other applicants i was nervous and knew that what i wrote in my personal statements and cv (curriculum vitae) would need to prove what i had done research-wise where i wanted to go in the future and that i deserved a chance to go to their school so i wrote with all my heart and left it ‘all on the field rakoski said
1281,from this feat and in addition to her accomplishments as a student she was accepted to many top programs on her list including carnegie mellon md anderson rice university texas a&m the university of california-davis and johns hopkins university it felt surreal when a professor from johns hopkins offered me a research fellowship before i even got the email that i was invited to their invitational rakoski said i felt so blessed for the opportunity i couldnt believe that they wanted to recruit me rakoski said that she decided to continue her academic career at johns hopkins because she found that their research is something that she could work on for the rest of her life my experience has truly changed my life and showed me what i love to do i cannot thank the clare boothe luce program enough for giving me the opportunity to find my passion in my undergraduate career rakoski said
1282,invent for the planet (iftp) an annual competition hosted by texas a&m university brought together more than 800 students from nearly 40 universities around the world the final presentations were held on july 28 2020 where the final five teams presented virtually and the three winning innovations were announced first place went to the joint-university team from brazil comprised of centro federal de educação tecnológica celso suckow da fonseca and universidade federal do rio de janeiro the team from texas a&m was in second place and the makerere university team from uganda was third each year the competition has grown as more universities and students ask to participate in the global design challenge this year was no different in february teams from each participating university were challenged to tackle one of 14 challenges set by industry leaders and academics on a range of issues affecting the planet the teams representing nearly all continents were tasked with developing and presenting engineering solutions on their chosen issues during the initial 48-hour weekend challenge after some local judging and polishing of presentations and prototypes over 35 teams submitted their innovations to virtual judging after their local competition ultimately the final five were selected it's been an inspiration to see the five teams participate in the iftp 2020 finals said rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship and invent for the planet they overcame the global pandemic to showcase how innovative solutions exist around the globe we look forward to hosting invent for the planet again in 2021 one of the unique aspects of the challenge is the final round where the top teams are invited to texas a&m to meet other engineers from around the world and compete in person after the first round of local competitions in february no one would have expected that the finals would have to be held virtually due to the safety concerns and travel restrictions from covid-19 the most memorable experience was our ability to quickly and effectively adapt to new circumstances said noble gutierrez member of the texas a&m team ecotory covid-19 turned the final round of competition into a virtual event and our team was incredible we were all fully committed cooperative and continued to develop our product and prepare for the competition the winning innovations are: first place: corais - centro federal de educação tecnológica celso suckow da fonseca and universidade federal do rio de janeiro brazil: roughly 37% of microplastics found in the worlds oceans are derived from personal care products and synthetic textiles like clothing expelled in the wastewater from washing machines team corais developed an easy-to-use filter containing magnetite a recyclable metal which attracts microplastics and prevents them from being released into waterways second place: ecotory - texas a&m: ecotory created a sustainable inventory app that allows airlines to better gauge passenger needs in advance this would then integrate with their inventory systems reducing excess weight and airline waste and thus reducing fuel consumption and the contribution to greenhouse gases passengers are incentivized with the ability to exchange unwanted meals and amenities for airline miles third place: hya bioplastics - makerere university uganda: the hya bioplastics team aimed to solve two environmental issues at once their innovation would eliminate single-use oil-derived plastics through a biodegradable alternative made from water hyacinths an invasive aquatic weed in the waterways of uganda by clearing the lakes of these invasive aquatic weeds to produce the packaging this design would address multiple local and global problems the two runners-up are: walkalot – james madison university virginia: the walkalot team developed a personalized app that promotes walking as the primary mode for transportation in urban environments users may select the preferred or most accessible routes when moving around outdoors like where ramps are available for wheelchair users or which route has the most scenic views crustacean – new mexico university: in order to address microplastics in the ocean crustacean designed a floating buoy with collection bins to trap microplastics and repurpose into reusable materials the winners are invited to continue collaborating with event sponsors and the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m many of the final five teams have expressed the desire to take their innovation to industry our team concurrently participated in the nsf i-corps site program which provides foundational elements for pursuing commercialization said gutierrez our team conducted 30 customer interviews and researched market potential receiving feedback from industry professionals clearly delineating airline needs and further establishing the feasibility of our product has greatly helped our team we submitted our application to the engineering incubator and are hopeful to have a real-world viable and industry-implemented solution the event was made possible with numerous volunteers from industry faculty and staff at participating universities as well as sponsors electrocomponents and socar find out more about invent for the planet on our website
1283,natures blueprint for the human limb is a carefully layered structure with stiff bone wrapped in layers of different soft tissue like muscle and skin all bound to each other perfectly achieving this kind of sophistication using synthetic materials to build biologically inspired robotic parts or multicomponent complex machines has been an engineering challenge by tweaking the chemistry of a single polymer researchers at texas a&m university and the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory have created a whole family of synthetic materials that range in texture from ultra-soft to extremely rigid the researchers said their materials are 3d printable self-healing recyclable and they naturally adhere to each other in air or underwater their findings are detailed in the may issue of the journal advanced functional materials we have made an exciting group of materials whose properties can be fine-tuned to get either the softness of rubber or the strength of load-bearing plastics said dr svetlana sukhishvili professor in the department of materials science and engineering and a corresponding author on the study their other desirable characteristics like 3d printability and the ability to self-heal within seconds make them suited for not just more realistic prosthetics and soft robotics but also ideal for broad military applications such as agile platforms for air vehicles and futuristic self-healing aircraft wings synthetic polymers are made up of long strings of repeating molecular motifs like beads on a chain in elastomeric polymers or elastomers these long chains are lightly crosslinked giving the materials a rubbery quality however these crosslinks can also be used to make the elastomers more rigid by increasing the number of crosslinks although previous studies have manipulated the density of crosslinks to make elastomers stiffer the resulting change in mechanical strength was generally permanent crosslinks are like stitches in a piece of cloth the more stitches you have the stiffer the material gets and vice versa said sukhishvili but instead of having these ‘stitches be permanent we wanted to achieve dynamic and reversible crosslinking so that we can create materials that are recyclable so the researchers focused their attention on the molecules involved in the crosslinking first they chose a parent polymer called prepolymer and then chemically studded these prepolymer chains with two types of small crosslinking molecules furan and maleimide by increasing the number of these molecules in the prepolymer they found that they could create materials stiffer in this way the hardest material they created was 1 000 times stronger than the softest however these crosslinks are also reversible furan and maleimide participate in a type of reversible chemical bonding put simply in this reaction furan and maleimide pairs can click and unclick depending on temperature when the temperature is high enough these molecules come apart from the polymer chains and the materials soften at room temperature the materials harden since the molecules quickly click back together once again forming crosslinks thus if there is any tear in these materials at ambient temperatures the researchers showed that furan and maleimide automatically re-click healing the gap within a few seconds
1284,the researchers noted that the temperatures at which the crosslinkers dissociate or unclick from the prepolymer chains are relatively the same for different stiffness levels this property is useful for 3d printing with these materials regardless of whether they are soft or hard the materials can be melted at the same temperature and then used as printing ink by modifying the hardware and processing parameters in a standard 3d printer we were able to use our materials to print complex 3d objects layer by layer said dr frank gardea research engineer in the united states army research laboratory and a corresponding author on the study the unique advantage of our materials is that the layers that make up the 3d part can be of vastly different stiffness as the 3d part cools to room temperature he added that the different layers join seamlessly precluding the need for curing or any other chemical processing consequently the 3d-printed parts can easily be melted using high heat and then recycled as printing ink the researchers also noted that their materials are reprogrammable in other words after being set into one shape they can be made to change into a different shape using just heat in the future the researchers plan to increase the functionality of their new materials by amplifying its multifaceted properties outlined in the current study right now we can easily achieve around 80% self-healing at room temperature but we would like to reach 100% also we want to make our materials responsive to other stimuli other than temperature like light said gardea further down the road wed like to explore introducing some low-level intelligence so that these materials know to autonomously adapt without needing a user to initiate the process other contributors include qing zhou primary author of the paper and zhen sang from the department of materials science and engineering; and dr seunghyun lee and dr matt pharr from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering this research is funded by the united states combat capabilities development command army research laboratory
1285,"dr harry hogan is now a fellow of the american society for bone and mineral research (asbmr) the asbmr awards the honor to those who have made outstanding contributions to the field of bone and mineral science hogan serves as professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and associate dean for graduate programs in the college of engineering at texas a&m university ""being selected a fellow of asbmr is a definite honor "" hogan said ""it is a recognition of long term contributions to musculoskeletal research that is initiated and supported by ones peers it is also a testimony in my case to the value and benefits of a decades-long cross-disciplinary collaboration with a colleague in the department of health and kinesiology dr susan bloomfield"" established in 1977 asbmr is a professional scientific and medical society that brings together clinical and experimental scientists who study bone and mineral metabolism it has more than 4 000 active members internationally hogan and his fellow honorees will be recognized at the asbmr annual meeting in 2021"
1286,recent discoveries made by researchers at texas a&m university could change the way ovarian cancer is understood and treated dr abhishek jain assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering and the department of medical physiology in the college of medicine collaborated with researchers from the departments of gynecologic oncology and cancer biology at md anderson cancer center to gain a better understanding of the interaction among ovarian cancer tumors blood vessels and platelets they found that tumors break the blood vessel barriers so that they can communicate with the blood cells such as platelets when these tumors come into contact with platelets they can then metastasize or begin to spread to other sites in the body the collaborative research was recently published in the journal blood advances
1287,"currently researchers understand that platelets are one of the initiators of ovarian cancer metastasis but did not know what led to the introduction of the platelets to the tumor cells instead of struggling to view this relationship in animal models jains team brought a new solution to the table: organ-on-a-chip research organs-on-a-chip are microfluidic medical devices the size of a usb drive the team designed on the ovca-chip to give researchers an easier window to view the biological processes between tumors and platelets in an interview with the international society on thrombosis and hemostasis jain explained that ""it basically is a microenvironment where ovarian tumor cells can be co-cultured along with their blood vessels and then they can interact with blood cells once we learn about these interactions we can then move forward to look into how drugs will impact these kinds of interactions"" viewing the interaction between tumors and blood vessels on the ovca-chip led the researchers to an extraordinary result the tumor cells systematically broke down the endothelial cells which are the barrier that lines the interior surface of blood vessels and prevents exterior interaction with blood cells once this barrier was gone blood cells and platelets entered the tumor microenvironment and could be recruited for metastasis harnessing this knowledge could change how clinicians approach ovarian cancer treatment jain said suggesting that anti-vascular drugs could be considered along with anticancer treatments a benefit of the organ-on-a-chip is that it can also test these novel drug treatments and drug combinations another application of the chips could be diagnostics ""you have to understand that these are chips that are living they contain living cells the advantage is that these are all actually human samples "" jain stated in the interview ""so what we think the future for this technology is is perhaps we can advance it in the direction of personalized medicine where we could actually take stem cells from patients and other patient-derived cells and make this entire chip from a single patient"""
1288,since the early 1930s electron microscopy has provided unprecedented access to the alien world of the extraordinarily small revealing intricate details that are otherwise impossible to discern with conventional light microscopy but to achieve high resolution over a large specimen area the energy of the electron beams needs to be cranked up which is costly and detrimental to the specimen under observation texas a&m university researchers may have found a new method to improve the quality of low-resolution electron micrographs without compromising the integrity of specimen samples by training deep neural networks a type of artificial intelligence algorithm on pairs of images from the same sample but at different physical resolutions they have found that details in lower-resolution images can be enhanced further normally a high-energy electron beam is passed through the sample at locations where greater image resolution is desired but with our image processing techniques we can super resolve an entire image by using just a few smaller-sized high-resolution images said dr yu ding mike and sugar barnes professor in the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineering this method is less destructive since most parts of the specimen sample neednt be scanned with high-energy electron beams the researchers published their image processing technique in institute of electric and electronics engineers transactions on image processing in june unlike in light microscopy where photons or tiny packets of light are used to illuminate an object in electron microscopy a beam of electrons is utilized the electrons reflected from or passing through the object are then collected to form an image called the electron micrograph thus the energy of the electron beams plays a crucial role in determining the resolution of images that is the higher the energy electrons the better the resolution however the risk of damaging the specimen also increases similar to how ultraviolet rays which are the more energetic relatives of visible light can damage sensitive materials like the skin there's always that dilemma for scientists said ding to maintain the specimens integrity high-energy electron beams are used sparingly but if one does not use energetic beams high-resolution or the ability to see at finer scales becomes limited but there are ways to get high resolution or super resolution using low-resolution images one method involves using multiple low-resolution images of essentially the same region another method learns common patterns between small image patches and uses unrelated high-resolution images to enhance existing low-resolution images these methods almost exclusively use natural light images instead of electron micrographs hence they run into problems for super-resolving electron micrographs since the underlying physics for light and electron microscopy is different ding explained the researchers turned to pairs of low- and high-resolution electron microscopic images for a given sample although these types of pairs are not very common in public image databases they are relatively common in materials science research and medical imaging for their experiments ding and his team first took a low-resolution image of a specimen and then subjected roughly 25% of the area under observation to high-energy electron beams to get a high-resolution image the researchers noted that the information in the high-resolution and low-resolution image pair are very tightly correlated they said that this property can be leveraged even though the available dataset might be small for their analyses ding and his team used 22 pairs of images of materials infused with nanoparticles they then divided the high-resolution image and its equivalent area in the low-resolution image into three by three subimages next each subimage pair was used to self-train deep neural networks post-training their algorithm became familiar at recognizing image features such as edges when they tested the trained deep neural network on a new location on the low-resolution image for which there was no high-resolution counterpart they found that their algorithm could enhance features that were hard to discern by up to 50% although their image processing technique shows a lot of promise ding noted that it still requires a lot of computational power in the near future his team will be directing their efforts in developing algorithms that are much faster and can be supported by lesser computing hardware our paired image processing technique reveals details in low-resolution images that were not discernable before said ding we are all familiar with the magic wand feature on our smartphones it makes the image clearer what we aim to do in the long run is to provide the research community a similar convenient tool for enhancing electron micrographs other contributors to this research include dr yanjun qian from virginia commonwealth university jiaxi xu from the industrial and systems engineering department at texas a&m and dr lawrence drummy from the air force research laboratory this research was funded by the air force office of scientific research dynamic data and information processing program (formerly known as the dynamic data driven applications system program) grants and the texas a&m x-grant program
1289,dr gerard coté director of the center for remote health technologies and systems texas a&m regents professor and holder of the james j cain professorship i received the walston chubb award for innovation from sigma xi the scientific research honor society i am honored that i was considered to receive the chubb award from sigma xi and that the committee felt our research merited their high standards for promoting creativity in science and engineering coté said i say ‘our work as much of what has been accomplished has been a team effort with my students staff and colleagues coté was recognized for his leadership in the development of biomedical optical systems for an array of medical applications with clinical impact along with a stipend coté will be recognized and present at this years annual meeting and student research conference which will be held virtually in november since the award is focused on innovation and the audience is broad including distinguished scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines as well as high school undergraduate and graduate students i plan to discuss engineering for impact with a focus on technologies for monitoring health at the point-of-care coté said the endowed award was formed to recognize research into new areas of potential scientific importance novel approaches to a long-standing problem in science or engineering or research that may create a new methodology of importance to science or engineering
1290,dr jeyavijayan jv rajendran assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has been selected to participate in the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) automatic implementation of secure silicon (aiss) program the four-year $75 million project aims to automate the process of incorporating security and defense mechanisms into digital integrated circuit designs one of many potential applications for this research include devices that are a part of the internet of things such as smartphones smartwatches and smart refrigerators because these types of devices have become a key target of hacking it is imperative that security measures are considered during the chip design process unlike software cybersecurity which can be quickly and more easily updated after production if security measures within chips for these types of devices are thought of after the fact it could be too late with hardware chip manufacturing now mostly being done abroad the security concerns for intellectual property theft and manufacturing of sensitive defense technologies have become an important issue for national security rajendran heads a research team focused on logic-locking technology on the team led by prime contractor synopsys the team which includes researchers from arm boeing and ultrasoc will explore the development of a novel design tool and internet protocol ecosystem – which includes tool vendors chip developers and internet protocol licensors – allowing for defenses to be incorporated efficiently into chip designs it excites me to be part of the larger hardware security community to develop this suite of tools and also about transitioning the technology from our lab to industry rajendran said (approved for public release distribution unlimited)
1291,polymers reinforced with ultra-fine strands of carbon fibers epitomize composite materials that are light as a feather and strong as steel earning them versatile applications across several industries adding materials called carbon nanotubes can further enhance the composites functionality but the chemical processes used for incorporating carbon nanotube end up spreading them unevenly on the composites limiting the strength and other useful qualities that can be ultimately achieved in a new study texas a&m university researchers have used a natural plant product called cellulose nanocrystals to pin and coat carbon nanotubes uniformly onto the carbon-fiber composites the researchers said their prescribed method is quicker than conventional methods and also allows the designing of carbon-fiber composites from the nanoscale the results of the study are published online in the journal american chemical society (acs) applied nano materials composites are built in layers for example polymer composites are made of layers of fiber like carbon fibers or kevlar and a polymer matrix this layered structure is the source of the composites weakness any damage to the layers causes fractures a process technically known as delamination to increase strength and give carbon-fiber composites other desirable qualities such as electrical and thermal conductivity carbon nanotubes are often added however the chemical processes used for incorporating the carbon nanotubes into these composites often cause the nanoparticles to clump up reducing the overall benefit of adding these particles the problem with nanoparticles is similar to what happens when you add coarse coffee powder to milk the powder agglomerates or sticks to each other said dr amir asadi assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution to fully take advantage of the carbon nanotubes they need to be separated from each other first and then somehow designed to go to a particular location within the carbon-fiber composite to facilitate the even distribution of carbon nanotubes asadi and his team turned to cellulose nanocrystals a compound easily obtained from recycled wood pulp these nanocrystals have segments on their molecules that attract water and other segments that get repelled by water this unique molecular structure offers the ideal solution to construct composites at the nanoscale said asadi the hydrophobic part of the cellulose nanocrystals binds to the carbon fibers and anchors them onto the polymer matrix on the other hand the water-attractive portions of the nanocrystals help in dispersing the carbon fibers evenly much like how sugar which is hydrophilic dissolves in water uniformly rather than clumping and settling to the bottom of a cup for their experiments the researchers used a commercially available carbon-fiber cloth to this cloth they added an aqueous solution of cellulose nanocrystals and carbon nanotubes and then applied strong vibration to mix all of the items together finally they left the material to dry and spread resin on it to gradually form the carbon nanotube coated polymer composite
1292,upon examining a sample of the composite using electron microscopy asadi and his team observed that the cellulose nanocrystals attached to the tips of the carbon nanotubes orienting the nanotubes in the same direction they also found that cellulose nanocrystals increased the composites resistance to bending by 33% and its inter-laminar strength by 40% based on measuring the mechanical properties of the material under extreme loading in this study we have taken the approach of designing the composites from the nanoscale using cellulose nanocrystals this method has allowed us to have more control over the polymer composites properties that emerge at the macroscale said asadi we think that our technique is a path forward in scaling up the processing of hybrid composites which will be useful for a variety of industries including airline and automobile manufacturing other contributors to this research include shadi shariatnia and annuatha v kumar from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and ozge kaynan from the department of materials science and engineering this research was funded by the national science foundation
1293,"the covid-19 pandemic has brought changes to higher education and texas a&m university has been no exception as the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering prepares to return for the fall semester students like aaron cozart are ready to return even if things are different from a typical semester ""im still really looking forward to this the fall semester particularly classes and the career fair "" said cozart a sophomore in the department ""while the majority of classes are in an online or hybrid format the spring and summer classes ive taken have shown that these formats are still a great environment for learning and interacting with others so im eagerly waiting for those to start"" cozart added that while the student engineers' council virtual career fair will also be different from its traditional in-person format he is excited for the opportunities and experience it will provide learn more about how texas a&m is preparing for safety as the fall semester kicks off"
1294,dr vergil eugene stover who served on the faculty of the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and was a researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) passed away on wednesday july 29 2020 he was 87stover a professor emeritus in the department was recognized as an international expert on access management and roadway design and was co-principal investigator for the first national access management manual as an engineer and economist he served as a consultant on major development projects was an expert witness on access and site development cases and assisted numerous state and local agencies in developing access management programs and standardshe worked at tti in the roadway safety program for 28 years from 1966-94 he was a consummate professional who was highly respected leaving a legacy that spanned several decades and many organizationsstover was an emeritus member of the transportation research board committee on access management and a life fellow of the institute of transportation engineers he authored many influential publications in the field of urban planning transportation and land development and received numerous highly influential citations over his long and distinguished career this included serving as the principal author of the institution of transportation engineers manual transportation and land developmentafter retiring from teaching at texas a&m in 1991 stover began a second career as an expert in transportation and site development as a partner in s&k enterprises he provided consulting services for transportation and urban planning for clients worldwide and served as consulting chair for the florida center for urban transportation research at the university of south florida he also worked for the national highway institute teaching professional development courses for city planners and traffic engineers across the nationin 1955 stover earned his undergraduate degree from ohio university and earned his phd in transportation planning and economics from purdue university in 1960stover will be laid to rest in the college station cemetery alongside his wife of 53 years mary sue stover who preceded him in death he is survived by his brother eddie; sons and daughters-in-law ken and becky stover; terry stover; and curt and susan stover; four grandchildren rob jon lauren and leah stover; and great-grandson therin stover
1295,the built environment where someone lives (private) or works (public) influences a persons daily life and can help or hinder their mental health this is especially true for those with mental health conditions such as ptsd or post-traumatic stress disorder researchers in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university are working to determine which elements of built environments affect veterans with ptsd the most and how they can be altered to help veterans thrive we have already established collaborations with veteran support groups to develop veteran-centered tools for monitoring and self-management of ptsd said dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor principal investigator of the project and 2020 texas a&m engineering experiment station research impact award winner through interactions with hundreds of veterans diagnosed with ptsd we realized the need to also investigate the context in which these tools are used and became interested in the design of built environments the researchers looked at three themes: architectural design features interior design features and ambient features as part of the project researchers interviewed veterans with ptsd about their triggers in public and private spaces from their interviews the researchers categorized and provided suggestions for each theme area that would provide the greatest positive impact for veterans alarmingly we learned there is a general gap in built environments design guidelines for mental health habitants in general and ptsd patients in particular so we leveraged our wide network of veterans to study their preferences sasangohar said architectural design features architectural design features are permanent features of a building or space that would be difficult or expensive to change after construction is completed like the entrance and exit locations in the study veterans identified six areas that made a difference toward their comfort: windows – large windows located closer to the ground made veterans feel safer in a space they also preferred to have multiple windows in a space so they could see what was going on outside entrance and exit location – veterans liked to easily see the entrance and exit to a room or building this helped keep them from feeling trapped in a space walkways/hallways – larger hallways that allowed for increased maneuverability and reduced the chance of touching other people were preferred by veterans open floor plans – open spaces allowed veterans to see their surroundings and provided them with feelings of security sharp turns and blind corners caused stress due to the inability to see what was around the bend green space – open spaces with vegetation made the veterans feel calmer and gave them more visibility interior design features interior design features are parts of a built environment that are easier to change and could be accommodated in spaces that are already built veterans preferred spaces with fewer pieces of furniture and walls that were painted in brighter more vivid colors instead of muted colors ambient design features ambient design features are the easiest features to change in a space and include lighting and air quality overall veterans preferred natural light some said that poor light including too much artificial lighting could trigger stress air and sound quality was important also including ventilation odor and noise levels many veterans said that certain odors could trigger fear or bad memories and that loud unexpected noises were particularly startling for them they felt that soundproofing was important in spaces they visited or lived in what can be done while this research addressed an important gap in research and practice the research team identified the need for more work to understand issues related to the design of built environments for those with ptsd further research should include a wide range of stakeholders including veterans veterans affairs architecture and housing regulatory bodies we hope that this research contributes to the curriculum codes and standards regulatory documents and general practice of designing built environments including health care facilities which are sensitive to the needs of veterans who are affected by ptsd and others with mental health conditions sasangohar said this research article veteran-centered investigation of architectural and space design considerations for post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) is featured in the health environments research & design journal
1296,petroleum engineering graduate student eliza ganguly recently received a society of petrophysicists and well log analysts foundation grant for her research in petrophysics – the study of the physical and chemical properties of rocks and rock-fluid interaction
1297,this area of study focuses on how pores in the subsurface are interconnected and how these connections control the storage transport and recovery of hydrocarbon gangulys research supervised by her advisor dr siddarth misra specifically focuses on quantifying fluid phase connectivity from whole-core images of a carbonate sample after various fluid injection scenarios she has created a machine learning-based workflow that uses the segmentation of the microscopic images of the rock by dividing them into distinct components followed by computation of fluid phase connectivity the developed metrics can standardize and speed up the measurement of connectivity to facilitate the characterization of properties and processes of the rock material in petroleum engineering one of the most important parameters governing the production of oil is porosity which quantifies the pore space present in a sample whereas connectivity is an important petrophysical property that directly controls the recovery of fluid from pore space ganguly said
1298,in order to see how the fluid components are connected the workflow uses multiple microscopic images maps or scans of the rock sample to create a three-dimensional volume by breaking the component up into multiple parts it is easier to see each component the connectivity metrics are then applied to obtain the connectivity values for oil water and gas components the results from the metrics help identify the parts in the rock where there is maximum fluid recovery we quantify many things in our day-to-day lives ganguly said from age height temperature and speed comparing the different parameters of each gives us valuable insights and helps us make decisions like avoid speeding tickets with the funds from the grant ganguly will make her machine learning-based workflow accessible to petrophysicists across the world by using her workflows and testing them for accuracy they will be improved and lead to a better understanding of connectivity
1299,dr bimal nepal professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has been elected fellow of the american society for engineering management (asem) the asem fellow is the highest membership level with the society and the honor is maintained for life candidates must have eight years of continuous membership in asem with significant service to the engineering management profession demonstrated engineering management accomplishments and continuing distinguished service and contributions to the society no more than five new fellows are elected in a given year nepal has held several leadership roles within asem including conference technical chair board of directors member and associate editor of their flagship journal engineering management journal he is also the associate director for the industrial distribution undergraduate program in the department and teaches at both undergraduate and graduate levels his research interests include distribution logistics and supply chain management new product development manufacturing systems and engineering education he has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal and conference proceedings articles in these areas his research work has been recognized with numerous local national and international awards his previous awards include holleran-bowman faculty fellow phillips 66 first-year faculty fellow william keeler memorial award herbert h richardson fellow and corrie and jim furber '64 faculty fellow nepal joined the texas a&m faculty in 2009 he received his phd from wayne state university a master of engineering from the asian institute of technology and a bachelor of engineering from the malaviya national institute of technology
1300,pressures liquids and temperature changes create cracks in rock and concrete over time these cracks can grow and combine into networks eventually reducing solid materials into rubble while this is a natural process of erosion it is not well documented because it is not always visible when its happening yet cracks are important in allowing fluid to flow in oil and gas production and critical to avoid in man-made structures texas a&m university researcher dr siddarth misra was given a $548 099 grant from the department of energy (doe) to use technology and machine-learning analysis on provided data measurements to portray the evolution of cracks in solid material so the destruction can be classified even when visibly hidden this research could have multiple applications such as benefitting oil and gas energy production geothermal applications and even nuclear waste storage monitoring
1301,the three-year project involves accurately depicting the destruction of cracks in rock or illustrating the mechanical discontinuity of material said misra associate professor and douglas von gonten faculty fellow in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering cracks initiate grow propagate combine coalesce and cluster but its difficult to see whats going on inside solid rock or concrete to know what stage of crack is there picture a rock striking a car windshield and starting a tiny crack wind sun and water encourage the crack to grow when more cracks form they meet and intersect separating the glass into smaller and smaller sections that eventually fail to hold the overall shape the stages of cracks in rock and concrete are similar but do not form smooth paths like those in glass plus rock fractures grow three-dimensionally meaning a few surface cracks could indicate far more damage underneath that cannot be seen we cant just guess what is going on said misra we cant always cut the rock apart to see our approach to the problem uses data from different sources to explain what has actually happened the research project uses multiple types of measurements from sound electromagnetics and pressure sources to gather the necessary data the first phase will involve supervised learning on standard samples where the cracks have already been measured and classified misras team is collecting these samples from other doe test sites that completed the electromagnetic and pressure measurements as his team performs the sound tests and receives the measurement data sets from the other test sites they are instructing misras machine-learning software how to merge these different sources of information together and filter the results this will refine the information and teach the software to understand each stage of damage the second phase of the project unsupervised learning uses the same types of measurements but on unclassified samples to see if the software can recognize the data set patterns and accurately sort the crack stages by itself
1302,misra and his student researchers gathered the acoustic data by taking measurements produced by sound waves they not only used multiple angles to measure samples they also used different types of sound to produce the best data sets possible sound traveling through rock gives us an active acoustic data set explained misra but the rock also produces sound as it cracks giving us passive acoustics one month in the results are already showing promise when the software learned how to fuse both active and passive acoustic data sets misras team found it could use the same math that reduces unwanted noise in photo images to improve the clarity of the sound data and generate 3d visuals of the cracks this approach of using multiple measurement sources is unique said misra when we combine all the sources of data the software will be capable of robust 3d representations of crack damage then we can develop the predicted workflows where we only need provided data to visualize and categorize cracks
1303,dr roderic pettigrew has written an essay humanity binds us which will be included in the fall edition of the bridge the flagship quarterly publication of the national academy of engineering the issue will be online mid-september and is dedicated to the memory of us congressman john lewis who passed away july 17 the essay is currently available on the association of american medical colleges website pettigrew is ceo of engineering health (enhealth) and executive dean for engineering medicine (enmed) at texas a&m university and houston methodist hospital as well as the robert a welch professor in the department of biomedical engineering
1304,jeffrey d moeller ‘94 has generously contributed to the lowery scholars program distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time upper-level students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineering at texas a&m university moeller had a non-traditional experience at texas a&m he originally arrived as a petroleum engineering student in the mid-1980s but ended up leaving before completing his degree he moved back home to san antonio and worked for an engineering firm for eight years before deciding to return to school to finish his degree moeller again enrolled in the college of engineering but decided to pursue a degree in civil engineering he graduated in 1994 when moeller came back to texas a&m he had dr lee lowery as an advisor a structural engineering professor who came highly recommended as both an instructor and advisor i was told that if dr lowery is teaching a class you need to take it with him no matter what day or time it is offered so without any hesitation i signed up for one of dr lowery's civil engineering courses said moeller moeller walked into lowerys class on the first day not knowing a single person but by the end of class he would know lowery very well as this was the day he forever changed the course of moellers academic pursuits i am not sure he understood the impact he had on me but his vote of confidence and support gave me what i needed to make it through the remaining four semesters i ended up meeting with dr lowery often during those two years he treated me like a peer and we eventually became good friends over the course of our time together his words of wisdom support and encouragement continued through graduation and have yet to cease even after i left a&m said moeller moeller said it was his experiences with lowery after he re-enrolled at texas a&m that was the driving force behind why he chose to support the lowery scholars program dr lowery is a unique individual one who truly embodies the aggie spirit and truly impacts the students he encounters said moeller true brown senior director of development for the texas a&m foundation who was working closely with moeller said philanthropy is largely driven by the desire to make a positive impact on another persons life it has been very meaningful to see jeff and others who support the lowery scholars program take that to heart dr lowery has a long lineage of students who have gone on to do great things in the real world and jeff is certainly a bright example of that moeller is the president of his general civil engineering firm moeller & associates based out of new braunfels texas his business partner james ingalls also graduated from texas a&m with a degree in civil engineering in 2006
1305,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1306,texas a&m university college of engineering researchers will play a key role in a consortium sponsored by natura resources llc to build an advanced research reactor in the state of texas the $305 million effort to design and license a research reactor is a collaboration with three other universities: abilene christian university georgia institute of technology and the university of texas at austin the texas a&m team has been awarded $35 million over the next three years for their portion of the project nuclear engineering faculty members drs pavel tsvetkov mark kimber and sean mcdeavitt and their respective research groups are members of the consortium texas a&m plays an important role on the team supporting the design thermal management and fuel characterization efforts toward the reactor said tsvetkov associate professor of nuclear engineering and lead of the texas a&m team we are excited to be part of the consortium this is going to be the first advanced reactor to be built in the 21st century in the us and the first to be built as a university research reactor it will enable the nuclear engineering community as well as serve the strategic role of workforce development supporting advanced reactors dr kimber and dr mcdeavitt have years of unique experience in important areas of the project allowing us to provide high-impact assistance to the team we are incredibly pleased and honored to sponsor this remarkable multi-disciplinary collaboration of talented researchers – physicists engineers chemists and their students – to support our vision to develop advanced energy systems that are inherently safe sustainable and environmentally friendly said dr tony hill natura director of product development launched in spring 2019 the consortiums goal is to design license and commission the first university-based molten salt research reactor ive been working with molten salts for nuclear applications off and on for over 25 years said mcdeavitt nuclear engineering professor and director of the nuclear engineering and science center this is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the actual construction of a nuclear energy system that has the potential to impact future generations the thermal management team will focus on validating modeling efforts aimed to predict thermal performance during normal and off-normal scenarios added kimber assistant professor of nuclear engineering being able to place a known confidence in those models is especially important with this advanced reactor design because it sets the stage for future reactor designs to follow suit texas a&m nuclear engineering department head dr michael nastasi stressed the importance of this project over the next several decades the energy environment must undergo a transformation to a minimal carbon future if greenhouse gasses are to be sufficiently limited molten salt reactors fit perfectly into this future because of their innate safety as well as their ability to consume spent nuclear fuel from conventional nuclear reactors he said additionally this project will help educate a new cohort of engineers who are equipped to work with advanced reactors texas a&ms department of nuclear engineering was established in 1958 and strives to serve the state nation and global community by nurturing nuclear engineering professionals and leaders to meet the complex challenges associated with the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and enhancing global security it is the largest program in the us with a current enrollment of 292 undergraduate and 141 graduate students the program is ranked second nationally among undergraduate and fifth nationally among graduate programs included in public universities by us news and world report
1307,two faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering have been recognized by sigma xi the scientific research honor society for their exemplary achievements in science and engineering they will be recognized during the societys national meeting in november which will be held virtually nov 5-8 the two engineering faculty members and the awards they will receive are: gerard l coté texas a&m regents professor and holder of the james j cain professorship i department of biomedical engineering walston chubb award for innovation for leadership in the development of biomedical optical systems for an array of medical applications with clinical impact bonnie j dunbar tees eminent professor department of aerospace engineering john p mcgovern science and society award for leadership and contributions in aerospace engineering; work spanning industry academia and government; a commitment to furthering engineering and science education at texas a&m; and outreach to k-12 students in addition each faculty member will serve as a plenary speaker at the societys virtual research conference and art exhibit hacking the brain: the intersection of art and neuroscience dr marcetta y darensbourg from the department of chemistry was also recognized for significant contributions to bioinorganic chemistry from her work on chemistry of the di-iron hydrogenases congratulations to our remarkable faculty members on their selection for these well-deserved awards said dr mark a barteau vice president for research their individual contributions to bioinorganic chemistry aerospace engineering and biomedical sciences are representative of texas a&ms commitment to expanding the frontiers of science and its applications recognition by sigma xi a champion of the importance of scientific research is a testament to the impact of these scholars
1308,sitting atop power transformers are wavy shaped bushing systems that play a critical role in supplying communities with electricity however these objects are also susceptible to breaking during earthquakes once damaged bushings can cause widespread outages and burden the state with expensive repairs in a recent study texas a&m university researchers have shown that during high seismic activity the structural integrity of bushing systems can be better maintained by reinforcing their bases with steel stiffeners also by using probability-based loss assessment studies they found that the economic burden due to damage to bushing systems from earthquakes is up to 10 times lower for steel-reinforced transformer bushing systems compared to other bushing configurations transformer bushing systems are vital to electrical substation networks and these components are especially vulnerable in high-seismic regions like in california or parts of the northeast said dr maria koliou assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering we have conducted a full risk and loss assessment of the impact of damaged bushings in terms of cost and time to recovery for electrical power networks the details of the study are provided in the july issue of the journal structure and infrastructure engineering an electrical bushing is a sleeve-like covering that surrounds a conductor carrying a high voltage electrical current generally found at close proximity to transformers or circuit breakers these systems ensure that electric currents do not leak out of metal wires thus bushings are made of insulators porcelain in particular and are filled with mineral oil despite their ability to withstand strong electric fields bushings are brittle and can crack easily in the event of high seismic activity consequently any damage to them is an electrical hazard more extensive structural injuries to the bushing system can cause widespread power outages and high replacement costs one possible way to mitigate damage and thereby repair is by strengthening the bushing with steel plates just like a strong foundation can improve a buildings stability steel flexural stiffeners as close as possible to the bushing base has been shown to improve bushing stability during earthquakes however koliou said a more comprehensive analysis of the impact of seismic vulnerability on bushing systems in terms of recovery costs has been lacking to address this gap koliou and her graduate student andrew brennan conducted a probabilistic analysis to compare the economic losses incurred from the damage of bushings for different intensities of ground motions they investigated bushings of different geometries representative of medium- and high-voltage scenarios more importantly some bushings had steel plate stiffeners and others did not in their original designs koliou and brennan found that the economic losses for the earthquake intensities considered in the study were 33-55% lesser when the bushings bases are reinforced with steel plates in fact the expected annual losses for bushings without the steel stiffeners were at least 25-10 times larger when subjected to different ground motions our results show that steel stiffeners are effective at preventing bushings from damage but what ‘effective means for a structural engineer can have little meaning for someone who is not we wanted to generalize our findings in more practical terms for stakeholders other than engineers said koliou and so we quantified the benefit of using steel stiffeners in terms of dollar value and the time it would take to recover for a variety of earthquake scenarios which is more easily interpretable
1309,the human body is composed of molecules like dna rna and proteins through interactions with each other proteins act as the workforce molecules of life though the protein pairs that interact with each other have been increasingly identified how they interact often remains a mystery dr yang shen assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university will work on computational methods to unravel how proteins interact in living systems which will allow for a better understanding of how biological systems work this can ultimately lead to the development of therapeutics to combat diseases or illnesses for this research shen recently received the faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) one of the most prestigious recognitions given to researchers early in their careers that showcase the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization i am honored to receive this prestigious award and happy to join many of my excellent colleagues who have also received this award shen said i am very excited that my ideas are supported and the project can be carried on because this is something i feel really devoted to and passionate about protein-protein interactions play a significant role in how our bodies function many of us are now attending virtual events or are on daily video calls while participating in such activities some proteins in our eyes retinas are converting light into signals when this happens some proteins in our nerves relay those signals to our brain and other proteins trigger our neurons which is when we begin to think about and understand the visual world another result of protein-protein interactions is the spread and the prevention of diseases within living systems using the covid-19 pandemic as an example during infection certain receptor proteins of our body interact with the coronavirus spike proteins so for the urgent need of treatment antibody proteins are being developed to interact with and neutralize those viral proteins shen will investigate these protein-protein interactions so that researchers have a better understanding of how living systems function and how therapeutics can be developed for diseases he is developing algorithms using machine-learning and artificial-intelligence techniques that will treat proteins as multimodal data from which patterns can be mined and insights can be discovered
1310,shens interest in biological systems was born from his background in systems engineering as an engineer i am always curious about how things work shen said my undergraduate training was in engineered systems which eventually led to my interest in natural systems of course the `parts and the `links are not so clearly defined in a living system ive always been curious about how living systems function but from an engineers perspective as engineers we can make unique contributions to perceive approach and tackle the challenges in living systems from cancer therapeutics to pest control the project has wide applications shen hopes to use his findings to enable other research projects he also hopes to use the findings to inspire new development of machine-learning and artificial-intelligence technologies including how to represent domain knowledge and inform data models in addition to his research shen has two educational objectives for this nsf-funded project the first is to enhance the accessibility of interdisciplinary data science training for a diverse student body and science researchers the second is to foster the awareness and interest in interdisciplinary data science in middle and high school communities and the general public he is working with several doctoral and masters students on machine-learning and bioinformatics projects he is also working with two undergraduate students on their theses who are members of the texas a&m engineering honors program im very excited about the opportunity to work with our students and communities and look forward to more contributions to education and outreach shen said
1311,us army secretary ryan d mccarthy visited the rellis campus today to see progress on the texas a&m university systems new unique contribution to military modernization mccarthy toured construction of the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) the complex was designed in consultation with the military and the defense industry it will host experiments by researchers from texas a&m university other leading universities the us army and other military branches federal agencies defense contractors and tech entrepreneurs thanks to help from the army and the state of texas the texas a&m system is able to invest $200 million in the complex we are honored by secretary mccarthys visit and pleased to show him how we are leveraging the state and federal investments with world-class researchers said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories for the texas a&m system the bcdc reflects our enduring commitment to excellence in pursuit of national security the bcdcs first strategic partner is the us army futures command (afc) which has contracted with the texas a&m system to research experiment with and test prototypes for next-generation soldiering for more information see the full press release about mccarthy's visit
1312,the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) located on the 2 000-acre rellis campus is the result of a partnership between the us army futures command (afc) and the texas a&m university system texas a&m engineering experiment station and the state of texas the $200 million complex will bring together researchers from us universities the military and the private sector for collaboration demonstrations and high-tech testing of initiatives to help accelerate military innovation the bcdc is funded with $50 million from the state legislature $65 million from afc and $85 million from the texas a&m system for more information about the bcdc visit the 2020 special edition of the texas a&m engineer magazine
1313,dr choongho yu is now a senior member of the national academy of inventors (nai) a recognition honoring years of research and innovation yu associate professor and sallie and don davis 61 faculty fellow ii in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was elected to the position for the success he has achieved in securing patents licensing and commercialization as well as for producing technologies that have brought or aspire to bring real impact on the welfare of society according to a statement by the nai he was nominated by dr m cynthia hipwell oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair ii professor in the department and a fellow of the nai who said she is excited to see yu recognized making nanotechnologies scalable and manufacturable is an incredibly important contribution particularly in critical areas such as higher density batteries and thermal supercapacitors hipwell said yu said it is a great honor to receive the recognition for the years he has spent exploring high-impact areas among all of his research yu said his most notable invention which has drawn great interest from investors is the manufacturing of self-assembled 3d porous carbon nanotubes which have a broad potential for applications including electrochemical systems for energy storage and conversion the first five to 10 years have been very rough due to lots of unknowns and uncertainties but i am glad that it pays off yu said i thank all my former and current students post docs and collaborators it wouldnt be possible without their contributions yu and his newly elected peers will be officially inducted during the nais 10th anniversary annual meeting set for june 7-9 2021
1314,hannah toerner '18 a recent graduate from the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university received the 2020 ocean news and technology young professional award from the marine technology society (mts) this accolade honors members of the society under the age of 35 who work in a management engineering or research and development position within a marine technology field and have demonstrated outstanding leadership in and out of the organization
1315,"""it was truly an honor (and very surprising) to be nominated for the award let alone receive it "" said toerner ""it is nice to see people recognize my hard work especially since i often do not recognize it myself receiving the award has made me realize that sometimes i don't give myself enough credit for the work i do"" now an aspire rotation engineer at the american bureau of shipping toerner received her ocean engineering undergraduate and graduate degrees at texas a&m in 2018 and 2020 respectively during her time in the department she served as the vice president for the local chapter of mts and was involved in numerous organizations including the society of naval architects and marine engineers (sname) the human powered submarine team the society of women engineers and the society for underwater technology toerner explained that her experiences in the department helped to shape her into the young professional that she is today the mts and sname student chapters allowed her to connect to peers and industry professionals through meetings and conferences as well as gave her insight into how to prepare for working in industry her time with the human powered submarine team taught her how to organize and lead a team troubleshoot solutions to project problems and how to think on her feet and adapt when things do not go as planned"
1316,"looking back on her time at texas a&m toerner advises current students to submit their resume to the resume book via hireaggies and to take advantage of the opportunity to build relationships within the department ""i feel blessed to have had professors and advisors that knew me on a personal level and could pass along job opportunities they knew i'd be interested in "" said toerner ""if i could give advice to current students it would be to build a network by getting involved take the opportunity to go to conferences submarine races and mts meetings and camps to form relationships with the people you meet the ocean engineering community is very tight knit; who you know is just as important as what you know and reach out to former students old ocean engineering students love hearing from and helping current students this department is the epitome of 'aggies helping aggies'"""
1317,dr roderic pettigrew texas a&m universitys chief executive officer of the engineering health program and executive dean for engineering medicine will receive a prestigious lifetime achievement award from the national science board (nsb) pettigrew will be presented with the vannevar bush award which is considered one of the nations highest science awards it honors lifelong science and technology leaders who have made exceptional contributions to the welfare of the nation through public service in science and technology and in shaping public policy roderic pettigrews passion and creativity have spurred innovation in biomedicine said victor mccrary vice chair of the national science board and chair of the 2020 nsb honorary awards subcommittee his reimagining of health-care solutions is helping converge science fields narrowing gaps between disciplines in a way that really impacts society pettigrew is helping us to see what might be what could be and what is possible pettigrews contributions are wide-ranging they include: his service as the founding director of the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering at the national institutes of health his advanced treatment for spinal injuries that enabled some chronically paralyzed men to regain voluntary muscle movement and sensory function his use of radiation in cancer treatments his work to use mris to image the beating heart and quantify blood flow his establishment of a partnership with the indian government to develop cuff-less blood pressure measurements along with other low-cost diagnostic and therapeutic technologies pettigrews work also involved bringing out the best in others while at nih he created the quantum grants program to encourage researchers to undertake medical moon shots to solve major challenges through technological innovation pettigrew continues to help others achieve greatness at texas a&m where he is executive dean of enmed in houston and also holds a joint faculty appointment in the department of biomedical engineering the enmed program blends engineering and medicine in a four-year curriculum to develop problem-solving physicianeers; graduates who earn a medical degree and a masters degree in education plus they must invent a solution to a health care problem that is ready for a patent it is an incredible honor to receive the vannevar bush award which is so steeped in science history pettigrew said my only regret is that my parents are not alive to share this honor they were my first role models pettigrew was raised in rural georgia and attended segregated public schools before attending morehouse college in atlanta through a merrill scholarship after graduating with a bs in physics in 1972 he earned an ms in nuclear science and engineering at rensselaer polytechnic institute and a phd in applied radiation physics at massachusetts institute of technology where his work resulted in a new type of neutron activation radiation treatment of malignant brain tumors being pioneered at mit-harvard in 1979 he received an md from the university of miami in recent years he has been elected to the national academy of medicine the national academy of engineering the american academy of arts and sciences and the national academy of sciences india he has received the pierre galletti award from the american institute for medical and biological engineering the distinguished service award of both the international society of magnetic resonance in medicine and the national medical association the pritzker achievement award of the biomedical engineering society and was the first winner of the gold medal of the academy of radiology research he also was awarded a gold medal from the radiological society of north america and received the arthur m bueche award from the national academy of engineering the nsb created the award in 1980 in memory of vannevar bush who served as a science advisor to president franklin roosevelt during world war ii helped to establish federal funding for science and engineering as a national priority during peacetime and was behind the creation of the national science foundation past award recipients include: leon lederman (fermilab) nobel laureate harold varmus (former nih director) nobel laureate charles townes (uc berkeley -laser inventor) david packard (hewlett-packard company) rita colwell (former nsf director) charles vest (former mit president) and last year walter massey (university of chicago – oversaw giant magellan telescope)
1318,dr romina del bosque initially pursued biomedical engineering as an undergraduate student because it combined medicine and engineering at the time she planned to pursue a medical degree but found she liked the problem-solving aspects of biomedical engineering more that interest continued to her doctoral program there she continued her research in radiofrequency coil design for magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy in dr mary mcdougalls lab financial support came from two texas a&m university fellowships the national science foundation (nsf) louis stokes alliance for minority participation bridge to the doctorate and the graduate diversity excellence fellowship throughout both undergrad and graduate school i had phenomenal professors and mentors del bosque said the combination of that support and my interest in mentoring and teaching undergraduate researchers in my lab is what led me to pursue a career in academia del bosque defended her dissertation in late 2019 started teaching in january 2020 and graduated from texas a&m in may she is now on the academic professional track at vanderbilt university along with teaching two courses a semester she has two service components: developing a mentorship program for underrepresented minority students within the department and designing a program that helps students get internships
1319,while in bryan-college station del bosque was a member of the texas a&m system research model (txarm) part of the nsf texas a&m university system texas alliance for graduate education and the professoriate this alliance was created to advance knowledge about models to improve pathways to the professoriate and success of historically underrepresented minority graduate students postdoctoral fellows and faculty in specific science technology engineering and math disciplines del bosque said txarm provided a community with a common goal to pursue a career in academia we have had numerous retreats and scholarly learning community meetings in which we discuss the grant writing process different teaching strategies job search etc del bosque said all these professional development activities are extremely helpful when transitioning from doctoral student to junior faculty the retreats which provided community and interactive activities were beneficial and prepared del bosque for the drastic change of moving her focus from research to teaching now working with a different teaching format del bosque said many things have changed but one thing remains the same students want to feel supported by professors i still try to find time to interact with the students in smaller groups she said last semester i had a couple of meetings with smaller groups of students to check in on them since they all had such sudden transitions in the fall i plan on also meeting with the students in smaller groups to check on their group project progress one of her main professional and personal mentors in graduate school was her advisor one piece of advice that del bosque has carried with her is to not doubt herself as a first-generation college student i often doubted myself and my abilities she said i plan to mentor undergraduate students especially those who are in similar situations i was in to help them understand that they do belong within the department and that hard work can help them accomplish anything they set their mind to regardless of their ‘starting point
1320,technology is no longer the future; it is the present in a world that centers around it many feel that schools should provide students with opportunities to participate in technology-based learning experiences the national science foundation through the innovative technology experiences for students and teachers program awarded a team of researchers a grant to design and implement a program for high school students in career and technical education this program is currently being implemented at the bryan independent school district this project will prepare students for the current and future digital economy said dr malini natarajarathinam co-principal investigator on the project and associate professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university the future of work favors individuals who are flexible and innovative with a holistic understanding of a range of technologies the studys goal is to prepare students for a digitally forward future by using the horizontal approach to learning through integration of knowledge the students will focus on practical learning and gaining relevant skills the researchers will be monitoring students throughout the program to determine the impact of this learning experience
1321,during the first year students will focus on learning operational knowledge such as digital fabrication microprocessor electronics and programming as well as tactical processes such as production and manufacturing the second year will focus on production and deployment cycles leading to design a part of this process is engaging in real-life scenarios with local schools and businesses to implement these lessons (students) will then engage in project-based cycles of learning and production where they prepare given educational science kits and deploy these in local elementary school classes natarajarathinam said in the second year the students will progress to a 'strategic' phase of design and innovation where local businesses will present lectures and design challenge problems hence learning in both years will be grounded in the authentic needs of the students' community once completed the research team will test the program's effectiveness by testing and analysis of several different aspects of the program the team hopes to show the strengths of a technology-based program we will assess the impact of this program on students' technology literacy career preparedness growth mindset and sense of stem identity natarajarathinam said the study will be completed in 2024 this project is led by dr francis quek professor of visualization in the college of architecture other collaborators on the project include dr mathew kuttolamadom from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution dr rebecca schlegel from the department of psychological and brain sciences rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship dr sharon chu from the university of floridas department of computer and information science and engineering dr jill morris and david reynolds from the bryan independent school district and jose quintana ceo of adventgx
1322,for the first time in more than 50 years the society of petroleum engineers (spe) has created a new major award and it is named after former department head dr stephen a holditch 69 the stephen a holditch visionary leadership award honors spe members who dedicate significant time effort thought and action to the society or the oil and gas industry and demonstrate exceptional visionary leadership that creates a long-standing and powerful impact holditch will be the first recipient of the award posthumously given to him during the spe annual technical conference and exhibition in october of this year this honor recognizes the leadership and dedication he gave the society his business acumen and leadership within the oil and gas industry and the academic leadership and vision he provided to the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university i pushed for this new award because leaders like dr holditch dont come around often and i wanted his legacy to continue said dr jeff spath current head of the petroleum engineering department this award will inspire others to give their time dedication and expertise to the society as steve has done so generously over the years holditch received numerous spe awards including the three top technical honors: the lester d uren award the john franklin carll award and the anthony f lucas medal he served as spe president as vice president of finance and was a member of the board of directors in recognition of his lifetime contributions he was given honorary membership holditch became a recognized expert in tight gas reservoirs coalbed methane shale gas reservoirs and the design of hydraulic fracture treatments earning his consulting company respect on a global scale holditch taught classes at texas a&m for many years while working in the industry after he retired from schlumberger holditch served as head of the petroleum engineering department for several years before retiring from academia he was inducted into the corps of cadets hall of honor and recognized as a distinguished alumni by the association of former students for his lifetime of service to texas a&m
1323,"tracking the spread of covid-19 is vital for public health decision making to this end dr ulisses braga-neto is working with undergraduate and doctoral students in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university to model the spread of covid-19 and estimate its true prevalence from incomplete and noisy testing data tracking covid-19 on campus senior durward cator iii is working with braga-neto professor in the department on a model to track the spread of covid-19 on texas a&ms campus using its evolution over space and through time the model cator is using is based on a campus seir (susceptible exposed infected and recovered) model the model can generate population plots of the susceptible infected and recovered individuals on campus cator explained that the probability of a contact infection is not directly shown but can be approximately inferred from the graphs these probabilities can be changed based on factors such as mask wearing and social distancing in his model cator can account for student behavior such as movement between buildings and building proximity to accurately simulate and track the spread of covid-19 on campus cator began this project when he applied for and was accepted in the online research experience for undergraduates (o-reu) program over the summer shortly after joining the program braga-neto approached cator with the idea for this project and he was immediately intrigued ""(the o-reu program) has definitely been a useful experience "" cator said ""i am glad that i did it and im happy to continue working on (this project) and hopefully do something useful for the campus and create something everyone can use"" while cator and braga-neto are still running simulations their ultimate goal is to gather real campus data and then integrate that data into the model to allow them to deploy this tool for campus use expanding to the state of texas doctoral student yukun tan is working with braga-neto on a similar project but instead of focusing on the spread of covid-19 on campus his research focus encompasses the entire state of texas tan began this research project after the high second round of reported cases in texas in june prior to tackling this project he was working with braga-neto on signal processing and machine learning tools for a gene regulatory network interface and wanted to use the expertise from that area to explore and predict epidemic-related issues braga-neto explained that the gene regulatory network project and the covid-19 model project are similar in that at any given time there is a state of a gene to assess and for the covid-19 model there is a state of an individual to look at for example whether they are infected or not infected it is a very practical project tan said if we do well we could not only get the prediction of our current and future situation but also obtain the guidance of how to prevent and control the epidemic in reality one thing that sets tans work apart from the campus simulations cator is running is that tan can apply the real-world data provided by all the counties in texas to his model for the campus state and nation finding a way to accurately track the spread of covid-19 is the first step in understanding and overcoming the pandemic fortunately researchers at texas a&m are already hard at work to help solve this problem"
1324,dr abhishek jain assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is taking the study of veins out of the body and onto a chip to develop better ways to address and treat various diseases including covid-19 jain was recently recognized with the national science foundations faculty early career development program (career) award to further his work to develop new disease models of veins to better understand how these unique structures help our cardiovascular systems function venous diseases are ranked amongst the top cardiovascular causes of death worldwide the award gives us not only the critical funding to work on this but also visibility that we are doing something that will potentially have a long-lasting impact within health care he said while moving blood from the heart throughout the body only requires the heart to beat bringing the blood back to the heart is much more complicated and falls on the veins throughout veins are valves that open and close to pump the blood when these valves fail this can lead to different cardiovascular conditions including venous thrombosis or blood clots these valves have a very unique structure their architecture is such that as the blood moves through the valves its actually disturbed its not regular flow so venous valves are very sensitive to any biochemical or even mechanical changes if there are any changes our venous blood vessels can be vulnerable to clots veins however are tricky to study outside of the body
1325,thats why jains team is engineering microfluidic devices known in his lab as vein-on-chip to mimic the architecture of veins in a miniaturized transparent format researchers will be able to use human blood and cells in these systems giving them a chance to better test new drug therapies or treatments for venous conditions veins are specialized blood vessels it has been seen clinically but there are no model systems to effectively study those to really understand the underpinnings of vein physiology jain said this gives us an enormous opportunity to understand vein biology and physiology in a totally new way jain can already see a future application of the chip technology helping in the fight against the covid-19 pandemic recent studies have shown that covid-19 impacts the blood vessels and a majority of the patients who are dying experience some sort of thrombosis we have the opportunity to advance this model to prevent future death from pandemics that are actually vascular diseases jain said you could very quickly use these tools to find drugs to find treatments you can save lives by using these devices jains research philosophy is also reflected in the career award which encourages translational work taking the research out of the lab and into the clinic and classroom jain plans to create a new educational program titled biology without animals but with engineering that will target high school students involve undergraduates in research and as mentors and provide contemporary communication strategies to graduate students the program will provide experiential learning experience to younger students promoting excitement in stem education and career opportunities my long-term educational goal is to contribute in creating a critical and diverse workforce of biomedical engineers who can accelerate and economize health care through innovation in drug discovery pipeline jain said
1326,funded by the national science foundation (nsf) a grant was awarded to the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university to induce collaboration among faculty members by encouraging testing and sharing of teaching methods to transform the department's cultural norms the effort of the mechanical engineering department is very timely and will significantly enhance the diversity recruitment and retention efforts of the college of engineering and serve as a model for other departments and universities said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering (since the publication of this article dr banks has been appointed texas a&m university president effective june 1 2021) research has shown that facultys views of great teaching are often based on individual experience and informal grassroots collaborations rather than a top-down approach the approach used here will be based upon lean startup methods focusing on sustained incremental improvements rather than episodic upheavals the project will empower and facilitate interested faculty to participate in small groups that strive to develop a vision for change instead of training to teach the project will train these teams to experiment and share by implementing hypothesized improvements and measuring the effectiveness of teaching styles this is a unique proposal that aims to change the culture and mindset of faculty and how we teach to the current generation of students said dr andreas polycarpou head of the mechanical engineering department and a principal investigator on the project in the same way faculty experiment with their research we want them to follow a similar process of teaching
1327,the grant will primarily be used to develop training sessions that motivate change make active classrooms work and break down implicit biases unlike some negative stereotypes for faculty members most are constantly tweaking courses to benefit the students said dr karan watson a co-principal investigator from the department of electrical and computer engineering the lag time to ensure tweaks are working and the lack of the convenient environments to explore and share these tweaks with experienced peers result in slow advances of teaching this project will model how to accelerate the incorporation of innovative teaching approaches for most faculty members in an engineering department by sharing among peers and practicing self-evaluation the goal is to systemically spread grassroots changes through a large department more effectively ultimately this will create a unity of purpose across the department serving better student learning in both research and classroom experiences students will benefit because they will participate and give feedback and will be able to help move the departments courses toward more inclusive and hands-on formats said dr m cynthia hipwell a professor in the department and a co-principal investigator on the project these small changes shared with others can add up to a great deal of new learning and transformation we want to develop a shared vision and culture of continuous improvement of teaching the grant took effect on sept 1 and the project will continue until late 2023 the other co-principal investigators are dr arun srinivasa from the department and dr mindy bergman executive director of interdisciplinary critical studies from the college of liberal arts
1328,shell eco-marathon is one of the worlds leading student engineering competitions the global academic program brings together stem (science technology engineering and math) students from across the globe to design build and operate some of the worlds most energy-efficient vehicles in the name of collaboration and innovation as students bright ideas help to shape a lower carbon future for all due to the global pandemic all of shells physical events in 2020 have been cancelled this motivated the competition committee to adjust to a more virtual environment so they created the shell eco-marathon autonomous programming competition the competition was developed in partnership with the southwest research institute the winning team was from the texas a&m university college of engineering department of engineering technology and industrial distribution (mechatronics program) jorge roa (team leader/actuation) daniyal ansari (perception) alex trejos (decision making) j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering mike ashley (actuation) trent collins (decision making) the autonomous competition encouraged the development of energy-efficient autonomy algorithms the scoring criteria emphasizes conserving energy through how the car is driven and how the algorithms are implemented while emphasizing maximum efficiency path planning competing teams worked a simulation challenge each team was first ranked by the number of goals completed then by their energy usage distance central processing unit usage and time dr xinyong song team advisor and associate professor in the engineering technology and industrial distribution department was amazed by his teams accomplishment
1329,the teams winning entry is analogous to the development of full-scale autonomous vehicles however this project represents a new low-cost entry roa shared his perspective on the difficulty of working as a team virtually during a pandemic we were left with our personal computers to run the simulation environments required to work on the project said roa only two out of the five computers from the team members were able to run the simulations since they had the hardware requirements this meant that we could not test our own work locally we had to ask team members to test code for hours despite working together for the competition over a period of three months the team never actually met in person i think that is incredible achieving such a friendship and even winning a competition with people that we dont even know how they look like said roa additional financial and academic support for the team came from dr swaminathan gopalswamy research professor in the mechanical engineering department
1330,in the september issue of the journal nature scientists from texas a&m university hewlett packard labs and stanford university have described a new nanodevice that acts almost identically to a brain cell furthermore they have shown that these synthetic brain cells can be joined together to form intricate networks that can then solve problems in a brain-like manner this is the first study where we have been able to emulate a neuron with just a single nanoscale device which would otherwise need hundreds of transistors said dr r stanley williams senior author on the study and professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering we have also been able to successfully use networks of our artificial neurons to solve toy versions of a real-world problem that is computationally intense even for the most sophisticated digital technologies in particular the researchers have demonstrated proof of concept that their brain-inspired system can identify possible mutations in a virus which is highly relevant for ensuring the efficacy of vaccines and medications for strains exhibiting genetic diversity over the past decades digital technologies have become smaller and faster largely because of the advancements in transistor technology however these critical circuit components are fast approaching their limit of how small they can be built initiating a global effort to find a new type of technology that can supplement if not replace transistors in addition to this scaling-down problem transistor-based digital technologies have other well-known challenges for example they struggle at finding optimal solutions when presented with large sets of data lets take a familiar example of finding the shortest route from your office to your home if you have to make a single stop its a fairly easy problem to solve but if for some reason you need to make 15 stops in between you have 43 billion routes to choose from said dr suhas kumar lead author on the study and researcher at hewlett packard labs this is now an optimization problem and current computers are rather inept at solving it kumar added that another arduous task for digital machines is pattern recognition such as identifying a face as the same regardless of viewpoint or recognizing a familiar voice buried within a din of sounds but tasks that can send digital machines into a computational tizzy are ones at which the brain excels in fact brains are not just quick at recognition and optimization problems but they also consume far less energy than digital systems hence by mimicking how the brain solves these types of tasks williams said brain-inspired or neuromorphic systems could potentially overcome some of the computational hurdles faced by current digital technologies to build the fundamental building block of the brain or a neuron the researchers assembled a synthetic nanoscale device consisting of layers of different inorganic materials each with a unique function however they said the real magic happens in the thin layer made of the compound niobium dioxide when a small voltage is applied to this region its temperature begins to increase but when the temperature reaches a critical value niobium dioxide undergoes a quick change in personality turning from an insulator to a conductor but as it begins to conduct electric currents its temperature drops and niobium dioxide switches back to being an insulator
1331,these back-and-forth transitions enable the synthetic devices to generate a pulse of electrical current that closely resembles the profile of electrical spikes or action potentials produced by biological neurons further by changing the voltage across their synthetic neurons the researchers reproduced a rich range of neuronal behaviors observed in the brain such as sustained burst and chaotic firing of electrical spikes capturing the dynamical behavior of neurons is a key goal for brain-inspired computers said kumar altogether we were able to recreate around 15 types of neuronal firing profiles all using a single electrical component and at much lower energies compared to transistor-based circuits to evaluate if their synthetic neurons can solve real-world problems the researchers first wired 24 such nanoscale devices together in a network inspired by the connections between the brains cortex and thalamus a well-known neural pathway involved in pattern recognition next they used this system to solve a toy version of the viral quasispecies reconstruction problem where mutant variations of a virus are identified without a reference genome by means of data inputs the researchers introduced the network to short gene fragments then by programming the strength of connections between the artificial neurons within the network they established basic rules about joining these genetic fragments the jigsaw puzzle-like task for the network was to list mutations in the virus genome based on these short genetic segments the researchers found that within a few microseconds their network of artificial neurons settled down in a state that was indicative of the genome for a mutant strain
1332,williams and kumar noted this result is proof of principle that their neuromorphic systems can quickly perform tasks in an energy-efficient way the researchers said the next steps in their research will be to expand the repertoire of the problems that their brain-like networks can solve by incorporating other firing patterns and some hallmark properties of the human brain like learning and memory they also plan to address hardware challenges for implementing their technology on a commercial scale calculating the national debt or solving some large-scale simulation is not the type of task the human brain is good at and that's why we have digital computers alternatively we can leverage our knowledge of neuronal connections for solving problems that the brain is exceptionally good at said williams we have demonstrated that depending on the type of problem there are different and more efficient ways of doing computations other than the conventional methods using digital computers with transistors dr ziwen wang from stanford university also contributed to this research this research was funded by the national science foundation the department of energy and the texas a&m x-grants program
1333,during covid-19 artificial intelligence (ai) has been used to enhance diagnostic efforts deliver medical supplies and even assess risk factors from blood tests now artificial intelligence is being used to forecast future covid-19 casestexas a&m university researchers led by dr ali mostafavi have developed a powerful deep-learning computational model that uses artificial intelligence and existing big data related to population activities and mobility to help predict the future spread of covid-19 cases at a county levelthe researchers published their results in ieee accessthe spread of pandemics is influenced by complex relationships related to features including mobility population activities and sociodemographic characteristics however typical mathematical epidemiological models only account for a small subset of relevant features in contrast the deep-learning model developed by mostafavi associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and his urbanresilienceai lab can explain the complex relationship between a larger number of features to forecast the range of increase in covid-19 infections in future dayswe immediately realized the potential for employing artificial intelligence to complement the existing mathematical epidemiological models mostafavi said we are living in the era of big data and leveraging these big data during crises is providing great opportunities for the development of models and data-driven tools to inform policiesa deep-learning model is a subset of machine learning a type of artificial intelligence where computing systems called neural networks learn from large amounts of data by training the deep-learning model with data from a certain time period in this case from march through may 2019 the model identified features to predict the trajectories of another time period june 2019the researchers deep-learning model accounts for features such as the movement of people within a community census data social-distancing data past case count growth and social demographics to predict the growth of covid-19 cases for each county with 64% accuracy which is twice the accuracy of an untrained model the models greatest accuracy was for seven days into the future the accuracy decreased the further into the future the model predictedone aspect of modeling that is helpful is not the accuracy but evaluating what factors drive the outcomes mostafavi said this model does not identify specific mitigation and response strategies but it can help at different points in time to see which strategies could be effective based on various county-level features
1334,knowing which features of the model have the most significant effect on the increase of cases officials can inform developing policies that target those factors if the most critical feature for a county is mobility officials can implement policies like stay-at-home ordersthe model can also offer insight into the effectiveness of policies after they have already been in place mostafavi discovered that overall the initial travel reduction orders were effective people from less populated counties traveled less to higher-populated cities but the extent of travel in densely populated counties did not change drasticallyhe said the influence of features can change over time for one county and vary from county to county at the onset of the pandemic the researchers saw travel-related and mobility-related factors were important predictors of cases but as time went on they saw other features such as travel to points of interests and social demographic characteristics were more importantthe outcome is that pandemic mitigation is complicated and policies are not one size fits allin the future mostafavis lab will use new data sets to develop different types of models in addition to the current national-scale predictive surveillance model the team is currently working on an artificial intelligence-based model for city-scale surveillance to predict cases at the zip-code level more importantly they want to predict the factors that influence each zip code so that officials can explore location-specific policies mostafavi said instead of closing restaurants in an entire county officials may close restaurants in only high-risk zip codeshis research shows big data and artificial intelligence have the potential to play a key role in improving pandemic surveillance prediction and policy developmentsignificant opportunities exist using these big data and ai to contain the existing pandemic and also better prepare and mitigate the future pandemics mostafavi saidthe research is funded by the national science foundation
1335,ahmadreza mahmoudzadeh a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been named to mass transits 40 under 40 list for 2020mahmoudzadeh is also a graduate research assistant at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) within the department and at tti he develops methodologies using different modeling techniques to apply his knowledge in transportation-related problems he also develops multiple automated toolboxes from scratch for analysis of transit agency operational and financial data which have been key for projects in transit cost allocation route scheduling service provision and data evaluationit is truly an honor for me and i greatly appreciate all the board members choosing me he said i believe that i had great mentors in academia industry and especially the great support of my family who contributed to who i am today listening and trying to implement the lessons i have learned are the most powerful tools which put me on the right path to walk and make progressspecifically mahmoudzadeh is grateful for his advisor and professor dr bruce wang and his tti supervisor todd hansen and their encouragement and guidancei have learned statistical and optimization methods machine learning tools and different programming languages to apply my knowledge in transportation-related problems i used this knowledge to improve travel operations using different modes such as public transit vehicles and vessels he saidin one of his recent projects mahmoudzadeh developed a new methodology for assigning buses to the campus shuttle system he evaluated the campus shuttle system's annual ridership data in terms of service efficiency and then proposed a new scheduling system based on a clustering-based methodology this methodology reflects the difference in graduate and undergraduate students' behaviors and considers rapid changes between peak and off-peak services implementing this methodology showed that the shuttle fleet could operate more efficiently when class changes take placeas for the future mahmoudzadh will continue his work to improve the transportation of people and goodsdoing research helps society to bridge the gap between practice and innovation he said
1336,"by seeking to understand how tiny droplets behave when subjected to high pressure and temperatures texas a&m university researchers could contribute to the development of more efficient engines for propulsion and energy production applications their project titled ""droplet breakup and vaporization effects in high-speed liquid-fueled combustion "" investigates how liquid droplets break up vaporize and react in detonation waves which may lead to better engine technologies ""one day we may be able to use liquid-fueled detonation waves to power our commercial and military aircraft or to provide more efficient electric power generation "" said dr jacob mcfarland ""understanding how droplets break up can benefit us in other areas as well such as delivering aerosolized medicines more efficiently developing safer methods for destroying chemical or biological weapons mitigating the spread of diseases through airborne droplets and developing more efficient power generation and refrigeration technologies"" mcfarland associate professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is leading the research effort for which he was recently awarded the 2020 young investigator award from the united states office of naval research funding for the project began september 1 and is scheduled to continue for the three-year duration of the award while the rotating detonation engine most commonly used in the propulsion of aircrafts and rockets is the primary focus of the research mcfarland said advances in the technology could also benefit more conventional liquid-fueled engines as well as supersonic-combustion ramjet engines mcfarland said the award is a great honor and opportunity for a young faculty member like himself and that he is excited for the life-long expertise it will help him build in this subject area ""the project will support the development of a new liquid-fueled detonation tube facility and to purchase new instrumentation to allow us to image droplet breakup under these conditions for the first time "" mcfarland said ""it will also support the studies of a post-doctoral researcher and undergraduate researchers to train in this field of research"""
1337,dr chanan singh regents professor and irma runyon chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2020 foreign fellow of the indian national academy of engineering (inae) inae presents fellowships to individuals who have demonstrated eminence in their own chosen area and achieved outstanding accomplishments in engineering and technology singhs research interests lie in the areas of reliability and security of electric power systems theory and applications of system reliability integration of renewable energy sources and the reliability of cyberphysical systems he was also named a 2020 foreign fellow of the chinese society for electrical engineering and is a member of the national academy of engineering and the academy of medicine engineering and science of texas inae is comprised of indias most distinguished engineers engineer-scientists and technologists covering the entire spectrum of engineering disciplines inae promotes the practice of engineering and technology and the related sciences for their application to solving problems of national importance it also provides a forum for futuristic planning of the countrys development requiring engineering and technological input and brings together specialists from such fields as may be necessary for comprehensive solutions to the needs of the country
1338,matija jankovic is a senior in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university he transferred to texas a&m from the university of western australia in perth australia in fall 2019 upon moving across the seas – an experience that he described as both nerve-wracking and exciting – he has joined the texas a&m undergraduate research program and engineering honors program q: why did you choose to study electrical engineering a: i chose to study electrical engineering because i enjoy having the ability to design and build electronic devices that can be utilized in many industries also it is a highly relevant field in the future of technological space and has many different areas of specialization q: what advice would you give to another student looking to transfer to the texas a&m college of engineering a: i would say to research all the amazing opportunities texas a&m engineering has to offer and see whether one of them really appeals to you these opportunities include research professional events industry talks a large organization base and countless others if youre looking for a school that incorporates education and research while also valuing hands-on experience and the communication aspect of the classroom you should definitely consider texas a&m q: how would you describe your undergraduate research project a: i have been working in dr roozbeh jafaris embedded signal processing lab (esp lab) since my first semester at texas a&m in fall 2019 dr jafaris lab was formed to investigate how embedded processing and sensing systems that use advanced signal processing techniques can improve medical care and health care the esp lab has many projects that are multidisciplinary incorporating the areas of biomedical engineering computer engineering computer science and electrical engineering my particular research concerns a cuffless wearable system that can measure blood pressure continuously with cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death worldwide and high blood pressure being directly correlated to that this research is highly relevant and has the potential to make a positive impact in this area q: what inspired you to participate in a research project as an undergraduate student a: i decided to join the esp lab and participate in their research because it was something that i thought would be interesting innovative and challenging i also thought it would be a good way to apply the theories and ideas i learned in my coursework to a practical situation i wanted to engage in an area of electrical engineering that i hadnt particularly known about and something that wasnt commonly thought of as an area of electrical engineering participating in undergraduate research is also a good introduction to graduate school so doing this gave me some idea what the research aspect of a master of science would look like q: what are your career aspirations and future goals related to your degree a: my career aspirations include working in the semiconductor industry and applying the knowledge related to my degree to make a positive impact i have come to have an interest in wearable systems through my research so i would like to use the research experience im gaining in the esp lab to further my knowledge in this area i would eventually like to complete a masters degree in electrical/electronics engineering
1339,"dr jaime grunlan is now holder of the leland t jordan '29 chair professorship grunlan who joined the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university in 2004 is an internationally renowned research leader in the area of flame-retardant materials utilizing nanocoatings to create better fire protection for a wide variety of materials including upholstered furniture textiles and insulation he said his new appointment is ""an amazing honor "" particularly for a faculty member at this time in his career ""its absolutely the culmination of more than 16 years of hard work and innovation here at texas a&m "" grunlan said ""the resources this provides will certainly create more opportunities for scientific collaboration and student travel among other things"" grunlan whose research has been cited more than 17 000 times is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers and holds an honorary doctorate from the university of south brittany in france"
1340,daring themselves in an unprecedented time a team of three texas a&m university students participated in the accenture innovation challenge during the spring semester successfully making it into the final round of the competition this year accenture and nonprofit organization waterkeeper alliance partnered to create the national accenture innovation challenge which allowed students an opportunity to work on a business case formed by accenture the texas a&m team was made of three seniors: finance student ashni shah electrical engineering and engineering honors student michael sporkin and mechanical engineering student harrison vickers on a national scale waterkeeper alliance focuses on protecting the earths clean water resources the team was asked what waterkeeper alliance could do differently and was tasked to build and refine their solution from an abstract idea to a fully-implementable business plan with the aim to advance through the three rounds of competition i wasnt sure of the team dynamic until our first online meeting however i was extremely satisfied with my team members and their eagerness to compete and win this competition vickers said the first round was held in houston consisting of several teams from universities around the district the team proposed modifying startup microfilter technology to be used as a smart filter at the back of laundry machines capturing all of the microplastic waste released in the wash shah said that although they were confident and did their best to present a solution they came up with hours prior she was unsure how they ranked among the other competitors when we found out we had been selected to move on to round two it felt amazing shah said i had only met my team for the first time in person that day and it felt great to know that strangers could work together to create a tangible solution worthy of the next round in preparation for the second round the team had to refine their solution with more detail and direction because the regional competition was held virtually it became more important for the team to build a presentation that communicated their solution without having to explain it in person we added supplemental background research and numbers and built a deck that told a story that explained not only why our solution would work but was critical to protecting earths water resources sporkin said due to the virtual aspect of round two shah said it became more difficult to gauge the teams chance of advancing to the final national competition that was initially meant to be in new york fortunately after waiting for an update they received an email congratulating them for advancing we were all excited to represent our university on a national scale but i did not realize the competitiveness of round two until we were in the final round at that moment our team was proud to have made it that far shah said the team realized that they were in the top four of 60 teams given the opportunity to progress to the final round ultimately due to the covid-19 pandemic the final round was moved remotely it was a disappointment when we found out that the final round would be held over zoom shah said however the accenture team did an amazing job planning and executing the final round amid all the uncertainty although shah sporkin and vickers achieved many accomplishments in this accenture innovation challenge they did not win the final round despite this the team learned versatile lessons the best solution to a problem isnt always the best solution for a client sporkin said we offered a tangible potential path to fight a global problem but our plan didnt match the clients culture or current operations approaching situations with empathy for both those impacted and those trying to help is critical to finding a solution that works the team is now using the skills they gained in the accenture innovation challenge to progress in their careers
1341,the texas a&m university college of engineerings undergraduate engineering program climbed two spots ranking seventh among public engineering schools offering a doctorate (tied with university of wisconsin-madison) and no 13 overall in the recently released 2021 us news & world report best college rankings in all eight departments were ranked in the top 10 among public institutions six of which increased their rank from the year before two departments within the college of engineering were ranked in the top five the harold vance department of petroleum engineering was ranked first among public schools and overall the department of biological and agricultural engineering which is part of both the college of engineering and the college of agriculture and life sciences at texas a&m was ranked second among public schools and overall other departments ranking in the top 10 of public institutions include the department of aerospace engineering (7) the zachry department of civil engineering (8) the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering (8) the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering (8) the department of electrical and computer engineering (9) and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering (10) topping off the list is the department of computer science and engineering (14) all were ranked in the in the top 20 overall
1342,texas a&m university college of engineering faculty dr dilma da silva and dr raymundo arroyave are co-principal investigators on a research project that has received a $39 million major research instrumentation grant from the national science foundation (nsf) the grant will allow the university to acquire a next-generation composable high-performance computing platform to enable researchers to make transformative advances in a wide range of scientific fields acquiring such hardware capabilities will enable texas a&m scientists and engineers to explore new ways of leveraging machine learning in data-driven discovery said da silva computer science and engineering professor and holder of the ford motor company design professorship ii for computer researchers like me understanding the demands that large-scale data analytics make on the platform may point out novel directions to accelerate the software with the support of the grant texas a&ms high performance research computing (hprc) will purchase faster (fostering accelerated scientific transformations education and research) a composable high-performance data-analysis and computing instrument faster will significantly benefit scientific fields that rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning (ai/ml) techniques big-data practices and high-performance computing (hpc) technologies these fields include the development of ai/ml models cybersecurity health population informatics genomics bioinformatics computer-aided drug design agricultural sciences life sciences biophysics oil and gas simulations materials science climate modeling multi-scale simulations quantum computing architectures biomedical imaging geosciences and quantum chemistry this is an important addition to our already impressive capabilities in high-performance research computing said dr mark a barteau vice president for research computational science has become the ‘third pillar of research and scientific investigation and is essential for advanced theory and experimentation in this age of groundbreaking multidisciplinary research it is vital for a world-class institution like texas a&m to offer researchers access to the paradigm-changing power of high-speed computation and data analysis texas a&m will provide cost sharing of more than $132 million toward the project which will be used to support researchers to effectively use this novel hpc/al/ml platform congratulations to hprc and the project team for securing the federal funding for this vital addition to our computing capabilities said dr costas n georghiades senior associate vice president for research research workflows in an ever-growing number of scientific and engineering disciplines are becoming more and more reliant on high-performance computing to pursue pioneering discoveries and innovations we are proud to expand and extend this capacity to our outstanding researchers across the a&m system in addition 30% of fasters computing resources will be allocated to researchers nationwide by the nsfs extreme science and engineering discovery environment program the platform also will contribute to code development education and the workforce development goals of the nsf advanced cyberinfrastructure ecosystem this unique hpc/ai/ml platform delivers much desired composability-features that go beyond the scope of the current generation of deployed supercomputers said dr honggao liu hprc director and principal investigator for the faster project the faster platform will help researchers nationwide seek answers to questions that are currently intractable the faster platform removes significant bottlenecks in research computing by leveraging a technology that can dynamically allocate resources to support research workflows faster combines the innovative composable software-hardware approach with cutting-edge technologies such as next-generation central processing units and graphic processing units (gpus) state-of-the-art non-volatile memory express (nvme)-based storage and high-speed interconnect workflows on faster will dynamically integrate gpus and nvme to compose a single node allowing them to scale beyond traditional hardware limits this will allow researchers to use resources far more efficiently and to conduct more research in less time arroyave is a professor in the department of materials science and engineering dr zhe sarina zhang is an assistant professor in the department of geography at texas a&m and co-principal investigator on the project
1343,in the 2019 boeing 737 max crash the recovered black box from the aftermath hinted that a failed pressure sensor may have caused the ill-fated aircraft to nose dive this incident and others have fueled a larger debate on sensor selection number and placement to prevent the reoccurrence of such tragedies texas a&m university researchers have now developed a comprehensive mathematical framework that can help engineers make informed decisions about which sensors to use and where they must be positioned in aircraft and other machines during the early design stage for any control system critical decisions have to be made about which sensors to use and where to place them so that the system is optimized for measuring certain physical quantities of interest said dr raktim bhattacharya associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering with our mathematical formulation engineers can feed the model with information on what needs to be sensed and with what precision and the models output will be the fewest sensors needed and their accuracies the researchers detailed their mathematical framework in the june issue of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers control system letters whether a car or an airplane complex systems have internal properties that need to be measured for instance in an airplane sensors for angular velocity and acceleration are placed at specific locations to estimate the velocity sensors can also have different accuracies in technical terms accuracy is measured by the noise or the wiggles in the sensor measurements this noise impacts how accurately the internal properties can be predicted however accuracies may be defined differently depending on the system and the application for instance some systems may require that noise in the predictions do not exceed a certain amount while others may need the square of the noise to be as small as possible in all cases prediction accuracy has a direct impact on the cost of the sensor if you want to get sensor accuracy that is two times more accurate the cost is likely to be more than double said bhattacharya furthermore in some cases very high accuracy is not even required for example an expensive 4k hd vehicle camera for object detection is unnecessary because first fine features are not needed to distinguish humans from other cars and second data processing from high-definition cameras becomes an issue bhattacharya added that even if the sensors are extremely precise knowing where to put the sensor is critical because one might place an expensive sensor at a location where it is not needed thus he said the ideal solution balances cost and precision by optimizing the number of sensors and their positions to test this rationale bhattacharya and his team designed a mathematical model using a set of equations that described the model of an f-16 aircraft in their study the researchers objective was to estimate the forward velocity the direction of wind angle with respect to the airplane (the angle of attack) the angle between where the airplane is pointed and the horizon (the pitch angle) and pitch rate for this aircraft available to them were sensors that are normally in aircraft for measuring acceleration angular velocity pitch rate pressure and the angle of attack in addition the model was also provided with expected accuracies for each sensor their model revealed that all of the sensors were not needed to accurately estimate forward velocity; readings from angular velocity sensors and pressure sensors were enough also these sensors were enough to estimate the other physical states like the angle of attack precluding the need of an additional angle of attack sensor in fact these sensors although a surrogate for measuring the angle of attack had the effect of introducing redundancy in the system resulting in higher system reliability bhattacharya said the mathematical framework has been designed so that it always indicates the least sensors that are needed even if it is provided with a repertoire of sensors to choose from lets assume a designer wants to put every type of sensor everywhere the beauty of our mathematical model is that it will take out the unnecessary sensors and then give you the minimum number of sensors needed and their position he said furthermore the researchers noted that although the study is from an aerospace engineering perspective their mathematical model is very general and can impact other systems as well as engineering systems become bigger and more complex the question of where to put the sensor becomes more and more difficult said bhattacharya so for example if you are building a really long wind turbine blade some physical properties of the system need to be estimated using sensors and these sensors need to be placed at optimal locations to make sure the structure does not fail this is nontrivial and that's where our mathematical framework comes in vedang deshpande from the aerospace engineering department is the primary author of this research he worked on this research for his doctoral thesis in bhattacharyas laboratory this research was funded by the national science foundation
1344,although engineering is typically associated with metals polymers and plastics day-to-day materials from paint to toothpaste have also been engineered to perform there are a lot of materials that are used in everyday life that people on average don't realize are unusual or nonstandard engineering materials said dr chandler benjamin toothpaste is a perfect example because it has to have a certain level of texture when you're spreading it on your teeth because if it was too gritty then you you'd never use it so it has to have a certain ability to spread but of course it also has to have the ability to stay on your toothbrush when youre not brushing to determine how to design the materials they must first be tested so that it is known how they behave in certain situations – a task that benjamin an assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and his lab approaches through the use of material characterization and nonlinear models but while its nice to have toothpaste that doesnt grit against your teeth or drop off the brush the applications of these models have life-saving potential as well one of the main areas of benjamins research focuses on harnessing these models to help health care providers combat cardiovascular diseases affecting the bodys largest artery the aorta one disease in particular aortic dissection has been a primary focus of benjamins research an aortic dissection typically occurs when an injury to the innermost layer of the aorta allows blood to flow between the layers of the aortic wall forcing the layers apart if an aortic dissection occurs on the arch – the part that attaches right into the heart – i hope you are already in the hospital on the operating table benjamin said if it occurs in the descending or the abdominal aorta it's very bad and you have some time to get to the hospital but still the fatality of that disorder is high unfortunately the condition is difficult to diagnose and can often be confused with an aneurysm based on current methods of detection including an mri which leaves physicians with no choice but to perform surgery to physically observe the artery to help assist health care providers in determining the likelihood of an aortic dissection benjamin and his lab group are working to create a model that could accurately detect the conditions under which it might occur most of the time you know this right before something bad is about to happen benjamin said we're trying predict these things well before they occur if you could detect this before it ever becomes a serious problem then you can take steps toward prevention to accomplish such goals benjamin and his team take the materials they study and seek to determine how they behave when put under stress it is at this point where benjamins lab sets itself apart taking these characterizations and using them to test nonlinear models while more traditionally considered engineering materials use linear models biologically grown materials like the aorta require the use of nonlinear models similar to paint and toothpaste and are much more difficult to characterize if youre unable to describe how a material is going to behave under different loads and different conditions and if you have no models to represent this you cant even start benjamin said you cant even think about how youre going to predict something like this so this is always the first step in any mechanical development its the first thing that has to be done
1345,three countries five time zones and a range of technical and business backgrounds jessica zamarripa a graduate student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and a team of international researchers are creating a novel wearable patch to help medical professionals remotely monitor patients vitals and reduce hospital overcrowding during and after covid-19 zamarripa a national academy of engineering (nae) grand challenge scholar said the team postlytics came together during the 2019 global grand challenges summits (ggcs19) innovation hackathon co-lab that challenged groups to create a business model to address two global questions: can we sustain 10 billion people by 2050 and will artificial intelligence and other transformational technologies change humanity for the better postlytics included emily cho from the university of maryland luke he from the university of nottingham ningbo china asit rahman from the university of glasgow and the royal air force morella wang from fuzhou university and zamarripa inspired by both theirs and others experiences regarding the difficulty of having access to adequate hospital resources postlytics aims to reduce overcrowding in hospitals by enhancing the ability for clinicians to monitor patients from afar this would allow for those with less severe conditions to heal from home while still being remotely surveyed by medical staff while hospital overcrowding is already a big issue across the globe the issue will only increase as the global population is expected to rise to 10 billion people by 2050 said zamarripa before the covid-19 pandemic we certainly did consider the potential use of our idea to help infectious diseases with the onset of the pandemic the team decided to primarily focus on pivoting to help the covid-19 situation as zamarripa explained health care and other data resources such as the organisation for economic cooperation and development estimate there are as few as three hospital beds per 1 000 people available in the united states the covid-19 pandemic puts this shortage to the test as hospitalization rates rise and lead to excess patients being boarded in emergency rooms such overcrowding causes inefficient patient care and a decreased ability for doctors to give patients proper attention and care the teams solution to this issue is a wearable patch that monitors patient vitals such as temperature cough detection heart rate and electrocardiogram (ecg) this information is transmitted in real time to health care professionals who can monitor the patient from afar thus allowing for those in recovery or early stages of covid-19 to be sent home the teams new wearable design will use leading-edge materials for reusability and flexibility purposes the system will utilize data analytics and machine-learning algorithms to inform both health care professionals and patients in addition to the team being selected as one of the four winning teams of the innovation hackathon co-lab they were chosen to speak at the second nae covid-19 call for engineering action: concept pitch event the team has also been selected to participate in the joint royal academy of engineering-women in engineering virtual incubator and the national science foundations i-corps training in los angeles they are currently in the selection process for opportunities such as the creative destruction lab and national institutes of health rad-x programs i believe i can speak for the entire team when i say it is extremely humbling and motivating when the team gets recognized for our efforts said zamarripa we each have a passion for wanting to make a difference in society the recognition that the team has received thus far has fueled our passions for furthering the development of our project now with the grand challenges competition a year behind them zamarripa said the team continues to innovate with plans to build and test a fabricated prototype apply for patents and the nsf national i-corps program (innovation start-up incubator) and begin the us food and drug administration approval process postlytics is not going to be slowing down any time soon in the long term we see many benefits and applications for enhancing remote monitoring capabilities on a hopefully global scale she said with the covid-19 pandemic our primary focus is on using our solution to benefit hospitals and the overall health care industry; but we do see a wide range of applications to improve working and living situations in this social-distancing time postlytics would like to acknowledge their mentor dr kayleen helms 00 with intel corporation who serves on the external advisory boards for texas a&ms material science and engineering and aerospace engineering departments for her support and guidance postlytics would also like to acknowledge student workers aysheh abushanab justis morales emma ong and ruth ann sonom from texas a&m; nicholas bruns from marquette university; chenhao martin shi from university of nottingham at ningbo; and robert luttrell from california polytechnic state university for their critical work toward this effort
1346,what would someone with an engineering and science career spanning over 50 years say to students just beginning their engineering journeys have fun from the very beginning dr ignacio rodriguez-iturbe knew he was not drawn to the structural side of science and engineering he strove to understand the world around him and ask questions that had no answer while always staying curious and having fun with his work rodriguez-iturbe is a member of the national academy of sciences the national academy of engineering the american academy of arts and sciences and the vatican academy of sciences he is a tees eminent professor and distinguished professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university finding his flow while rodriguez-iturbes initial interest and focus was in hydrology his path has flowed through many areas his intrigue and curiosity led him to study hydraulics and hydrology for his masters and doctoral degrees – diving into how nature worked in relation to water what followed was a passion that spanned both decades and various topographies on its way to coastal processes and ocean engineering
1347,starting with hydrologic processes in river basins rodriguez-iturbe followed his curiosity as he asked how the structure of natural drainage networks and river networks controlled hydrologic processes such as those associated with the water cycle
1348,working alongside dr andrea rinaldo a hagler fellow and professor at école polytechnique fédérale de lausanne in switzerland he published their pioneering research in a book titled fractal river basins: chance and self-organization their work stands as a foundation for probability models (a mathematical representation of a random phenomenon) of rainfall and the structure of the drainage network the development of solutions for environmental problems related to species diversity and river conservation methods continuing his research on probability modeling and the interface between environments and the water cycle his focus shifted to another important ecosystem savanna geomorphology and vegetation with a topography that is very different from wetlands and coastal areas in that it doesnt undergo dramatic change savanna vegetation is largely driven by soil moisture combining his hydraulic knowledge with this new ecosystem rodriguez-iturbe wondered how vegetation (in the case of his research grass and trees) cope with unpredictable rainfall from a hydrology point of view to better understand how in turn these plants impact the water cycle through their coping methods uncharted (and unpredictable) waters upon an invitation to return to texas a&m after visiting years prior rodriguez-iturbe finally found himself at the coast and wading into ocean engineering as he explained with nearly half of the worlds population living within 100 kilometers of a coastline the need to understand coastal processes on a fundamental level and the nature therein is paramount i always say that what drives my research is the want to know how nature works he said what is the relationship between vegetation the coastal geomorphology of dune fields and the marine environment specifically waves and wind unlike savannas which do not change much over time the coast is constantly evolving due to wind and waves what makes studying coastal topography even more challenging is that its topography as well as its drivers the waves and wind are all stochastic – meaning that they cannot be researched in deterministic terms only looked at in terms of probabilistic modeling
1349,an additional challenge as rodriguez-iturbe explained is that high water events – including normal tide and wave events and extreme events such as hurricanes – flatten the coastal line thus affecting the vegetation and dune fields all of which are also random dunes are extremely important because on top of them and behind them you have vegetation of different types he said dunes are also the first line of defense against water events and they themselves have vegetation that depends on the topography of the dune field which is constantly changing so one of the first questions the coastal people in the department had was what is the mathematical framework to establish dune height change along the coastline how do dunes change over time and space what is the probability distribution and the probabilistic structure of the dune height at a single point the answer to these questions is a fundamental understanding of how coasts naturally evolve and change around the world that insight is vital for the protection and preservation of coasts for all those living near enough to one to be affected by larger water phenomena such as hurricanes and tsunamis and while he doesnt have all the answers to these questions rodriguez-iturbe and his collaborators are making strides toward being able to mathematically understand formulate and model such probabilities by simplifying the problem and focusing first and foremost on the wave input he and his team are carving the first stepping stone to a groundbreaking understanding of the stochastic fundamentals of coastal processes they currently have submitted two papers on this subject to the proceedings of the national academy of science navigating new horizons in addition to his world-renown research rodriguez-iturbe has a passion for education and teaching the next generation of inquisitive leaders seeking to understand and better the world
1350,i love to tell my students – especially undergrads – that when you go for a walk just think about what you see he said why do the trees you see have branches the lungs have branches rivers have branches why is that natural architecture something that is so common in nature look at the world like a child and ask those questions explore them as rodriguez-iturbe described his interest in finding patterns in the natural world has led him down many paths of research as he has kept his eyes and mind wide open – curious how the geometry of the world impacts the way things are and how they can be implemented in other aspects of life such as engineering and above all else what does he have to say to those just beginning their academic and professional careers how does someone keep their passion and excitement for their work for over half a century have fun said rodriguez-iturbe what is beautiful about investing in research is that the search is many times more exciting than the result – the evolution and how you get there like mountain climbers we are guided by our destination but should never forget to enjoy the climb and the journey there in research you can be working for many hours on a single project and sometimes you will be upset or frustrated or not get the result you want that happens to all of us so my advice is to make sure you enjoy what you do enjoy the climb because when you care other people will care too and thats something to be excited about
1351,kamal m ariss 83 has established the kamal m ariss 83 engineering scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time first-generation students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree from the college of engineering at texas a&m university all recipients of this scholarship will be participants in the first-generation engineering students mentoring (fgen) program when looking at colleges ariss was drawn to texas a&ms engineering program all the way from his prep school in connecticut he said he admired how the aggie core values are timeless and are for life not just until you get your degree back in 1979 everybody said howdy while i toured the campus the friendliness education and traditions all played a major factor that i never regretted i liked it so much i came back for my masters degree as well said ariss ariss has been on several texas a&m boards and organizations and said he has enjoyed every moment of his involvement those experiences made me realize there is plenty of need for help academically and athletically to keep a&ms reputation as a premier university he said giving back is very important to me we need more donors to help many students achieve their dreams in addition to a quality education ariss hopes his scholarship will help students build an affinity toward their alma mater and find ways to give back once they graduate ariss is the first aggie in his family and graduated with his bachelors degree in engineering technology in 1984 and his masters in land development in 1987 he hopes his daughter will follow in his footsteps when she applies to texas a&m this upcoming year ariss is the president of woodway enterprises and he and his family currently reside in the dallas texas area
1352,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president of development
1353,ever since sputnik launched in 1957 humankind has been reaching deeper into the stars with technological advances and interstellar missionsdr john junkins inspired by the space race and a prominent aerospace engineer tn edelbaum set out to answer a question edelbaum posed over 50 years ago how many impulsesmeaning how many velocity impulses – and in what direction and at what time – must be used to allow a spacecraft to fly from its starting point to reach a specified destination with a minimum total impulsethe answer to a 50-year questionhow do you optimally fly from a to b asked junkins who was recently awarded a 2020 texas a&m engineering experiment station research impact award for his contribution to the development of his space navigation and control research that's really the kind of problems i'm dealing with in this research and those are tough problems that require us to combine judicious control forces with gravitational field effects to fly from one moving object to anotherjunkins serves as regents professor distinguished professor and holder of the royce e wisenbaker chair in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university he is also director of the hagler institute for advanced study and a member of the national academy of engineeringprior to junkins' and his teams recent work there was no rigorous process to answer edelbaums question which arises in virtually every space flight missionadditionally recent advances in low-thrust propulsion means that some spacecrafts are literally propelling for decades of powered flight between objects separated by many astronomical units and thus the trajectory design problems are getting more difficult as a consequenceworking alongside dr ehsan taheri an adjunct assistant professor in the department junkins formulations and algorithms led to a new way to determine continuous thrust minimum fuel orbit transfers by varying the theoretical maximum thrust allowed by x amount their approach ultimately revealed the solution for any maximum thrust level as the theoretical maximum thrust is allowed to approach infinity longer coasts appear between ever shorter optimal thrust arcs the limiting case is the answer to edelbaums optimal impulse question for any feasible orbit transferthis research published in a special edition of the journal of the astronautical sciences dedicated to the 50 glorious orbits of junkins career to date also helped to earn him the robert h goddard astronautics award from the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics in may 2019the work taheri and i did extended and unified existing methodology junkins said and its really amazing that many researchers and flight control engineers worked on this for a half century and even though i was born a bit too late to be a key player in the apollo program during edelbaums time i wasn't born too late to bring closure to an important question he raised and in the process established new tools to design space missions optimally and with computational efficiencydeveloping the next generationand while his research impacts are numerable and transformational it is the development of young collaborators and mentees that junkins places the greatest pride inthe basic and applied research i do is very important to me obviously i just love this stuff he said but putting that aside i consider the development of ehsan taheri – through our collaboration – much more important than the specific results we documented in the paper because he is a young man and 30 years from now he will have done all kinds of things that utilize this work and approaches we developed hopefully affecting many future missionsjunkins has mentored more than 50 doctoral students and two dozen post-doctoral collaborators more than half of which have gone on to become professors and mentors of their own with each mentee and each day at texas a&m junkins lives out his philosophy that developing people lies at the heart of his approach to academic research and impactthe cascade effect of being an effective research mentor is of fundamental importance junkins said i've seen virtually all of the young researchers i have mentored develop in ways that went far beyond what i could foresee during the time they worked with me and so many pleasant surprises emerged seeing former collaborators build on their work with me is very gratifying and it is especially rewarding when i see former students mentoring additional generations of bright young engineers
1354,research led by dr wonmuk hwang has led to better understanding on how components of the bodys immune system find intruding or damaged cells which could lead to novel approaches to viral and cancer treatments hwang associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has written about this in an article recently published in the journal proceedings of the national academy of sciences when viruses enter the body the immune system kicks into gear to seek out and destroy the intruder t-cells are one component of the immune system and they seek out viruses hiding in host cells acting as an ultimate line of defense against antigens or foreign bodies t-cells probe the surface of other cells examining materials scooped from inside the cell and presented by the major histocompatibility complex (mhc) molecules on the surface of the cells the problem is there are hundreds of thousands of mhc molecules displaying peptides and only a few are from invading cells if at all hwang said the rest of them are normal products of cellular metabolism which means the t-cell needs to be able to see that needle in the haystack researchers have discovered recently that t-cells increase their detection power mechanically: when t-cells probe the surface of other cells there is a natural contact force created if the cell is infected by an antigen the applied force results in a catch bond between the t-cell receptors (tcrs) and mhc molecules which strengthens the contact this bond does not occur between tcrs and mch molecules that do not carry specific antigens however it is almost impossible to see this interaction in atomic details experimentally so hwang developed a computer simulation that could realistically demonstrate and analyze the interaction between tcrs and mhc molecules when force is applied only the simulation can see and analyze molecular motion under load a lab experiment doesnt have the resolution hwang said experimentally determined atomic structures of proteins are static snapshots but when the molecule moves you have basically no way to see the motion what hwang discovered was how the motion between the parts of the tcr controls their interaction with the mhc molecules when force is applied the motion is suppressed only when the mhc molecule has the matching antigen thereby stabilizing the entire complex other cases will refuse to interlock with the tcr and the constant motion between the two eventually leads to them disconnecting it is like a lock-and-key system where the lock and key constantly change shape and only with a perfect match and under an adequate level of force can the molecules interlock hwang said the knowledge of which parts of the molecule respond to force can help tailor t-cells for certain applications other than fighting infections tcrs are also the rising stars of cancer therapy if you can train the t-cell to see those cancerous antigens itll be really specific therapy hwang said chemotherapy kills all the cells but t-cells you can train to recognize cancer cells with extreme accuracy hwang said the next step for him is to investigate what is general and what pertains to specific t-cell receptor systems to see how this principle applies to different t-cell receptors im going to expand this initial finding hwang said this is the very first work that has found the operation mechanism of t-cell receptors under force hwang collaborated with researchers from vanderbilt university and harvard medical school and the research was supported by grants from the national institutes of health
1355,"perhaps one of the most iconic modern science fiction characters is optimus prime – the leader of the extraterrestrial self-configuring robotic beings called the autobots from the ""transformers"" series optimus prime and the autobots are modular robots able to transform themselves into different shapes such as cars planes and semi-trucks bridging cinema and reality doctoral student swarnabha roy is studying the components of modular robots to ultimately create a connected intelligence that can help enhance the capabilities of the robots based on the application though these robots will not be fighting to save earth from impending doom the modular robots roy is working with will have the capability to assist humankind by providing a safer work environment for industries such as manufacturing and surveillance and providing products to general consumers at a lower cost and faster speed modular robotics consists of small independent robots or components that like the autobots can be reconfigured together to assume different shapes and functions for example a robot that can take the shape of a snake to crawl through a pipe or take the shape of a human roy said it can even reassemble into something with spider-like legs to cross uneven terrain while the modules in modular robotics can be independent roys research is mainly focused on areas that require the robots to work together and function in unison as one system the modular aspect of the robots will greatly reduce the cost of their maintenance for example if a repair or additional power is needed for the robot only the affected module would have to be serviced instead of the entire robot roy is exploring the cloud architecture for modular robotics and working to develop a heterogeneous system where the individual modules are not required to be identical in order to function properly the modules are little bundles of software inside little bundles of hardware and similar to parts of a computer may be unique or identical roy said the most challenging part of the project will be to determine the behavior of the robots if the communication between the modules is lost so that the entire system can be safe for human use he began this project in spring 2020 after searching for the perfect fit for his research project ""i had a variety of experience as an undergraduate but i always wanted to work on something related to robotics "" roy said ""i ventured into the field of robotics when i joined the embedded electronics team at the indian institute of technology my freshman year and from then on my interest in robotics kept on increasing"" roy is pursuing his phd in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and is working with his advisor dr stavros kalafatis who serves as associate department head and professor of practice in the department kalafatis said that the idea of a modular robot architecture was developed over time as he observed that most of the robots today are application-specific making them expensive and inflexible modularity will democratize robotic development by reducing price and enabling broader applications kalafatis said i am very happy to have swarnabha on our team focusing on this major enabling technology for the future roy is excited to pursue a project that uses cutting-edge technology and also contribute to the breadth of work being done with the internet of things which encompasses everything from smart appliances to the cellphone in your hand – essentially any technology that has the ability to connect to the internet this project will require knowledge of a lot of specializations namely embedded systems computer networks cloud computing low-level programming and control theory hence this project caters to my experiences and provides me with a lot of scope for further research roy said"
1356,dr homero castaneda-lopez associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as one of 12 experts to serve on the corrosion of buried steel at new and in-service infrastructure committee that is a part of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine this committee will focus on technical issues related to steel corrosion in ground stabilization pipelines and infrastructure foundations in unconsolidated rock among other settings the committee brings together experts from academia and industry to conduct a study aiming to improve the performance of steel over the long term for a number of infrastructure applications due to limitations caused by the covid-19 pandemic they will hold virtual meetings to discuss their findings including a workshop on the prediction and monitoring of corrosion in buried steel castaneda-lopez has made significant contributions to the field of corrosion science and engineering and serves as the director for the national corrosion and materials science reliability lab he has authored over 100 peer-reviewed papers in the areas of corrosion science and engineering coatings degradation and reliability and materials characterization he holds eight patents and three copyrights he received the hh uhlig best corrosion educator award from the national association of corrosion engineers international in 2018 he was also named a nace fellow in 2019 he is the editor of three journals related to electrochemistry materials corrosion and pipelines he recently was appointed as adjunct professor (professeur affilié) with mechanics surface and processing laboratory at école nationale supérieure d'arts et métiers (ensam) in aix-en-provence france and honorary professor at the university of science and technology in beijing china it is an honor to be a part of this widely recognized panel in the area of corrosion science and engineering for the infrastructure sector said castaneda-lopez he will serve as a member of the committee for the next year and half
1357,earthquakes hurricanes and tsunamis can have a catastrophic impact on infrastructuredr petros sideris assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a national science foundation (nsf) grant to advance the fundamental understanding and computational simulation of the damage and failure mechanisms of reinforced concrete structures under these extreme natural eventsaccurate predictions of damage and the failure of reinforced concrete structures are essential when designing and assessing risk especially by federal and state agencies and local communities this research will support structure- and community-level resilience effortsspecifically it will help accurately assess the performance of new and existing structures against natural hazards identify key vulnerabilities prioritize and guide retrofitting upgrade actions and develop and refine new designs to protect people and property from disastersthis research will produce computational simulation tools that will become available to the engineering community to support a wide range of efforts on addressing structure- and community-level resilience challenges sideris said i am very excited and humbled by this award which will allow me to pursue research that will advance our capability to predict structural failures under natural hazards in order to support efforts to improve the resilience of structures and communitiessideris research focuses on infrastructure resilience with particular emphasis on mitigating the effects of natural hazards on the built environment through understanding of the behavior of existing structures and the development of new resilient and sustainable designs realized via novel response mechanisms advanced materials and new construction methods his work lies at the nexus of performance-based engineering computational structural mechanics and dynamics and experimental methods for large-scale structures and materials
1358,a mechanism designed by a team of texas a&m university students from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering looks to innovatively help those who suffer from seizures by way of a small computer-like device attached to a service dogs vest the goal of the design is to send an alert when the user is experiencing symptoms of a seizure the project is funded by an endowment from the departments namesake dr j mike walker its inspiration comes from a local familys teenage son mj rocha who needed a better way to alert his family when he may be in danger after hearing the options for their capstone senior design project claire riordan and her five fellow teammates lexi atwood garrett brewer tj chorba walker clayton and zac yelich felt an instant pull toward the assignment
1359,everyone on the team connected with the topic immediately and were excited to be able to help the rocha family said riordan who is responsible for the mechanical aspects of the design as well as team communication right now our biggest hope is to produce a sturdy and reliable prototype rochas illness causes him to experience frequent seizures his mother tina and father mike are continually looking for reliable and inventive ways to help through technology they hope their son can live safely but also self-sufficiently the most rewarding part of this project has definitely been working with the family every time we talk to tina about her experiences with mjs illness we learn something new and incredible about what they've been able to do riordan said tina has worked for years creating solutions to problems that come up surrounding mjs illness and is constantly looking for ways to make him safer and more independent her passion and willingness to dive into this project with us has been wonderful for our team to experience currently rocha wears a biometric watch that operates through bluetooth technologies connecting to an app on his phone when he is experiencing symptoms of a seizure an alert sends to an emergency contact stating his location this system proved to have several flaws the watch and phone must be within 15 feet of one another to send an alert if the phone is dead if the app malfunctions or if the distance is too far these could potentially be high-risk situations for rocha with this in mind the team set out to create a more dependable system for the rocha family after months of deliberation using a small computer-like device connected to a service dogs vest yielded the most promising idea we came to this design firstly with help from dr srikanth saripalli who helped immensely in answering our questions about circuitry sensors and microcontrollers we also really tried to encourage thinking outside of the box as well as researching other solutions said riordan
1360,when the handler showcases signs of a seizure the dog activates the mechanism by pulling on a cord that is a stretch sensor the stretch sensor connects to a microcontroller that is in essence a small computer equipped with a sim card and gps capable of alerting the emergency contact of the users location some different aspects of the device that the students had to take into account were ease of the mechanism for the dog ease for the handler and the reliability of the microcontroller there were many intricate parts of the design that inspired the team to learn new aspects of engineering we worked on the design of the casing what materials were made of and how we could assemble it with electronic components our members had to do a lot of work to learn quickly about portable methods of sending and receiving signals said riordan although the original intention of this design was to serve the rocha family the team hopes their design can be used by others who have similar issues our team is in the process of exploring options with the engineering entrepreneurship program said riordan if this a route our team decides to go we may consider a way to make this product something families everywhere could buy for their service animals for more information about the senior capstone design program or to sponsor a future capstone project email dr joanna tsenn at joannatsenn@tamuedu
1361,dr joseph sang-ii kwon assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2020 korean-american scientists and engineers association (ksea) young investigator grant the ksea young investigator grant is the groups highest recognition given to young professionals who earned a doctoral degree in science or engineering and have been working in academia industry or government for no more than six years with the grant kwons research proposal will investigate multiscale modeling of pulp digester for improved renewable resource efficiency the research goal of his proposal is to establish a multiscale model of a pulp digester – a large pressurized cooker that transforms raw materials into pulp – to capture the evolution of both macroscopic and microscopic phenomena taking place within the digester in addition to the ksea young investigator grant kwon was named a 2020 tees young faculty fellow kwons research focuses on developing process systems engineering models and frameworks for the analysis control and optimization of complex chemical and biological systems especially in the field of oil and gas production he has been a part of teams awarded grants from the department of energy to study novel viscosifying agents process intensification and natural gas extraction as well as a national science foundation grant to study modeling and control of hydraulic fracturing and pathogen infection pathways he has published more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and 30 peer-reviewed conference proceedings
1362,"what if you could provide emergency responders with technology that could not only potentially save lives but make their work more precise and efficient at the same time through the use of novel human augmentation technologies this concept called learner is on its way to becoming a reality thanks to an award from the national science foundation (nsf) learner (learning environments with augmentation and robotics for next-gen emergency responders) is a mixed-reality learning environment with physical augmented and virtual reality components for users to learn to work effectively with nascent human augmentation technologies this new learning environment will feature powered exoskeletons and head-worn augmented reality interfaces to augment responders physical and cognitive capabilities learner is a personalized learning platform that will incorporate physiological neurological and behavioral markers of learning into real-time emergency response scenario evolution that can be accessed via tiered hardware-based learning experiences ranging from laptops/desktops to vr (virtual reality) and ar (augmented reality) headsets at field houses to haptic suits at in-situ emergency response training at national training centers said dr ranjana mehta principal investigator on the two-year $5 million project and associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university and director of the neuroergonomics lab the project is funded through the nsfs newly formed convergence accelerator program which integrates use-inspired team-based science cross-cutting partnerships and multidisciplinary efforts to produce impactful solutions toward national-scale societal challenges ""convergence accelerator is producing true innovation "" said douglas maughan nsf convergence accelerator program head ""all 2019 cohort teams worked hard to further develop their initial concepts strengthen their teams and engage with customers and partners; however phase ii is where we expect to see high-impact deliverables"" throughout the process especially in our evaluation and assessments we are poised toward staying focused practical and user/customer-centric by closely working with the learner advisory board that includes leaders from core technology development companies (eg ford boeing) stakeholders and trainers from emergency response organizations and decision-makers from government agencies (eg federal emergency management agency national fire protection association) said mehta the learner team includes researchers from virginia polytechnic institute and state university the university of florida knowledge based systems inc and sarcos robotics dr jason moats and his team from the texas a&m engineering extension service a world-renowned leader in emergency response workforce development and the national institute of standards and testing are providing guidance content building and testing capability dr saurabh biswas from the texas a&m engineering experiment station is a senior personnel member on the project providing guidance on commercialization the team was among 43 phase i award winners selected in 2019 phase i award winners competed through a proposal and pitch peer-review process and nine were selected for awards in phase ii over the next 24 months the team will advance learning by creating a scalable and replicable platform that will increase the speed of integration and adoption of innovative and emerging human augmentation technologies that benefit the future workforce not only in emergency response but also across other industrial sectors such as manufacturing construction and health care imagine if health care workers are quickly able to learn how to use powered exoskeletons using learner fewer workers would be needed for safer patient handling thereby potentially reducing the spread of covid-19-related infections the award will accelerate our efforts to make immediate impacts to address challenges of national importance such as this said mehta"
1363,in a new study researchers at texas a&m university have described their novel plant-based energy storage device that could charge even electric cars within a few minutes in the near future furthermore they said their devices are flexible lightweight and cost-effective integrating biomaterials into energy storage devices has been tricky because it is difficult to control their resulting electrical properties which then gravely affects the devices life cycle and performance also the process of making biomaterials generally includes chemical treatments that are hazardous said dr hong liang oscar s wyatt jr professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering we have designed an environmentally friendly energy storage device that has superior electrical performance and can be manufactured easily safely and at much lower cost their research is outlined in the june issue of the journal energy storage energy storage devices are generally in the form of either batteries or supercapacitors although both types of devices can deliver electrical currents when required they have some fundamental differences while batteries can store large amounts of charge per unit volume supercapacitors are much more efficient at generating a large quantity of electric current within a short duration this burst of electricity helps supercapacitors to quickly charge up devices unlike batteries that can take much longer supercapacitors have an internal architecture that is more in line with basic capacitors both these devices store charge on metal plates or electrodes however unlike basic capacitors supercapacitors can be made in different sizes shapes and designs depending on the intended application furthermore supercapacitor electrodes can also be built with different materials for their work liang and her team were attracted to manganese dioxide nanoparticles for designing one of the two supercapacitor electrodes manganese dioxide is cheaper available in abundance and is safer compared to other transition metal oxides like ruthenium or zinc oxide that are popularly used for making electrodes said liang but a major drawback of manganese dioxide is that it suffers from lower electrical conductivity past research has shown that lignin a natural polymer that glues wood fibers together used with metal oxides enhances the electrochemical properties of electrodes however liang said there have been few studies looking into combining manganese dioxide and lignin to leverage both of their useful properties to create their electrode liang and her team treated purified lignin with a commonly available disinfectant called potassium permanganate they then applied high heat and pressure to initiate an oxidation reaction that results in the breaking down of potassium permanganate and the deposition of manganese dioxide on lignin next they coated the lignin and manganese dioxide mixture on an aluminum plate to form the green electrode finally the researchers assembled the supercapacitor by sandwiching a gel electrolyte between the lignin-manganese dioxide-aluminum electrode and another electrode made of aluminum and activated charcoal
1364,upon testing their newly designed green electrode they found that their supercapacitor had very stable electrochemical properties in particular the specific capacitance or the ability of the device to store an electrical charge changed little even after thousands of cycles of charging and discharging also for an optimal lignin-manganese dioxide ratio the specific capacitance was observed to be up to 900 times more than what has been reported for other supercapacitors liang noted that these supercapacitors are also very light and flexible these properties extend their use as structural energy storage elements in vehicles for example in this study we have been able to make a plant-based supercapacitor with excellent electrochemical performance using a low-cost sustainable method said liang in the near future wed like to make our supercapacitors 100% environmentally friendly by incorporating only green sustainable ingredients other contributors to this research include swarn jha raj likhari and weston stewart from the mechanical engineering department; yan chen from the department of materials science and engineering; siddhi mehta from the texas a&m energy institute; and dr dilworth parkinson from the lawrence berkeley national laboratory california this research was funded by a texas a&m energy institute fellowship
1365,the first of its kind the interdisciplinary engineering program has transitioned into the department of multidisciplinary engineering (mtde) in this individualized approach to education students work closely with mtde staff and faculty to create degrees that align with their interests by educating engineering students in an array of disciplines mtde students are able to overcome problems in innovative ways and lead engineering into the future after hearing about the department through an engineering seminar susan mccartt jumped at the opportunity an engineer is comfortable taking risks thinking outside the box and choosing their own path this is the kind of engineer i want to be said mccartt by choosing interdisciplinary engineering you are taking a risk you could do a program that has already been thought of but instead you choose to create a program geared towards questions that dont have answers from austin texas and part of the graduating class of 22 mccartt enjoys the flexibility and range of courses that are available in mtde every student has the ability to choose classes that are tailored to their wants or choose a pre-approved track that is equally diverse i am able to take classes that i am passionate about and have a deep interest in rather than getting a degree as a means to an end said mccartt because of my unique course load i inherently have different ideas for ways problems can be solved the mix of engineering courses is not the limit of mtde students are also able to take courses in disciplines outside engineering such as education or architecture to develop a personalized set of skills the ability to integrate non-engineering courses into a degree plan builds on the concept that mtde students are able to apply an engineers problem-solving ability to a number of projects that expand across the professional workforce said mccartt there is absolutely no limit to what an mtde student can achieve mccartt plans on entering industry after graduation in design engineering research and development or a consulting field she believes that because her degree plan was tailored to her she will be successful in whatever she chooses she is frequently in close-communication with advisors and professors to make sure she is taking steps to reach her long-term goals mtde students are able to think deeply about the values they hold for themselves their degree and their profession said mccartt this approach requires a lot of collaboration between students and mtde staff but mtde students leave texas a&m with an in-depth understanding of how far their degree can and will take them
1366,how does the ceo of a performance chemicals company help fight the covid-19 pandemic by finding a way to manufacture masks with antiviral material phil mcdivitt 87 president and ceo of ascend performance materials is working to develop comfortable sustainable and durable materials that not only fight against covid-19 but also are already used in hundreds of applications from activewear to airbags in light of the covid-19 pandemic mcdivitt and his team determined through research and testing that they had created the first antiviral material a technology called acteev™ currently being manufactured for the production of face masks we have been working on this technology for about four years said mcdivitt a graduate of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering made from nylon 6-6 it is cooling moisture-wicking and it doesnt grow bacteria so its an odorless product we began developing it for antibacterial purposes when we started to hear about covid-19 in china we had our material tested against a number of viruses with every virus tested they all became deactivated after coming in contact with this material the key to forming this textile is infusing it with zinc oxide which is built into the materials polymer matrix it deactivates the virus by disrupting the virus cell wall while also preventing the virus from connecting to cells in your body the antiviral mask is 9999% effective in deactivating sars-cov-2 (which causes covid-19) human corona virus 229e h1n1 and beta corona virus oc43 upon contact the integration of zinc oxide into the polymer matrix means textiles like masks made with acteev™ are self-cleaning and reusable because the zinc oxide remains in the mask even after washing and multiple uses ascend is currently working with the us food and drug administration and us environmental protection agency to obtain registrations necessary to promote the technologys antiviral properties publicly for mcdivitt texas a&m is embroidered into the very fabric of his life as he continues to make the world a safer place he contributes many of his accomplishments to the lessons he learned during his time at the university the foundational element that you are given at a&m is simple try mcdivitt said there is a constant aspiration to try and change the world and i think thats exactly what most aggies do
1367,the first cohort of undergraduate students from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the best technical report one of the top three awards in the steel founders society of america (sfsa) second annual cast in steel 2020 competition the winning team included five seniors: nathaniel lies (team lead) bianca avila garrett smola tafimul tasif and gregory wong this competition challenged the students to translate what they had learned so far in their coursework to a fun engineering problem there were 18 teams competing from universities across north america each tasked with designing and producing a jim bowie-style knife apart from creating actual knives the competition also required a technical report and a video presentation bowie knives have characteristically long double-edged blades and are traditionally used in hand-to-hand combat to start the team computationally modeled the blade tang and guard in solidworks from there the long process of brainstorming began
1368,"for the body of the knife the team used d2 steel – a material that is extremely hard as well as wear- and corrosion-resistant – to cast the knife utilizing the investment casting technique for manufacturing they first designed and 3d-printed their blade pattern using photopolymer materials that change properties when exposed to light this was then dipped into a ceramic slurry to create a ceramic shell the team worked with texcast inc a houston-based foundry to pour molten d2 steel into the ceramic shell and successfully cast the knifes blade finally they heat treated ground and polished the blade attached it to a handle made from spalted pecan wood and laser sharpened it before submitting the knife for judging the team was advised by dr ankit srivastava assistant professor in the department ""it is exhilarating to see students put their classroom knowledge to work and succeed "" said srivastava ""what makes it really special is that the students were able to achieve this in the midst of a pandemic this shows us that our students are ready to face any challenge that the future has to offer"" the team summarized their project in a video that can be viewed here"
1369,"akanksha baranwal a graduate student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been named a 2020 amelia earhart fellow by the zonta international foundation the very prestigious $10 000 fellowship is awarded annually to up to 35 women worldwide pursuing doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering and space sciences baranwals research which focuses on hypersonic turbulent boundary layers and thermal non-equilibrium will contribute to the development of hypersonic flight capabilities for aircraft she is pursuing her doctoral degree in aerospace engineering under the supervision of dr diego donzis professor in aerospace engineering she holds bachelor of technology and master of technology degrees in aerospace engineering from the indian institute of technology madras india ""i feel honored to receive this prestigious award and for my research to be recognized it reassures me that my dedicated endeavors and learning at texas a&m have been on the right track said baranwal i am highly obliged to my advisor dr donzis for his kind guidance and trust in me i hope this award will inspire other female students in putting efforts to the best of their potential in their field of study"" the main focus of baranwals research is the understanding and modeling of momentum transport and non-equilibrium energy transport processes in hypersonic turbulent flows using massive numerical simulations the lack of fundamental understanding limits severely the ability to predict these flows and to design better and more robust hypersonic systems her results using direct numerical simulations that resolve accurately all temporal and spatial scales of motion for compressible turbulent boundary layers on massively parallel supercomputers at realistic flight conditions will have an impact in high speed flow control thermal insulation on hypersonic aircrafts mixing and reaction rates in combustion systems the amelia earhart fellowship was established in 1938 in honor of aviation pioneer amelia earhart in an effort to carry out its mission that women in the aerospace industry have access to all resources and are represented in decision-making positions on an equal basis with men"
1370,texas a&m engineering researchers have been awarded $13 million in funding from the us department of energys advanced research projects agency-energy (arpa-e) with the award researchers will focus on the design fabrication and testing of a lightweight and ultra-efficient electric powertrain for aircraft propulsion to reduce the energy costs and emissions of aviation the texas a&m team is led by principal investigator dr hamid toliyat raytheon professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and head of the advanced electric machines and power electronics lab and recent texas a&m graduate dr matthew gardner 19 who is an assistant professor at the university of texas at dallas their multidisciplinary team includes dr prasad enjeti department of electrical and computer engineering; drs dion antao jonathan felts jaime grunlan and bryan rasmussen from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering; dr moble benedict from the department of aerospace engineering; and dr patrick shamberger from the department of materials science and engineering the teams technology will reach unprecedented peak power density and efficiency via (1) an axial flux motor with lightweight carbon fiber reinforced structural material (2) a gan multilevel inverter (3) a thermally conductive nanocomposite electrical insulation and (4) a two-phase thermal management system with zeolite thermal energy storage to absorb the excess heat generated during takeoff each subsystem is designed for tight integration with the other subsystems to minimize weight the wealth of technical expertise at texas a&m allowed us to form a multidisciplinary team that can approach this problem from every angle to achieve a profound advance in electric powertrains and help enable electric and hybrid-electric aircraft this project will also give texas a&m students invaluable experience solving challenging real-world problems with a multidisciplinary team said toliyat texas a&m received this competitive award from arpa-es aviation-class synergistically cooled electric-motors with integrated drives (ascend) program which works to develop innovative lightweight and ultra-efficient electric motors drives and associated thermal management systems (collectively referred to as the all-electric powertrain) that will help enable net-zero carbon emissions in single-aisle 150-200 passenger commercial aircraft millions of americans travel on single-aisle aircraft every year contributing to continued increases in energy use and emissions by commercial airlines said arpa-e director lane genatowski in the arpa-e release announcing the awards reeach and ascend teams will work to lower these burdens by creating innovative new systems to enable more cost-effective and efficient flight systems for commercial travel
1371,nearly half the worlds population lives within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of a coastline this means exposure to the increasing risk of flooding and destruction in light of rising sea levels eroding coastlines and more frequent storms like hurricanes that bring storm surges and devastating waves to the coast hurricanes katrina laura ike dorian and many more in the recent past are prime examples it is imperative to find new innovative ways to reduce the risk coastal communities and infrastructure face dr jens figlus associate professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston and a team of researchers are safeguarding coastal communities through better designed hybrid coastal structures these structures combine the benefits of coastal sand dunes with those offered by traditional human-made structures like seawalls sea dikes and rubble mounds to elevate their effectiveness and resilience
1372,in an international endeavor to strengthen coasts around the globe the team is combining physical model testing with numerical simulations to outline the physical properties to achieve the best defense against flooding this work inspired by natural sand dunes will bridge the gap between research and application – allowing such structures to be utilized around the globe an article detailing these types of hybrid structures innovative coastal risk reduction through hybrid design: combining sand cover and structural defenses  was published in the journal of coastal research
1373,coastal flooding on sept 8 1900 galveston was hit by the deadliest natural disaster in american history a category four hurricane descended upon the island city destroying more than 3 600 buildings and leaving between 6 000 and 12 000 people dead with massive storm surges and winds up to 135 miles per hour galveston was flooded and leveled traditionally when massive storm waves occur along the coastline coastal engineers have responded by building hard structures such as the galveston seawall and the levees and flood gates in new orleans to fend off high water levels and flooding in the last decade or so the tide has turned to not approach everything with just brute force – so with concrete and steel type structures figlus said and the direction coastal engineering has gone is more toward what some folks call engineering-with-nature approaches instead of trying to constantly battle and work against nature or protect against nature we're trying to use natural processes and more natural features to do the job that we intend to do as engineers like reducing the risk of flooding and destruction and increasing the level of protection getting dune to business
1374,working with the coastal engineering lab the center of texas beaches and shores and researchers from other institutions such as the stevens institute of technology and delft university of technology in the netherlands figlus is testing how the combination of sand dunes and hard structures can best weather a storm the idea is that we're trying to make something look and have vegetation ecosystems like a natural dune but in its core hidden underneath the sand layers would be a hard structure the combination of sand cover and hard structure is intended to do the job of reducing the risk of flooding inundation and destruction behind it in the event of a big storm surge and massive wave attack – like during hurricane ike but at the same time provide the aesthetic appeal and ecosystem services like a natural dune under normal conditions figlus said despite these advantages research producing data-backed designs and guidelines for the construction of hybrid coastal structures has not been done to fill this vital gap figlus and his team have conducted physical model tests and simulations utilizing the haynes coastal engineering wave basin in college station the team built a hybrid dune consisting of a rubble mound fortified core with sand on top they tested various storm scenarios– changing the wave and water levels to explore how the structure reacted and deformed when hit by storm waves
1375,armed with that information they then created models and design formulas intended to improve hybrid coastal structure design one primary objective of such a structure is to reduce the risk of flooding by limiting wave overtopping the amount of water that goes over the structure this included testing what physical properties – such as slope and height of the dune – produce the best outcome and resilience against storm surge and wave impact the practical application is really the coastal spine intended to reduce the risk of flooding and storm surge damage to the greater houston-galveston region  figlus said we're actively working on concepts that could hopefully be used by the army corps of engineers to design that potentially 70-mile-long coastal barrier these hybrid systems are a really good alternative as the oceans continue to rise flooding and coastal erosion will become more and more a global issue affecting billions of people while this research currently calls galveston home figlus and his team are working to expand this research area and protect coastal communities now and into the future
1376,petroleum engineering undergraduate students at texas a&m university are required to work an internship in industry or research as a way to enhance their education considering the current pandemic situation and employment slump in the oil and gas industry securing such a position proved a daunting challenge for students over the summer catherine sliva director of the undergraduate program in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering pulled together a joint academic and industry initiative that provided summer workshops for these students that partially satisfied the learning experience requirement originally designed to help students who were unable to secure an internship the workshops were quickly opened to all undergraduate students when spaces were available instructors from all over the world participated these workshops were taught collaboratively by faculty and industry experts said sliva they were taught online through either zoom or microsoft teams but were very hands-on the students gained experience and knowledge not covered in the classroom two workshops were offered the first one a two-week session led by former student karen olson instructed students in the use of stimplan developed by nsi technologies to build hydraulic fracturing models using real-world data the second workshop was divided into two sessions the first week-long session taught by faculty member dr iskander diyashev and his brother dr ildar diyashev introduced students to pipesim by schlumberger as they solved practical nodal analysis problems the second week-long session was led by faculty members dr eduardo gildin and dr mike king in this session industry experts from petex taught students the skill of production modeling and solving real industry problems using their integrated production modeling software suite of tools the pilot program was a huge success according to the students i can't express my gratitude in words said thomas casarez this course was great it's one thing to learn from a book it's a whole other one to get to speak to so many industry professionals and even some legends in our field i think the part that was most beneficial was the amount of knowledge i got not only about hydraulic fracturing but about current technology and how the industry works said samantha mack the personal experiences the speakers shared gave me a look into what it is like working in the industry i did not expect to get positive feedback like this has encouraged sliva to continue her efforts we hope to offer more workshops of this type to our students in the future said sliva this is one more learning opportunity that will set aggie petroleum engineers apart from their peers at other universities
1377,engineers work on real-world problems to provide practical solutions an experience that can be difficult to duplicate in a purely academic learning environment however three undergraduate students from the texas a&m university college of engineering will have the chance to work on energy related big data and machine learning projects for six weeks at the universiti teknologi petronas in perak malaysia as a part of the national science foundations (nsf) international research experiences for students (ires) program undergraduate students do not get enough exposure to an international work environment said dr bimal nepal principal investigator and professor in the department engineering technology and industrial distribution this opportunity will further enable these students to join the global workforce by gaining global research and cultural experiences the ires program supports international research activities for 27 us science and engineering undergraduate students within an nsf-funded research area one different cohort of three students will represent texas a&m each year for the three-year program providing research opportunities for nine texas a&m students students from north dakota state university and the university of nevada will also take part in the program as partner entities with texas a&m serving as the lead institution the students involved in the project will provide solutions for the development of novel reliability and risk analysis methodologies for applications in the energy industry through hands-on research these students will assess the reliability of energy networks through scientific and engineering practices as a cohort of multinational teams mentored by international faculty and researchers the goal of the project is to increase enthusiasm and research skills of undergraduate students from underrepresented population groups said nepal (these are students) who otherwise might not have an international opportunity for professional development
1378,the college of engineering at texas a&m university has created a new department the department of multidisciplinary engineering the first department of its kind multidisciplinary engineering students are uniquely trained to solve problems that span multiple engineering disciplines dr timothy jacobs professor and steve brauer jr 02 faculty fellow will serve as interim department head jacobs joined the college of engineering in 2006 as a professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering in 2017 he became director of interdisciplinary engineering for undergraduate and graduate programs what an honor it is to pilot the first department of its kind jacobs said we feel the curriculum we are continuing to develop will train future engineers to overcome obstacles in a new way and propel us into a future that we cannot even imagine the most fulfilling element is knowing we are addressing a serious deficiency in what industry needs in its engineers while the interdisciplinary engineering program has been around for several years the college of engineering made the decision to transform this program into a department in order to answer the call from industry to produce engineers who are multidisciplinary in their thinking
1379,we want to enhance opportunities for students to explore the intersection of engineering disciplines said dr m katherine banks texas a&m engineering vice chancellor and dean we are establishing a new multidisciplinary engineering department to ensure our students have every opportunity to broadly contribute to the engineering professionjacobs said this department will help train engineers who can connect the dots among engineering disciplines more effectively thats why we decided to transform this program into a full-blown department jacobs said our goal is to train future leaders to transform the engineering industries of tomorrow the department offers a multifaceted approach to curriculum creation and degree plans undergraduate students can earn a bachelor of science in interdisciplinary engineering following a degree plan that they work with multidisciplinary advisors to develop nearly half of this degree is open to flexibility meaning a student can design about half of their curriculum to meet their specific interdisciplinary interests by focusing on long-term career goals we can help our students hone in on their interests and focus on the future jacobs said the department also offers numerous pre-approved degree plans that span multiple disciplines or colleges one such degree is the bachelor of science in architectural engineering students take courses in the college of architecture as well as within the college of engineering the department also offers two combined degree programs allowing students to earn a bachelors degree in interdisciplinary engineering and either a master of public health or a juris doctor degree for graduate students the department offers degrees with focus areas in subsea engineering cybersecurity and systems engineering again students can work with the department to design a degree program that spans multiple traditional departments or colleges through a partnership with the college of medicine and houston methodist hospital students can earn an md degree and a master of engineering degree were excited to be a part of our colleges mission to transform engineering education jacobs said we are confident that this innovative approach will produce successful engineers who will become leaders in industry
1380,a team of researchers was awarded best paper at the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) power and energy society (pes) general meeting 2020 for their paper titled a holistic framework for parameter coordination of interconnected microgrids against disaster which aims to enhance power grids resilience against natural disasters ieee pes the power and energy society general meeting is a flagship conference in the ieee power and energy society over the past decade extreme weather has exposed the fragility of the modern power grid with the inevitable blackouts that follow but how inevitable are these blackouts and can they be avoided microgrids – a small-scale yet autonomous power system that connects to the main power grid under normal operating conditions – allow for disconnection from the grid so that in the case of extreme weather they can function properly and prevent major outages in this paper the research team addressed a stability issue in the operation of networked microgrids during natural disasters and extreme weather
1381,authors of the paper include doctoral student tong huang and professor dr le xie from the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university; and drs hongbo sun kyeong jin kim and daniel nikovski from mitsubishi electric research laboratories in cambridge massachusetts they bring a new perspective to the community of grid resilience enhancement by focusing on the dynamic performance of microgrids – examining the system behaviors in the time scale of milliseconds/seconds – instead of the more common steady-state perspective in the time scale of minutes/hours looking into this finer time scale allows the research team to more accurately depict the state of the grid in the presence of disasters additionally the team proposes an innovative framework to coordinate all interface parameters of networked microgrids which has the potential to serve as a critical building block in the energy management system for the next-generation power grid the core of this framework is a novel stability assessment algorithm that is set apart from conventional stability assessment methods
1382,in the united states poor diet contributes to more than half of premature deaths related to cardiovascular and metabolic disease including type 2 diabetes a team of researchers at the precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) center at texas a&m university are developing a new way to approach diet monitoring to benefit the more than 30 million americans living with type 2 diabetes as well as decrease the risk of progression past prediabetes the team led by principal investigator (pi) dr bobak mortazavi recently received a grant from the national science foundations smart and connected health program to support their work current methods of recording meals and tracking macronutrients carbohydrates protein fat and fiber can be inaccurate and difficult to use many food diaries require manual entry and require an individual to estimate how much of each macronutrient is in their food food diaries are invaluable in a number of medical interventions (eg diabetes cardiovascular disease) but they are difficult to maintain since they require manual entry said dr ricardo gutierrez-osuna co-pi on the study and professor in the department of computer science and engineering our objective is to develop algorithms that can predict the macronutrient composition of a meal automatically by analyzing how blood glucose changes after the meal
1383,the texas a&m team plans to take the recording process from a different direction studies have shown that the shape of blood glucose changes based on intake levels of different macronutrients their solution continuous glucose monitors with automated machine learning if researchers can analyze the shape of the blood glucose after a meal they can reverse engineer the results to break down the macronutrient intake mortazavi assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering said one application of this technology would allow individuals to log the makeup of meals even when theyre in places where they have no knowledge or control over the ingredients this will also enable diet intervention studies for the health care industry understanding the changes in glucose response to meals at an individual level and allowing users to understand the differences in their responses based upon the differences in the meal macronutrient compositions enabling clear intervention plans for changing diet and health mortazavi said the work funded by the grant will be focused on developing the machine-learning algorithms to predict food macronutrients from glucose responses we are very grateful for the opportunity to work on this project which we view addresses a critical need in automated diet logging mortazavi said the nsf smart and connected health program has been uniquely positioned to create important new personalized sensing paradigms and analytic strategies that foster clinical care we are excited to get started
1384,the researchers are collaborating with the sansum diabetes research institute in california mortazavi said the institute has experts in treating diabetes the interaction with participants that enroll in studies and how best to make technology accessible to individuals wishing to improve their care the collaboration will involve data collection efforts and translation of findings toward the end of the project once the user studies and data collection are complete the main challenge will be for us to develop the machine-learning algorithms gutierrez-osuna said were trying to solve a problem that is computationally very difficult mortazavi said a broader impact of the work is enabling patients and physicians to become better educated on how a body responds and develop a more personalized diet intervention strategy this project would be helpful to clinicians to provide new information to support positive behavior change to reduce the risk of or progression from prediabetes to type 2 diabetes and would make it easier for patients to passively and accurately track nutritional components of their diet potentially leading to healthier diets and improved health mortazavi said
1385,dr perla balbuena gpsa professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been elected fellow of the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) fellow is aiches highest grade of membership and is awarded to members in recognition of significant professional accomplishments and contributions in engineering the fellow grade of membership was established in 1969 and is limited to 5% of the total membership of aiche balbuenas research focuses on first-principles materials analysis and design using predictions of physical and chemical properties of materials via atom­ic-level simulations her research contrib­utes to an improved understanding and better design of power sources such as lithium-ion and lithium-sulfur batteries and fuel cells as well as to the development of new materials for catalytic processes her interests include reactions on nanomaterials surfaces and interfaces with applications to catalysis and energy storage the election to aiche fellow is just the latest in a long string of successes for balbuena in 2014 balbuena was awarded a us department of energy (doe) grant through the ev everywhere grand challenge to research design improvements and optimization of lithium-sulfur batteries in their application as plug-in electric vehicles in 2016 a team led by balbuena was selected for another doe grant totaling $12 million to study and model battery reactions in 2017 balbuena and dr jorge seminario holder of the lanatter & herbert fox professorship in the chemical engineering department were awarded yet another doe grant to study the development of advanced solid electrolyte technology for lithium-sulfur batteries and in 2019 a new doe grant was awarded for further studies of advanced battery technologies balbuena and seminario were awarded a 2020 texas a&m engineering experiment station research impact award for this same research balbuena holds a doctoral degree from the university of texas at austin is a fellow of the american association for the advancement of science and is a tees senior faculty fellow
1386,dr michel kinsy associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was presented with the 2020 computing research associate widening participation (cra-wp) inaugural skip ellis early career award the award is named after the first african-american to earn a doctoral degree in computer science and to be elected a fellow of the association for computing machinery it will be given annually to an individual who identifies as a member of a group underrepresented in computing has made significant research contributions in computer science and/or engineering and has contributed to the profession especially in outreach to underrepresented demographics
1387,kinsy explained that the meaning of this award truly exemplifies what he desires out of his career – to embrace diversity intellectual honesty excellence in his work social responsibility and personal integrity call me an idealist but i have always viewed my work first and foremost as an expression of the world as i would like to see it where embracing the stranger is enriching a never-ending pursuit of knowledge is emancipating and paying it forward through mentoring is the reward kinsy said purpose-driven mentoring in academia is hard and precarious to have the community nodding their heads in acknowledgment of that it is a singularly worthy endeavor for that i am sincerely grateful to the people who have instilled in me this notion of purpose-driven mentoring originally from st john us virgin islands kinsy is eager to provide outreach activities such as training and mentoring to students from there one recent project he has been a part of is to create an annual summer cybersecurity program to introduce students to hardware approaches and cybersecurity he also brings this passion to texas a&m and is eager for students to experience the wonder of education particularly in engineering education has shown me a larger and culturally richer world kinsy said it has provided opportunities and experiences that are simply beyond anything i could have dreamed up – so passing forward this transformative effect is one of the true blessings of my life kinsy joins the college of engineering this semester as associate professor in the department and associate director of the texas a&m cybersecurity center
1388,engineers at rice university and texas a&m university have found a 2d material that could make computers faster and more energy-efficient their material is a derivative of perovskite a crystal with a distinctive structure that has the surprising ability to enable the valleytronics phenomenon touted as a possible platform for information processing and storage the lab of materials scientist dr jun lou of rices brown school of engineering synthesized a layered compound of cesium bismuth and iodine that is adept at storing the valley states of electrons but only in the structures odd layers these bits can be set with polarized light and the even layers appear to protect the odd ones from the kind of field interference that bedevils other perovskites according to the researchers best of all the material appears to be scalable
1389,this is not a new material but we figured out a way to make it without solution processing or exfoliating it from bulk lou said whats novel is that we can produce it (via chemical vapor deposition) in a few layers and all the way down to a monolayer that enabled us to probe its nonlinear optical properties the discovery is detailed in advanced materials valleytronics are a cousin to spintronics in which memory bits are defined by an electrons quantum spin state in valleytronics electrons have degrees of freedom in the multiple momentum states or valleys they occupy these states can be read as bits in a transistor if you put an electron there it represents a state and if you take it out that represents another state said co-principal investigator dr hanyu zhu of rice in valleytronics the electrons are always present and are in either of two different quantum wave functions with opposite momenta these two wavefunctions interact with different light polarization so the momentum state can be resolved optically a close look at the inorganic lead-free material through an electron microscope showed molecules in the odd layer are asymmetric that lack of symmetry is missing in the even layers thats how we differentiate between them and it gives rise to the properties we see lou said thats just the nature of this crystal structure the lab tested the material with up to 11 layers and found a lack of transparency doesnt seem to affect how well light triggered a response even a thicker material behaves like its still a single layer lou said thats quite important thicker 2d transition metal dichalcogenides lose unique properties like valleytronics he said all the behaviors are gone thats not the case for this material
1390,lou said calculations by co-principal investigat dr xiaofeng qian of texas a&m university provided the necessary theoretical evidence the valley polarization observed in both thin and thick layers is largely due to the weak interlayer electronic coupling a unique feature of this perovskite derivative compared to other 2d materials when stacked together qian said it also leads to persistent nonlinear optical responses in thicker samples the material also seems less susceptible to environmental degradation a common problem for hybrid perovskites developed for solar energy this material wont give you very high conversion efficiency but think of it like an all-around athlete in the olympic games said lead author and rice postdoctoral fellow jia liang it may not be the best in each category but if you consider its different aspects together it will stand out the researchers suggested the already strong light-matter interaction they observed could be enhanced by further engineering the materials band gap i think its a breakthrough for using this type of material in information processing lou said were really hoping this is the starting point co-authors of the paper from rice are graduate students qiyi fang rui xu and kaijun shen alumni shuai jia and yuxuan guan postdoctoral researcher qing ai research scientist guanhui gao assistant research professor dr hua guo and research specialist tanguy terlier; graduate student hua wang of texas a&m; and postdoctoral appointee xiewen wen and senior scientist gary wiederrecht of argonne national laboratory qian is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at texas a&m zhu is an assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of physics and astronomy lou is a professor of materials science and nanoengineering the peter m and ruth l nicholas postdoctoral fellowship in nanotechnology the welch foundation the national science foundation and the texas a&m university presidents excellence fund x-grants and t3 program supported the research
1391,"as smart devices and new digital interaction methods continue to evolve the use of photons as a delivery system in an internet of things (iot) could enable a new generation of technology with vast potential dr shoufeng lan assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is pursuing research into harnessing these tiny particles which could provide optical solutions to wide-ranging challenges in energy manufacturing health science information technology and national security ""optics and photonics are enabling techniques for many sciences such as telescopes for astronomy and microscopy for biomedical science and they are ubiquitous in our daily life too ranging from human vision the colorful world to displays of cell phones "" lan said lan said by harnessing the power of photons to carry information an optical iot has the potential to provide an unlimited data bandwidth which could enable more widespread and integrated use of technologies including augmented reality and glasses-free 3d displays ""many of the photonic technologies in the optical iot have been selected by the world economic forum as the top 10 emerging technologies that could change our lives in the near future "" lan said ""for example augmented reality has the potential to revolutionize the way information presented to us such as the popular game of pokémon go"" lan said one of the biggest challenges in developing an optical iot is successfully marrying the fundamental research on photonics with practically engineered devices ""for example we designed and demonstrated an augmented reality device on contact lenses in the lab but it may take another five to 10 years to see commercial products from this technology "" he said researchers pursuing the optical iot will also need to overcome another hurdle in the form of massive amounts of data and information that could easily overwhelm current computers ""another challenge is to compute and process the unprecedented large amount of data and information in an optical iot "" lan said ""to tackle this challenge we believe optical quantum computers are a promising candidate and we are working on this topic too"" lan said he and his team are approaching these problems particularly how best to manipulate these massless photons to transmit data by focusing on developing the physical interface through which the information could travel for the optical iot ""we are particularly interested in a metamaterial which is an artificial material that obtains material properties more from the geometry and structure of the building blocks rather than its chemical compounds "" lan said ""those building blocks of metamaterials are achievable with nanofabrication facilities in the semiconductor industry"""
1392,in 1989 a geomagnetic disturbance (gmd) event in quebec left six million people without power for nine hours the disturbance caused seven of the electrical devices used to regulate voltage in the grid the static var compensators to be tripped within 59 seconds causing a voltage collapse 25 seconds later gmd events continue to occur and when they do can wreak havoc on the power grid texas a&m university researchers have created a network to help solve this problem with funding from the governors university research initiative (guri) grant dr thomas overbye professor and o'donnell foundation chair iii in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m led the installation of the first closely spaced magnetometer network in the country – the texas magnetometer network a magnetometer is a device installed in the ground that is used to measure the earths magnetic field at a particular location the magnetometer outputs can be used by the electric power industry to better manage gmd events which are caused by solar flares ejected from the surface of the sun these gmds can cause geomagnetically induced currents (gics) in the grid that could result in voltage collapses and transformer damage leaving many without power
1393,other magnetometers being used in the us are scattered throughout the country often thousands of miles apart the texas magnetometer network contains six magnetometers all in the state of texas overbye who is also the director of the smart grid center at texas a&m is working closely with associate research engineer komal shetye to analyze the data and use that to better understand these types of events the ultimate goal is to lessen the impact of these dangerous occurrences data is captured every second allowing for the potential to better understand changes in the grid affected by gmds and gics analyzing the data received from the magnetometers is the first step to understanding the events themselves and can help overbyes team recreate past events and do post-event analyses in addition the real data captured by the magnetometers allows the team to validate their grid simulations and subsequent research being in closer proximity to one another than most magnetometers allows the team to gather information that is simply not available with others that are dispersed farther apart having such closely spaced arrays is kind of rare especially in the us shetye said the benefit of having closely spaced arrays is that there is information we are getting which is currently missing from these that are currently distributed around the country for example we can study any low-grade differences or any field intensifications which has also been a concern of the research community the installation of all six magnetometers was completed in december 2019 overbye and shetyes next steps will be to partner with power grid operators and utility companies to analyze the data and ultimately improve the state of texas power grid this new magnetometer network is a wonderful resource for texas and the rest of our country overbye said were very much looking forward to getting this data out to industry to help them improve the resiliency of the electric grid
1394,two researchers from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university are making strides in developing the next generation of batteries dr perla balbuena gpsa professor and dr jorge seminario lanatter & herbert fox professor have been developing protective layers for safer and longer-life batteries balbuena and seminarios research is currently in phase 2 of the battery 500 project which is supported by the us department of energy (doe) the continuous support of the doe has resulted in significant developments in the understanding and design of advanced battery materials that will further the progress of battery technologies for electrical vehicles for their research the pair was awarded a 2020 texas a&m engineering experiment station research impact award which recognizes research that has had an impact broadly defined as leading to outcomes that extend beyond conventional boundaries including opening new lines of research solving a long existing problem or producing tools or products that have become widely adopted in practice by industry and/or government the researchers work is focused on the mechanisms of electron and ion transport and degradation reactions of electrolyte materials which have had a profound effect in the development of advanced materials for high-energy density batteries beyond current lithium-ion (li-ion) technologies the problem with lithium-metal batteries going beyond li-ion technologies means that instead of the typical layered intercalation – the movement of lithium ions between the layered materials of the anode and cathode during charge and discharge – materials used in li-ion batteries li-metal is used as one of the electrodes providing a much higher theoretical capacity however stable long-lived li-metal batteries are not yet possible due to multiple issues one of these issues has to do with the interaction between li-metal and the electrolyte solution – the substance through which the lithium ions pass during charging and discharging the extreme reactivity of lithium metal causes the formation of microscopic fibers of lithium (called dendrites) which sprout from the electrode and eventually may short circuit the battery to prevent or mitigate the dendritic growth one of the most important factors yet also one of the least understood is the formation and properties of solid-electrolyte-interphase (sei) layers the continuous passing of electrons between the li-metal anode and a liquid or solid electrolyte causes the electrolyte layer to degrade this degradation results in the formation of multicomponent sei layers on the electrodes in order to be effective the sei films need to act as barriers that stop the transfer of electrons while letting the lithium ions go through and deposit smoothly on the metal surface moving toward stable sei layers and longer-lasting batteries the research conducted by balbuena and seminario has had a strong impact on the development of protective layers for safer and longer-life batteries in particular for the first time the research team was able to explain the sustained growth of sei layers at the surface of anodes in li-ion batteries where the degradation reactions proceed via radical species when the layers thicknesses grow beyond those allowing electron tunneling the team was also able to contribute ideas for tuning/designing protective layers by examining nucleation and growth mechanisms of sei layers derived from the electrolyte material of the battery further work discussed the development of a practical device using these ideas and other new concepts related to ionic transport through the interfacial layer the mechanisms proved by the theoretical and simulation work by balbuena and seminario were confirmed by experimental observations and applied to practical devices
1395,ocean engineering research has taken dr mirjam furth assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university around the world: sweden the united kingdom japan new jersey and now texas joining the department this semester she is excited to bring her research and expertise to both the college station and galveston campus – utilizing the resources of both to give graduate and undergraduate students the opportunity for a hands-on research experience what i'm really looking forward to is that we are going to do experiments in the ocean off the galveston campus furth said generally you do experiments in a controlled facility like the offshore technology research center but there are very few people who can do that because these centers are expensive to run and there aren't a lot of them then there is kind of a subset of people who can do free running models which again requires different facilities you need a lake or an ocean body or research vessel texas a&m ocean engineering researchers have both available what we're working on now is building a free-running model about six feet on scale of a high-speed craft that we are equipping with sensors furth said then we are going to measure the pressure the accelerations and specifically how its running taking my students to galveston and going out on the boat and just doing these experiments that we have been waiting to do for a really long time is super exciting originally from stockholm sweden furth was introduced to naval architecture and ocean engineering as a child – although she didnt know it at the time – when her family went on sailing trips following this field of study through joint masters and bachelors degree programs at the royal institute of technology in stockholm she spent her final year abroad at the university of southampton in the united kingdom there she would complete her doctoral degree she then headed around the world after working with the lloyd's register foundation – the british equivalent of the american bureau of shipping – for her graduate work furth applied for a grant through the japanese society for the promotion of science an organization similar to the national science foundation and received a one-year postdoc fellowship from ocean to ocean she made the trek across the pacific to begin her career at stevens institute of technology in new jersey before finding her way to the gulf of mexico and texas a&ms galveston and college station campuses with research experience in numerical and experimental hydrodynamics furth explained that her focus in marine design looks at how the shape of an object (such as the high-speed craft her lab is building to test in galveston) can be changed to improve its capabilities for instance with a high-speed craft which are planing boats how can we make changes to the hull shape so that it moves quicker through the water or so that it reduces slamming pressures because if you've been on a high-speed boat as it hits the hits the waves there is this slamming motion furth said how can we reduce the pressure by just changing the shape another aspect of furths naval architecture research is in relation to moving aquaculture farms into rougher seas to utilize wave energy converters to harvest clean energy for electricity production needed to sustain the structure her studies look at the configuration of the aquaculture farm and converter as well as how to dampen the motion of the structure caused by harsher wave conditions as she starts her research at texas a&m furth said undergraduate students should not hesitate to ask to take part in research opportunities near the beginning of each semester she gives an open invitation in her classes for students to join her lab and said that despite covid-19 and hurricane laura the turnout this fall is one of the highest shes seen i was so surprised and i think that says a lot about aggies in the ocean engineering department and how much they want to participate furth said but i also think students should know that this is always available so they should ask their professors how they could be more involved in research because i think that's really something that a lot of people would enjoy
1396,marvin and laurie morrow have established the marvin ml 86 and laurie h morrow 85 student development endowment to support the meen girls organization in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering and the marvin ml 86 and the laurie h morrow 85 family endowed scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at texas a&m university both ml and laurie were drawn to texas a&m for the quality education and most of all the spirit of aggieland our experiences at a&m have shaped our lives since graduation not only did we receive great educations but over the years and around the world when people see our aggie rings there is an instant bond laurie said through the generous support of their families laurie and ml were both able to attend a&m we recognize that not all students have that luxury laurie said we both acknowledge the importance of engineering in the world today and quality education that a&m provides the morrows decided to establish their scholarship with texas a&m because of the far-reaching positive effects texas a&m has had on them and their family the quality education and experience that we received allowed us to have exciting careers and lives and we want others to be able to experience that too laurie said we hope that our student development endowment will allow for students to have access to activities that will enhance their careers beyond just their classroom education she continued we hope that the endowed scholarship will allow the recipient to focus on their education and reduce their financial worries our inspiration comes from our own memorable experiences both during our aggieland days and the life we lead because of a&m laurie graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and ml with a degree in civil engineering they have two children who graduated from texas a&m anderson 14 and william 16 as well as their daughter-in-law kami 14
1397,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
1398,"ian cash '17 started playing golf when he was only seven now he's on the cusp of revolutionizing the art of the golf swingon tuesday oct 27 the ceo and founder of ctrl is launching a biokinetic sleeve designed to help golfers improve their individual swing""simply put nobody swings the same; you have to find what works best for you "" he saidsynced with a mobile application the sleeve evaluates the club face club path and rhythm of a player's swing and provides real-time insights and training recommendations golfers can simply slide on the sleeve pop in the sensors and start taking swings in as few as 30 swings the sleeve will know precisely what each individual's perfect swing looks likefor cash golf is personal at 13 he was struck by an autoimmune disease that partially paralyzed his movement""this kept me out of the sport for years "" he said ""but when i was finally able to swing again it was an entirely different motion than before yet i still play as well as i did before that was the inspiration for ctrl""the idea really started to take shape from a couple of sketches on a napkin at lunch between cash and his high school friend alex hansen the drawing moved from a napkin into a passion project for cash's senior design class in mechanical engineering at texas a&m university where he picked up six team members who saw the value in this productwhen the project was mentioned to rodney boehm associate professor of practice and director of the engineering entrepreneurship program he saw the prototype's true potential and offered enrollment in an entrepreneurship incubator focused on taking prototypes and finding their proper place in the market""it wasn't until he saw our initial prototype that i ever thought we had a real shot of making this passion project a business "" cash said ""as far as being an entrepreneur i have to give the credit to texas a&m and specifically rodney boehm once i was enrolled in his entrepreneurship class the leap was easy having that amount of experience and knowledge behind you would make anyone confident in making such a big decision"""
1399,"the team started with a broad approach in a virtual reality space they conducted hundreds of customer interviews to really explore the market and find out where their technology belonged from weightlifting to swimming and archery to basketball but cash said it all came down to the sport he played as a child golf""our original prototype was a bulky piece of 3-dimensional printed plastic "" he said ""it was clear that wasn't going to mesh well with a golf swing so we moved to a compression sleeve almost immediatelyand so the work began and an entrepreneur was born but not without some challenges along the way""in the startup world challenges are your friends "" cash said ""they're a nice gut check you have to face them head on and find new and creative solutions that was a lesson i learned early on there will always be challenges but the reward for getting past them is unequaled plus it gives you a reason to celebrate""cash is quick to point out that being a part of the aggie network has been crucial to his success he has worked with engineering inc and startup aggieland he's also worked closely with jim donnell professor of practice in the engineering entrepreneurship program""the aggie network is incredibly strong in fact we've had almost 10 aggies work at ctrl "" he said ""rodney boehm and jim donnell are treasure troves of entrepreneurship experience i consider myself exceptionally lucky to have even met them they're rock stars and they have been so influential not just in starting up the business but in my own personal journey as i learn to be a better ceo every day"
1400,"""they're always looking out for you and aren't afraid to let you know when they disagree you need that kind of guidance and reality check when you're doing something for the first time without them i'm not sure we would have made it this far""donnell said cash and his team epitomize the entrepreneurial mindset they strive to develop in the engineering entrepreneurship program""we have worked closely with ian for the past four years and watched the evolution of the product the personnel the company name along with the maturity of its leader ian cash he is a special person and has poured himself into this endeavor it is such a pleasure to see the successful product launch "" donnell said ""ian's strength of character his indomitable spirit and his commitment to excellence have all served to get this team across the finish line""cash comes from working in very large global companies so becoming an entrepreneur was new territory he said it takes discipline to keep pushing forward and offers a bit of advice to any current aggies considering a future as an entrepreneurdont quit its a tough road but you couldnt have picked a better place to start an entrepreneurship journey he said a&m has one of the biggest networks of ceos and entrepreneurs out there and all of the professors are tried and true successful entrepreneurs themselves youre in good hands see more about ctrl and their new bio-kinetic sleeve online"
1401,the department of defense (dod) today named a state agency of the texas a&m university system to lead a national consortium for modernizing hypersonic flight capabilities the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) will manage a five-year $20 million-per-year dod initiative involving many of the nations top research universities the universities will work cooperatively among themselves and with other key research institutions of government national laboratories federally funded research centers and industry the university consortium for applied hypersonics (ucah) will work on everything from basic research to real-world capabilities in hypersonic flight systems the concept is for researchers from all of the institutions to work in close coordination together they will accelerate innovation to address the nations hypersonic needs and nurture the next generation of researchers in aerospace engineering and related fields tell us how we can help protect this nation and well be right there said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system we have experience managing consortiums and our hypersonic research capabilities are second to none the ucah will be managed by tees under the leadership of one of the nations foremost hypersonic researchers dr rodney bowersox professor of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university initial operations will begin under the guidance of an impressive board of national experts from texas a&m the massachusetts institute of technology the university of minnesota the university of illinois at urbana-champaign the university of arizona the university of tennessee space institute morgan state university the california institute of technology purdue the university of california-los angeles and the georgia institute of technology texas a&m has become the hypersonics research center of the nation said dr m katherine banks texas a&m vice chancellor and dean of engineering our researchers and partners are unmatched and our new state-of-the-art facilities will fill critical gaps in us testing capabilities the dod contract comes as the texas a&m system is preparing to build the biggest enclosed hypersonic testing range in the nation as part of the george hw bush combat development complex on the rellis campus in bryan the ballistic aero-optics and materials will complement other cutting-edge hypersonic facilities at texas a&m such as the national aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory and the aerospace laboratory for lasers electromagnetics and optics the ucah approach will include a major focus on modeling and testing to facilitate earlier and more certain progress on developing hypersonic systems the ucah will become a collaborative hypersonic ecosystem to bridge the so-called valley of death between promising research possibilities and actual real-world capabilities tees has already identified more than 41 institutions from at least 23 states committed to participating in the ucah participation is expected to increase in upcoming months to include additional institutions from across the country and from australia and the united kingdom this first-of-its kind consortium will be critical to advancing hypersonics research and innovation a key priority of the department of defense said michael kratsios acting under secretary of defense for research and engineering importantly through collaborative industry and academic partnerships it will also accelerate technology transfer and strengthen workforce development to meet the nations future warfighting needs tees currently manages a variety of consortia and brings extensive expertise in experimentation logistics contract management workforce development and protection of national security-related research its all headquartered here thanks to the support of chancellor sharp and the texas a&m system banks said
1402,susan and keith macivor 85 meredith macivor 19 and alan macivor ‘20 have established the tommy walker frank sr ‘50 endowed scholarship distributions from this generous endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university the macivor family comes from a long line of aggies starting with susans father tommy walker frank my dads education at a&m was so important to him and he loved and supported the school his entire life susan said unfortunately his parents separated while he was attending a&m so my dad dropped out of school to support his mother and two sisters he never completed his degree and passed away at age 56 and he always regretted not going back and finishing his education although tommy was not able to receive his degree from texas a&m his legacy is carried on by his son-in-law keith and his two grandchildren meredith and alan our family has been so blessed with three generations of aggies obtaining an engineering education and wed like to pay it forward with this engineering scholarship susan said susan did not attend texas a&m but is proud to be an aggie daughter wife and mother she said she has always been very impressed with the quality of education as well as the network and support of its current and former students that texas a&m provides although i did not attend a&m i love the university and its aggie spirit! susan said my parents had all three of their children in college at the same time so i attended our local university so that i could live at home and help decrease school expenses both of my parents were avid fans so i grew up with an appreciation of the aggie spirit and traditions it has been a longtime dream of mine to provide a scholarship in memory of my dad the macivor family aims to help aggie engineering students achieve their goals and obtain their degrees they hope that this gift will remind students that in the aggie spirit former students and their families are cheering them on and are with them every step of the way my family is honored to provide this gift in memory of my dad susan said hes been gone a long time and i miss him every day were so happy to see his aggie spirit live on through this endowment
1403,the texas a&m college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
1404,structural damage to any of the nations ailing bridges can come with a hefty price of billions of dollars in repairs new bridge designs promise more damage-resistant structures and consequently lower restoration costs but if these designs havent been implemented in the real world predicting how they can be damaged and what repair strategies should be implemented remain unresolved in a study published in the journal of structural engineering texas a&m university and the university of colorado boulder researchers have conducted a comprehensive damage and repair assessment of a still-to-be-implemented bridge design using a panel of experts from academia and industry the researchers said the expert feedback method offers a unique and robust technique for evaluating the feasibility of bridge designs that are still at an early research and development phase bridges particularly those in high-seismic regions are vulnerable to damage and will need repairs at some point but now the question is what kind of repairs should be used for different types and levels of damage what will be the cost of these repairs and how long will the repairs take these are all unknowns for new bridge designs said dr petros sideris assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering we have answered these questions for a novel bridge design using an approach that is seldomly used in structural engineering most bridges are monolithic systems made of concrete poured over forms that give the bridges their shape these bridges are strong enough to support their own weight and other loads such as traffic however sideris said if there is an unexpected occurrence of seismic activity these structures could crack and remedying the damage would be exorbitantly expensive to overcome these shortcomings sideris and his team have developed a new design called a hybrid sliding-rocking bridge instead of a monolithic design these bridges are made of columns containing limb-inspired joints and segments hence in the event of an earthquake the joints allow some of the energy from the ground motion to diffuse while the segments move slightly sliding over one another rather than bending or cracking despite the overall appeal of the hybrid sliding-rocking bridge design little is known about how the bridges will behave in real-world situations
1405,to find the correct repair strategy we need to know what the damages look like said sideris our bridge design is relatively new and so there is little scientific literature that we could refer to and so we took an unconventional approach to fill our gap in knowledge by recruiting a panel of experts in bridge damage and repair for their study sideris dr abbie liel professor at the university of colorado boulder and their team recruited a panel of eight experts from industry and academia to determine the damage states in experimentally tested hybrid sliding-rocking segment designed columns based on their evaluations of the observed damage the panel provided repair strategies and estimated costs for repair the researchers then used that information to fix the broken columns retested the columns under the same initial damage-causing conditions and compared the repaired columns behavior to that of the original column through computational investigations the panel found that columns built with their design sustained less damage overall compared to bridges built with conventional designs in fact the columns showed very little damage even when subject to motions reminiscent of a powerful once-in-a-few-thousand-years earthquake furthermore the damage could be repaired relatively quickly with grout and carbon fibers suggesting that no special strategy was required for restoration fixing bridges is a slow process and costs a significant amount of money which then indirectly affects the community said sideris novel bridge designs that may have a bigger initial cost for construction can be more beneficial in the long run because they are sturdier the money saved can then be used for helping the community rather than repairing infrastructure this work is funded by the national science foundation other contributors include dr jakub valigura former graduate student researcher from the university of colorado boulder and dr mohammad salehi former graduate student in the civil and environmental engineering department at texas a&m
1406,in response to the face mask shortage the us recently faced a team of students bonded together to create the easymask funded by the national science foundations (nsf) i-corps site program it is a superior alternative to homemade masks that provides a safer user experience to alleviate the demand for medical-grade face masks conserve n95 masks (surgical masks) for medical workers and provide a dependable reusable and inexpensive face mask to the general population our team designed the easymask noble gutierrez said the easymask concept provides a better seal and protection than disposable and homemade masks and utilizes common materials found at home as filters gutierrez 22 is a student in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and a member of the team who created the easymask during the aggies against covid-19 virtual competition his team members are ian suarez veronica perez sterling laboo cecilia torres and thomas goodwin half of the members are engineering students while the other half are public health students the products success provided eligibility into the nsf i-corps site program through this program students receive guidance and funding to take their products from conceptualization to the market
1407,"our team received an email invitation from the nsf i-corps site program following our top-10 placement in the aggies against covid-19 event gutierrez said we were grateful for the opportunity to explore market potential the product is a mask frame that combines comfort with sustainability allowing users to interchange the mask filters with typical household items common household fabrics can be as effective as surgical masks in the filtration of particles depending on the combination and layering of materials gutierrez said the easymasks simple frame allows the user to insert their own filters made from fabrics that can be easily frequently and inexpensively replaced the mask eliminates the compulsory need for users to regularly adjust their masks reducing the risk of contamination"""
1408,to receive further funding through the program the team had to conduct market research and adapt their product based on feedback covid-19s impact required the students to accomplish most of these feats virtually i facilitated our product design requirement features conducted all 30 customer interviews and program presentations gutierrez said covid-19 turned our entrepreneurship experience virtual and our team was incredible we were fully committed cooperative and continued to develop our product it was a tremendous pleasure to work with eager and capable team members to address the global humanitarian crisis the team will continue working on their product with the nsf i-corps site program to develop their prototype and aid in the continual fight against covid-19
1409,"come december 2020 washington bryan 95 will have been with great lakes dredge & dock company llc (gldd) for 25 years working his way through several positions since he graduated with a degree in ocean engineering from texas a&m university bryan an operations manager for gldds site engineering department oversees a team of 12 project engineers who in turn supervise 100 engineers in the field while he no longer attends texas a&m bryan explained that his maroon roots still run deep when he took over the operations manager role he began training alumni to recruit at their own alma maters ""so now we have a three-person team that actually does the recruiting at texas a&m and they have all graduated within in the last three years "" said bryan ""it has been hugely successful because not only do they get to visit texas a&m again but they are invested in determining the future engineers that they will be working with on a daily basis"" in addition to getting recent graduates involved in the recruiting process bryan said he established a winter internship program in 2005 to help up-and-coming engineers build their resume and gain a hands-on introduction to the company and the dredging industry ""this has developed into one of our most successful means of finding our next generation of engineers "" he said with a large portion of the companys market being beach nourishment the engineering teams are typically busiest in the winter when coastal tourism is low and beaches can be shut down for restoration and replenishment operations the winter internship program is an ideal time for interns to get a feel for real-world dredging engineering and determine if they are interested in joining the industry ""the program starts about two days after a student is done with their fall finals "" said bryan ""we fly them to a job site they work right through the winter break and then typically a few days before their classes start back up again we fly them back to school or to their homes it gives them that two- or three-week glimpse into the work that gldd performs and what the industry is all about"" ""maybe it's only two or three weeks over the break but at least they get to see exactly what that industry has to offer "" he said ""it gives them a better perspective from which to make career decisions and helps them develop their resume at the same time it provides gldd with an opportunity to see what the engineer has to offer"" experiences such as this are vital for young engineers looking for full-time jobs so what advice would bryan give to students looking to begin their career after college ""figure out what you want to do before you start interviewing "" said bryan ""even if you find out later in life that its not what you want to do have a direction do some preparatory work before you talk to companies research the position they are trying to fill make sure the objectives on your resume or that you highlight during your actual interview are in line with the position you are applying for"" ""secondly having some sort of related work experience or research on your resume is critical to get a recruiters attention "" he said ""go after engineering internships some of our most successful hires are people who have interned with our company there is nothing better than working for a company to determine if its the path you want to take for your career while it might be fun to be a lifeguard every summer during your college career the lack of an engineering-related internship wont support your resume"" along with advice to current students bryan would like to see his fellow former students find ways to extend a helping hand and give back to texas a&m through offering internship programs ""if you have any involvement in recruiting for your company see what you can do about providing internship opportunities for our future aggie ocean engineers "" he said ""even if the engineers do not end up working for your company the added experience in a related engineering field might make the difference when they are applying for their first job"" ""in 2018 when dr (robert) randall was retiring one of our former students found out that gldd has hired more texas a&m ocean engineers than any other company while i was surprised at the news i couldnt be happier "" said bryan ""while not all of the engineers we have hired over the years still work with us i was glad that we were part of getting them started on their careers"""
1410,david senor a researcher at pacific northwest national laboratory has been appointed to the nuclear engineering advisory council at texas a&m university senor was named a 2018 distinguished former student in the department of nuclear engineering and has spent eight years using his expertise in tritium to mentor students in the nuclear engineering senior design course as part of the advisory council senor will provide guidance and external review to the department to help shape the education of the upcoming generation of engineers dr senor has been making excellent contributions to our academic programs said dr kenneth lee peddicord professor in the nuclear engineering department through his technical guidance students are being exposed to out-of-the box thinking and projects that are important for the country senor earned his bachelors masters and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering and has also created the david 88 and denise 85 senor scholarship alongside his wife to support one or more full-time students in the department he hopes to serve as a mentor for students the way that peddicord once advised him my perspective as an author and researcher from a national lab allows me to advise on more than the science curriculum said senor even the best technical students can benefit from learning communications writing and presenting
1411,the control of solids formation and their deposition are major flow assurance challenges to design and operate any deepwater production systems of hydrocarbons one of the most challenging flow assurance issues is the management of wax deposition at low temperature and high-pressure conditions of waxy crude oils causing operational problems from downhole to the processing facilities an accurate knowledge of the cooldown time and cooling temperature is needed especially for the emergency (unplanned) shutdown for managing heat retention and low temperatures of the production system before the system cools below the wax appearance temperature this may rely on the correct descriptions of the reservoir fluid properties and thermal insulation of the subsea production system including equipment over the life of the field dr keshawa shukla in collaboration with his graduate student mayank vishal labh addressed these issues in a chapter he wrote for the book paraffins the book chapter managing paraffin/wax challenges in deepwater hydrocarbon production systems deals with wax management issues in order to properly design and operate a subsea production system consisting of the pipe-in-pipe flowline flexible riser and subsea equipment their study recommends that the subsea hardware such as water stop and equipment valves along with the flowline riser and jumpers should be adequately insulated in order to prevent any cold spots (low temperature) and achieve sufficient cooldown time for the shut-in operations of the entire subsea production system shukla a professor of practice in subsea engineering in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university has over 36 years of professional experience in the academic and oil and gas industry in the disciplines of teaching research project management and engineering and is a subject matter expert in subsea field development thermodynamics multiphase flow fluid phase behavior and heat transfer flow assurance design and operations gas production from hydrate reservoirs compositional variations in reservoirs software development application of artificial intelligence in subsea processing and many more
1412,"dr mark balas has been appointed to the leland t jordan professorship balas a professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering joined texas a&m university in january 2020 i am truly grateful to the lt jordan family for this wonderful professorship "" he said balas research interests are in the theory and application of adaptive control systems with particular emphasis on large-scale and infinite-dimensional systems and quantum information systems his research has been cited more than 9 000 times and he is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers the institute of electrical and electronics engineers and the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics"
1413,the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university welcomes dr michel kinsy this semester kinsy joins as associate professor and is eager to get started on the important work being done in the department and the college there is a level of research that you can engage in here that is not readily available in most departments around the country or in the world for that matter kinsy said his core area of research is computer architecture he is especially passionate about discovering and creating the set of definitions methodologies and hardware primitives that enable the integrity checking of computing processes the access control and monitoring of system resources and hardware root-of-trust solutions for secure computation – something he calls design for security another central aspect of kinsys research efforts is the translation of basic engineering discoveries into applicable solutions in fact he is one of just a handful of secure systems researchers who can claim that their academic hardware designs have been directly incorporated into commercial and military systems bringing expertise in cybersecurity and a passion for attacking important engineering and computational problems he has also begun his appointment as associate director of the texas a&m cybersecurity center as associate director he hopes to develop the centers technical research and development enterprise alongside interim director dr danny davis their goal is to accelerate the centers ascension to be the premier academic destination for government agencies and industry entities looking for ahead-of-the-curve solutions for their cybersecurity needs and for the students interested in hands-on cybersecurity training cybersecurity incidents are happening at an astonishing frequency scale and sophistication kinsy said the center being part of the texas a&m university system has access to tremendous resources that are almost unmatched anywhere in the country – chief among them the sheer number and caliber of faculty members engaged in cybersecurity research coupled with the deep-rooted culture of academic excellence and service among the student body as he starts his career at texas a&m kinsy urges engineering undergraduate students to embrace more mathematics courses such as number theory discrete mathematics logic and linear algebra early on in their academic careers – even students focusing on hardware although i am a hardware researcher these courses form the foundation of my engineering thinking process and my cybersecurity problem-solving methodology he said the cybersecurity field is moving toward security through proofs and not merely by construction due to ever-increasing complexity of our computing systems the main challenge is that if you are not exposed to these courses in a substantial way early on in your academic training by the time you really need them or use them it is often too late
1414,now in the last year of her doctoral program shreedevi arun kumar has found a passion for research and teaching to help her pursue those paths in the department of biomedical engineering arun kumar has received the 2020 us senator phil gramm doctoral fellowship from texas a&m university arun kumar has been involved in research for the last four years and only recently began to develop her skills as an instructor with the help of a graduate teaching fellowship in 2019 that really opened my eyes to the fact that i loved teaching especially when undergrads come back to me and say theyre glad they took the class arun kumar said i really love the interaction with the students in research arun kumars work is mainly in tissue engineering and drug delivery studies she works to gain a better understanding of the impact hydrogels have on cells as well as innovative ways to deliver drugs for cancer applications arun kumars own experience both as a researcher and a former undergraduate student influences what she brings to the classroom i always wanted to know real-life examples arun kumar said i would of course want to know the basics but beyond that i think what interested me in this field was the relevance the translational aspect of it thats what i try to incorporate in my classes one example was when she used examples of a project she had worked on involving vaccine application several of the undergraduate students who worked with her on the project also took the course she taught that was exciting for them to see something they had worked being talked about in a class setting arun kumar said arun kumar said she has renewed emotional motivation to continue on her path with the gramm doctoral fellowship as you go into your phd you start to lose the picture of why you came here what are you passionate about arun kumar said i think when youre recognized with something like this for your contribution that motivates you to go to the finish line this is what ive been working for and now this is the reminder that i should keep moving keep pushing arun kumars experience combining research and teaching has also impacted thoughts on her plans after graduation ive always wanted to pursue research but i think mentoring is something ive grown to enjoy arun kumar said i for sure would want some form of mentoring or teaching in my future
1415,"dr james hubbard jr is among the latest members appointed to serve on the united states board on army research and development the board is an independent advisory resource for the us military on topics including research development and the application of science and technology in support of military matters appointed by the president of the national academy of sciences members are widely recognized experts in industry academia and the military ""this is a chance to serve my country by providing expertise in a broad variety of technical topics of interest to the army "" hubbard said ""the experience of others on the board will also allow me to grow both technically and personally in new areas"" hubbard who serves as oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair i professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering said it is an honor to serve on the board and that he hopes it will bring recognition to the expertise texas a&m university can provide ""i am hoping my combined 40 years of engineering experience from my career brings a fresh perspective to the challenging problems the army faces in its attempt to continuously upgrade and modernize to ensure the safety of our troops and the nation "" hubbard said as part of the boards duties members will be assessing the feasibility of the us army's strategic long range cannon program looking specifically at the propellant projectiles electromagnetic launch and the cannon itself according to the national academies' official description of the program it aims to achieve the capability to fire a projectile up to 1 000 miles at hypersonic speeds hubbard previously served six years on the us naval research advisory committee and eight years on the us air force studies board on which he remains an active member a member of the national academy of engineering hubbard joined texas a&m in early 2017 first serving as a visiting fellow of the hagler institute for advanced study before accepting a permanent position he leads the starlab a state-of-the-art motion-capture research space well-suited for testing and developing new methods and technologies the lab features more than 40 high-speed motion capture cameras a capture volume of 40 feet by 40 feet and a holodeck-like environment hubbard is internationally known for his research in aeroacoustics for noise control adaptive structures spatially distributed transducers and the extension of modem time-domain control methodologies into the spatial domain for the monitoring of distributed systems"
1416,researchers from the texas a&m university college of engineering the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and los alamos national laboratory (lanl) are improving magnesium alloys usability which could mean stronger lighter vehicles with improved gas efficiency this collaboration is made possible by the texas a&m system national laboratories office and lanl drs ibrahim karaman amine benzerga and alan needleman doctoral student wahaz nasim from tees; and dr ricardo lebensohn from lanl are collaborating to improve magnesium alloy manufacturing processes in order to make the alloy easier to use for a variety of applications currently aluminum alloys are most commonly used in aerospace defense and automotive components because they are light and easy to manipulate at room temperature however magnesium is more than 30% lighter than aluminum if magnesium alloys could be fabricated and processed more easily and strengthened through processing then using magnesium alloys in place of aluminum could significantly reduce fuel consumption and carbon footprints and enhance maneuverability in transportation due to the lighter weight and higher specific strength unfortunately magnesium is difficult to manipulate into different forms at room temperature and it is difficult to process the alloys current methods require high temperatures to manipulate magnesium which raises costs and decreases the overall alloy strength through thermomechanical processing methods researchers at tees have the ability to further strengthen magnesium alloys and the potential to increase formability of magnesium alloys at room temperature according to karaman lanl plays an important part in this project because they have one of the best modeling approaches for predicting the behavior of metals the results of their modeling will inform how tees researchers process the magnesium alloy in order to determine the appropriate methods for making it easier to work with the processing methods these researchers are exploring are based on the idea that one can engineer the anisotropy of magnesium alloys anisotropy refers to how substances display variations in physical properties along different material crystal directions and sample axes a simple visual example would be wood wood is easier to split along the grain than across it as benzerga explained it is time to engineer that which we cannot suppress materials scientists have been trying to suppress or minimize the anisotropy of wrought products especially in technologically important lightweight applications such as aluminum alloys and magnesium alloys our goal is not to suppress anisotropy but to engineer it so as to actually improve material performance the processing methods involve heating and pressing or extruding the magnesium alloys at different temperatures and pressing/extrusion rates in order to orient the crystal domains in the metal differently this process forces the grains of the metal to recrystallize in ways that make the alloy easier to manipulate at room temperature lanls modeling techniques allow the researchers to test a variety of processing steps very quickly in comparison with experimental techniques nasim gave the example that over the summer (2020) he was able test over 1 000 methods with the simulations something that would have taken significantly longer if it needed to be done experimentally lanls modeling techniques are also very accessible to researchers outside of the organization and the open access is a huge asset to the science community another aspect of the project involves developing an index that can be used to determine the level of formability necessary for a project thereby the optimal processing method for the alloy for that situation according to lebensohn thats the most exciting aspect the possibility of demonstrating the feasibility of going beyond a trial-and-error edisonian approach to material design combining limited experimentation with advanced modeling and inverse optimization to discover novel processing routes to produce material with superior mechanical properties he said in addition to advances in the field and potential future applications this collaboration has given nasim a unique opportunity in his position as a doctoral student karaman explained that nasim plays a fundamental role in this research both at tees and at lanl nasim shared that he had learned a significant amount about the experimental side of his work at tees but he was missing some fundamentals working with lanl has allowed him to fill the gaps in his knowledge and open up his future career possibilities to both experimental and computational avenues this story originally appeared on the texas a&m system national laboratories office website
1417,in march 2020 new york city an icon of america was unfortunately named an early epicenter of the novel coronavirus now seven months later america faces a new surge in coronavirus cases and researchers at texas a&m university hope to provide information and context to help with the battle ahead rich whittle a doctoral student at texas a&m cites in a recent study that by april 2020 new york city accounted for more than a third of the nations confirmed cases with a transmission rate five times higher than the rest of the country whittle wanted to look at these early stages of the pandemic spread in new york neighborhoods to discover if there were any socioeconomic factors that could be associated with the high positivity rate of covid-19
1418,the study published in bmc medicine identified four significant predictors of covid-19 cases in new york city: neighborhoods with higher population densities led to an increase in the positivity rate; neighborhoods with younger populations (under 18 years old) also led to an increase; households with a higher income led to a decrease; and race showed a significant association with detected covid-19 cases – both a lower percentage of white population and higher percentage of black population led to increased positivity rates from what is available in the early stages this is what were seeing from the data and we know those early stages are really important to keep this and future pandemics under control said dr ana diaz artiles assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m and co-author of the study the study used spatial modeling techniques to look at data from roughly 60 000 cases during the first month of the pandemic in new york city im really interested in spatial statistics when i was in the military i worked in geospatial intelligence so i have a background interest in that said whittle and i was taking dr diaz artiles stats class at the time so i thought i could combine those two interests and have a look at an ecological study related to covid-19 whittle initiated the study as his final class project for diaz artiles spring design of experiments and statistical methods course (aero 689) this class gives the opportunity to solve problems that the students are interested in said diaz artiles these classes are really useful for students not only in terms of learning statistical tools but to apply them in practical applications that could even lead to impactful results and publications in addition to academic interest whittle was motivated to pursue the study because of the value the results could provide both now and in the future theres a need to understand the beginning stage of the pandemic said whittle and i think in america certainly now theres a lot of discontent theres a definite public interest in understanding the response in the initial stages of the pandemic whittle and diaz artiles emphasize that understanding the early factors and influences of past pandemics such as the h1n1 pandemic of 2009 and the one we face today is important in helping to inform future management hopefully our study will provide a better understanding of the main factors that impact the spread of the disease thus improving future decision making in the early stages of a pandemic said diaz artiles
1419,when asked william villalobos 21 often explains what petroleum engineering involves and why he enjoys studying the subject while this type of engagement is typical for students in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university this undergraduate actively seeks ways to open a dialog on the subject currently he is organizing a summit at texas a&m involving students a representative from the texas railroad commission and oilfield professionals to discuss health safety and the environmental aspects of oilfield operations villalobos took the time to answer questions and share his thoughts on why all petroleum engineers and the public should be familiar with the more positive aspects of the oil and gas industry q: did you have any contact with the oil and gas industry while growing up a: yes i moved to an oilfield town in east texas called winnsboro when i was about eight years old before then i lived in peru and the dallas area while in winnsboro my stepdad introduced me to the inner workings of the oil field through his oil field construction company which often assembled production equipment and conducted other labor-intensive oil field operations q: what were your college degree plans a: i attended northeast texas community college fresh out of high school and graduated with an associates degree in science then i transferred to texas a&m to pursue a bachelors degree in either petroleum or chemical engineering i ended up finding petroleum engineering more interesting q: why did you choose petroleum engineering a: as a field hand for b&k construction i considered my knowledge of the construction of drilling sites pipelines and production equipment to be a great stepping stone toward a petroleum engineering degree also an uncle who worked as a petroleum engineer spoke highly of the position and helped me decide to pursue this field q: why come to texas a&m a: out of all the petroleum engineers i worked with the aggies would spend their spare time teaching me some of the basic principles of daily drilling and production operations these generous actions encouraged me to attend texas a&m which in my opinion is the best and most reputable institution for this career path q: have any other work experiences shaped your goals a: yes during my internship with dimock operating company the owner explained to me how to handle small business negotiations meet regulatory compliance with the texas railroad commission and maintain worker safety during workover operations since then my goals have always included emphasizing regulatory and safety relations for drilling engineers q: are there any other experiences youd like to mention a: as a lab assistant in the petroleum engineering department i participated in gas and chemical research the most interesting findings to me were the minimum miscible pressures of varying gas combinations for unconventional reservoirs the function of huff-n-puff pressure injections and how flue gases usually a waste product could be used to enhance hydraulic fracturing operations q: are you involved with student organizations a: im a current member and the former chairman of the international association of drilling contractors (iadc) student chapter during my tenure as chairman i was able to introduce students of all majors to oil-field related professional development workshops rig tours sponsored conferences and unconventional operations q: how do you think the industry is doing with awareness and engagement a: there is room for improvement to date the negative publicity about the industry has been more successful at engaging new students while there are valid negative points there are also positive aspects that the oil industry provides for society for example this industry produces energy and materials needed for medical supplies cosmetics battery advancement technologies etc and it utilizes advanced technological resources to improve extraction methods students are usually amazed by the robotic systems fluid mechanics systems and well-logging tools i mention during my brief discussions with them so i think raising awareness about these technologies would improve new student engagement q: why take on organizing a summit a: i found myself always having to explain what petroleum engineering is and my reasons for choosing this particular career path feedback from these conversations led me to wonder how academics state regulators and industry representatives interacted with each other and the public on a daily basis because of my involvement with iadc i was able to organize a summit for april 2021 to include texas railroad commissioner representative christi craddick a process safety director and oilfield professionals through this summit i hope to educate the public especially students about oil and gas health safety and environmental operations i consider this to be a positive and beneficial engagement with the next generation
1420,start your engines! students recently founded a chapter of the society of automotive engineers (sae) at the higher education center at mcallen (hecm) and are looking to recruit new members texas a&m university opened the hecm to provide top-tier higher education opportunities to students in the rio grande valley students at the hecm are students of texas a&m and can complete their degree in mcallen there are two engineering degrees that are offered fully in mcallen designed to support the development of engineers for the rio grande valley industry sae is for students interested in building designing racing and testing automotive and commercial vehicles while simultaneously making professional connections with engineers worldwide i realized the need for student organizations at hecm to help polish their engineering skills said dr muzammil arshad the founding faculty advisor of the sae hecm chapter this is accomplished by having professional student organizations such as the sae as a department of multidisciplinary engineering i believe that sae is a great fit for us members of sae develop their knowledge of mobility solutions through hands-on competitions that range from building cars planes automobiles and even snowmobiles sae international hosts various competitions and races to test the students creations these events range from electric vehicles to aerospace designs for example students can re-engineer an existing snowmobile in the sae clean snowmobile challenge and compete in events such as emissions noise fuel economy/endurance in the autodrive challenge students make autonomous vehicles and race through urban terrains these events are only a glimpse into the opportunities available to sae members not only do these events require a diverse array of expertise but they allow members to showcase their skills as interdisciplinary students the competitions work to refine their engineering skills and bring them into practice arshad said if they win a competition its a huge national success even if they don't win it gives them the confidence that they can physically apply what theyve learned at a national level one of the students already involved in sae is president kassie juarez after hearing about the opportunity from arshad she immediately took on the role of a leader i want students to join because its focused on building the necessary skillset an engineering student needs to survive in the real world said juarez i feel like it will give (students) a different perspective of how their job is going to be if they go into the automotive or engineering field due to covid-19 some of the larger sae events are on hold however juarez has several ideas to help members in the meantime such as seminars held by local engineers workshops on resume building and creating linkedin accounts the hecm wants to use sae as a catalyst to recruit students to the organization and highlight their strides as a university i think doing these types of workshops will help the students get out of their comfort zone and start meeting other people juarez said we are trying to push ourselves and create new opportunities for students to come to the higher education center sae at mcallen is accepting new members until mid-november if interested contact arshad
1421,a team of researchers is creating mobile robots for military applications that can determine with or without human intervention whether wheels or legs are more suitable to travel across terrains the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) has partnered with dr kiju lee at texas a&m university to enhance these robots' ability to self-sufficiently travel through urban military environments the darpa offensive swarm-enabled tactics (offset) program awarded lee associate professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and a team of graduate students another opportunity after her prior successful accomplishments on developing a mixed-reality swarm simulator with embedded consensus-based decision making for adaptive human-swarm teaming as part of the offset sprint-3 this project was showcased at offsets third field experiment (fx3) together with other participating teams
1422,i have recently been awarded a new darpa contract to join the offset sprint-5 effort focusing on enhancements to (the robots) physical testbeds lee said through this new project i will develop unmanned ground vehicles with agile and versatile locomotive capabilities for urban military operations lee and her team are developing an adaptable wheel-and-leg transformable robot (α-waltr) that can traverse over varying surfaces including staircases more efficiently the α-waltr will move with wheels or legs depending on their immediate need and will be able to decide for itself which to use
1423,legged locomotion is more versatile but suffers from inherent structural mechanical and control complexities lee said the proposed testbed will be equipped with novel wheel/leg transformable mechanisms which can switch between the two locomotion modes actively adapting to its environment but without needing any additional actuator the team is rapidly developing prototypes and will showcase this new hardware platform at the offset fx5 tentatively scheduled for february 2021
1424,although created for military use the team hopes this technology will transcend this field while the current focus is on defense and other military applications these types of adaptable mobile robots can be applied to many other areas such as space domestic service surveillance and agriculture said lee the offset sprint-5 effort is led by lee along with the help of five graduate students and one undergraduate student chuanqi zheng siddharth sane vishnu kalyanram kangneoung lee sohil parsana and jenna horn
1425,since texas a&m university reopened its campuses at the start of the fall semester there were many safety precautions taken to help slow the spread of covid-19 the requirement to wear a face mask was one seeing the need for masks and being a small tight-knit department of students faculty and staff the department of ocean engineering quickly took this one step further with a new student-led initiative and organization focused on providing support to students on both the college station and galveston campuses participants in this program are now working to supply the ocean engineering family with custom face masks information and more
1426,mentorship in ocean engineering (moe) is designed to help students excel academically develop their professional network and build a sense of community within the ocean engineering department said alexis lexi miller senior and program leader we noticed that the department could use the help of a new organization to lead students down the path of success and that a three-tier (academic professional social) system was the best way to accomplish this professor laurrie cordes our faculty advisor is a very successful woman in engineering and we feel honored that she is supporting our goals while moe's original goals for the fall semester included service and social events like a beach cleanup at the galveston campus career fair and interview preparation and tutoring sessions the onset of the coronavirus pandemic shifted their focus instead of letting this chaotic time affect our dedication to improving the ocean engineering department we decided to find ways to adapt said program chairman and senior sebastiao appleton figueira not only have we managed to arrange ways to conduct our events remotely but we were also able to start an initiative within the department aimed at keeping our students faculty and staff safe throughout the semester this initiative included working with department head dr sharath girimaji to order custom ocean engineering face masks for students faculty and staff on the college station and galveston campuses additionally the organization produced pamphlets on how to care for the facemasks how to properly social distance on campus and safe event ideas that follow the centers for disease control and prevention and university covid-19 guidelines
1427,in addition to preparing their peers for classes during covid-19 professional representative and junior steven bradshaw said he hopes that moes professional initiatives stand to benefit students as well for example the group has created a networking system in which undergraduate students will be mentored by industry professionals this program will allow mentors to shape the career paths of our students by providing them with professional and academic advice and sharing their experiences in the ocean engineering field said bradshaw we believe this will help students decide which industry they would like to go into given that we hope to have mentors from naval architecture offshore subsea defense and coastal engineering this will also enable students to begin developing their professional network to use for internships and full-time recruitment all while still working on their studies bradshaw said by providing academic support professional mentors and events on both campuses moe will also give students a chance to make lasting friendships build their gpa and be better prepared to succeed in industry sam janner senior and academic representative added that moe welcomes all undergraduate students interested in ocean engineering to join we also want to make sure to let undeclared freshmen know that they are free to join this organization and utilize its resources if they would like to explore their options with our department and field said janner the creation of this new organization really shows how much the department of ocean engineering has grown in recent years
1428,janner said that many students will begin receiving emails from moe at the start of each semester and the group will hold introductory meetings to anyone interested along with emails nate baker junior and social representative said the group plans to grow their communication to help the ocean engineering student body on both campuses come together and get to know one another via social media and slack i am excited to be part of a new organization led by highly motivated students who are set on building relationships between their peers their department and members of the industry said baker we have ambitious goals and as we approach completing them the benefits will pay off
1429,while wildfires remain an unpredictable threat researchers at texas a&m university are attempting to mitigate that uncertainty by using mathematical and statistical models to identify the most cost-effective and efficient strategies for reducing wildfire risk through vegetation removal or fuel treatment strategies texas a&m is represented by dr lewis ntaimo professor and head of the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineering and texas a&m agrilife researchs dr jianbang gan forest management and economics professor in the department of ecology and conservation biology the two texas a&m researchers received $280 000 of a $550 0000 national science foundation grant for this interdisciplinary collaborative project with dr oleg prokopyev in the swanson school of engineering at the university of pittsburgh ntaimo who serves as the projects principal investigator from texas a&m specializes in systems modeling mathematical optimization and simulation with application to wildfire management gans contributions will center on forest economics and management and response strategies to environmental disturbances like climate change and wildfires simulating fires to anticipate risk the diversified expertise from the texas a&m project leaders will help produce outcomes that provide landowners and at-risk communities with alternatives to other potentially more costly methods of wildfire prevention or management fire is a big concern in texas but fuel treatments and fire protection like firefighting are very expensive gan said with this research were trying to come up with ways to minimize fuel treatment and firefighting costs; and most importantly lessen damages from fire to protect human life property and natural resources when left unmanaged vegetation fuels wildfire ignition and spread removing that vegetation through fuel treatment methods such as prescribed burns grazing and tree thinning can help reduce wildfire risk however these management methods come with a price given the ongoing wildfires devastating the western us our research project focusing on fuel treatment planning is very timely indeed ntaimo noted the main goal of our project is to develop mathematical models that will help fire managers and planners with fuel treatment options to minimize the occurrence of potentially large-scale wildfires such as the ones we are seeing today identifying most-effective treatment solutions various factors including population growth urbanization changes in land use and weather variability due to climate change continue to amplify wildfire risk leaving livestock wildlife public and private land and entire communities increasingly vulnerable without appropriate action gan said their models will consider factors such as critical locations of concern in at-risk areas seasonal conditions and spatial patterns of vegetation in order to predict what fuel treatment methods would be most effective under certain conditions and when and how they should be implemented for optimal economic efficiency historical data from the texas a&m forest service will be used to build and test these models the model simulations will allow researchers to anticipate threats and identify optimal solutions for realistic large-scale problems posed by wildfires
1430,catherine dillier has always loved the science of mixing chemicals – now her attention is on the fuel that makes rockets go growing up with a strong interest in math and science dillier enjoyed mixing random household items together spent summers doing educational workbooks and found refuge in her ability to solve equations although she did not know then how to apply her interests she has found her niche within the turbomachinery laboratory at texas a&m university her current research focuses on solid composite propellants using formulations she adjusts additives to a propellant so it can meet specific criteria this criterion can include things like burning rate and how this burning rate can affect the impact and temperature sensitivity or the strength of a propellant
1431,i get to formulate these propellants and then burn them it is the best of both worlds you get the chemistry and then you get the combustion and fire dillier said thats the fun stuff if you had told me when i was little that this is what i was going to do i'd laugh and say that this is not a real job as an undergrad dillier intended to work toward a safety certificate in chemical engineering until she crossed paths with dr eric petersen director of the turbomachinery lab petersen invited her to tour the lab and offered her a position dillier graduated from the department with her bachelors degree in december 2014 completed her masters degree in 2016 and is now working toward her doctoral degree the nice thing about mechanical engineering is that you're exposed to so much said dillier you can find the avenue you like because of the broadness and available routes within mechanical for me that avenue is combustion
1432,dr melissa grunlan and dr le xie are among 19 distinguished texas a&m university faculty honored as 2020 chancellor enhancing development and generating excellence in scholarship (edges) fellows launched in 2019 edges fellowships were developed with resources from texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp to honor incentivize and boost mid-career faculty at the associate or early full professor rank who are making significant marks in their discipline the recognition highlights texas a&ms intentional commitment to intensively support retain and recognize faculty with significant and sustained accomplishments and the promise of continued high-impact scholarship these awards recognize the priority of texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp to develop and support faculty members with national and international acclaim said provost and executive vice president carol a fierke the honorees are scholars with careers on-track to make high-impact contributions to enhance the state and nation leading to national and international recognition grunlan is a professor and holder of the charles h and bettye barclay professorship in the department of biomedical engineering and xie is a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering grunlan received her bachelors degree in chemistry and masters in polymers and coatings from north dakota state university and her doctoral degree in chemistry from the university of southern california her current research projects focus on developing self-cleaning membranes for implanted biosensors clot-resistant coatings for blood-contacting devices and scaffolds for bone repair and for the regeneration of osteochondral interfaces xie received his bachelors degree from tsinghua university his masters degree from harvard university and his doctoral degree from carnegie mellon university his current research interests include modeling and control of large-scale complex systems smart grid applications in support of renewable energy integration and electricity markets edges fellows retain the right to use the title throughout their tenure as faculty members in good standing at texas a&m the awards join with endeavors like the presidential impact fellowships and other faculty investment programs to empower and advance the careers of faculty at every level
1433,about 10% of the us population has diabetes and about a third of that number around 11 million people will suffer from diabetic retinopathy diabetes-induced irreversible vision loss at some point in their lifetime people in both rural and underserved communities may suffer more because they dont have access to specialists and its likely the disease is underdiagnosed ai-ris (pronounced a-iris) a team comprised of six engineering and medical students from texas a&m university are working to address these diagnosis barriers specifically they are designing a tool to better reach individuals in rural or underserved communities
1434,were developing this system that leverages machine learning and also uses low-cost hardware in a user-friendly form something like a headset that can be used in a non-clinical setting and doesnt require the presence of an optometrist or ophthalmologist said tj falohun team member and biomedical engineering doctoral student uthej vattipalli civil engineering graduate student witnessed the impact of diabetic retinopathy his grandfather began to lose his eyesight after retirement but could not afford to get a diagnosis vattipalli said the teams work could transform the health care market we are going to need an army to go into what we want to do if we want that impact vattipalli said not everybody has all the skill in the world theres definitely been complementary skill sets required to get tasks accomplished one of the good things of being on an interdisciplinary team is the variety of skill sets that help you keep moving forward
1435,the project started as a sling health initiative sling health national network is a student-run biotechnology incubator that provides resources training and mentorship to teams of students in engineering medicine and business tackling clinical problems by developing innovative solutions the project began to gain members and motivation and spread outside of sling health into its entrepreneurship effort the team continued their work with the help of the engineering incubator at texas a&m where they worked with rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship to expand their access to resources now a limited liability company llc ai-ris placed second in the 2020 sling health demo day and participated in the innovation corps site fellows program at texas a&m recently the team won a venturewell e-team grant through venturewell the team will receive funding connections and training to further their entrepreneurial efforts
1436,amir tofighi zavareh 19 an electrical engineering doctoral graduate said beyond making an impact he joined the team because the technical challenges involved intrigued him he said collecting the retinal images at a low cost is a challenge that is not being addressed in the market right now in the clinics they use this benchtop device that costs tens of thousands of dollars its a very tricky thing to do tofighi zavareh said we want to do that with low-cost devices so thats going to make it challenging to do that at the same quality levels but at lower costs so it can be available to rural areas
1437,harsha mohan a former aggie student and current graduate student studying robotics at johns hopkins university said working on a multidisciplinary team has taught members soft skills such as communicating effectively and elevating each members strengths we have people from all over the world; we have people from different backgrounds and to work toward health care equity at this point of my life im not sure theres anything better than this mohan said
1438,dr saurabh biswas principal investigator of venturewell grant and faculty advisor of sling health said ai-ris is a great example of a highly motivated team with complementary skill sets which biswas said is critical to solve problems in health care i truly hope other aggie innovators will follow their example and take advantage of great programs like venturewell grants sling health and nsf i-site and i-corp to bring their ideas from concept to prototype with extensive customer discovery to validate product-market fit said biswas who also serves as executive director of tees commercialization and entrepreneurship and as a professor of practice in the department of biomedical engineering
1439,while the team continues to delve into the world of entrepreneurship and health care integration they are already seeing how their work can play a part in treating many ocular diseases in the future marcus deayala a biotechnology graduate student said he is excited to play a part in breaking down barriers to ai diagnostics which he says will shape the landscape of health care in the future i think we all understand that in the richest country (in the world) this many people going blind by a completely avoidable disease is ridiculous deayala said if the level of health care is going to increase the cost has to come down we have to become more efficient and devices like these have to be instituted in one way or another
1440,when engineers fracture a shale reservoir and connect natural networks of cracks so oil and gas can flow efficiently back to the well they base their efforts on maps created by reservoir simulators since simulators often use probability to predict where these nearly invisible natural networks are one researcher from texas a&m university is eliminating the guesswork with a new method of mapping them texas a&m student researcher marcus elliott is using the odd combination of electrical currents called electromagnetics and data from tightly-focused microseismic measurements to accurately render existing natural fracture networks in shale rock his results mapped in time-lapsed 3d are more accurate and cost-efficient than current methods and they also show which direction oil and gas flows during fracturing processes this flow information is critical to engineers so they dont waste time and money fracturing an area that wont produce oil said elliott and electromagnetics is a fairly inexpensive way to get this data cities use survey crews and equipment to measure and draw complex street maps so travel pathways are clearly defined similarly reservoir simulators use measurements based on sound called seismics to illustrate the ‘streets or fractures existing underground unfortunately these computer-generated maps arent accurate because natural fractures in a shale reservoir are often too small to show up clearly on seismic surveys this invisibility means the simulator must guess where these networks of tiny cracks are based on mathematical probability so when engineers fracture a reservoir to connect the natural fracture networks and allow oil and gas to travel to the well they base their efforts on guesswork elliotts initial step to clarify subsurface pathways was to create a base map of fractures in a reservoir using two different types of measurements first he broadcasted controlled-source electromagnetic (csem) waves into a reservoir receivers recorded the secondary electromagnetic wave signatures that returned to the surface any reservoir fluids that contained conductive materials such as the salt in reservoir brines reacted to these waves as if they were wires transmitting electricity revealing the underground fracture networks the fluids traveled through to the array of receivers above ground the receiver recordings were then input into an electromagnetic simulator called seatem developed by dr mark everetts group in the department of geology and geophysics at texas a&m that mapped the fluid flow pathways in the fracture networks elliott then entered microseismic measurements of fractures taken from the same reservoir into the petroleum general unconventional reservoir utility simulator (guru) developed by dr john killoughs group in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m which mapped the location of these fractures in his next step elliott used csem during an industry-induced fracturing process since the hydraulic fracturing fluids pumped into the reservoir were also conductive the surface arrays detected how the fluids traveled away from the well and back again he mapped the results in seatem and later transferred this information into guru the final depiction accurately illustrated the fracture networks while also revealing which networks allowed fluid to flow and which areas trapped fluid electromagnetics show the movement of conductive fluids in subsurface cracks no matter what their size elliott said the csem data showed how the fracture networks connected together during production and the microseismic data showed where the fracturing occurred merging this information is the key to solving inaccuracies in mapping hydraulic fracturing field patterns the idea of combining geophysics and petroleum engineering measuring methods came naturally to elliott who holds bachelors degrees in both fields he is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in petroleum engineering his advisors everett and killough are overseeing his work to make sure elliott does the best job possible many of the physics and principles are the same in both fields but combining the simulation work is complicated said elliott so far were getting a very clear understanding of whats happening in the far field away from the well elliott is currently investigating ways in which seatem can accurately map the stresses that happen when fractures form in the first section nearest the wellbore the least defined area of his simulations much of the uncertainty we have comes from not knowing whether we are actually producing from areas of the subsurface that have been fractured said elliott combining microseismic and csem data will help alleviate this uncertainty and it can solve some complex problems plus its more efficient doing a better job of describing fractures not only helps oil production but can also change how we design fractures in the future
1441,"autonomous vehicles (av) are the wave of the future in the automobile industry and there's extensive discussion about the impacts on transportation society the economy and the environmenthowever less attention has been focused on the potential health impacts of self-driving vehiclestexas a&m university researchers have developed a conceptual model to identify these health impacts systematically they identified 32 transportation-related risk factors that affected health and concluded that 17 could negatively impact public health while eight could have a positive impact there were seven areas of uncertain implications that require further investigationthe researchers recently published their findings in the december issue of sustainable cities and society""a survey on the receptiveness of autonomous vehicles' impacts showed that there is a lack of awareness of the potential health impacts of avs and low perceptions of the importance of av health benefits "" said soheil sohrabi a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and a graduate researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) ""on the other hand there are some unintended consequences of avs implementation that need to be studied before avs find their way onto the road""sohrabi with dr dominque lord professor in the department ap wiley faculty fellow and tti associate research scientist and dr haneen khreis with tti created a conceptual model to systematically identify the pathways through which avs can affect public health the proposed model summarizes the potential changes in transportation after av implementation into seven points of impact: transportation infrastructure; land use and the built environment; traffic flow; transportation mode choice; transportation equity; and jobs related to transportation and traffic safety the changes in transportation are then attributed to potential health impactsin optimistic views avs are expected to prevent 94% of traffic crashes by eliminating driver error but avs operation introduces new safety issues such as the potential of malfunctioning sensors in detecting objects (pedestrians bikes and cyclists vehicles obstacles etc) misinterpretation of data and poorly executed responses which can jeopardize the reliability of avs and cause serious safety consequences in an automated environmentanother possible safety consideration is the riskier behavior of users because of their overreliance on avs for example neglecting the use of seatbelts due to an increased false sense of safety"
1442,"avs have the potential to shift the people from public transportation and active transportation such as walking and biking to private vehicles in urban areas which can result in more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and create the potential loss of driving jobs for those in the public transit or freight transport industriesthe model serves researchers in the fields of transportation engineering and urban planning as well as automotive makers health sectors and policymakers to identify the potential pathways through which avs can affect public health and to investigate the impacts quantify them and develop policies to mitigate them""given the very fast-paced research related to avs this work provides very good preliminary guidelines about how avs can negatively and positively affect the general health of people before their full deployment lord said hence engineers planners and policymakers can already examine measures and policies that could mitigate the negative health effects""this study can urge public health sectors to enter the discussion about avs and contribute to supporting policies that address the potential negative impacts "" sohrabi said ""it also increases the public awareness of the health impacts of avs that can facilitate the acceptance of av regulations and motivate them to use this new technology and ultimately benefit the greater good""in the future sohrabi said more research is needed to clarify public health impacts of avs more accurately this study was primarily focused on urban areas and does not take into account the affects of avs in rural areas""the discussion about the health implications of avs is new and limited "" he said ""next we will be working on quantifying the health implications of avs"""
1443,the human factors and ergonomics society (hfes) student chapter at texas a&m university was bestowed with a silver chapter title under the outstanding student chapter award for the 2019-20 academic year additionally three texas a&m students from the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineering were recipients of the student member with honors award tamu hfes is a local chapter of the national human factors and ergonomics society maintained by students at texas a&m said hananeh alambeigi the chapter's president the goal of this organization is to promote and advance the understanding of human factors and ergonomics provide networking opportunities and facilitate discussion through an interchange of knowledge and collaboration the hfes is the worlds largest scientific association for ergonomics professionals their goal is to provide engineering solutions for people in systems through partnership and exchange of information the outstanding student chapter award was developed to highlight chapters that have positively impacted their campuses communities and human factors and ergonomics alambeigi and fellow members changwon son and jukrin moon were recipients of the 2020 student member with honors award from the national hfes for their outstanding contributions to the discipline dr mehta ranjana was an advisor during the time the students received the award dr maryam zahabi a professor in industrial and systems engineering and the new faculty advisor for the organization would like to thank the hfes members for their efforts and congratulate alambeigi son and moon for receiving this prestigious honor dr s camille peres is currently co-advisor with dr zahabi and they are both so impressed with the leaders of the student chapter of hfes at texas a&m and look forward to another great year
1444,"ocean waves represent an abundant source of renewable energy but to best use this natural resource wave-energy converters need to be capable of physically handling ocean waves of different strengths without capsizing texas a&m university researchers have developed analytical tools that can help characterize the movements of floating but anchored wave-energy devices unlike complicated simulations that are expensive and time-consuming they said their technique is fast yet accurate enough to estimate if wave-energy devices will turn over in an ever-changing ocean environment wave-energy converters need to take advantage of large wave motions to make electricity but when a big storm comes you don't want big wave wind and current motions to destroy these devices said dr jeffrey falzarano professor in the department of ocean engineering we have developed much simpler analytical tools to judge the performance of these devices in a dynamic ocean environment without necessitating massive amounts of simulations or physical model tests that take a lot of time to run and are cost-prohibitive the mathematical tools are described online in the journal ships and offshore structures in july wave-energy devices function in two modes in normal"" mode they convert the energy from tidal waves into electricity thus this mode largely determines whether the design of the wave-energy device is economically efficient however in survival mode or when incident waves cause large motions in the wave-energy devices the performance of the wave-energy devices is largely determined by a system of moorings that anchor the devices to a location at the bottom of the body of water moorings can be of several types including wharfs and anchor buoys and can be arranged in different configurations in addition there are considerable variations in the shape of wave-energy devices making the prediction of whether the device will capsize nontrivial ships come in a variety of shapes and sizes; tankers for example are very different from fishing vessels or other military ships these different geometries affect the ships motion in the water said falzarano similarly the shape of wave-energy devices can be quite diverse"
1445,for the analysis hao wang falzarano s graduate student used a cylindrical wave-energy device this generic shape allowed the researchers to simplify the problem of prediction and extended their analysis to other wave-energy converters of similar shape he also considered three mooring configurations hao used two analytical methods the markov and melnikov approaches to predict the risks of turning over under random excitation more specifically using information from the wave-energy devices geometry the configuration of the mooring system and tidal wave properties the methods yield a graph containing an envelope-like region intuitively if the waves are really big like during a storm and the floating vessel escapes this envelope it will likely turnover the researchers noted that although the analytical models were completely different they yielded almost the same results validating their merit and accuracy they also said that their mathematical approach can be applied to assess the performance of other floating devices such as floating wind turbines the platform for a floating wind turbine is the same as the one for wave-energy devices and so floating turbines can also pitchpole or turnover if the waves are very high said falzarano my group has been leaders in developing methods for predicting ship stability we're now looking at applying those approaches to renewable floating energy devices
1446,for the second year in a row a survey by bankrate a leader and authority in the financial industry has ranked naval architecture and marine engineering as the most valuable majors with a median salary of $90 000 and an unemployment rate of 16% with such importance placed on naval architecture as a specialty within ocean engineering the question follows: what exactly is it dr jeffrey falzarano professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university has the answer here are the top five things you need to know about naval architecture
1447,1 its been around for thousands of years naval architecture a specialization offered in the in the ocean engineering department is one of the oldest engineering disciplines dating all the way back to the first manmade raft and canoe as falzarano explained since the grecian times of archimedes scientists were not only creating floating crafts but studying the buoyancy and stability of them as well while it wasnt called such until more recent years naval architecture tasks people with creating some of the largest (up to 1 500 feet in length) and most complex moving manmade crafts and systems like oil tankers nuclear submarines and cargo ships
1448,2 it isnt just about military ships despite how its name might sound naval architecture is not solely focused on designing ships for the navy while that is one aspect naval architecture is the science of designing boats ships and other floating structures such as aquaculture habitats this includes cruise ships cargo carriers personal speed boats and jet skis while many engineers do work on navy ships and underwater military crafts the field of ocean engineering and naval architecture is broad anything that floats in the water is something that needs naval architects and marine engineers said falzarano one of my areas for example is ship maneuvering when you drive a car you want to make sure it responds well it has to turn when you want it to right when you drive a ship it has to respond correctly and like cars sometimes collisions happen why what went wrong
1449,3 it puts the ship in shipment i think there's literally tens of thousands of large commercial ships sailing the ocean as we speak tankers container ships said falzarano globalization makes opportunities because shipping makes opportunities someone makes a product in one country and they want it in another and you have trade and people dont think about naval architecture when they think about shipping but according to the organisation for economic co-operation and development around 90% of traded goods are carried via the ocean sea-based shipment only represents 26% of total greenhouse emissions making it cleaner than most other transport options
1450,4 it is an international and multi-industrial field from shipping to submarines to luxury and leisure the need for experts who can not only design a floating vehicle but adhere to the international policies and regulations that govern the safety of those vehicles is imperative global organizations have been founded drawing upon the expertise of a wide range of industries to determine how to protect those aboard floating vessels it is up to naval architects and marine engineers to understand abide and strive to better these regulations through innovation and ingenuity additionally as falzarano described because naval architecture is a global industry through trade building cruise tourism personal water transportation etc there are many facets for naval architects to find their niche in the field and see the world
1451,5 its continuing to grow and evolve there will always be a need for people to do this said falzarano with the evolution and implementation of new technology to the discipline such as unmanned robotic vehicles and clean energy solutions naval architecture is continuing to grow and transform the world there are wind turbines out in west texas but the real potential is offshore energy because the wind is even stronger offshore and the waves have much more energy in them than wind said falzarano my point is whether it's a ship a renewable energy device an oil and gas platform or another floating structure they all kind of behave the same way with a hand in connecting cultures and continents bridging industries and ideas and bringing together people and products there is still lots of ground to cover
1452,the department of ocean engineering offers a specialization in naval architecture at both its flagship college station and its seaside galveston campus this unique duel campus setup gives the department access to both world-class research facilities and direct access to the water and coast offering students a hands-on research and education experience like no other learn more about the ocean engineering degree programs offered at each campus
1453,dr bimal nepal professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has been selected to receive the 2020 american society for engineering management (asem) william daughton world headquarters service award asem is a global professional society dedicated to the promotion and advancement of the engineering and technical management profession the william daughton world headquarters service award recognizes significant contributions to the streamlining enhancement or improvement of the day-to-day operations of asem world headquarters nepal has held several leadership roles within asem including elected fellow conference technical chair board of directors member and associate editor of their flagship journal engineering management journal he is currently serving as interim director for asem professional societies outreach i am truly humbled and honored to receive such a distinguished honor from asem said nepal it keeps me even more motivated to serve the society to broaden its mission and contribute to the profession of engineering management i would like to thank the honors and awards committee within asem for their trust in me his previous awards include the holleran-bowman faculty fellow the phillips 66 first-year faculty fellow the william keeler memorial award the herbert h richardson fellow and the corrie and jim furber '64 faculty fellow nepal joined the texas a&m faculty in 2009 he received his doctoral degree from wayne state university a masters degree from the asian institute of technology and a bachelors degree from the malaviya national institute of technology
1454,with the intensity of the ongoing climate change debate scientists and engineers are looking for cleaner energy sources to replace fossil fuels nuclear energy is one such possibility but innovations are being sought to enhance the promise of clean nuclear energy a team from texas a&m university has established a collaboration to explore the potential of an innovative new type of thorium-based fuel researchers in the nuclear engineering and science center (nesc) at texas a&m and the us department of energys (doe) idaho national laboratory (inl) have partnered with clean core thorium energy (ccte) a chicago-based company to fabricate a proprietary thorium-based nuclear fuel called advanced nuclear energy for enriched life (aneel) this fuel is a combination of thorium and high-assay low-enriched uranium and addresses issues including cost safety proliferation and waste management texas a&m will manufacture the aneel fuel pellets at the nesc following the strict guidelines and quality assurance requirements of the doe and nuclear regulatory commission they will then send fabricated aneel fuel pellets to inl to conduct high burn-up irradiation testing of aneel fuel followed by post-irradiation examination and fuel qualification we are excited for the opportunity to be part of the aneel fuel development to work with our colleagues at inl and ccte to realize a safe and clean baseload energy solution for the world said dr sean mcdeavitt director of the nesc for years researchers have been investigating new ways to make nuclear energy often looking at new types of nuclear power plants however due to the high cost of full-scale demonstrations lengthy irradiation and performance testing and regulatory limitations most of these new nuclear technologies are still decades away from realization despite these challenges nuclear energy is still one of the largest sources of emission-free power in the world generating nearly a fifth of americas electricity and more than half of its clean energy moreover nuclear energy is an abundant clean energy source that can deliver baseload electricity that is needed most in emerging markets
1455,the texas a&m/inl/ccte team is addressing nuclear energy from a different angle by delivering optimal performance in existing heavy water reactor designs with proven competitive performance the new aneel fuel breaks barriers for fuel utilization safety and proliferation resistance necessary to lower the hurdles to deploy nuclear energy when used in small heavy water reactors aneel fuel is ideal for deployment to emerging countries where the need for additional clean energy is most urgent two such existing heavy water reactors are the canada deuterium uranium (candu) and the pressurized heavy water reactor (phwr) these reactors are heavy water-cooled and moderated pressurized water reactors where the nuclear core is contained in hundreds of pressurized tubes they usually employ natural uranium oxide as fuel with heavy water as the moderator (a material used in a nuclear reactor to slow down the neutrons produced from fission) the team feels it is beneficial to use existing reactor technology to minimize the cost and avoid decades-long regulatory hurdles for deployment there are currently 49 operating phwr/candu reactors in seven countries including canada argentina india and china using thorium as the main ingredient also has many advantages in these existing reactors with its higher melting point and lower internal operating temperature thorium is inherently safer than uranium making a core meltdown less likely due to the higher fuel burn-up possible with aneel waste is decreased substantially higher fuel burn-up also means more uranium and plutonium are burned to make energy while the end product is significantly denatured reducing the possible proliferation of the used fuel thorium is also found more abundantly than uranium on earth and can be extracted readily from seawater making it a renewable energy source with this collaboration aneel-fueled phwrs/candus could provide abundant safe and clean energy in order to build a path to development and dignity for emerging nations said mehul shah founder and ceo of ccte
1456,"beth gibson coyle '82 has established the harry m coyle sr & harry m ""michael"" coyle jr '82 endowed scholarship distributions from this generous endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineering at texas a&m university coyle grew up in bryan and started attending texas a&m sports events when she was very young she says she was firmly set on attending texas a&m upon graduating from bryan high school i majored in journalism focused on photography and was able to work with the battalion not only as a photographer but as a writer and editor during my years at a&m she said i also worked at the media production center in the photography lab i love texas a&m having grown up here in the atmosphere of a college town and having my degree from a&m coyle said the education provided at a&m is second to none not only with academics but with character and integrity the six core values of this university sets it apart since graduating coyle has had great success throughout her professional life i have taught journalism and photography at the high school level acted as ceo and handled marketing for mine and my late husband's civil engineering firm for 20 years and i am now working as a commercial photographer working with companies to assist with marketing and portfolio images coyle established this endowment in memory of both her late husband mike and his father dr harry m coyle both men were award-winning engineers in practice or in teaching and research mike passed away at age 52 in 2013 in an accident and harry passed away a few years later at 90 the world lost two amazing men and talented engineers she said each sought to mentor young engineers to love the profession and to use it for the betterment of this world like they did mike and beth founded their civil engineering firm coyle engineering in 1995 mike was one of only nine engineers in the state of texas to have been selected young engineer of the year and engineer of the year after spending four months in the field helping underfunded counties rebuild following hurricane ike harry coyle was head of the geotechnical group at texas a&m and taught upper-level courses in soil mechanics he performed valuable research for the university dr coyle was a west point graduate and served in korea with the corps of engineers he received his masters from the massachusetts institute of technology and doctorate from the university of texas at austin both men loved what the lord made them to do and i picture them continuing to engineer in heaven i miss them both terribly coyle hopes that this gift will grow and that mike's siblings will also have the chance to add to the endowment to honor the memory of their dad and brother it is my hope that this gift will not only help a young engineering student to continue in his or her studies with a degree in civil engineering from texas a&m but also will encourage him or her to know more about the two men the scholarship honors and seek to be like them in life and in the civil engineering profession she said an engineering degree from texas a&m is quite meaningful in the design industry coyle said"
1457,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1458,"dr swaroop darbha is now holder of the gulf oil/thomas a dietz professorship darbha a professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering joined texas a&m university in 1997 he is currently conducting research on the robust synthesis of complex networks with los alamos national laboratory motion planning and coordination of unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles with air force research laboratory and army research laboratory and developing diagnostic systems for air brakes in autonomous and connected trucks with texas a&m transportation institute ""i am delighted to be appointed the gulf oil/thomas a dietz professor and will continue to perform basic and applied research in the area of autonomous vehicles with renewed vigor "" darbha said darbha whose research has been cited more than 8 000 times is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers and the institute of electrical and electronics engineers and is known for his fundamental contributions in the areas of intelligent transportation systems and unmanned aerial vehicles"
1459,three faculty members have joined the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university with research expertise in areas such as empirical software engineering practices artificial intelligence and big data systems with the ever-increasing role and impact of computing in society our field faces significant competition for talent from both industry and academia we are excited to have such promising faculty join us said dr scott schaefer head of the department the three new faculty members include:
1460,dr khanh nguyen assistant professor who received his doctoral degree in computer science from the university of california los angeles and his masters and bachelors degrees in computer science from the university of california irvine nguyens research interests include complier and runtime support programming languages memory management and big data systems dr paule taele instructional assistant professor who received his doctoral and masters degrees in computer science from texas a&m and his bachelors degrees in mathematics and computer science from the university of texas at austin taeles research interests include sketch recognition artificial intelligence human-computer interaction and intelligent user interfacespauline wade associate professor of practice who received her masters degree in computer science from columbia university and her bachelors degree in computer science from texas a&m wades research interests include empirical software engineering practices software engineering framework for data science projects and improving the effectiveness of test suites through mining historical data
1461,before he was a student at texas a&m university sam williams knew that above anything else he loved to work with his hands even helping with his uncles painting and remodeling work at the age of 5 that love grew into a desire to attend engineering school which led williams to attend texas a&m and create his own legacy as one of the first black engineering students and athletes in the schools history while a junior in high school i was sitting in (my dads) office discussing colleges and he asked me ‘what about a&m williams said i applied and got accepted i didn't know that i was going to be one of the first students to attend texas a&m as an african-american williams started as a student at texas a&m in 1964 during james earl rudders tenure as president of the university at that time the corps of cadets was still a compulsory part of enrollment for all texas a&m students williams who had attended an all-black high school didnt know what to expect of texas a&m or the military-school lifestyle in high school i was one of the so-called ‘big man on campus types and then i got to a&m in the corps and it was totally different williams said you couldn't leave or go home without a pass and i said to myself ‘what have i gotten myself into as a student williams struggled balancing the rigors of cadet life working to make the track team and being an engineering student he eventually quit the corps when it was no longer compulsory just as he was leaving the corps williams suffered a difficult blow to his engineering career the assistant dean of engineering cliff ransdell felt his struggling academic performance wasnt strong enough to let him stay enrolled that was the most difficult time of my life williams said i came back home to houston and (my parents) explained to me that i wasnt going to go sit around on my butt in this house so i enrolled in a technical school not one to quit easily williams later made an appointment with ransdell to show him his outstanding academic performance in technical school ransdell having taught williams in his engineering graphics class decided to give him one more chance as an engineering student after he returned he was accepted into the industrial technology program i started really focusing on industrial technology williams said it was kind of right up my alley it prepared (me) to be in management in manufacturing field services and technical sales
1462,joining the football team with his roommate jt reynolds shortly after coming back to campus the two would go on to pass yet another milestone as the first black football players and lettermen at texas a&m in 1967 and 1968 for williams this wasnt his first attempt to play on the field years earlier he had suited up for freshman practice only to be told by head coach hank foldberg that texas a&m would not be integrating its football teams even after triumphantly surviving a difficult conditioning weed-out process williams and reynolds never traveled and only played sparingly in home games after leaving texas a&m in 1969 williams severed most ties with the school and began a successful career with general electric (ge) as a sales engineer and contract administrator he later moved to houston and left ge eventually going into business for himself as the ceo of a small manufacturing and engineering consulting service i had very little connection with a&m in my early career williams said i didnt care it was a difficult time that i went through at a&m and when i walked out of there it didnt matter when i ever came back after his business closed williams found an unlikely tie back to texas a&m a chance visit with a fellow former student provided him with an invitation to a texas a&m networking breakfast the connections he fostered there helped him return to the corporate world where he spent 21 years as the senior representative at emersons subsidiaries automatic switch & asco services inc after reconnecting with the texas a&m network williams later came into contact with former texas a&m university president bill mobley after visiting campus at mobleys invitation in 1989 to discuss racial issues in education with other black former students williams received an invitation to co-chair the presidents former student advisory committee on black issues williams served on the committee until 1993 williams later co-founded the caring aggies mentor program in 2006 which mentors students from third grade through high school and introduces them to career opportunities while encouraging them to complete high school and pursue higher education many of the programs graduates have gone on to college and trade schools including texas a&m from first-hand experience williams knows how one act of caring can change someones life i will always be thankful for dean ransdell williams said he was the one person that let me back into a&m to restart my academic career and i will never forget that
1463,"dr matt pharr assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university takes his place among less than 300 faculty members in 30 years as a montague-cte (center for teaching excellence) scholars award recipient for his achievements in teaching undergraduate students according to pharr his dedication to teaching stems from his enjoyment of working in the classroom i enjoy interacting with students particularly with the energy they bring to class pharr said it is fun to hear students ask questions and come up with new solutions from perspectives that i have not considered before it's also very rewarding when students come to that ""aha moment"" through lectures and discussion this award is given to only one tenure-track assistant professor from each college annually along with the title of being a montague-cte scholar he will receive a grant to continue making positive impacts in the classroom i am honored to receive this award said pharr it will provide me the opportunity to continue to develop augmented and virtual reality learning modules with a goal of enhancing student engagement and understanding course content to greater depths pharrs teaching philosophy centers around fundamental principles by teaching students about the larger picture he can educate them on solving real-world issues based on his personal experiences as a student a critical part of this is assigning projects that accentuate mechanical engineerings key principles and perpetuate student involvement i implement approaches that i personally found effective as a student encouraging creative thinking and cultivating an enjoyable learning environment pharr said to that end i like to keep students engaged by asking questions frequently during lectures doing demonstrations showing videos having students work through example problems with their neighbors etc the montague-cte scholars award adds to his list of accolades that include the peggy l and charles brittan 65 outstanding undergraduate teaching award in 2019 and the center for teaching excellence - texas a&m student success faculty fellows grant program in 2017"
1464,one challenge of the covid-19 pandemic has been monitoring cases in places with high amounts of foot traffic a team of students from the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is working on a biosensor that could quickly diagnose cases and help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus the aerosol pathogen sensor team was selected for the national science foundations i-corps site program at texas a&m to gain resources and assistance with moving their design past the concept phase their biosensor is designed to detect airborne pathogenic particles relating to covid-19 to help diagnose a case within 20 minutes originally the team felt the project could have applications in a variety of industries including grocery stores health care offices etc after completing their interviews their focus was narrowed to hospitals private practices and retirement homes
1465,"the team first came together to participate in the aggies against covid challenge in april they also participated in the ""tracking covid-19"" challenge from the new york academy of science where they competed in a global challenge assisting in the tracking of covid-19 there they placed in the top 10 teams worldwide out of about 100 teams that competed and were invited to pitch their idea to judges in a virtual pitch setting over the summer theres a lot of people suffering from the covid crisis a lot of people dying and i wanted to help however i could said junior ryan bean i didnt want to just sit there and watch as people were dying and being isolated i wanted to try my best to mitigate the crisis as best as possible"
1466,the device addresses two needs: it provides more accurate and available testing to people in high traffic areas and it provides the centers for disease control and prevention with more accurate and in-depth data as fellows in the i-corps program the team conducted 35 industry interviews and 400 consumer interviews to gauge reaction interest and feedback on their proposed biosensor the team said they received lots of positive feedback especially since their device is noninvasive more accurate and reusable
1467,the program really helped narrow down if we wanted to go forward with our project or not said junior haley clark it was extremely useful for us because it gave us that entrepreneurship mindset and the business side versus just strictly engineering which we had from our classes junior hannah chamberlain said her biggest takeaway from the i-corps program has been the entrepreneurial skills she gained i had never wanted to make a product or start a business because i have no idea how to do it she said (the program) really teaches you how to gauge needs from an industry and then create your device based off those needs
1468,while their time in the i-corps program is complete the team said innovation is never done they are looking into ways to continue moving forward including getting into a research lab and working with the engineering incubator at texas a&m the applications for it truly are pretty numerous once we get it going said junior zach mendoza what were working on can be applied across all infectious diseases of course thats very broad and far in the future but the fact that weve gotten this far and been this successful gives me a lot of hope
1469,jon williamson 20 received the most prestigious honor available to a graduating senior ­from the college of engineering at texas a&m university – the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award the award which is over 70 years old is presented to a student who excels scholastically who exemplifies leadership and whose character exceeds standards my experience at texas a&m has been transformational said williamson i have grown as a mechanical engineer a computer scientist a leader and as a human over the last four and a half years a zealous student from colorado williamson felt immediately connected to texas a&ms core values and long-standing traditions he chose the difficult path of pursuing mechanical engineering and computer science degrees simultaneously due to his interests in multiple fields i love the pure analytical nature of engineering said williamson i see math everywhere: when i walk to class when i review current events and when im relaxing engineering allows me to apply robust and often enlightening analytical tools to any situation in december williamson will graduate with 218 credit hours instead of the typical 128 in just four and a half years of study he is on track to graduate summa cum laude with an honors fellows distinction he has participated in multiple engineering projects from custom art tools to football helmets that can help diagnose and report concussions he showed outstanding leadership through his involvement in the memorial student center he oversaw the planning funding and execution of tedxtamu in 2018 which is an independently-run ted conference held here on the texas a&m campus this resulted in the memorial student center investing heavily into the tedxtamu program williamson is also a member of the texas a&m chamber orchestra when not in school he has had several unique internships including working for bhp engineering & construction lp as a field engineer intern within surface engineering as a defense service engineer for rolls-royce and as a summer associate for the boston consulting group this is only a few of the accomplishments and contributions williamson has achieved while attending texas a&m along williamson's impressive journey many faculty members have helped paved his way jon is an outstanding student with natural scientific curiosity and is clearly deserving of this award said dr matt pharr assistant professor in the mechanical engineering department it is obvious to me that he is interested in taking scientific concepts and applying them to do good in the world i almost expect to see his name in the news sometime for his accomplishments williamson would like to acknowledge those who have helped him pursue his goals and led him to receive this award dr zohaib hasnain and dr aakash tyagi supported my application for this award said williamson other faculty members that mentored me throughout my time at texas a&m include dr dmitri loguinov dr matt pharr dr dale cope and dr shawna thomas i was lucky to take courses from each of these professors; each one challenged me and pushed me to become a better engineer the generous support of many donors notably mr brown through the craig and galen brown foundation scholarship programs and mrs carolyn lohman through the presidents endowed scholar program allowed me to pursue both degrees concurrently said williamson williamson will graduate in december leaving texas a&m to do fantastic things in the future he plans to use engineering to impact the lives of many i hope to make an impact through autonomous systems as an engineer in the future said williamson i believe that autonomous systems particularly transportation systems have the potential to drastically increase societys efficiency and safety i am excited to help society shift through shorter more robust supply chains and decreased amounts of material and energy waste
1470,our environment is swarming with all kinds of microbes the ones that cause harm have a few tricks up their sleeve they can either attach to receptors on host cells or produce toxins or disrupt the hosts cellular machinery to develop effective therapeutics against pathogens scientists need to first uncover how they attack host cells an efficient way to conduct these investigations on an extensive scale is through high-speed screening tests called assays in that effort researchers at texas a&m university have invented a high-throughput cell separation method that can be used in conjunction with droplet microfluidics a technique whereby tiny drops of fluid containing biological or other cargo can be moved very precisely and at high speeds specifically the researchers successfully isolated pathogens attached to host cells from those that were unattached within a single fluid droplet using an electric field other than cell separation most biochemical assays have been successfully converted into droplet microfluidic systems that allow high-throughput testing said dr arum han professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and principal investigator of the project we have addressed that gap and now cell separation can be done in a high-throughput manner within the droplet microfluidic platform this new system certainly simplifies studying host-pathogen interactions but it is also very useful for environmental microbiology or drug screening applications the researchers reported their findings in the august issue of the journal lab on a chip microfluidic devices consist of networks of micron-sized channels or tubes that allow very controlled movements of fluids recently microfluidics using water-in-oil droplets have gained popularity for a wide range of biotechnological applications these droplets which are picoliters (or a million times less than a microliter) in volume can be used as platforms for carrying out biological reactions or transporting biological materials thus millions of droplets within a single chip facilitate high-throughput experiments saving not just laboratory space but the cost of chemical reagents and manual labor however much like a packet of m&ms biological assays can involve different cell types within a single droplet which eventually need to be separated for subsequent analyses this task is extremely challenging in a droplet microfluidic system said han getting cell separation within a tiny droplet is extremely difficult because if you think about it first its a tiny hundred-micron diameter droplet and second within this extremely tiny droplet multiple cell types are all mixed together he said to develop the technology needed for cell separation han and his team chose a host-pathogen model system consisting of the salmonella bacteria and the human macrophage a type of immune cell when both these cell types are introduced within a droplet some of the bacteria adhere to the macrophage cells the goal of their experiments was thus to separate the salmonella that attached to the macrophage from the ones that did not for cell separation han and his team constructed two pairs of electrodes that generated an oscillating electric field in close proximity to the droplet containing the two cell types since the bacteria and the host cells have very different shapes sizes and electrical properties they found that the electric field produced a different force on each cell type this force resulted in the movement of one cell type at a time thereby separating the cells into two different locations within the droplet to separate the mother droplet into two daughter droplets containing one type of cells the researchers also made a downstream y-shaped splitting junction
1471,han said although these experiments were carried with a host and pathogen whose interaction is well-established their new microfluidic system equipped with in-drop separation is most useful when the pathogenicity of bacterial species is unknown he added that their technology enables quick high-throughput screening in these situations and for other applications where cell separation is required liquid handling robotic hands can conduct millions of assays but are extremely costly droplet microfluidics can do the same in millions of droplets much faster and much cheaper said han we have now integrated cell separation technology into droplet microfluidic systems allowing the precise manipulation of cells in droplets in a high-throughput manner which was not possible before this work is funded by the defense advanced research projects agency dr song-i han and can huang from the electrical and computer engineering department equally contributed to this research
1472,set to help further accelerate the digital transformation of the energy industry the texas a&m university student-led company teale engineering llc has been recently accepted into the national nsf i-corps teams program – a true testament of their abilities the nsf i-corps site program is one that provides students with the foundational elements to take an innovation and discover the market potential of the production while moving their ideas toward commercialization the company includes students enrique losoyam pursuing his doctoral degree in interdisciplinary engineering narendra vishnumolakala pursuing his doctoral degree in interdisciplinary engineering and connor ust pursing his masters degree in engineering technology the team formed after discovering one another during the aggies invent – energy solutions competition in 2019 and have since founded their company after joining texas a&ms nsf i-corps site program together our team came together mostly by chance losoya said although we did not win that aggies invent competition we realized that we worked well together and had skills that could complement one anothers and shortly after formed our company teale engineering llc the company decided to focus on the energy sector as it faces a key challenge in meeting the growing demand for energy in a safe and environmentally responsible manner teale engineering llc strives to bridge this gap by leveraging advanced technologies and innovations
1473,therefore their immediate hope in this program was to interact with experts and customers in the industry to discover if the technology they are developing provides a solution to an actual problem faced in the energy sector today the team has been working on the research topic for years within texas a&m and the idea was born after brainstorming ideas from different multidisciplinary perspectives and experiences they realized that for decades one of the industry's most critical technological limiters in drilling optimization for the oil industry is the inability to transmit large amounts of data from the downhole and processing it on the surface their solution eliminates the need to transfer large amounts of data altogether by performing most of the processing directly at the drill bit in short we're building the fastest most powerful and intelligent downhole tool ever created for the next generation of drilling technology that can identify optimize and potentially control drilling operations vishnumolakala said we applied the lean launch methodology to the customer discovery process to identify the target market which helped us by opening up new market opportunities for the tool such as the geothermal drilling industry brian rogers the companys mentor through the nsf i-corps site program was initially excited about the product because it was forward thinking rogers had just finished a rotation on a drilling rig and found that his direct experience provided unique insight to the possibilities that this product could bring when teale engineering llc approached me with assisting them on their product it was clearly a next-generation product we could apply to the rig systems design basis rogers said we finished our coaching session with a robust risk assessment one that incorporated customer feedback and industry return on experience subsequently leading to a prototype product development in the next nsf i-corps site program phase it was through nsf i-corps site program mentor rodney boehm that the team found courage to apply for the national program by providing a strong recommendation and believing in themselves and their product one of the most important takeaways during the program was realizing how powerful the aggie network is but more importantly how extremely helpful and altruistic people can be losoya said we were shocked to find out how helpful and accessible people can be the team has found that the program grew them both professionally and personally providing an immersive experience that heightened their interpersonal communication and professional business skills most importantly ust realized the value of industry feedback it was difficult at first to have a project you care so much about be critiqued and criticized until i realized how to use the feedback to our advantage ust said as the team continues to evolve their product with the national nsf i-corps teams program the company hopes to prove that the product's technical and economic feasibility will benefit automating the drilling operations and open up avenues for implementing the technology in other aspects of process optimization
1474,"dr matt pharr has been named a j mike walker ‘66 faculty fellow pharr assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering joined texas a&m university in 2016 his current research focuses on materials for energy storage and conversion deformation and fracture of soft materials the mechanics of flexible and wearable electronic devices the mechanics of irradiated materials coupled electro-chemo-mechanics and mass transport in materials dr pharr demonstrates a genuine and impressive commitment to the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering his research and the education of future leaders "" said dr andreas a polycarpou mechanical engineering department head and james j cain chair professor ""we are fortunate to have him as a part of our faculty and look forward to further accomplishments in the future he is well deserving of the j mike walker 66 faculty fellow title pharr a recipient of the 2020 national science foundation faculty early career development award said he is honored to receive the fellowship and is deeply grateful to the walker family for their support ""the fellowship will allow me to pursue some new ideas for research in mechanics of materials establish new collaborations and develop augmented and virtual reality learning modules to enhance student learning experiences "" said pharr"
1475,dr rusty feagin professor in the department of ecology and conservation biology and the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university was recently awarded the robert g dean coastal academic award from the american shore and beach preservation association (asbpa) feagin received this honor for his significant contributions to coastal science and his mentorship of the next generation of coastal scientists and engineers feagins research centers on how living materials like plants and microflora affect the processes of coastal erosion he teaches classes like coastal processes and ecosystem management wetlands and riverine restoration among others that are attended by students from multiple majors i enjoy mentoring grad students because its more one-on-one and its a bigger time investment feagin said over several years you really get to know someone and what makes them tick and it gives you enough time to learn where they are strong in science and how to help them best apply themselves one of feagins current projects involves the creation of a living shoreline by building several miles of an oyster reef in carancahua bay a northern extension of matagorda bay on the texas coast to reduce waves and decrease erosion while also increasing habitat for fish and other species in the environment were trying to figure out ways that we can stop the erosion but also increase the number of fish and the overall environment for fishing and hunting so that we can help the local economy feagin said the asbpa founded in 1926 to combat the effects of coastal erosion with science and lobbying for government policy change bestows multiple special awards each year upon individuals and coastal projects for their contributions to their mission the robert g dean award recognizes individuals in academia that have made significant contributions to coastal science or engineering and fostered the education of new coastal scientists or engineers feagin was nominated for this award by one of his colleagues cris weber a senior managing coastal engineer at anchor qea a science and engineering firm he also received multiple letters of support from students former students and other colleagues for the honor
1476,the aggie 100 summit award established in 2012 by the mcferrin center for entrepreneurship seeks to highlight an aggie-owned and led business with the highest average revenue over the same three-year-period the recipient of this years award is srs distribution led by dan tinker 96 tinker has had many notable mentors and confidants who have helped to support him throughout his career now as the president and ceo of srs distribution tinker wants to provide the same support structure for his employees tinker graduated in may of 1996 with a degree in industrial distribution from the texas a&m university college of engineering he credits the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution for having a major impact on his career and success it prepared me really well for leadership and for managing people and leading teams he said tinker went on to describe how the industrial distribution program provided him with a strong technical background while at the same time providing holistic business education from finance to strategy to operations it gave him a well-rounded view of how engineering and business can be used together as a powerful tool tinker is a visionary who fully embraces the entrepreneurial mindset of dream big be bold he isnt intimidated by hard work and thrives whenever he faces a problem that seems insurmountable throughout his career hes lived by the adage of small goals dont stir peoples souls tinker has learned firsthand that when you challenge yourself and your team to achieve impossible milestones that is when the magic happens it hasnt been an easy lesson to learn and along the way people have doubted him i dont know if anyone but me early on believed that we were going to achieve what i told them we were going to go do said tinker time and time again hes proven that theres no value in shying away from your passions and goals its only when you are all in and fully committed to your dreams that you can convince others to do the same for tinker the best way to encourage others to buy into goals is by fostering strong company culture he wants to hire talented people and inspire passion in them by creating a corporate environment that makes them excited to go to work every day i want people to get a speeding ticket on the way to work not on the way home from work you have to create the right environment to make that happen he said i believe talent trumps strategy every time but the talent is wasted if theyre not engaged and fully passionate about the work theyre doing the vision of the company and the mission of the company have you ever seen a company with good customer service but bad morale it doesnt exist you cant do it tinker engages his highly talented employees by actively living the aggie values of respect and selfless service we want to bring talent here and build wonderful careers for people and change their lives for the better he said you end up serving them as ceo im the lowest person in the company and my job is to serve everyone above me the front-line employees who serve the customer are at the top for tinker ceo stands for chief excuse elimination officer he believes that his most important role is to eliminate all obstacles and provide all of the resources that their people need to succeed thats my job he said i want 5 500 people to come to work that are smarter than me and harder working than me and as a result they drive the business and i provide them all of the resources and the environment for them to thrive and have fun that commitment to culture is evident in the srs distribution mission statement: make money have fun give back weve chosen to be a people-first and a culture-led company and a big part of that is a dedication to others and service to others tinker said how do you inspire an employee workforce of several thousand individuals for tinker its simple the way you do that in our mindset is to let (our employees) be the entrepreneur he said he wants his team to take ownership of their role in the company and let them be the strategist locally tinker wants his team to know that their input and decision-making skills are valued by the company and that they are trusted by leadership to make calls independent of the corporate mandate rather than trying to force a cookie-cutter approach on their 390 locations srs distribution instead provides centralized tools and resources such as technology support and talent management and encourages their employees to leverage an entrepreneurial mindset all of our employees think of themselves as owners and founders of the company he said they have a different level of pride and engagement this commitment to employee empowerment and success is evident through the srs distribution employee shareholder program all 5 500 employees have some sort of equity in the company every time weve sold the company or had a liquidity event every employee stockholder got a payout in fact weve already made over 115 millionaires in the company from the employees and my goal is to make hundreds more in the next five years we have a warehouse worker in portland who makes $18 an hour and is already a millionaire because of his small investment in the company in 2008 said tinker thats the fun part you can have great financial success and not keep it all at the top you can share it broadly if you have the right structure and right equity program for an aggie entrepreneur who is so fiercely passionate about selfless service and supporting the goals and dreams of others it would be remiss not to include recognition of the individuals who have played a major role in supporting tinkers career the most notable champion for tinkers career is his wife audrey tinker 96 my wife is the smart one in the family she has her phd masters and undergrad degrees all from a&m and has taught at a&m all i know is how to sell stuff for more than i paid for it shes the real brains of the family said tinker the two met freshman year in college and have been together ever since she played a huge role in his career since tinkers first job out of college at the ripe age of 22 tinker was able to convince the leadership at cameron ashley building products to promote him to the branch manager it was a hard sell but they did give me the worst branch in the company which was in little rock audrey agreed to uproot her life in texas to move to arkansas so that tinker could pursue his career in just one year tinker turned that branch from dead worst to branch-of-the-year out of 165 locations during his time reinvigorating the little rock branch tinker experienced tremendous growth as a leader he learned how to motivate his team to be passionate about their work he discovered the impact that a talented experienced employee can have on a teams morale and a businesss bottom line tinker distinguished himself as a force in little rock it wouldnt have happened without audrey by his side another individual who was monumental in supporting tinker is ronald ross chairman of the board at srs distribution tinker met ross while he was a student at texas a&m and ross was serving on the advisory board for the of industrial distribution department for over two decades ross has served as a mentor and fount of wisdom for tinker we have a great friendship i consider him to be a second father to me he was a mentor right out of college and taught me how to acquire businesses how to value companies and the operations of the business as well said tinker ross was responsible for hiring tinker at cameron ashley building products he is also a co-founder of srs distribution alongside tinker it started with buying a small bankrupt company in florida that only had six locations and 30 million in sales in the past 12-and-a-half years weve done 84 acquisitions 133 greenfield new openings and our sales are now approaching $4 billion rosss wisdom leadership and mentorship have been integral to the leader that tinker is today tinker is a living example of how the education and values provided by texas a&m can serve as a springboard for success but the greatest lesson that can be learned from the story of the 2020 summit award recipient is that when you treat people with respect and invite them to be a part of your dreams great things can and will happen
1477,dr edgar sanchez-sinencio ti jack kilby chair professor and distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university passed away on nov 20 2020 sanchez-sinencio had been a professor and researcher in the college of engineering since 1984 and leaves behind a legacy of selfless service extraordinary leadership generosity and respect he was an unwavering supporter of the department college and the university as well as his fellow faculty and current and former students this year he made arrangements to create a number of scholarships to maintain and enhance the future of young researchers in analog and hybrid electronics in addition with generous help and support of his friends and former students sanchez-sinencio created the edgar sanchez-sinencio and yolanda f de sanchez chair which will be used to support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the holder edgar is no longer with us but his storied career and legacy created through the success of his research and careers of his students as well as the new endowments in support of the young researchers will continue to feed the future successes and preeminence of texas a&m that edgar was an essential part of said dr miroslav begovic department head and college of engineering excellence professor sanchez-sinencio was the director of the analog and mixed-signal center and co-author of six books on different topics such as radio-frequency (rf) circuits low-voltage low-power analog circuits and neural networks his interests included the area of ultra-low power analog circuits rf circuits harvesting techniques power management and medical electronics circuit design his exemplary and inspired research in analog and hybrid microelectronics has found fertile ground for applications in some of the major us corporations which gladly employed his students supported his research and considered texas a&m a major supplier of the best trained workforce in that area begovic said sanchez-sinencio served in many administrative and technical capacities of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) including life fellow he was a recipient of a honoris causa doctorate by the national institute for astrophysics optics and electronics mexico in november 1995 which was the first honorary degree awarded for microelectronic circuit-design contributions he was a co-recipient of the 1995 guillemin-cauer award for his work on cellular networks a recipient of the texas senate proclamation for outstanding accomplishments in 1996 and a co-recipient of the 1997 darlington award for his work on high-frequency filters he was also a recipient of the ieee circuits and systems society golden jubilee medal in 1999 and the prestigious ieee circuits and systems society 2008 charles a desoer technical achievement award
1478,beginning in march of 2020 texas a&m university launched aggies against covid-19 a virtual design competition that invited students of all majors to identify and solve problems related to the pandemic valentina alarcon and juan cuellar from the college of engineering and leticia gomes from mays school of business teamed up to create aira a portable air purifier after placing in the top ten teams they were automatically admitted into the national science foundations (nsf) innovation corps (icorps) site fellows program where they conducted an in-depth exploration of customer discovery as part of their customer discovery alarcon cuellar and gomes conducted 33 interviews with various professionals and individuals they also conducted a random survey to determine the publics perception of air quality survey results revealed that a majority of respondents (676%) were concerned about air quality given the current pandemic and that the primary locations of concern were schools and restaurants/bars its the teams hope that while everyone can use aira it would be especially helpful in crowded areas such as primary schools and universities
1479,we wanted to address how covid-19 is thought to be an airborne virus said alarcon the goal was to create a portable device that wasnt a mask – something that was simple to use and available to the general public air purifiers are not a novel idea however; current air purifiers are either installed into a buildings heating ventilation and air-conditioning (hvac) system (ie not portable) or they use whats called negative ionization to filter the air with negative ionization negative ions are released into the atmosphere and latch onto contaminant particles such as pollen allergens bacterium and other toxins
1480,those particles then become so heavy that they fall to the ground explained gomes the issue with negative ionization is that the virus is never actually killed and theres no guarantee that particles will fall to the ground – they can also fall to the closest surface whether that be a t-shirt coffee table or handbag aira aims to use bipolar ionization an emerging technology that will kill viral particles by releasing both positive and negative ions in the air catalyzing a chemical reaction on the viruss membrane and essentially deactivating the virus studies have shown that bipolar ionization can reduce 999% of microbes including covid-19 in a matter of minutes although the creators of aira would like to move forward with producing their design they found themselves hindered by technological barriers theres only one other company in the united states atmosair that implements bipolar ionization through the use of patented tubes that are installed into a homes hvac system however aira would require a similar mechanism on a much smaller scale and the technology that aira needs to utilize bipolar ionization while remaining compact and portable is not in existence as of yet
1481,dr paula hammond professor and head of the department of chemical engineering at the massachusetts institute of technology (mit) was selected as a hagler fellow hammond will be jointly collaborating with faculty and students from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university the hagler institute for advanced study at texas a&m university invites a select group of decorated scholars named hagler fellows to conduct research with texas a&m faculty and graduate students the institutes purpose is to recruit talented faculty-researchers who strive for innovation and excellence in their respective fields we are excited for the opportunity to work with dr hammond said dr andreas polycarpou head of the mechanical engineering department she is an accomplished researcher and professor and our faculty and students will benefit greatly through this collaboration hammonds research focuses on macromolecular design and synthesis targeted drug delivery for cancer nanoscale assembly of synthetic biomaterials and electrostatic and directed materials assembly she is particularly interested in advancing translational medicine through the use of nanomaterials and polymeric systems she is a founding member of the mit institute for soldier nanotechnology as well as a member of mits koch institute for integrative cancer research and the mit energy initiative one of only 25 scientists elected to all three national academies she is a member of the national academy of sciences the national academy of engineering and the national academy of medicine she is also a member of the american academy of arts and sciences she was awarded the american chemical societys acs award in applied polymer science the charles ma stine award from the american institute of chemical engineers and the margaret rousseau pioneer award for lifetime achievement by a woman chemical engineer
1482,michael bass a doctoral student in the department of multidisciplinary engineering always knew he wanted to own a business – just like his dad and grandfather – but he didnt know how to make that a reality he had already double majored earning a bachelors degree in both electrical engineering and computer science and had started working on his doctoral degree when an email advertising an entrepreneurship course caught his eye i always wanted to do a startup but i had no idea how to go about it i had no idea what was involved he said how do you actually take something that is an idea to potentially commercializing it enter rodney boehm director of the engineering entrepreneurship program and instructor for bass first class bass took the class and has continued to be involved with the program for the past several years honing his skills by participating in all facets of the engineering entrepreneurship program currently bass is working on a startup icii technologies where he is developing technologies to implement artificial intelligence in fpgas (field-programmable gate arrays) this startup has been through the national science foundations innovation corps (i-corps) grant where he received $50 000 in funding and is preparing for the small business innovation research (sbir) grant in hopes of securing $250 000 in seed funding bass technology takes trained machine learning models and implements them into hardware for example when a camera is being used and a cat is detected artificial intelligence has made great progress in recognizing that the object is indeed a cat however that information is typically cloud-based bass is trying to get that information located on the camera itself so that every camera could better understand what it is seeing the application for this technology could be used in large area searches such as those performed by the us coast guard or in border security operations the engineering entrepreneurship program is a game-changer for engineering students bass said its giving engineering students an opportunity to learn the business side of things the use case the customer interaction the why which will put you ahead as an employee
1483,aggie hispanics in computing (ahic) is a new student organization in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university for students with an interest in exploring the technology field formed in september the group is committed to empowering hispanic/latinx students to pursue and succeed in computer science careers as well as providing educational opportunities and resources to further promote the idea that computing is for everyone officers include larry powell president; maximiliano zavala vice president; bernardo gonzalez de castilla treasurer; valeria heredia administration officer; elba garza officer; gino chacon mentoring and leadership officer; and nadxhieli juarez; professional communications officer dr dilma da silva professor and holder of the ford motor company design professorship serves as the groups faculty advisor
1484,the number of computer science job openings has skyrocketed in the past few years but tech professionals from minority groups are still severely underrepresented more specifically hispanic/latinx tech professionals make up only about 7% of the field to help increase diversity and inclusion in the field ahic looks to develop a safe space where students can connect and help each other with coursework work on passion projects brush up on or learn new computing skills and network with former students overall the officers hope that the group can be a support system for students who do not have one in their personal lives or the communities that they are involved in
1485,people say it is hard to find talented hispanic/latinx computer scientists and computer engineers but that is not true at all said da silva at texas a&m we have hundreds attending our classes right now and this organization will help better connect industry to current and former students ahic is currently looking to recruit new members and welcomes students from all backgrounds and disciplines visit the groups website for the latest news and announcements
1486,even before the coronavirus pandemic hit finding elderly care was becoming more difficult in the united states trying to find the right facility while balancing budget health concerns and time were challenges that covid-19 compounded however an interdisciplinary team of student researchers from texas a&m university are working toward a mobile solution
1487,dealing with the mental trauma of watching a loved ones memories and mental faculties deteriorate is difficult enough said team member tj falohun biomedical engineering doctoral student individuals in this position should not have to struggle to find the information that they need to make the best decision on finding care for their loved one with their application olera the team aims to provide a resource for children or spouses of elderly individuals in need of professional care and connects them to local care options while the name olera doesnt stand for anything falohun said it evokes a feeling of balance lightness and tranquility that represents the vision of their venture
1488,this not only lowers the stress involved with finding care but it drastically reduces the time that this process would otherwise take said member carter radocha computer engineering junior upon logging in users will have the ability to filter local facilities by price location and offered medical services information that would otherwise be time consuming to obtain the team which also includes business administration graduate student logan dubose biomedical engineering senior jesse phipps and biomedical engineering graduate student chidinma nzedibe began through participation in sling health a student organization where teams tackle unmet clinical needs in interdisciplinary teams the members wanted to address alzheimers and dementia
1489,before they even began app development they needed more information on what needs there were in the elder care community team members participated in the national science foundations innovation corps (i-corps) site fellows program at texas a&m this summer where they interviewed 40 people familiar with the process of searching for elderly care this helped them learn about one of the greatest challenges they would have to address a lack of knowledge on what to do when a loved one needs to be moved to a long-term care facility we imagine that our service will redefine how people seek senior care radocha said having one consolidated resource that is simplified and easy to use for anyone can significantly reduce the time spent seeking out care and increase first time matching of a care option for a senior
1490,"magda lagoudas executive director industry/nonprofit partnerships in the college of engineering said the program has impacted more than 100 student teams such as olera on campus by providing training mentor support and funding ""it was great working with olera in the site program this summer and i am super excited to see them continue their work on a very important issue for our society "" lagoudas said moving forward the team plans to launch a limited beta test to test and refine the product they also are focusing on entrepreneurial efforts now in the process of forming an llc and connecting with early adopters interested in their service"
1491,less than a year ago olera was nothing but an idea falohun said currently we have a hardworking team of eight students a prototype and several early adopters who are eager for our product launch by keeping the needs of our users first we believe we can overcome any obstacles that may arise and create a digital platform that will revolutionize elderly and dementia care to learn more about the project check out the team's website
1492,"seven engineering faculty members at texas a&m university received faculty early career development program (career) awards from the national science foundation (nsf) for their 2020 funding cycle the nsf career program offers support to early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization activities pursued by early career faculty are expected to build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research each year the nsf presents an estimated 500 career awards totaling around $250 million to early career faculty at us institutions of higher learning museums observatories research labs professional societies and similar organizations associated with research or educational activities this years recipients include: dr faruque hasanassistant professor and kim tompkins mcdivitt 88phillip mcdivitt 87 faculty fellowartie mcferrin department of chemical engineering hasans five-year research project career: synergistic design analysis and learning of intensified process systems aims to systematically detect and analyze the existence emergence and role of hidden synergistic effects in complex systems synergy is the combined effect of cooperative interactions between two or more organizations substances or other agents that is greater than the sum of their separate effects wherever complex systems exist there exists synergy or the potential for synergy hasan argues that studying and understanding synergies could unlock hidden potential across a wide swath of academic disciplines it (synergy) has a very transformative impact beyond chemical engineering said hasan biology materials science economics business and education can all benefit from a deeper understanding of synergistic effects read more about his research dr ruihong huangassistant professordepartment of computer science and engineering huangs five-year career project discourse level event-event relation identification aims to create document-level event graphs that identify the relationships (eg temporal and causal relations) between events mentioned anywhere in a document in order to better contextualize real-world events and interpret how and why they happened thus better supporting various event-oriented applications events tend to be described in a complex relationship with other events she said for example a news article describing the events of a protest without information on why it was launched would be considered incomplete read more about her research dr abhishek jainassistant professordepartment of biomedical engineering jains project career: modeling human veins and venous pathology with organ-on-chip engineering for basic translational and educational research will further his work to develop new disease models of veins to better understand how these unique structures help our cardiovascular systems function venous diseases are ranked amongst the top cardiovascular causes of death worldwide we have the opportunity to advance this model to prevent future death from pandemics that are actually vascular diseases jain said you could very quickly use these tools to find drugs to find treatments you can save lives by using these devices read more about his research dr stephanie paalassistant professorzachry department of civil and environmental engineering paal will use her career award leveraging existing knowledge and artificial intelligence to understand the performance of civil infrastructure under extreme hazard loads to leverage existing knowledge and artificial intelligence to understand the performance of civil infrastructure under extreme loads such as natural or human-made disasters like earthquakes hurricanes or fires""i will focus specifically on the application of ai (artificial intelligence) techniques such as transfer learning by leveraging available relevant large datasets to address the small datasets that are comprised by the development of these new materials and structural designs she said while my research goal focuses on augmenting human knowledge with the artificial my education goal focuses on augmenting current practices with the physical"" read more about her research dr matt pharrassistant professorj mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering pharr was awarded nsf support for his work career: electro-chemo-mechanics of li and na metal: toward dendrite- and damage-free metallic anodes of rechargeable batteries his research is investigating lithium and sodium metal anodes and key alloys as potential components of next-generation batteries and how to overcome the challenges of safety and durability currently associated with these chemistries while the electrochemistry of lithium and sodium has been studied extensively at the heart of the issue lies a mechanics of materials problem pharr said unstable deformation occurs during operation producing so-called dendrites and damage materials and mechanics-based studies are thus necessary to enable safe and durable operation read more about his research dr yang shenassistant professordepartment of electrical and computer engineering through his project career: physics-constrained modeling of molecular texts graphs and images for deciphering protein-protein interactions shen will work on computational methods to unravel how proteins interact in living systems which will allow for a better understanding of how biological systems work this can ultimately lead to the development of therapeutics to combat diseases or illnesses shen will investigate protein-protein interactions so that researchers have a better understanding of how living systems function and how therapeutics can be developed for diseases he is developing algorithms using machine-learning and artificial-intelligence techniques that will treat proteins as multimodal data from which patterns can be mined and insights can be discovered i am very excited that my ideas are supported and the project can be carried on because this is something i feel really devoted to and passionate about he said read more about his research dr ankit srivastavaassistant professordepartment of materials science and engineering dr ankit srivastavas project career: constrained slip cracking and instability in extremely anisotropic nanolayered solids will focus on understanding and modeling microstructural-scale deformation and failure mechanisms in nanolayered crystalline materials some of these nanolayered materials hold tremendous promise for technologies where reliable performance is required under extreme environments an integrated experimental and computational approach will allow us to understand and engineer fracture and instability in nanolayered materials to enhance their damage tolerance and enable their use in critical applications srivastava said"
1493,faye e and michael d smith ‘77 have contributed to the electrical engineering excellence fund distributions from this fund are at the discretion of the department head for critical departmental program needs not supported by state funding allocations after graduating from high school michael studied electrical engineering at kilgore junior college for two years he said it was the dean of engineering dr samuel canterbury '36 who set him on the path to complete his bachelors in electrical engineering at texas a&m university michael details his history at texas a&m and describes his journey in analog integrated circuit design two of my professors dr philip allen and dr randy geiger expanded my thinking into considering this emerging field he said both had recently joined the faculty were doing research in that field and had an interest in establishing a graduate program in analog integrated circuit design four other electrical engineering students and i took the plunge and so the seven of us embarked on the fabulous journey of mapping out the courses for the new degree program while doing research together all five of us became the first ms graduates in the new analog circuit design curriculum after graduating from the program michael went directly into working for motorola's telecom division eventually becoming a design engineer for a startup dallas semiconductor which went public in 1987 i had opportunities to move into management eventually running the communications business unit maxim integrated eventually bought them and i stayed pretty much until retirement he said michael and faye hope their contribution will help the department in encouraging students to develop an interest in circuit design and help facilitate their studies although most electrical engineering graduates are focusing on software somebody still has to design the hardware equipment for the software to run on and design the communications 'plumbing' that enables the internet michael said since he was one of the first graduates of this program at texas a&m michael wanted to give back to keep the analog design department thriving for future grads i simply wanted to give back to the university as a small token of thanks for the opportunities it trained me for particularly the graduate-integrated circuit design group michael said my career opportunities opened up tremendously because of my masters in electrical engineering studies and i want to support the next generation of circuit designers michael and faye have two daughters and a son their oldest daughter julie attended texas a&m and graduated with a bachelors in marketing in 2008 michael said she is faithfully training her 9- and 11-year-old daughters to continue the aggie tradition
1494,contributions to excellence funds allow our department to have a direct and immediate impact on the program and student experience excellence fund earnings are directed at the discretion of the department head to projects such as equipment acquisition facility improvements awards for teaching and research student-driven professional development activities and more if you are interested in supporting the departments goal or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1495,two former students have established the doug 99 and angie turk ‘99 endowed scholarship this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university both doug and angie were drawn to texas a&m by the rich traditions and tight-knit student body that the university offered our time at texas a&m has greatly impacted both of our careers doug said it provided an experience that was second to none has opened countless doors as former students and established a deep-rooted appreciation for the fightin' texas aggies doug said his time spent in the college of engineering taught him the importance of teamwork and allowed him to gain valuable exposure to some of the best curriculum in the academic world doug and angie note that they have been interested in giving back to the university for some time we first met in a history class in the harrington education center our freshman year our interest in giving back was inspired by our shared aggie experience doug said since then the aggie spirit has always held a special place in our marriage and in the lives of our children as for the impact their gift will have doug and angie hope it will help others to experience the true meaning of being a part of the aggie family our bond as aggies is something that really can't be explained from your first time on the third deck at kyle field that first trip to the lawn at blue bell (park) to ring dance and elephant walk there is no other experience like the one we embark on as aggies doug said ultimately doug and angie hope their gift will help build upon the aggie legacy for years to come we want to help our university continue to lead the way in engineering and stem education doug said since angie taught middle school math for several years and doug is an electrical engineer they felt the multidisciplinary engineering technology (mxet) stem educator program was very fitting to fund their first scholarship the couple has two children and although they are not yet old enough for college they regularly attend aggie sports and other events as a family
1496,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah walker assistant director of development
1497,"the simple act of blowing through a straw could soon come to symbolize a breathtaking leap forward in the covid-19 fight – and in combating other public health threats including pathogens that could cause future pandemics that simple exhaled breath is key to a new device that uses artificial intelligence (ai) to detect whether individuals should be tested for covid-19 the sophisticated breathalyzer is being developed and tested through a collaboration among a dallas-based company worlds inc the us air force and the texas a&m university system called worlds protect the device takes the form of a kiosk where a person uses a disposable straw to blow into a copper inlet in less than a minute test results can be sent to the persons smartphone worlds inc co-founders dave copps and chris rohde envision worlds protect kiosks being placed outside of factories schools military bases anywhere large groups of people need to be screened for covid-19 or other infectious diseases people can walk up and literally just breathe into the device said rohde president of worlds inc it's completely noninvasive there's no amount of touching and you quickly get a result you get a yay or nay the texas a&m system has invested $1 million in the projects development it is assisting worlds inc with engineering and design prototype building and the mapping of a commercial manufacturing process five prototypes will be tried out this fall on the texas a&m campus getting tech innovations to market is one of our sweet spots said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system this breakthrough could have lasting impact on global public health one of the prototypes was set up thursday on the texas a&m campus to test students and others aggies will be tested using both worlds protect and polymerase chain reaction (pcr) tests results will be compared to test the accuracy of worlds protect and refine its system more than 800 individuals have been tested with worlds protect already at wright-patterson air force base in ohio and brigham young university (byu) results so far suggest that the accuracy of worlds protect is comparable to pcr tests which are considered the best type of test available for diagnosing covid-19 by applying ai we are able to achieve a high level of accuracy and improve every day as more results are analyzed "" said copps ceo of worlds inc we are using pcr tests as our yardstick to see and understand our progress copps and rohde are working with the food and drug administration to obtain emergency use authorization that eventually could allow worlds protect to become an alternative to pcr tests texas a&m system experts are involved from the texas a&m college of engineering the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the secureamerica institute an organization headquartered on the rellis campus that assists with high-tech manufacturing rob gorham executive director of secureamerica said the texas a&m system specializes in helping businesses like worlds inc get through the so-called valley of death between an invention and commercial viability there's a lot of work that has to happen gorham said you have to think about standards you have to actually be able to rapidly and with agility circulate your design as well as think through all of the different supply-chain requirements inside the worlds protect kiosk a persons breath is examined for the specific volatile organic compounds that are generated by the body when someone is fighting the virus the test is done with advanced mass spectrometry technology a chemical analysis made smarter by ai worlds inc uses ai software to map the chemical code of a body reacting to the infection the copper inlet and other key interior elements are heated between each breath to clean and sanitize the device so one individual test does not contaminate another individual test dr guido verbeck a doctoral graduate of texas a&m has developed the devices key technology verbeck a university of north texas chemistry professor has worked with worlds inc software engineers since march he is a widely known expert on innovative uses of mass spectrometry his peer-reviewed research on using mass spectrometry to detect covid-19 was accepted and published recently by the royal society of chemistry dr david staack associate professor of mechanical engineering at texas a&m has partnered with worlds inc on the development of the breath-capture system for the device the system controls the variables in how people breathe so that the chemical compounds related to covid-19 are more easily identified by the mass spectrometry technology secureamerica is building additional worlds protect prototypes for demonstration at us air force bases and other department of defense locations including lackland air force base in san antonio where the devices could help screen up to 900 airmen weekly who arrive for basic training col charles bris-bois leader of the air force disruptive technology team at the pentagon will coordinate the screening of the airmen in texas he also helped arrange the devices initial testing in ohio and screening now underway at byu copps said additional device testing locations within texas are also being discussed worlds protect software also could be engineered to detect other health problems including future pandemics and bioterrorism threats it is exciting for texas a&m experts to be part of a project with so much potential gorham said we could be saving people's lives and allow the economy to come back because there's a way to detect covid-19 rapidly it means the world literally"
1498,an article written by dr qingsheng wang associate professor and director of the safety engineering program in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was selected as an american chemical society (acs) editors' choice graduate students zeren jiao pingfan hu and hongfei xu from the wang group are co-authors of the paper in the article machine learning and deep learning in chemical health and safety: a systematic review of techniques and applications which originally appeared in the journal acs chemical health & safety wang and his team examined the current literature surrounding machine learning and deep learning in the context of safety engineering machine learning and deep learning are subsets of artificial intelligence and models based on machine learning/deep learning techniques can automatically learn from data and perform tasks such as predictions and decision-making a great variety of interdisciplinary studies have shown that combining machine learning and deep learning into a comprehensive safety regime have been successful in trend identification and prediction assistance which can greatly save manpower as well as material and financial resources while both machine and deep learning have very similar goals in the context of safety engineering there are a few key differences machine learning incorporates probability theory statistics approximation theory algorithm complexity theory and convex analysis to build algorithms that can build mathematical models based on training data for predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so essentially machine learning technology can interpret huge amounts of data and offer predictions trends and make informed decisions deep learning which is a subset of machine learning uses artificial neural networks – computing systems inspired by biological neurons – as the architecture to characterize and learn data deep learning forms a more abstract high-level representation attribute category or featured by combining low-level features to discover distributed feature representations of data which can eliminate the feature engineering step of machine learning-based algorithms with increasing accuracy and are extremely useful for tasks like computer vision and natural language processing both areas are rapidly developing with great potential for application in safety engineering in the article wang and his research team analyzed and categorized more than 100 peer-reviewed papers to present a snapshot of the current machine and deep learning scholarship as well as to present a review of the progress in the area further wang highlights the challenges and the gaps in the current machine and deep learning literature concerning safety engineering acs editors' choice is a service designed to feature scientific articles of broad public interest and to make this material widely accessible to both the scholarly community and general public this is an honor given to only one article from the entire acs portfolio each day of the year
1499,every year an estimated 15 million babies are born preterm (before 37 completed weeks of gestation) and this number is rising current interventions to prevent premature births are not always successful and the health care cost to treat them is over $26 billion per year in the united states alone researchers at texas a&m university are working to produce an organ-on-a-chip model to help prevent these preterm births tissue chips also called organ-on-a-chip or microphysiological systems are hybrid microsystems that contain both microfabricated structures and human cells to mimic the multi-cellular structure of human organs dr arum han professor and presidential impact fellow in the department of electrical and computer engineering and director of the nanobio systems laboratory and also a member of the tissue chip testing center at texas a&m is leading this research along with dr ramkumar menon professor at the university of texas medical branch at galveston they received a $38 million grant from the national institutes of healths (nih) national center for advancing translational sciences (ncats) for their research on developing extracellular vesicle-based therapeutics against preterm birth through the use of maternal-fetal interface on a chip research has shown that fetal immune responses are key mediators triggering spontaneous preterm birth where labor starts early and doctors are not able to stop the labor process this accounts for about 60% of preterm births current prevention strategies do not address fetal immune responses instead doctors focus on stopping contractions to delay birth which is more of a band-aid approach instead of actually fixing the problem finding a way to reduce inflammation in the tissues at the feto-maternal interface (which helps protect and nourish the fetus) could help maintain a pregnancy and prevent spontaneous preterm birth unfortunately current intervention strategies have not been very effective in treating this problem currently to study preterm birth researchers use very simplistic cell culture models but the feto-maternal interface is a complicated three-dimensional organ structure with many different cell layers all working together to protect the baby throughout gestation han said conventional cell culture systems are two-dimensional and cannot incorporate the many different cellular layers and thus cannot mimic the complicated 3d multi-cellular structure of the feto-maternal interface animal models are also used but most animal models are structurally and functionally different from human and thus not adequate
1500,approximately 30% of promising medications have failed in human clinical trials because they are found to be toxic despite promising preclinical studies and about 60% of candidate drugs fail due to lack of efficacy ncats in collaboration with other nih institutes and centers and the us food and drug administration is leading the tissue chip for drug screening program to develop tissue chips that more accurately model the structure and function of human organs to better predict drug safety and efficacy in humans more rapidly and effectively as part of this effort ncats has just launched a new $355 million clinical trials on a chip program providing grants to 10 teams to support research in studying diseases and test drugs using organ-chip models han is leading one of the 10 teams organ-on-a-chip systems can more accurately recapitulate the complex 3d structure and functions of organ systems thus research using such a model system can lead to far superior and more relevant research outcomes han said while organ-on-a-chip research has progressed a lot in the last decade the fetal membrane a key tissue that maintains pregnancy and promotes childbirth has been neglected hans project will develop an organ-on-chip model that reproduces the structure function and responses of the feto-maternal tissue interface the chip will recreate healthy and inflammatory conditions and allow testing of compounds that can inhibit inflammation in this interface available drugs are extremely limited against preterm birth this is due to the numerous reasons that can cause preterm birth not just few factors and the complexity of the feto-maternal interface han said one of the reasons that it is so difficult to develop drugs against preterm birth is due to the limited experimental model and the difficulty of conducting clinical trials we expect that the development of fetal-maternal organ-on-a-chip models can be used as a powerful and efficient model system that can greatly accelerate new drug development this is indeed precisely what this newly launched ncats program is trying to do to see the feasibility of using organ-chip technology to generate pre-clinical data and accelerate clinical trials han expects their organ-on-a-chip research will make preterm birth research including understanding the mechanisms of preterm birth and new drug development far more effective because the chip is a far more accurate physiological model of a human organ system so the outcome of experimental results will be far more physiologically relevant this could not only save lives but also save billions in health care costs and prevent other preterm-related health issues the preterm birth rate has not declined in the past several decades he said the success of this research will produce a personalized feto-maternal interface organ-on-a-chip model that can mimic either the healthy or diseased state of pregnancy which can be used to test the effect of candidate therapeutic molecules to expedite processes toward clinical trials and/or eliminate or minimize certain steps from expensive clinical trials
1501,the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university recently launched a new student organization geared toward students with an interest in competitive programming competitive programming is an intellectual sport usually held over the internet or a local network involving participants trying to write programs to solve well-defined problems within a specified amount of time the aggie competitive programming clubs (acpc) mission is to give students the opportunity to learn practice and teach competitive programming techniques and algorithmic problem-solving skills as well as promote a healthy environment overall we just want to create a love for learning and an increased level of competitiveness for texas a&m students in local regional national and international programming competitions said tanner hoke founder and president of the acpc the club holds weekly meetings where members teach a skill or present a topic in competitive programming for discussion as well as solving practice problems all students are welcome to attend the meetings to become a member they must attend six acpc events per semester competitive programming brings an aspect of problem-solving to light that is often neglected or underappreciated said logistics officer adil rasiyani by giving students an opportunity to pursue problem-solving as more than just a means to land a job we hope to create a higher level of competence and understanding as well as strengthen critical thinking skills the acpc is also involved in organizing programming contests each semester the club hosts a big contest thats designed to allow programmers of all skills levels to participate the club also holds practice contests every few weeks exclusively for members so they can continue to build upon their skills and experience in a competitive environment in october the club held its fall programming contest on the texas a&m campus during the competition which was open to all texas a&m students participants were challenged to solve as many problems as they could within three hours on the codeforces platform in the past i have participated in some of the departments programming contests and even before i knew what competitive programming was i found the problems in these contests interesting and satisfying to try to solve said web officer alex labbane as i learned more about competitive programming i was introduced to interesting new data structures and algorithms and my problem-solving skills began to rapidly improve when i heard about the acpc i was excited to have a community of other individuals to learn alongside it has proven to be a very rewarding and motivating experience to stay up to date on the club's meetings and events visit the acpc website
1502,loren and shaw ottis 00 have established the loren and shaw ottis 00 chemical engineering endowed scholarship distributions from their generous endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at texas a&m university shaws path to texas a&m started in the fields surrounding his hometown in southeast texas his family was in the farming industry and he spent several summers growing up helping in the rice fields the agricultural roots of texas a&m combined with its superior engineering program were a great match for my background and academic interests coming out of high school he said during much of his first few years of college shaw worked full time during the summers and part time during the semesters in order to help pay for his education i was very fortunate that my parents were able to contribute to my college education but like parents of many college students there was only so much financial support they could provide he said and upper-level chemical engineering classes do not make it easy to both work part time and stay on top of your studies so i made the decision to commit full time to school during my last few semesters as i was getting to the point that i needed to take out student loans to complete my degree the department offered me several scholarships that allowed me to complete school without needing student loans now it is my turn to give back so that future students can get the same help that was so important to me at the time it was the college of engineerings commitment to shaw in the later years of his collegiate career that provided the motivation to establish this scholarship it was a debt that i had to pay back as well as an opportunity to help students that may be in similar situations as i was i really appreciated dr charles glover looking out for scholarship opportunities for me during my junior and senior years and im sure that future professors in the department will find great students that our scholarship can help as i was helped shaw said texas a&m continues to impact shaws career immensely the spirit of the university has stayed with me throughout my career he said it was an honor graduate from a&m and i feel a personal and professional responsibility to protect and grow a&ms reputation loren and shaw have three sons ages 12 10 and 5 who they hope will add to their familys aggie legacy shaw comes from a long line of aggies including his grandfather frank w perrin '40 his brother brian '98 as well as many cousins uncles in-laws and other extended family members shaw currently works at freeport lng as vice president and deputy general counsel and his family resides in houston texas
1503,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
1504,engineering a spaceship is as difficult as it sounds modeling plays a large role in the time and effort it takes to create spaceships and other complex engineering systems it requires extensive physics calculations sifting through a multitude of different models and tribal knowledge to determine singular parts of a systems design dr zohaib hasnains research shows that data-driven techniques used in autonomous systems hold the potential to solve these complex modeling problems more accurately and efficiently applying high-functioning artificial intelligence to physics-based processes he aims to automate modeling reducing the time it takes to produce solutions and cutting production costs if i am trying to undertake something along the lines of say designing a pencil there's a process involved in designing that pencil hasnain said i have a certain set of steps that i would undertake given the knowledge that i have available to me based on what others have done in the past anything that can be described by a process or an algorithm on paper can be automated and analyzed in the context of an autonomous system an assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering hasnain realized while working in the aerospace industry the delay in projects due to modeling efforts while conducting traditional modeling processes scientists and researchers must create various models many of which require testing additionally filing through individual models takes far too long to produce answers an example of a traditional modeling for space systems is computer fluid dynamics or cfd which uses numerical analysis to determine solutions resulting in hefty costs computationally and in human labor for verification i always thought that there was work to be cut out because there are autonomous systems and machines that seemed capable of handling the bottleneck that is modeling hasnain said my research is a first step in understanding how and when data-driven techniques are beneficial with the ultimate goal of taking a process that consumes months or weeks to solve and producing a solution in hours or days hasnain accompanied by assistant professor dr vinayak r krishnamurthy and graduate research assistant kaustubh tangsali conducted a study to understand how commonly used machine-learning architectures such as convolutional neural networks (cnn) and physics informed neural networks (pinn) fare when applied to the problem of fluidic prediction the data-driven approach uses a pre-existing modeling database to train a model over carefully controlled variations in fundamental physics of the fluid as well as geometries over which the fluid flows the model is then used to make a prediction their research found that both cnn and pinn have the potential to optimize modeling processes if targeting very specific aspects of the solution process they are now working on a hybrid learning approach to achieve their final goal of speeding up the design process we're looking at a different set of tools that will replace the old tools said hasnain we are trying to understand how these new tools behave in the context of applications traditionally governed by first principles-based solution techniques the researchers published their findings in the journal of mechanical design their article generalizability of convolutional encoder-decoder networks for aerodynamic flow-field prediction across geometric and physical-fluidic variations focuses on understanding dimensional tools that have the potential of replacing modeling tools that are the current industry standard from the research results hasnain hopes to build an autonomous infrastructure that pulls from a collection of data to produce modeling solutions through hybrid machine-learning architectures through algorithms and pre-existing data the infrastructure will be a modeling process that can be applied to various systems in real-life applications eventually he plans to share this infrastructure for widespread free usage i would like this infrastructure to be a community initiative thats offered free to everyone hasnain said perhaps more importantly because it can produce near on-demand solutions as opposed to the current modeling state-of-the-art which is extremely time-consuming the infrastructure is in its early stages of development hasnain and his fellow researchers are working to produce a prototype in the near future
1505,the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university announced the recipients of the 2020 distinguished graduate award and distinguished graduate legacy award at the annual scholarship and fellowship banquet held virtually on nov 12the department also recognized its donors and scholarship recipients during the eventdistinguished graduate awards
1506,paul w denham 80in his senior year of high school paul w denham 80 made a campus visit to texas a&m with his high school sweetheart elisa and his best friend both of whom had aggie relatives that visit was pivotal for denham he became the first in his family to attend and graduate from texas a&m with a civil engineering degree and his high school sweetheart later became his wifetoday as a licensed professional engineer denham leads a single-family design group in the land development division of civil engineering consultants (cec) throughout his career he was directly involved in the design and subsequent development of approximately 50 000 single-family lots in bexar county prior to cec he was the president/owner of denham-ramones engineering acquired by cec in 2016along with his full-time job as an engineer denham has also held a position on the randolph-brooks federal credit union board of directors for several years he is currently secretary of the board he has also concentrated his efforts on economic literacy within the bexar county community he served previously as chairman of the board of consumer credit counseling services of san antonio along with the subsequent transition into the financial literacy of south texas foundation
1507,john d doucet 81for as far back as he can remember john d doucet 81 was always told by his parents dudley and nita doucet that he had to attend college neither of them did but they understood the importance and the value of a college degree of all the universities he applied to texas a&m was his choice for financial reasons but it quickly became obvious to him that going there was a true blessingdoucet spent the early years of his career managing complex public and private projects with large engineering firms in texas and california in 1992 doucet and his wife amy also an aggie engineer with a bachelor's degree in industrial distribution co-founded doucet & associates inc growing the texas-based firm from the original three employees to over 80 in 2020as executive vice president doucet manages and provides oversight to geospatial planning and engineering services transportation and public works/water resources he is also responsible for contract negotiations and client relationship management having over 38 years in the civil consulting field doucet has built a solid reputation as a valuable industry resource and is regularly called on to provide expertise to panels advisory boards and professional committees
1508,raymond r longoria 77when raymond r longoria 77 arrived at texas a&m in 1974 as a civil engineering major the enrollment had just reached around 20 000 students he was looking for a smaller university experience and when he looked at the 1971 texas a&m catalog there were only about 14 000 students he thought he would give it a try and transfer to a smaller school if it didnt work out but as fate would have it there was no need longoria said texas a&m felt like the smallest large college that there ever was and he felt right at homelongoria is known for his expertise in water and wastewater treatment throughout the state of texas having served as engineer of record on some of the largest wastewater and water plant expansion and renovation projects in the state throughout his career he has directed hundreds of water and waste­water treatment projects across the state as engineer and advisor thus improving the quality of drinking water for millions of texas cit­izens and protecting texas rivers and streams by designing resource recovery facilities that consistently produce outstanding waterhe currently serves freese and nichols an account director and senior treatment advisor for the firm he is working on major initiatives along the gulf coast including fnis efforts in seawater and brackish groundwater desalination in corpus christi and with the north alamo water supply corporation
1509,dr rich s szecsy ‘92both of dr rich s szecsys grandfathers elmer szecsy and arthur collier worked with their hands they both knew what it was to be a practitioner a tinker a problem solver and thats where szecsy feels like he got his strong genetics to propel him into engineeringszecsy started his collegiate career at another university but it was limited on engineering opportunities and he found his way to texas a&m there was no question where he needed to be and it became life-changing szecsy met his wife amanda lindley 94 while sitting in a survey classnow szecsy is the chief operating officer of charley's concrete he has worked internationally as a technical expert for a $4 billion ready-mix and aggregate company a university department head and as an independent engineering consultant he serves on several state and national committees as well as boards of direction for texas aggregates and concrete association the american society for testing and materials the american concrete institute the american society of civil engineers and astm aci asce and the national ready mixed concrete association he has written and collaborated on over 40 articles and publications ranging from concrete material science to technology management and integration for various periodicals including concrete producer concrete construction and concrete international
1510,distinguished graduate legacy awarddean fred j benson '36the distinguished graduate legacy award was established in 2014 to honor remarkable former students whose life-long contributions and service have had an immeasurable impact on the civil engineering profession and society the inaugural recipient hb pat zachrys lifetime achievements serve as the benchmark against which future consideration of recipients are judged dean fred j benson ‘36 was selected as this years recipientbenson began his service to the civil engineering profession in 1936 as an instructor at purdue university when he retired in august 1980 he was deputy chancellor of engineering for the texas a&m university system and vice president of the texas a&m university research foundation he earned a masters degree in civil engineering from texas a&m in 1936his career positions at texas a&m included instructor to professor from 1937-55; executive officer texas a&m transportation institute from 1955-62; dean of engineering from 1957-78; director texas a&m engineering experiment station from 1959-80; and vice president texas a&m research foundation from 1963-80many of his friends and hundreds of former students continued to affectionately and respectfully call him dean long after he no longer officially held that title his advice to students was always to strive to do the best in every task given you tasks are a learning process and how we gain experience at his retirement in 1980 his message was simple strive for excellence
1511,a student organization in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university is not letting the challenges that come with virtual learning stop them from flourishing – even in the middle of a pandemic women in nuclear is an organization of men and women who want to advance nuclear energy and technology in the united states through advocacy education and the advancement of women the texas a&m chapter consists of 63 people were in a unique time of history where these challenges are affecting everyone on the planet in different ways in every way of life said morgan rogers women in nuclear president for students the challenge of completing a nuclear degree has been exponentially increased with the online format and social isolation win took the opportunity to find new ways to communicate and come together as students and learn outside of the classroom despite the inability to meet in person or hold large gatherings win continues to meet throughout the semester oftentimes inviting prominent researchers in the industry to speak virtually most recently theyve heard from christine czismadia director of state government affairs & advocacy at the nuclear energy institute who instructed them on how to become better advocates former student dr luz martinez sierra a space environment engineer also presented at a meeting to discuss her career and nuclear applications in the space industry this year the texas a&m chapter decided to concentrate on expanding their outreach and advocacy efforts through community education as well its a common misconception that nuclear energy is something to fear and many nuclear scientists believe that part of their duty is to educate the public about the realities of nuclear energy and its many benefits for nuclear engineers outreach and advocacy efforts include increasing community awareness and education about nuclear energy so far weve prepared materials and reached out to local school districts about training teachers how to teach nuclear science said rogers if the coronavirus continues to delay outreach plans in the spring they will look into giving virtual presentations to local school districts about the various sectors in the nuclear engineering industry rogers credits their success to the enthusiasm and determination of the students in the organization and the officers we have an incredible group of women in the officer positions this year who are ambitious hardworking and creative said rogers without the officers taking on additional responsibilities on top of their studies i dont think we would have had such an exceptional line of speakers this semester nor as much drive to continue to meet every week and find new ways to engage students
1512,the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university welcomes assistant professor stephen raiman who joins the department after four years as a staff scientist at the materials science and technology division of oak ridge national laboratory raiman received his undergraduate degree in physics at the university at buffalo before continuing with his doctoral degree in nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at the university of michigan he studies how materials behave in extreme environments more specifically he studies how the materials in an advanced nuclear reactor wear down and corrode over time lately ive been working on material interactions and compatibility with molten salts he said other research interests include radiation effects in nuclear materials ion irradiation stress corrosion cracking and high temperature corrosion over the years raiman has encountered many former aggies in different positions throughout the industry he noticed that they always had great things to say about their time at texas a&m and it was eventually this detail that encouraged his transition the department has great resources both in terms of people and facilities said raiman i believe i will have what i need to run the kind of research program i want to run and train excellent students who go on to make contributions to our field raimans biggest strength that he brings to the department is his willingness to collaborate and work with others the people ive met in the department have been very welcoming and im excited to work with colleagues who have been doing research that i have admired for a long time in addition to being a nuclear engineer raiman is also an environmentalist with interest in clean energy alternative transportation and sustainable cities
1513,dr brent bielefeldt '16 20 discovered his interest for structural design in middle school when during career day his friends dad designed an entire airplane on the computer in less than 30 minutes he was fascinated by the tools and their capabilities at this engineers fingertips eventually bielefeldts interest in engineering led him to pursue his masters and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering at texas a&m university where he began developing a tool of his own that would solve a current concern in the field of topology optimization topology optimization is the process of taking a preliminary structural design like an aircraft wing and adjusting where material should be placed to maximize the efficiency of the structure and its performance to achieve this designers rely heavily on not only math and engineering but also their intuition for both the materials they're working with and the problem they're trying to solve however designers that are unfamiliar with the responses of adaptive materials to different physical fields may be unable to effectively utilize their complex behaviors creating a major drawback if someone asks you to design an aircraft wing of a certain material how are you going to do that if you dont have experience with what that material is what its going to do and how its going to react and respond my research has focused on a tool that is flexible enough to explore the design space generate solutions that are well-performing and identify trends to give designers a starting point he explained according to bielefeldt his framework will allow aircraft designers to tailor the material and structure to a given application and discover non-intuitive solutions the added ability to consider multiple physical fields will also allow for more realistic models of complex materials and combined loading conditions potentially expediting the design process the need for this solution and the promise of bielefeldts research presented him a significant opportunity upon receiving his doctorate since graduating in may bielefeldt has been able to devote full-time effort to working on his project with leading scientists and engineers at the air force research laboratory in ohio as part of a year-long research associateship the opportunity was awarded to him by the national academies of science engineering and medicine through their highly competitive national research council (nrc) research associateship programs
1514,applications for the nrc research associateship programs go through an extensive review process by panels of distinguished scientists and engineers who evaluate the applicants academic and research record and scientific merit of their proposed research applications are assessed for quality likelihood for success and contribution of the research its always good to be doing research that you enjoy and that other people think is worthwhile and worth pursuing and that youre the person who should be pursuing it said bielefeldt so far the opportunity has given bielefeldt the space to interact with world-class engineers and be exposed to different approaches to research projects giving him a fresh perspective on engineering research in addition to getting to work with incredibly talented researchers ive enjoyed being able to collaborate on multiple projects and having the potential to shape the direction of research in the medium and long term said bielefeldt stepping outside of his area of expertise when collaborating on other projects though has been challenging for bielefeldt as well as making progress on his research in an environment affected by covid-19 he attributes his success to some of the experiences from his time at texas a&m texas a&m taught me to be self-reliant said bielefeldt i was challenged to learn critical thinking skills and become a problem solver which has helped me stay productive and continue to make progress on my research bielefeldt says the level of expectations at texas a&m and from his former advisor dr darren hartl assistant professor in the aerospace engineering department has also stuck with him and he hopes is resulting in better and more impactful research brent represented exactly the kind of student i seek to recruit to texas a&m said hartl he is hardworking with a great personality self-critical but optimistic and above all truly curious he is certain to be a strong technical leader for our nation and i hope to work with him more in the coming years
1515,lja engineering has established the lja engineering in memory of calvin t ladner 80 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university lja engineering established this scholarship in honor of their founder calvin t ladner who served as president and ceo from 1997 until his passing in august 2020 he graduated from texas a&m in 1980 with his degree in civil engineering lja is honoring calvins legacy and love of texas a&m university by establishing this scholarship in his name he was never far from his prized possession his texas a&m football coffee mug and his aggie enthusiasm seeped into everything he did said ljas current president and ceo james d ross 96 ross is also a graduate of texas a&m with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering i was drawn to the engineering school at texas a&m because of the great people and great traditions he said the lessons learned and relationships that i built at a&m have had a big impact on my career and me personally ross said lja has many aggie former students walking the halls of the company and they wanted to honor calvin through his love for texas a&m calvin loved texas a&m and having his scholarship established at his alma mater is so fitting to his legacy and to the history of our firm as well he said ross said that he and all of those at lja engineering hope that everyone who benefits from this scholarship can follow in calvins footsteps in some way there is so much to admire about him he was not only an amazing businessman but a wonderful person loved by family friends clients and employees ross said
1516,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1517,michelle scudder 80 and brooks w herring 80 have established the michelle s 80 and brooks w herring 80 endowed scholarship distributions from their generous endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at texas a&m university both michelle and brooks attended texas a&m along with their two sons mason and marshall brooks said he was determined to be a chemical engineer and attend texas a&m because it had a strong reputation as a top-notch engineering school my father had also attended a&m for a year in 1947 and he was always a strong aggie fan he said although brooks parents weren't able to complete their college education they made sure that their two sons had a path to complete theirs that was an enormous blessing that has allowed me and michelle to work around the world and experience a great diversity of cultures and business practices he said it has been a terrific experience that has resulted in friendships across the world michelle and brooks hope their scholarship will allow students to complete their chemical engineering degree at texas a&m and that in turn leads to a fulfilling professional career of their own aggie engineers have such great opportunities to help make our world a better place through their professional and personal service brooks said the high-quality chemical engineering education i received in the college of engineering changed the course of my life and we want to help provide that same opportunity to others michelle and brooks both graduated from texas a&m in 1980 michelle with her degree in journalism and brooks with his in chemical engineering while attending school brooks was president of the msc chair of msc town hall and served on the student engineers council while michelle was the chair of msc town hall their youngest son mason 07 has a degree in agricultural economics and later graduated from the south texas college of law in 2010 marshall 09 graduated from the mays business school professional program in accounting (ppa) in 2010 with a bachelors degree in accounting and a masters degree in management information systems
1518,the texas a&m college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
1519,brian and jennifer l boutte 89 have contributed to the camp build fund in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering camp build is a one-week summer camp designed for high school juniors and seniors that gives them the opportunity to explore the civil and environmental engineering program at texas a&m university and experience the aggie culture jennifer originally decided to attend texas a&m because of its civil engineering reputation and when she later received a scholarship she said the stars aligned while i didn't stay in the professional field of engineering my time at a&m impacted my career in that i learned how to collaborate tackle problems methodically and establish protocols and procedures she said initially jennifer was first inspired to establish this gift with camp build when dr robin autenrieth civil and environmental engineering department head described the program to her i hope to help future engineers attend camp build she said i would like to see more people in underrepresented communities go into the engineering field this camp allows potential students to see all the opportunities a degree civil engineering has to offer jennifer said her time as a student with autenrieth was immensely impactful and she admired that autenrieth was one of the few women in the civil engineering department while she was there her intellect and confidence was inspiring to me jennifer said both jennifer and her husband brian hope to help future aggies learn more about civil engineering and what a great field it is to get into our main desire is to help students gain a quality education jennifer said we are happy to be able to help expose young people to the field of civil engineering jennifer graduated from texas a&m with her degree in civil engineering in 1989 she and brian have two children their son matthew is a 2020 graduate of the university of michigan and their daughter marilyn is currently a student at the university of north carolina at chapel hill 22 jennifers sister michelle adams earley is also an aggie and graduated from texas a&m in 1993
1520,if you are interested in impacting the lives of future aggie engineers and would like to support the camp build program please contact patrick wilson director of development
1521,for as long as she can remember electrical engineering junior alyssa brown has enjoyed math and science more recently she has become painfully aware of the effects of global warming on the world combining her love for stem with her desire to help in the fight against climate change she decided to pursue a degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university
1522,"i wanted to do something where i could make an impact on the environment but still be within the realms of math and science and i figured electrical engineering was the best route to do that brown said i wanted to be part of the industry that could make a difference in power production and renewable energy to get a head start on accomplishing her goals brown has been working on research with dr prasad enjeti ti professor iii in analog engineering in fact she is currently enrolled in his graduate-level course on power electronics as an undergraduate student and is working on a project in his class to design an ac to dc power adapter with built-in features to make it similar to a typical ""brick"" on a laptop charger dr enjeti provided some specifications for the project but gave my partner and i design liberty for the most part brown said this project is very similar to something power electronics engineers would be working on at companies like dell microsoft apple and many others since we are also taking into consideration the cost of materials and trying to optimize the design with this in mind brown hopes to earn her doctoral degree in electrical engineering and is excited that she has the opportunity to pursue research as an undergraduate student undergraduate research has provided an avenue for brown to hone her skills and knowledge of power electronics even if she hasnt taken a course covering the subject yet"
1523,brown hopes to earn her doctoral degree in electrical engineering and is excited that she has the opportunity to pursue research as an undergraduate student undergraduate research has provided an avenue for brown to hone her skills and knowledge of power electronics even if she hasnt taken a course covering the subject yet renewable energy is one of the most effective tools in the fight against climate change power electronics can increase the efficiency of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power brown is eager to contribute in this area and her work as an undergraduate student is setting her up for a future filled with possibilities
1524,dr yan zhou 14 a former student from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university received the 2020 ronald p harrelson outstanding young manufacturing engineering award from the society of manufacturing (sme) this honor recognizes the achievements of 15 individuals age 35 or younger who have made exceptional contributions and accomplishments in the manufacturing industry i feel humbled to receive this award a significant recognition of our work in manufacturing industrial process fluids he said zhou received his doctoral degree in materials science and engineering from texas a&m in 2014 and focused his research on the interfacial interactions between biomaterials and biological systems at different scales for his graduate work now a senior research and development engineer at quaker houghton zhou is developing industrial process fluids to the primary metals and metalworking markets the courses he took and the research he did at texas a&m equipped him with the right knowledge and expertise needed to excel in his career in particular zhou attributed his current success to the materials science and engineering interdisciplinary program at texas a&m the interdisciplinary program has many exciting research areas to choose from said zhou i am grateful to my phd advisor dr hong liang who had provided me the platform and the opportunity at texas a&m zhou was the recipient of multiple awards and honors including the society of tribologists and lubrication engineers (stle) young tribologist award (2012) and the george bush presidential library foundation grant (2012) zhou also served as president of the stle texas a&m section (2013–14) materials science and engineering is an exciting program and provides a lot of opportunities for people with career goals in academia and industry said zhou if i could go back to my time at texas a&m i would like to reflect more on my projects and try to gain bigger pictures why am i doing this project why is it important why am i using x technique but not y technique besides working in the lab i would also like to take as many courses as possible to broaden my horizons sme is a nonprofit association of professionals educators and students committed to promoting and supporting the manufacturing industry
1525,dr lin shao professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university was recently awarded a university professorship he was one of four faculty members honored for having demonstrated significant and sustained accomplishments in their discipline earning them national and international recognition the award also highlights the recipients commitment to inclusivity accountability climate and equity in their departments colleges and throughout their service at texas a&m shao has been teaching at texas a&m for 14 years he is well-known by his students for his passion to always focus on the fundamentals and big-picture-scenarios as well as his ability to explain complex theories in a simple manner he strongly supports students gaining hands-on research experience as much as possible and as early as possible in their career paths and has hired about 50 undergraduate student interns so far he designs research mentoring plans for each of them while taking into consideration their individual backgrounds and interests shao has graduated 16 doctoral students so far three are assistant professors at peer institutes three are mangers at intel inc and most of the others are researchers at national laboratories as the undergraduate program advisor shao is dedicated to improving student advising retention and outreach his biggest challenge is helping prospective students better understand the variety of career paths offered by an education in nuclear engineering the efforts to further optimize our curriculum diversify career tracks and develop innovative teaching methods are forever important to us said shao shao enjoys his work as a researcher and educator and hopes his students learn to understand the value of their lifes work many people continue a career because they get used to doing the things they are doing said shao i want my students to understand that passion should be the driving force behind what they do
1526,shao is internationally known for his pioneering work in radiation materials science he directs the accelerator laboratory which is the largest university ion irradiation facility for nuclear materials testing the lab is a us department of energy national user facility and helps the nation for various alloy developments for advanced reactors shaos major interests are to understand materials behaviors under extreme conditions accelerators are used as a unique tool to emulate a reactors harsh environments he has published 230 journal papers and holds 11 us patents shao frequently served as general chair for international conferences he has been funded for more than 40 projects with a total budget of $16 million he has received many teaching and research awards including the inaugural ibmm prize in 2008 the national science foundations career award in 2009 and the tees senior faculty fellow award in 2019 shao is a fellow of american nuclear society created in 2019 the university professorship has a unique feature that allows the holder to personally name the professorship for a significant emeritus or deceased texas a&m faculty member who has served as inspiration or motivation for the holder shao hopes to name his professorship after dr robert cochran the founder of the nuclear engineering department
1527,from nov 16-19 scientists and nuclear engineers from across the globe will gather to share research and deliberate on the future and forces of nuclear energy at the 2020 american nuclear society (ans) virtual winter meeting this years theme nuclear: good for you brings positivity and hopeful aspirations to the field during a time of tension the goal is to highlight the ways in which nuclear science and technology contribute to improving the environment health care and the betterment of society the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university will have a prominent presence at the event with nine faculty members scheduled to lend their expertise and present in either a technical or plenary session dr pavel tsvetkov associate professor in the department and program chair of the reactor physics division is helping kickstart the annual event on nov 16 tsvetkov will be an alternate chair for a technical session on the versatile test reactor project a sodium-cooled fast test reactor that could become critical as early as 2026 similarly assistant professor dr shikha prasad will lead two events as chair of the local sections committee: a business meeting and a workshop the workshop will include a student-mentor mixer as well as a presentation regarding the new ans chapter in the united arab emirates and a presentation by the ans idaho chapter another key focus of the meeting is refining the way in which scientists communicate the value of nuclear technology to society as an expert in the field of radiation protection and dosimetry assistant professor dr shaheen dewji will be speaking in the presidents special plenary session panelist experts will discuss the best communications practices when it comes to informing the public and non-scientists about the risks associated with low-dose radiation levels additionally dewji will present in a technical session with one of her doctoral students hadyn kistle other speakers from texas a&m include dr sean mcdeavitt dr rodolfo vaghetto dr warren pete miller dr stephen raiman and dr jean ragusa
1528,the peer teacher program in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has become an indispensable resource for undergraduate students despite facing budget restraints due to covid-19 the department is hoping to expand their services with the financial support from engineering former students peer teachers are high-performing undergraduate students with a desire to help others succeed in the classes that they have previously done well in they help other students to understand the material taught in classes and labs practice computational thinking and improve programming skills they are in the best possible position to assist with difficult coursework having just taken the same classes the program supports 100- 200- and 300-level computer science and engineering courses students consistently rate peer teachers as a positive impact on their performance the peer teacher program was started with a generous grant but has continued as part of the departments budget after the grant expired over the years the needs for the peer teacher program have grown and the department is seeking out ways to hire more peer teachers and provide more resources
1529,senior lecturer dr teresa leyk has overseen the peer teacher program since the fall of 2007 what i dont think people realize is that that these students are bridging a gap between faculty and students that has only grown due to physical distancing measures leyk said for example the csce 121 course has over 850 students enrolled in multiple sections with only four instructors and nine teaching assistants not only that but our peer teachers are mature with an uncommon willingness to selflessly serve their fellow students leyk said when we moved all services online it was the peer teachers who set up the new discord server to allow students to continue to receive help these students organized this new server and the programs new modus operandi as their programs budget was cut by 50% due to the pandemics effect on the department they spent many unpaid hours helping the staff and students migrate to a digital landscape leyk said a typical day for a peer teacher is always filled with tons of student interaction students have the freedom to come to scheduled labs or walk-in (now virtually) during office hours to seek help with their classwork
1530,the computer science department has experienced a surge of growth in recent years but the peer teacher program has been working with the same amount of resources said scott wilkins 21 a peer teacher this semester our peer teachers are stretched thin especially during office hours and assisting with 300-level classes in fact the department has seen a 15% increase in undergraduate students in the last year alone beyond simply helping students fix their code or understand a concept i try to form a relationship with the students so that they feel comfortable coming for help on a regular basis its extremely rewarding when they've become comfortable enough that they seek you out as a resource beyond their current computer science classes wilkins said and the peer teachers services have evolved to thrive on a digital platform
1531,usually students enter the digital queue system to wait to receive help said nkemdi anyiam 22 a peer teacher peer teachers quickly pull them into separate channels and have the students share their screen and communicate via voice chat then we solve problems and correct confusion together in real time i wasn't expecting peer teaching to be as fun and effective as it currently is when asked why peer teachers are so effective anyiam said peer teachers are more in-tune with how other students think and process information and are usually able to communicate subject matter in a way students can understand i can remember review sessions given by peer teachers were a godsend to me because the peer teacher explained things so well anyiam said sometimes students don't pick up certain syntax or techniques that they need for current assignments peer teachers are the ones who catch the students who fall through the net and fill in those knowledge gaps i've seen firsthand both from the perspective of a regular student and as an official peer teacher already how lost some students can get until they receive help from a fellow student
1532,jassin zaki 22 said professors also benefit from the program as for educators students who use peer teachers feel more prepared coming to class and in general will perform significantly better and with greater confidence zaki said the peer teacher program is a system that works great in tandem with the current classroom experience the department of computer science and engineering is asking former students to consider giving to the peer teacher program support fund with any gift even as small as $25 to benefit the program and contribute to the hiring of more peer teachers for next semester
1533,i think i would want former students to know that the classes we help students with are the foundation of students degrees said peer teacher hanna mitschke 21 these challenging courses are the first computer science courses that a student takes and their difficulty and intensity can really take students by surprise students need as strong of a support system as possible to help them through these classes which is why i think the peer teacher program is really valuable both to the department and to the school
1534,contributions to the peer teacher program support fund will allow the department to have a direct and immediate impact on the peer teacher program and student experience if you are interested in supporting the departments goal or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1535,christa hvidsten is a senior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston (tamug) originally from dallas her enthusiasm for ocean renewable energy led her to pursue a degree in galveston where she is surrounded by the very thing she came to study – the sea when i was younger i did a whole bunch of sailing and watersports and i originally wanted to do oceanography but i was also really good at math said hvidsten ocean engineering combined by love for the ocean and the environment and renewable energy plus my love for math and science so once i found ocean engineering texas a&m just made the most sense now as the shortened fall 2020 semester comes to a close hvidsten took a moment to reflect on her time as an ocean engineering student q: what's it like studying ocean engineering right by the ocean a: it's pretty cool because a lot of the stuff you see happening around you just while you're living on the island you end up relating back to your major and we've gotten to do a bunch of cool things like we got to tour an oil rig and go to this oil rig museum and for my chemistry lab freshman year we got to go on a boat and take samples you're engulfed in the industry that your major is going to be in so even when youre just looking off the beach you're looking at ships and you're looking at oil rigs it puts it all into perspective q: one of the unique things about ocean engineering is the duality of our campuses where you get this great waterfront location with galveston but you're still part of texas a&m what's that like for you as a student
1536,a: i personally love it because you get all the advantages of going to a big school and a small school you have the low student-to-teacher ratio and you really get to know your professors super well and everyone knows who you are but then you also get to go to the football games and get to go participate in the big aggie events and aggie traditions it's just kind of the best of both worlds in that sense q: if you could describe the ocean engineering department in one word what would it be and why a: dynamic they're very willing to adjust to every single student and figure out ways to make it work whether that's taking an online class through college station even though i attend galveston or whatever just very dynamic and able to maneuver and help each student individually q: aside from ocean engineering what organizations are you a part of a: i was the tamug lacrosse manager and that was fun i was on the sailing team and i competed in the collegiate sailing nationals in 2018 i work for the math department grading papers and in galveston we're opening up an engineers without borders club and i got selected to be the secretary q: looking back what's something you wish youd known when you first started in the department a: it's super challenging but your professors are there to help you do not be scared to ask questions or go to office hours or to raise your hand during class or any of that because i would get really shy during class and not want to ask questions but professors are so understanding when it comes to asking questions and such i wish i'd known that it's not as intimidating as it seems q: what do you plan to do after college a: my dream career would be working in any sort of ocean renewable energy whether that's wave energy or tidal energy or offshore wind farms i would love to be working off the pacific ocean doing all that q: what led you to that career path a: i think my love for the environment and for sailing in general and the technology behind it is incredibly fascinating ever since i was a young kid renewable energy always kind of stood out to me and then i was able to combine that with my love for ocean-related topics
1537,four undergraduate students from the texas a&m university college of engineering were part of a team that placed third at the 2020 cybersecurity challenge organized by the society of hispanic professional engineers (shpe) the competition which took place during the virtual shpe national convention and included 18 teams with 64 total competitors was a capture-the-flag exercise sponsored by the national security administration shpes cybersecurity challenge focused on empowering the next generation of cyber operators throughout the country to build our tomorrow together
1538,the team consisted of jonathan gaytan 22 (computer science) abraham sanchez 22 (computer science) alexander gomez 22 (aerospace engineering) jonathan saenz 21 (computer engineering) and francisco rangel ‘22 a computer engineering student at the university of texas rio grande valley the third-place ranking earned the team a $750 prize saenz expressed that he is very optimistic about the future of this team our team was really young compared to the first- and second-place teams he said they had graduate students on their teams overall it was a great competition and next year we will be better we learned a lot
1539,more than five million americans are diagnosed with heart valve disease each year and for some of these patients a heart valve replacement may be an inevitable option mechanical valves have proven to be lifesaving for many however due to their design they fall short in their ability to replicate physiological blood flow directly impacting patients' health to further improve the health outcomes of patients with artificial heart valves dr iman borazjani associate professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university uses his understanding of fluid-solid surface interactions to simulate blood flow through mechanical valves as their name suggests heart valves are flaps of tissue that are attached to ventricles and allow unidirectional flow of blood from one side of the heart to the other if a valve becomes impaired due to disease or aging it can be replaced with a mechanical valve however research shows mechanical valves currently cannot exactly replicate a natural heart valve's movement in particular they create unnatural blood flows thereby increasing the patients susceptibility to clotting mechanical valves can replace damaged valves and can restore unidirectional blood flow but we are now finding that the flow patterns are not entirely physiological said borazjani this nonphysiological flow triggers an immune reaction causing clotting and so these patients remain on blood thinners for the duration of their lives to determine the causes of unnatural blood flow borazjani focused on the design of the mechanical valves that are made of polycarbonate a material known for its rigidity and toughness although durable polycarbonate is not flexible unlike a natural valve that can bend or bulge out of the way by the pressure coming from blood flow the leaflets of mechanical valves cannot distort their shape and stay in the middle of the flow the presence of the leaflets in the middle of the orifice when the valve is open causes the blood to form swirls called eddies picture a rock in a river as the water flows past the rock ripples form around the rock borazjani said the eddies created by the leaflets of mechanical valves are conceptually similar they hinder the streamline motion of blood borazjanis research reveals that the eddies are a result of the design mechanical valves that are currently on the market have two leaflets but bioprosthetic (tissue) valves have three leaflets the presence of the rigid leaflets in the middle of the flow creates eddies even when they are fully open however the leaflets of bioprosthetic valves bend out of the way when fully open and do not produce significant eddies looking ahead borazjani hopes their findings lead to new mechanical valve designs that provide not just symptomatic relief to patients suffering from heart valve disease but cuts their dependence on blood thinners over time he is working with a heart valve company novostia sa whose new valve design might achieve this we are still in the early stages of research and development and there is still a lot of work to be done before we can introduce new valve designs to patients said borazjani having said that my team has leveraged its knowledge in fluid-structure interaction and computational fluid dynamics to come a step closer to elucidating the mechanics that guide cardiovascular flow in our body
1540,the friends and family of walter r wilcox 81 have established the walter r randy wilcox 81 memorial endowed scholarship distributions from this generous endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university walter wilcox graduated from texas a&m with a bachelors degree in civil engineering in 1981 and a masters degree in civil engineering in 1982 he came from a long line of aggies including his mother gladys (boyett) poston 78 along with numerous of her cousins siblings and grandchildren his wife of 40 years sarah also graduated from texas a&m in 1981 with her bachelors in management poston and the rest of wilcoxs family and friends decided to create this scholarship in his honor after he passed away this august at age 61 due to covid-19 one of walters favorite things was to mentor young engineers poston said my family felt that a scholarship was the perfect way to honor my son and create an opportunity for someone else wilcoxs family and friends hope that this scholarship will provide great opportunities for someone who might not otherwise have been able to attend texas a&m we hope that the funds will be used by someone who will love texas a&m and be a role model for others poston said wilcoxs memory is carried on through his mother his children and his friends and family a successful civil engineer and lifelong aggie his legacy will be remembered not only through this scholarship but by those he impacted throughout his life
1541,the texas a&m college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
1542,for the kall family the 2020 aggie ring day was special in more ways than one though scheduled to be jacqueline kalls ring day she and her family decided to surprise her dad larry with his very own aggie ring that he never got during his time at texas a&m university larry graduated from texas a&m in 1988 with a degree in civil engineering he was initially inspired to attend texas a&m by his father and the schools reputable engineering program similarly larrys daughter jacqueline was interested in texas a&m through her fathers association as well as the college of engineerings reputation and the tradition of the university jacquelines mom yvonne said jacqueline is most like her dad; they both have an engineering mind and i know he had a lot to do with her choosing texas a&m for school and followed in his footsteps however jacqueline decided to study industrial and systems engineering instead of civil engineering like her father i chose industrial and systems engineering because i knew it was broad but could still be applied in the aviation industry she said after graduation jacqueline hopes to follow her passions in the aviation industry whether thats flying or working as an engineer i hope my aggie ring can remind me of the values i hold and help me connect to those in the aggie network while larry was at texas a&m he recalls not quite understanding the tradition of the aggie ring and didn't pursue ordering one however as he grew older he realized the importance of the ring and its symbolism over the years it was evident that there was a strong former student tradition as people always asked to see the ring that i never got he said
1543,when jacquelines ring day finally came she felt as though she couldn't receive her ring from her father without him having his own my dad is such a proud aggie who gives love and support for everything a&m as well as represents everything an aggie is so it was fitting for him to finally get his aggie gold! jacqueline and her family presented larry with his aggie ring while they were all gathered not only for jacqueline and her cousin nathaniels ring day but also to celebrate larrys birthday i was extremely surprised! family and friends gathered outside the cavalry hotel to have birthday cake and sing happy birthday larry said afterward my daughter started to say nice things about me i thought for my birthday but she started making all these references to my time as an aggie and how well i represented the aggie spirit etc before handing me my brand new aggie ring! i was thrilled to get it but even more honored to get my ring with her who knew that 32 years later i would have a daughter getting an aggie ring and she would present me with one too! for both jacqueline and larry this was a day they would never forget and shows just how strong the aggie family is this was a really proud father moment and i am glad i unknowingly had the patience to wait for such a memorable event larry said yvonne who helped orchestrate the surprise is extremely proud of her family since the first day i met larry i knew he was an aggie she said i know he had to pay his way through school and when he graduated he concentrated on paying for his education he is very humble and kind and always thinks of others first as the years went by i realized he would have never bought himself anything i knew one day i wanted to purchase his ring for him but when jacqueline was ordering her ring i knew then it was the right time for them to share this special ring day together larry and yvonne also have two sons who attend texas christian university the couple is proud of all of their children and are thankful that their entire family got to experience this unforgettable day during these challenging times
1544,the texas a&m college of engineering loves to share stories about our former students if you know an aggie who is celebrating an accomplishment and would like them to be recognized by the college please contact the office of alumni relations in addition if you are like the kall family and have multiple generations of aggie engineers in your family wed love to hear your story!
1545,a team of more than 40 engineering students from the college of engineering at texas a&m university placed second in the overall cumulative score ranking at the 2020 autodrive challenge they are currently the top team in the united states hosted by general motors and the society for automotive engineers the competition challenges teams to develop and demonstrate a fully autonomous vehicle that can navigate an urban driving course the competition events which increase in difficulty each year test both the teams car and their technical skills the texas a&m engineering team known as the 12th unmanned included students from multiple departments across the college including mechanical electrical and computer civil and computer science engineering dr dezhen song professor in the department of computer science and engineering served as the faculty project lead we are extremely proud of our team and how they overcame the unforeseen challenges brought by the covid-19 pandemic to achieve this great success said song this year was the third competition milestone of the challenge which was held virtually it was originally scheduled to be held last spring at the transportation research center in east liberty ohio but was postponed while last years competition focused on driving scenarios with static and dynamic objects the goal of this years challenge was to design a robot taxi in order to simulate an autonomous ride-sharing scenario the year-three competition went deeper into the application domain of autonomous driving said song not only did we have to deal with the known issues in a self-driving car but we also had to consider realistic challenges in robot taxi applications such as the handling of street closures or interacting with passengers with the live events postponed the teams were judged on their static event team scores which were based on presentations and technical reports that they submitted remotely these included an overall conceptual design several computer simulations and an analysis of the social responsibility aspect of their design originally designed to be a three-year competition the autodrive challenge has been extended to a fourth year which is scheduled to take place sometime in 2021 in the coming year the team will focus on updating their previous report and gearing up to show what the past three years of development and learning have produced due to the pandemic the team did not get the chance to show off their proudest development which is the vehicle itself said song but the progress that theyve made will be shown in the year four competition so we are really looking forward to that
1546,lamees el nihum received the outstanding engineering graduate student award from the texas a&m university college of engineering at the virtual engineering student awards banquet held on thursday nov 5 it is given to graduate students who have demonstrated excellence in their field and comes with a $5 000 scholarship at times it is almost surreal to be on the crossroads of engineering and medicine as if i am on a bridge between worlds el nihum said had it not been for the engineering medicine (enmed) program and its rerouting me through a year of research in the midst of medical school i may never have experienced the chance to apply my undergraduate knowledge of pipes and fluids to the more nuanced and complex world of human vasculature in addition to fulfilling her academic requirements as a master of engineering student in the newly created department of multidisciplinary engineering el nihum is also a fourth-year medical student in the texas a&m college of medicine as a pilot student in the enmed program through the multidisciplinary engineering department she helped refine the curriculum for this budding program a collaborative endeavor between houston methodist hospital and the texas a&m university system involving personnel from both the college of engineering and the college of medicine established in 2017 enmed is a new initiative that develops innovation-trained health care professionals with prior academic training in engineering el nihum is a passionate driven and motivated student with an amiable personality and professional attitude said dr debjyoti banerjee professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering james j cain '51 faculty fellow and a fellow of the enmed program she demonstrates selfless service in her extensive mentorship to premedical and medical students and demonstrates leadership in the enmed program as its first pilot student the first education track of its kind students in enmed earn both md and me degrees in four years and are required to pursue the design of innovative medical technologies el nihums curriculum differs slightly from that of her fellow enmed students in the inaugural class el nihum is a participant in the college of medicines robust and visionary md plus program in which several five-year dual-degree programs are offered to medical students she will obtain her me in spring 2021 and md in spring 2022 el nihum is also one of five research scholars recently selected to participate in the texas a&m university academy of physician scientists program ($25 million grant) with support from the physician scientist institutional award ($125 million) granted by the burroughs wellcome fund she is conducting various forms of research at houston methodist to gain insight into heart disease and develop her knowledge of the cardiovascular system for her future as a surgeon in having the unique opportunity of simultaneously being an enmed pilot student and burroughs wellcome scholar i have reaped the engineering mentorship of my enmed faculty the clinical mentorship of my interventional cardiologist and cardiovascular surgeon mentors at houston methodist and the tutelage and guidance of the many physicians and research scientists who dedicate their invaluable time knowledge and efforts to the burroughs wellcome fund curriculum all of whom i am deeply indebted to said el nihum el nihum is well on her way to achieving her dream of deploying innovative engineering tools while also becoming a heart surgeon banerjee said she is dedicated to enhancing her skills in engineering research for advancing the fields of cardiovascular surgery and interventional cardiology el nihum received her bachelors degree from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m but always had the ultimate goal of attending medical school an aspiring congenital heart surgeon she is using enmeds unique partnership to research and pursue the development of diagnostic tools that can be used to treat patients with cardiac diseases my research team and i at houston methodist have two invention disclosures in the works both centered on catheter intervention techniques for cardiovascular surgery and interventional cardiology particularly geared toward congenital heart lesions said el nihum we are further studying the hemodynamics of the geometrically complex right ventricle through 4d mri (magnetic resonance imaging) and cfd (computational fluid dynamics) toward co-validation of acute and chronic flow patterns in the right heart and ultimately diagnostic and therapeutic applications el nihum has earned her title as an outstanding student through her dedication to both engineering and medicine as she continues to push toward her goals she is continually in awe of the opportunities and people texas a&m has aided her in finding i am but one small part of a colossal effort surrounded by individuals of all walks of life and equally passionate about their work and their role in striving by the grace of god to make the world a better place she said
1547,nuclear power plants have supplied about 20% of the annual united states electricity generation since 1990 according to the us energy information administration but that energy creates high-level radioactive waste that has to be storeddr yong-rak kim professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a us department of energy nuclear energy university program grant to develop a novel system in engineered barriers to permanently isolate and contain nuclear fuel waste kim is collaborating with researchers from the sandia national laboratories and the university of nebraska lincolnwe need to find a way to store nuclear fuel waste for a long time in a very safe manner this is a huge challenge for many countries where nuclear power plants have been operated kim said we need to find a better material that is less permeable and more resistant to cracking and chemical degradation than conventional materials in challenging geological environments all of the nuclear waste that a power plant generates in its entire lifetime is currently stored on-site in dry casks which is a temporary solution for nuclear waste disposalthe fundamental understanding and resulting novel material will vastly improve nuclear waste management and support the enhanced safety and security of nuclear-generated electricity in the united states kim saidthe new engineered barrier material reinforced by inorganic microfibers will significantly reduce the threat from the long-term disposal of spent nuclear fuel this will enable sustainable nuclear energy cycles in the united stateswe are very excited to be working on this project kim said the impact is huge as we can better engineer the nations nuclear waste management more safely for the next several centuries it is also a great opportunity to work with the department of energy national laboratories and technology centers
1548,laura e and gary c timmermann 77 have established the laura e and gary c timmermann 77 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university growing up gary was immersed in the texas a&m culture through his father curtis g timmermann who graduated in 1949 my parents had four children and over the years we attended many activities and events at texas a&m so we all grew up with a love and appreciation of texas a&m he said though laura did not attend texas a&m she shared garys love of texas a&m which they passed down to their three children shannon 98 dustin 04 and aaron their youngest aaron attended the united states air force academy on a baseball scholarship and graduated in 2007 the timmermanns hope their scholarship will help recipients to build and grow an aggie history of their own we are hoping that this endowed scholarship will enable many future aggie students to create their own family legacies for generations to come gary said laura and i feel immensely blessed and thankful to have the opportunity to give back to texas a&m and to hopefully help future students experience the aggie spirit and achieve their life goals we look forward to helping make this happen gary graduated from texas a&m in 1977 with his degree in civil engineering garys brother and sister linda j jeanie 74 and david 84 both graduated from texas a&m as well laura graduated from the university of texas permian basin with a degree in art and a minor in education
1549,the texas a&m college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
1550,"david s zachry '85 advisory council member of the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university is the 2020 recipient of the american road and transportation builders association's (artba) highest honor the artba award the award was presented on oct 20 during a special ceremony at the organization's national conventionzachry has more than 30 years of professional success at zachry corporation and was recognized for his artba volunteer leadership service as a two-term (2015-17) chairman senior vice chairman first vice chairman vice chairman at large and vice chairman of the transportation development foundation zachry holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from texas a&m and an mba from the university of texas at austin he served three years of active duty in the united states army including domestic and international assignments and airborne school""david zachry is always ready to give of his time and expertise to our students and his professional community "" said dr robin autenrieth department head and ap and florence wiley professor ""our department bears the zachry name which reflects the enduring success of three generations of graduates from this family who have helped to transform the built infrastructure around the state and beyond and generously supported the next generations of our graduates""he is a third-generation zachry in the company founded by his grandfather hb ""pat"" zachry in 1924 today the san antonio-based firm builds unique large-scale projects worldwide with high integrity and innovation highways bridges waterways museums music halls hotels and hospitals are among the many projects that provide noteworthy infrastructure solutionszachry helped develop and advance an innovative revenue and tax reform package to increase federal transportation infrastructure investment by providing long-term stability for the highway trust fund (htf) the htf is the source on average of more than 50% of highway and bridge capital investments made by state governments annuallyhe launched the safety certification for transportation project professionals™ (sctpp) the construction industry's only internationally accredited safety program the sctpp seeks to significantly reduce the number of safety incidents in and around us transportation project sites nearly 500 industry professionals have earned the certification credential since its late 2016 launchzachry also played a significant role in moving the artba women leaders council strategic plan forwardestablished in 1960 the artba award recognizes individuals for outstanding contributions that have advanced the association's broad goals recipients have included more than 25 us senators or representatives two us secretaries of transportation several governors and dozens of top leaders and executives from government and the private sector of the transportation construction industry"
1551,the texas a&m college of engineering is proud of our former students like david s zachry who display aggie core values such as loyalty selfless service and leadership if you know an aggie who is celebrating an accomplishment and would like them to be recognized by the college please contact the office of alumni relations
1552,even in the era of smartphones and self-driving cars the grim reality of our ever-modernizing world is that there are communities that still lack electricity and potable water making matters worse these underserved communities are often isolated from centralized power and water treatment plants making them largely dependent on infrastructure development for access to basic amenities researchers at texas a&m university have come up with an economical green solution that can help underprivileged communities with their water and electricity needs their standalone water-energy nanogrid consists of a purification system that uses solar energy to decontaminate water furthermore the setup they said is mathematically tuned to utilize solar energy optimally so that the water filtration is unhindered by the fluctuations of solar energy during the course of the day to serve areas that are remote and isolated the infrastructural cost of laying down new water pipes or setting up an electricity grid is enormous and can take a very long time said dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering to overcome these hurdles we presented a cost-effective solution that uses solar energy to both purify water and generate electricity for basic household use the researchers have described their technology in the journal applied energy in the united states the colonias represent one of the many rural low-income communities along the texas-mexico border where basic resources are not readily available since the colonias are very remote their residents consisting of mainly migrant workers are isolated from major utility and water treatment facilities and thus have limited means for electricity and more essentially safe drinking water moreover even methods like boiling water are extremely cost-prohibitive and inadequate boiling water is one of the most expensive ways of decontamination because it takes a lot of energy to heat water said dr shankar chellam professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering also although boiling gets rid of biological contaminants it does not remove many chemical contaminants we needed a solution that could address both these problems at the same time an efficient way to decontaminate water is by passing it through purification systems these machines utilize pumps to push water through a filter however the pumps require electricity which is again scarce in the colonias so the researchers looked for a solution that would help with both the power and water requirements of the colonia residents first to cut the dependence on centralized sources of power and water xie chellam and their team conceptualized an energy-water nanogrid which is a standalone truck-mountable filtration system whose pumps could run on solar-generated electricity next they developed a cost-minimization mathematical scheme called scenario-based optimization framework that minimized the total expenditure for the standalone setup by selecting the type of filter the number and size of solar panels and the size of the solar battery
1553,this model revealed that if nanofiltration a type of purification technique was used harvesting solar energy just during peak availability was sufficient to run pumps and purify water in other words the water nanofiltration system was largely unaffected by the day-to-day vagaries in solar energy and could purify enough water to meet the weekly water needs of the community in this way any excess solar power that was not used for filtration could be stashed away either for storage in the battery pack or for other minor basic household needs like charging cell phone batteries overall the researchers noted that although the nanofiltration system is more sophisticated and expensive than other filtration methods its overall merit is that it can successfully desalinate and remove chemicals like arsenic present in local groundwater thus they said nanofiltration is a preferable method for desalination and water purification for other remote regions where the contaminants within the water are not already known we have for the first time used a very rigorous mathematical approach to interlink water purification and energy provision said chellam this lays out a quantitative framework that can be used in not just the colonias but in any scenario based on local conditions other contributors to the research include m sadegh modarresi from burns & mcdonnell in houston who obtained phd from texas a&m; bilal abada from the civil and environmental engineering department at texas a&m and s sivaranjani from the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m this work was supported in part by the texas a&m engineering experiment station the texas a&m energy institute and the national science foundation
1554,texas a&m university alumni david henderson was recently named the department of nuclear engineerings distinguished former student an award given annually to alumni who embody texas a&ms core values in their research and career henderson received the award for his exceptional years of service with the department of energys office of nuclear energy henderson chose to study nuclear engineering at texas a&m university on a gut instinct the nuclear engineering program stuck out to me because i saw it as one of the bigger challenges to tackle said henderson the challenge and the complexity of the field excited me as a graduate student henderson completed his masters thesis under dr john poston he wanted to pursue the topic of nuclear waste however the department didnt have an established set of courses available for that area of study together they created a custom interdisciplinary track for henderson and he completed his thesis work on the radiological consequences of a range fire over the hanford nuclear waste ponds my classmates would jokingly say that i wasnt a ‘real graduate student but i made my own path said henderson soon after graduating henderson was offered a position with the department of energy (doe) to help manage nuclear research and development within months they began putting him in charge of his own projects and by his first year he was developing a program on nuclear hydrogen research henderson who said he barely passed chemistry was a bit terrified at being referred to as the hydrogen expert i found that with the government while you may start off with a lower salary the opportunity for advancement is much quicker than in industry he said while henderson still works with the doe he took three years off to move to paris where he worked at the nuclear energy agency i had minored in french as an undergraduate and i really wanted to give my kids exposure to life outside of america said henderson this time henderson was looking at nuclear reactor deployments and technology development on a global scale he would review various countries energy policies and try to determine for example whether they were setting reasonable goals for the future in late 2018 henderson and his family returned to the united states where he currently works as a program manager for advanced modeling and simulation research and development with the doe he recently managed the close out of one major program – the consortium for advanced simulation of light water reactors – and the reorganization of another – nuclear energy advanced modeling and simulation – to ensure that does modeling program would effectively address the needs of both existing light water reactors and the future deployment of non-light water reactors henderson has some advice for current students first he advises that undergraduate students take at least one class outside of the nuclear engineering curriculum especially social sciences or communication for one the industry needs to communicate and relate in order to survive said henderson but also most people in the nuclear industry do not have a nuclear degree while many reactor designers and operators have a nuclear degree henderson spends most of his time collaborating with colleagues who have a background in chemical mechanical or electrical engineering for example and his biggest piece of advice dont give up especially to a nuclear engineering student stick with it he said because its very difficult but youll come out with a degree that enables you to understand a range of technologies speak intelligently and be proficient in related engineering fields as well
1555,over the past two years a texas a&m university team in the department of aerospace engineering has been working to make personal flying vehicles a reality as part of the gofly prize competition sponsored by boeing the gofly prize a two-year $2-million international competition to create a personal flying device launched in september 2017 and had almost 3 000 innovators across 110 countries competing in phase i the challenge was to create a device that can be flown by anyone regardless of experience 20 miles without refueling or recharging with vertical or near vertical takeoff and landing capability under dr moble benedict associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering a team of eight texas a&m aerospace engineering graduate students and two researchers from nasa created harmony as outlined in their written report harmony is a compact rotorcraft designed to minimize noise and maximize efficiency safety reliability and flight experience as part of phase i the team built a 1/8 scale prototype to demonstrate their vehicle design they were awarded $20 000 as one of the 10 winning teams in phase i and went on to build a prototype named aria to win the $50 000 prize for phase ii the texas a&m team was the only united states university team out of the five phase ii winners winning both phases i and ii of the gofly prize especially with such fierce competition brought a lot of excitement and confidence to the team said benedict
1556,phase ii involved hundreds of hours of lab testing to successfully verify their full-scale aerodynamic and acoustic predictions despite the countless hours the team has put in to developing aria they have never lost their positive energy or focus on the end goal although the hours have been long and exhausting i'm very excited about gofly said team member farid saemi i would not have enjoyed such a hands-on opportunity to develop a new field of aviation even if i had gone straight to industry as a recent graduate throughout the process the team worked to address practical issues that needed to be overcome including the size of the personal flying vehicle and the high noise levels generated the vehicle has to be less than 85 feet – something that can fit in a garage like a car and take off almost vertically helicopter rotors are very big because of the trade-off between efficiency vs compactness of a rotor said benedict we have carefully chosen a configuration that can give you very high efficiency for the given footprint to address the noise the team shaped the blades to minimize the rotor noise as much as possible at 73 decibels 50 feet in the air (the equivalent of highway noise in a car) aria was also the quietest prototype at the competition and is also believed to be the quietest rotorcraft in the world at this size scale the final personal flying vehicle can be no larger than 85 feet capable of carrying a payload of 200 pounds and must travel at a speed of at least 30 knots because the teams vehicle crashed during a flight test 10 days prior to competition they were only able to fly their one-third scale prototype for phase iii in february 2020 however harmony was one of the four teams that could fly at any scale during the final fly-off since none of the competing teams could meet the gofly requirements in the final fly off the competition still remains open benedict and his team at texas a&m intend to continue competing for the $1 million grand prize provided they can obtain university support to build the next prototype based on the new gofly rules (to account for covid-19) harmony could even demonstrate the flight capabilities of their new prototype at the rellis campus and win the grand prize benedict is confident that had the team flown the full-scale model they would have won the competition; he intends to compete in the next gofly phase with a stronger and more innovative prototype theyre currently analyzing what theyve learned from the gofly competition to improve their design in the next competition since their phase ii success the team has also built and successfully tested both the one-third scale prototype (at 22 pounds and the full-scale prototype (at 550 pounds) benedict said the visibility and success the team has had from the gofly challenge has put texas a&m on the map for evtol (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aviation this also paved the way for two research grants we recently obtained one from the army research lab on hybrid-electric aviation the other from air forces agility prime program to develop quiet propulsors for evtol aircraft the team is also grateful for the financial and commercialization support from brad worsham 88 associate professor of practice in the department of aerospace engineering texas a&m engineering experiment station office of commercialization and entrepreneurship and ray rothrock 77 texas a&m team members include david coleman farid saemi carl runco atanu halder bochan lee hunter denton vishaal subramanian and benedict more information on benedicts research can be found at his website
1557,dr yassin hassan from the department of nuclear engineering and the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university recently received the regents professor award from the texas a&m university system established in 1996 the regents professor award program was created to honor individuals at the rank of professor whose distinguished performance in teaching research and service has been exemplary it is the highest honor bestowed by the texas a&m system on faculty members these individuals exemplify the commitment to excellence in research and service that sets a&m system employees apart said elain mendoza chair of the board of regents hassan joined the nuclear engineering department at texas a&m as an associate professor in 1986 and has since served as the associate interim and full-time department head (from 2013-18) he is a fellow of the american association for advancement of science the american nuclear society and the american society of mechanical engineers he was the recipient of the 2020 distinguished alumni award from the grainger college of engineering at the university of illinois hassan is a subject matter expert regarding nuclear microreactors for the department of defense
1558,glioblastoma multiforme or glioblastoma is the most common cancerous brain tumor originating fully in the brain and never spreading outside of brain tissue although a glioblastoma is common its a very aggressive tumor that currently has no known cause and no known cure a team of researchers led by dr shiren wang associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university received a texas a&m x-grant for research on photothermal therapy to treat glioblastomas this research topic was one of eight topics chosen out of 142 submissions the eight proposals will share a total of $7 million in funding over three years with wangs initiative being awarded $1275 million a glioblastoma has tentacles that stem from the mass of the tumor and spread throughout the brain so even when a patient has an operation it is almost impossible to remove the tumor in its entirety all glioblastomas are classified as stage iv tumors because of the abnormal cell makeup and because of how quickly they can appear a glioblastoma is exceptionally difficult to operate on because it resembles healthy brain tissue so closely that the two are indistinguishable from the other when a patient undergoes surgery to remove the tumor making smaller tumors inoperable current treatments include chemotherapy or radiation therapy but these treatments at best only keep the tumor from growing and a glioblastoma is often resistant to these treatments the average life expectancy of a patient with a glioblastoma is approximately 14 months with a 5-year survival rate of 56% the photothermal therapy that wang is researching uses a noninvasive infrared light used to smartly ablate the brain tumor tissues with the use of this infrared light coupled with smart gold/peptide nanoparticles surgeons will be able to remove the unhealthy cells without any damage to the healthy ones the smart gold/peptide nanoparticles are given intravenously which then assist the infrared light in providing a localized site to effectively show the tumor against healthy brain tissue because of tumor microenvironment-induced light response the particles will stay in both the normal cell and the tumor cell but in the tumor cell the nanoparticles were responsive to the light in this case we can selectively remove the tumor wang said the infrared light heats up to around 46 degrees celsius to burn the tumor in approximately five minutes you dont know which cell is which it makes (the tumor) difficult to identify you cannot label it but you do not want to remove brain matter by mistake wang said in another part of the body like the lung or if you are dealing with breast cancer you can cut the tumor out and its not as difficult to identify but in the brain it is a much bigger deal if the cut you make is wrong the patient will lose some kind of brain function wang said there are two main drivers behind his initiative to improve the survival rate of individuals diagnosed with glioblastoma and pain reduction to improve the quality of life in patients individuals diagnosed with glioblastoma currently have a very low survival rate because of the recurrence of the tumor with this initiative the survival rate will improve significantly and there are less prescription pain killers involved it is impossible to completely remove the tumor by surgery this is noninvasive and can improve the life quality and reduce the pain for the patient wang said we can reduce the recurrence of the tumor and as a result the survival chances will be significantly improved the transdisciplinary team from texas a&m also includes: zi jing wong department of aerospace engineering karen wooley college of chemistry fadi khansawneh college of pharmacy roland kaunas department of biomedical engineering robert tsai institute of biosciences and technology jun zou department of electrical and computer engineering about the x-grants programthe x-grants program is an initiative by texas a&m to bring faculty and researchers together across disciplines as part of the presidents excellence fund the aim is to introduce creative ideas and research to address important issues in our modern-day world spanning from cancer therapy and treatment to agriculture the commitment is $100 million over 10 years to fund faculty research
1559,the 2020 atlantic hurricane season was one for the record books there were 30 named storms and 12 hit the united states coastlinedr james kaihatu professor and associate department head of research in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university joins a team of researchers to examine and address the vulnerability of petrochemical facilities along galveston bay to flood-induced chemical spills and releasesin a robust partnership with the college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences the college of engineering the school of public health and the college of architecture at texas a&m and the galveston bay foundation researchers with the environmental defense fund will conduct modeling and analysis to identify which facilities are most at risk and what solutions such as natural infrastructure might reduce those risks and lessen impacts to nearby communities and ecosystemsthe unique collaboration leverages expertise across multiple disciplines that will inform strategies for other vulnerable coastal areas with heavy industrial footprints such as in neighboring louisiana the gulf research program of the national academy of sciences engineering and medicine awarded the three-year grantin his role kaihatu will create and run computer models for flooding of petrochemical facilities due to urban runoff and hurricane-induced surges hes done related work with the texas a&m superfund center in recent years
1560,the model will use information on incoming flood and surges to simulate and analyze flow patterns in the vicinity of these facilities and determine what would happen if chemicals inside these facilities were released in the floodwaters he said a significant portion of the land use around these facilities are residential in addition to these facilities proximity to the baychemical spills carried in floodwaters would pose a substantial risk to residents and the ecosystem of the bay low-income underserved communities along the gulf coast are at the most significant risk from releases of chemical contaminants these releases can also result in closure of fishing grounds with devastating effects to commercial fishing fleets and related jobspart of the work will include identifying how and where natural features can reduce flood risks and environmental impactsnature-based solutions for flood mitigation will be examined to minimize the effects of these possible contaminant spills kaihatu said
1561,two faculty members from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university were named 2020 distinguished members of the association for computing machinery (acm) for their outstanding scientific contributions to computing the two inductees were dr tracy hammond and dr shuiwang ji all 64 of the inductees are longstanding members of the acm and were selected by their peers for their significant accomplishments in the field of computing computer science or information technology that have moved the computing world forward hammond is a professor and director of both the institute for engineering education and innovation and the sketch recognition lab she also serves as chair of the engineering education faculty hammond is an international leader in artificial intelligence data science machine learning haptics intelligent fabrics smartphone development and computer-human interaction research ji is an associate professor and director of the data integration visualization and exploration lab he is also an associate editor for the journals institute of electrical and electronics engineers transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence acm transactions on knowledge discovery from data and acm computing surveys jis research interests include machine learning deep learning data mining and computational biology view the full list of the 2020 acm distinguished members inductees
1562,robin rae and william p bill jensen 85 have established the jean p and william m jensen endowed scholarship distributions from their generous endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering at texas a&m university bill and robin established this scholarship in bills parents' names because of the love they have for texas a&m and their support of higher education although neither of them attended texas a&m bill says his father saw himself as an adopted aggie and loved every aspect of the university as for bill he was a first-generation aggie and was initially drawn to texas a&m because of the engineering program but was also attracted by its rich history and tradition the analytic skills i learned at a&m while earning a degree in industrial engineering have served me well in my practice but most of all the a&m core values and network have made a tremendous impact on my career he said
1563,additionally bills grandfather was a college professor and lifelong educator at both the university of wyoming and texas a&m his grandfather felt strongly about paying it forward and bill shares those same beliefs i am also a firm believer in paying it forward and want to be able to give back to students in financial need he said bill and robin hope their scholarship will have a positive impact on its recipients and that it will inspire them to one day help future aggie engineers i am hopeful that the endowment will provide a lasting scholarship for many students attending a&m and that likewise they will pay it forward he said since graduating with his degree in industrial engineering in 1985 bill went on to earn his law degree from st mary's law school in 1989 and has been a patent attorney for 31 years bill and robin have two children parker and alexandra parker is a junior at schreiner university and may attend graduate school at texas a&m and alexandra has been accepted to mays business school at texas a&m
1564,the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial & systems engineering is celebrating its 80th anniversary in the coming years the departments goal for this celebration is to have 80 scholarships for the 80 years the department has existed endowments supporting the students in the department have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the departments goal or would like more information on how you can give please contact john berheim senior director of development
1565,amanda gibbens a former student in the department of biomedical engineering recounted her time at texas a&m university expressing her love for the time she spent here and all the things she was able to accomplish gibbens journey at texas a&m started with her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and led her to continue her academic career earning a masters degree during this time she participated in the engineering entrepreneurship program earning her concept creation and commercialization (c3) certificate among her many achievements gibbens received the jackie price dunn 02 endowed aggie ring scholarship which has been her proudest accomplishment the moments i cherished the most were those when i received my aggie ring gibbens said wearing my aggie ring is an honor i have hoped for ever since i first stepped foot on campus at the university she realized the ring represented everything she loved about texas a&m including core values comradery and the aggie spirit because of this she decided to pursue everything the university had to offer without abandon she immediately delved into the engineering entrepreneurship program by competing in aggie invent competitions i was lucky to start my first competition with an outstanding and diverse team that achieved first place after developing a hands-free functioning prototype to solve opening/closing and unlocking/locking doors for the visually impaired gibbens said after her first competition gibbens said she was hooked and went on to challenge herself in three more competitions gaining recognition in all three it was clear to her that the engineering entrepreneurship program was meant for her from making music production software more accessible to those with low vision to reducing carbon emissions in urban buildings i loved being able to tackle real-world problems outside of my degrees area of expertise gibbens said she decided to pursue the c3 certificate because she found its classes to be a great supplement to what she learned in her classes in biomedical engineering this certificate provided by the engineering entrepreneurship program aims to give undergraduate and graduate engineering students a chance to hone their entrepreneurial skills and become a self-starter of the many projects she has worked on through the certificate program gibbens said that she has developed a concept and gained customer validation for a device that allowed nonintrusive early detection of events that lead to infant mortality she hopes to one day continue the project into the prototyping phase and establish it as a potential start-up endeavor her time at texas a&m did not come without its challenges however in the bulk of the toughest coursework in her undergraduate degree her gpa dropped and she nearly lost her organization leadership positions to academic probation it was a struggle to overcome the stress that accompanied what in my eyes at the time was a complete failure gibbens said luckily i soon came to realize that a gpa is not what defines the knowledge you have gained
1566,she found new knowledge through perseverance during tough times as she wrapped up her engineering academic career at texas a&m gibbens said she is very thankful for the aggie network and the mentorship she has gained from faculty of the most meaningful she appreciates the professors of practice in the biomedical engineering department and members of the engineering entrepreneurship program network building warm introductions to job recruiters learning by example and a plethora of advice and insight into the engineering industry are just a few of the perks that professors of practice have imparted on my education gibbens said my sincerest thanks go to rodney boehm jim machek and alan brewer they truly make an impact on aggie engineers gibbens now works at fannin innovation studio in houston as an entrepreneurship fellow she chose this position specifically because it aligns with the career path she has in mind and because she was ready to jump into a workplace where she could contribute meaningfully gibbens knows that regardless of where she ends up the skills and knowledge she has gathered through texas a&m will further build her career
1567,"both a machine-learning algorithm and an engineer can predict if a bridge is going to collapse when they are given data that shows a failure might happen engineers can interpret the data based on their knowledge of physics stresses and other factors and state why they think the bridge is going to collapse machine-learning algorithms generally can't give an explanation of why a system would fail because they are limited in terms of interpretability based on scientific knowledge since machine-learning algorithms are tremendously useful in many engineering areas such as complex oil and gas processes dr akhil datta-gupta is leading texas a&m university's participation in a multi-university and national laboratory project started sept 2 and initially funded by the us department of energy (doe) with $182 537 to reduce this limitation he and the other participants will inject science-informed decision-making into machine-learning systems creating an advanced evaluation system that can assist with the interpretation of reservoir production processes and conditions while they happen hydraulic fracturing operations are complex data is continually recorded during production processes so it can be evaluated and modeled to simulate what happens in a reservoir during the injection and recovery processes however these simulations are time-consuming to make meaning they are not available during production and are more of a reference or learning tool for the next operation the doe project will create an advanced system that will quickly sift data produced during hydraulic fracturing operations through physics-enhanced machine-learning algorithms which will filter the outcomes using past observed experiences and then render near real-time changes to reservoir conditions during oil recovery operations these rapid visual evaluations will allow oil and gas operators to see understand and effectively respond to real-time situations the time advantage permits maximum production in areas that positively respond to fracturing and stops unnecessary well drilling in areas that show limited response to fracturing ""it takes considerable effort to determine what changes occur in the reservoir "" said datta-gupta a university distinguished professor and texas a&m engineering experiment station researcher ""this is why speed becomes critical we are trying to do a near real-time analysis of the data so engineering operations can make decisions almost on the fly the texas a&m teams first step will focus on evaluating shale oil and gas field tests sponsored with doe funding and identifying the machine-learning systems to use as the platform for the project next they will upgrade these systems to merge multiple types of reservoir data both actual and synthetic and evaluate each system on how well it visualizes underground conditions compared to known outcomes"
1568,at this point datta-guptas research related to the fast marching method (fmm) for fluid front tracking will be added to speed up the system's visual calculations fmm can rapidly sift through track and compress massive amounts of data in order to transform the 3d aspect of reservoir fluid movements into a one-dimensional form this reduction in complexity allows for the simpler and faster imaging using known results from recovery processes in actual reservoirs the researchers will train the system to understand changes the data inputs represent the system will simulate everyday information like fluid flow direction and fracture growth and interactions and show how fast reservoir conditions change during actual production processes we are not the first to use machine-learning in petroleum engineering said datta-gupta but we are pioneering this enhancement which is not like the usual input-output relationship we want complex answers ones we can interpret to get insights and predictions without compromising speed or production time i find this very exciting
1569,lucia (lucy) and kevin leonard have established the lucia a '93 and kevin p leonard '92 undergraduate petroleum ventures program scholarship endowment distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering at texas a&m university both lucy and kevin were the first in their families to attend texas a&m and were drawn to the university specifically for its engineering program i knew i wanted to study engineering and texas a&m was known for having an outstanding engineering program kevin said plus college station offered a distance from home that was far enough away to be on my own but close enough so that my parents could visit occasionally lucy also knew she wanted to be an aggie growing up texas a&m was the only school i applied to and it was five hours away from my hometown i was drawn to the engineering program at a&m and petroleum was the perfect fit she said the leonards feel that texas a&m not only gives students an outstanding education but so much more being an aggie teaches you about respect service leadership loyalty and more they said its the overall experience that makes a great student a great employee and a future leader we are thrilled to help aggies get this education and experience they felt that now was a good time to establish an endowment to help support future aggie petroleum engineers and leaders in the industry the petroleum industry has been good to us weve enjoyed the friendships comradery and career opportunities that it has provided our family over the past 25 years and hope that others enjoy what it has to offer for the next 25 years and beyond they said the leonards know how important financial support of any kind is for students they also hope that their gift to future aggie petroleum engineers as they reflect on their lives and careers will inspire them to establish a gift to texas a&m when they feel the time is right kevin and lucia graduated from texas a&m with their bachelors degrees in petroleum engineering -- kevin in 1993 and lucia in 1994 together they have two children their oldest is a freshman at texas a&m majoring in public health and is in the class of 2024 their youngest is in third grade and they hope he will also attend texas a&m
1570,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
1571,an essential component of engines used in aircraft and power generation is a gas turbine the efficiency of these machines can be significantly amplified if they are made of materials that can endure harsh environments such as high temperatures these high-performance futuristic turbines will have the potential to benefit not just the aviation and power industry but also consumers by reducing their energy costs to develop such ultrahigh temperature-resistant materials particularly those that can tolerate 1 300 c or at 1 800 c with coatings the us department of energy recently awarded $16 million to 17 projects as a part of phase 1 of the advanced research projects agency-energys (arpa-e) ultrahigh temperature impervious materials advancing turbine efficiency (ultimate) program a team led by dr raymundo arróyave professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has received $12 million to investigate a class of metals called refractory high entropy alloys (rheas) that can withstand higher operating temperatures finding a ‘printable refractory that would enable the next-generation ultra-efficient gas turbines is quite a scientific and technological challenge that will require that we at texas a&m university and our partners at brown university oak ridge national laboratory ames laboratory and thermo-calc inc push our scientific know-how to the limit we are very excited to take on this project said arróyave arróyaves project batch-wise improvement in reduced design space using a holistic optimization technique (birdshot) aims to identify the chemistry of promising rheas alloys by using an interdisciplinary approach that combines physics-based modeling machine learning and artificial intelligence as well as integrated high-throughput synthesis and characterization platforms arróyave said this investigation has the potential to discover alloys that can withstand the extreme environments retain compatibility with protective coatings and can be 3d printed to make custom parts for gas turbines all of these enhancements can result in significant energy savings in power generation and transportation a major challenge that our society faces is how to do more with less consuming less fossil fuels while sustaining and even augmenting our energy sources and expanding our options for safe faster and more convenient air travel is an imperative if we are to maintain our economy and keep our environment healthy arróyave said as indicated by the department of energy in their news release phase 1 will have ultimate teams demonstrate proof-of-concept alloy compositions coatings and manufacturing processes through modeling and laboratory scale coupon testing of basic properties as phase 1 concludes the findings of the teams will be reviewed and assessed for additional funding in phase 2 up to $14 million in additional funds will be available to selected teams i believe that ultimate is just the start of a broad technology development program that has significant opportunities for further development said arróyave finding materials capable of withstanding increasingly harsher operating conditions is an imperative in the energy civilian aerospace and defense sectors and the truth is that much of the science of materials under extreme conditions remains to be done there are very exciting years ahead of us
1572,hospital-acquired infections are a global health problem that threatens patients treatment in intensive care units patients who require intubation are at a higher risk of contracting life-threatening cases of ventilator-associated pneumonia dr vanderlei bagnato a hagler faculty fellow with the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is testing a new cleaning method that may stop these bacteria from spreading bagnatos work based out of his lab in brazil is focused on using the power of light to destroy bacteria living on the endotracheal tube (ett) a medical device placed in the patients trachea to assist breathing and deliver oxygen into the lungs bagnato said that while the trachea tends to be filled with different bacteria that an individual breathes in these microorganisms can be attacked by the bodys immune system when people are intubated very often they do develop pneumonia because that strange surface has no contact with the bodys circulation so your body cannot fight it bagnato said the immune system cannot get to it thats why its dangerous the doctor has to come with very strong antibiotics which fight an infection theres also concern that aggressive use of antibiotics will lead to more antibiotic-resistant bacteria also referred to as superbugs
1573,as a physicist bagnato professor in the department of physics and materials science at the university of são paulo in brazil works with light as a physical element one common technique he uses is photodynamic inactivation where certain molecules are exposed to light and produce a free radical oxygen molecule which is destructive placing these molecules in the body can help with a variety of treatments including cancerous tumors the same thing happens to the microorganism bagnato said if i put a molecule and the microorganism close together that molecule in the presence of light will produce the reactive oxygen and then destroy the bacteria the aim of bagnatos work is to prevent the progression of an infection as soon as possible after a patient is intubated i consider this a very nice addition to the present technology of artificial breathing because infection developed in the mechanical ventilators is a problem bagnato said bagnatos team has identified the molecule that works best against the microorganisms on the tubes a challenge that involved making sure the identified molecule would harm the bacteria without negatively impacting the patient the molecule sticks to the tube and then a one-millimeter fiber optic is fed into the tube to light and activate the molecule its a low intensity bagnato said this means that if we prevent infection we give a better chance to the patient who is already on the mechanical ventilator his research was recently published in the journal proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america bagnatos team is now using an artificial trachea to evaluate how long the antimicrobial effect lasts since these tubes typically remained placed in a patients trachea for days i hope that in six seven months were going to do the first clinical trial bagnato said
1574,hydraulic fracturing an oil-recovery process in shale reservoirs uses tremendous amounts of fresh water to crack the shale rock and free trapped oil and gas some of this water eventually flows back to the surface where it can be reclaimed and treated for reuse however this flowback water flushes out another kind of fluid from the reservoir called produced water since produced water is severely contaminated and considered a waste product it is commonly injected underground where it poses a threat to clean water supplies and ground stability dr berna hascakir associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university is investigating simple and cost-effective methods that can significantly clean produced water so it can be further treated and used in hydraulic fracturing processes saving millions of gallons of fresh water for better use elsewhere her research is part of a water management project headed by the berg-hughes center for petroleum and sedimentary systems and funded by university lands with a $771 500 grant university lands manages the surface and mineral interests of over 2 million acres in west texas and its governing board is highly involved in environmental stewardship so they are keen to find a way to reuse produced water rather than write it off as waste if the water can be cleaned enough for use in hydraulic fracturing this saves fresh water supplies and benefits both the environment and the public injecting pressurized fresh water underground is necessary for oil recovery in shale while much of this water remains in the underground reservoir what flows back up to the surface contains dissolved salts minerals and other solids that must be removed before reuse however the fluid flushed out the reservoir known in the industry as produced water has a far greater level of total dissolved solids (tds) because it has been in the reservoir for centuries for instance the salt levels in produced water can be 10 times higher than seawater about 70 teaspoons per quart or 350 grams per liter factor in the other contaminant levels in produced water and the volume of tds is incredibly tough to remove since produced water is unfit to recycle for human consumption it has been considered for reuse in hydraulic fracturing activities to save available fresh water sources for other needs however hascakir noted that this use of produced water is hardly advantageous unless its tds levels are significantly reduced opening fractures underground by injecting produced water into the tiny shale fractures means the fractures can get blocked immediately by any solids suspended or dissolved in the water said hascakir this becomes an obstacle for oil production pathways the salts in produced water are dissolved as free ions currently these ions can only be removed using advanced water treatment methods such as reverse osmosis ultrafiltration and nanofiltration however the salt levels of produced water are too high for these methods to handle so hascakir must reduce the salinity before they can be used this catch-22 situation makes removing the salts difficult but not impossible many of the other solids in produced water naturally attract salt and are suspended in the form of colloids which are larger in size than the salt ions hascakir and her student researcher damir kaishentayev are exploring three basic water treatment methods alone and in combinations to remove these larger solids while also reducing salt levels enough for the advanced treatment methods to work for the first method coagulation hascakir is taking advantage of some colloids ability to chemically or electrically attract together for example blood platelets a type of colloid can form clots hascakir said that many of the suspended solids have negative electrical charges she is using chemicals to reverse these negative repulses so these colloids cling to each other and pull salt ions in with them when they form heavy clots of molecules for non-charged colloids hascakir is using flocculation a chemical process that pulls the colloids into clumps called flocs with the use of polymers she is testing various polymers to see which ones allow the captured solids to take salts with them into the flocs the third method is sedimentation coagulation and flocculation need rapid stirring or agitation for chemical reactions to occur the stillness of sedimentation encourages larger solids coagulations and flocs to either gradually float to the surface or sink to the bottom of the treatment tanks
1575,hascakirs work is the initial cycle of the berg-hughes study each of her treated water samples goes on for further testing a chemical researcher will determine how well the samples respond to reverse-osmosis and other treatments agricultural researchers will test plant reactions to the treated water economic researchers will calculate water treatment costs based on hascakirs methods to see if it is cost-effective for companies to fund finally geologists will analyze how the treated water could affect groundwater should the two intermingle the project aims to find methods that can treat tremendous quantities of produced water cheaply and effectively so it can be used instead of stored away as waste that might contaminate the environment that goal is crucial said hascakir the majority of new wells drilled in the us are hydraulically fractured with an average of 3-7 million gallons of water used for every hydraulic fracturing treatment the amount of produced water flushed out of reservoirs is increasing rapidly produced water is a huge problem said hascakir if we find a solution a reuse for the university lands produced water it can be applied to every other area using hydraulic fracturing this is really exciting for me because the project connects my environmental engineering background with my petroleum engineering work and is producing a unique solution for hydraulic fracturing water needs
1576,a self-portrait after the spanish flu was painted by edvard munch in 1919 after the disease infected an estimated 500 million people around the world sir isaac newton discovered gravity when cambridge university shut down due to the great plague of london forcing him to return home where an apple mysteriously fell onto his head a team of students has paired with rosemarie fiore a pyrotechnic painter to make sure that art creation and discovery continue during the covid-19 pandemic every member of the team was drawn to the project because it lies at the intersection of art and engineering jon williamson said the teams project manager creating a robust tool that provides a substantial improvement from each of the previous three tool iterations would give the team a sense of accomplishment founded on the importance of art in each members life fiore is a renowned artist based out of new york known for her firework paintings crafted by custom-made pyrotechnic art tools fiore began collaborating with texas a&m university in 2018 when she used a tool created by students as part of painting smoke painting #44 which now hangs in the zachry engineering education complex i was one of the few artists chosen to be a part of the collection in zachry and thats my connection to texas a&m fiore said its been a joy working with the students on capstone projects and im always impressed with their creativity thinking outside of the box and their openness to my unique process of using tools that harness pyrotechnics williamsons team was passed down this senior capstone design project after a previous team had made significant developments on the tool which they called the smoke paint tool (spt) the team provided a terrific starting point but identified structural issues/flaws that werent able to be completed through hands-on troubleshooting and redesigning due to covid-19 complications
1577,the current team composed of katy armitage raul carrillo nicholas harper faith leskowitz and williamson took the spt and sought several modifications this included making the tool more robust allowing the dispersion chamber at the center of the tool to rotate fully stopping smoke leakage and mitigating soot buildup on the tool's bottom plate these improvements required adding several pieces such as a detachable platform to collect soot making modifications to the dispersion chamber to allow for rotation and many other adjustments to ensure the tool's usability their new design is called the pyrotechnic art tool (pat) although the pat differs in many ways from the spt it is also based around the chassis and chamber subassemblies said williamson the modifications to the spt were based on direct client feedback the current design stemmed from a concept dubbed the ‘platform tool due to the presence of a detachable platform to collect soot and mitigate soot blockages on the bottom plate of the tool the tool works as a pressure vessel by lighting smoke canisters and placing them in the tool the canisters are able to produce large amounts of smoke the smoke moves into the dispersion chamber causing a rise in pressure in the chamber the difference in pressure between the chamber and the environment draws smoke through holes in the tools bottom plate and onto canvas creating varying marks as the artist manipulates the tool the pat's function is to create broad and soft marks on fiores pieces that typically make up elements of her arts background
1578,what the tool does which is different than other tools that ive created is that the interior of the tool rotates as well as the exterior when you use it fiore said it has both rotation and counter-rotation that depends on movement and how i am working with the tool this device is not only complicated but potentially dangerous if not constructed correctly the team began working on their project at the end of may but could only meet virtually much of the time although the first part of their project which included conceptualization and understanding the customer worked on this platform the second part presented challenges the second phase of the project was slightly more difficult to overcome in a virtual environment due to the fact that this entailed actually fabricating and assembling the tool said williamson the team was able to achieve our goals throughout this process by clearly communicating with each other along every step of the way fiore who also communicated virtually with the team was incredibly happy and impressed with the students ability to continue the project despite the odds stacked against them the students have had a unique experience because of covid-19 restrictions said fiore their flexibility and professionalism when they were unable to collaborate in person has been impressive as an artist in the creative field which can include engineering social interaction is needed however they continued to hit deadlines which i give them a lot of credit for i look forward to finishing with williamsons team for more information about the senior capstone design program or to sponsor a future capstone project email dr joanna tsenn
1579,with the growing global concerns over climate change scientists are looking for cleaner energy sources and other ways to minimize the carbon footprint in the world researchers at texas a&m engineering and the ecole nationale superieure d'arts et métiers (ensam) are collaborating to look at the materials and products we use daily a carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions that come from the production use and end-of-life of a product or service it is expected that in the next few decades there will be a major transformation in the materials used in civilian and military applications or in the aeronautics automobile and other industries and there will be a need to use materials and products that are more environmentally friendly dr satish bukkapatnam director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) institute for manufacturing systems and dr mohamed el mansori professor in the department of mechanical materials science and manufacturing engineering at ensam combined their complementary strengths to advance the science and technology for biocomposite manufacturing to form the am² transatlantic partnership this partnership aims to effect change to a global manufacturing industry through extensive research collaborations education programs and mutual faculty and student exchange initiatives a biocomposite is a composite material formed by a matrix (resin) and a reinforcement of natural fibers the matrix phase is formed by polymers derived from renewable and nonrenewable resources hemp cotton jute and flax are some common natural fiber reinforcements in biocomposites that have good mechanical properties the work with professor el mansori was initiated to adapt methods for studying the machining process to create precisely shaped slabs of natural fiber composite materials for the emerging industrial applications said bukkapatnam the interest in biocomposites is rapidly growing due to their great benefits they can be used alone or as a complement to standard materials such as carbon fiber a significant market driver for high-volume applications is the potential to disassociate material costs from the fluctuating price of oil and energy el mansori said in many cases biobased materials offer weight reduction added functionality eg damping (restraining of vibratory motion) or impact absorption and occupational health benefits prior to their collaboration both bukkapatnam el mansori and their respective teams had been studying components related to smart manufacturing with various materials systems and manufacturing processes for many years in 2017 they combined their collaborative strengths: texas a&m in smart manufacturing focusing on advanced in situ sensing and ensams strengths in multi-scale modeling and analysis which led to several outcomes first was the creation of a smart experimental setup to study forces vibrations and acoustic emissions generated during the machining of natural-fiber composite materials and thereby using the signal patterns themselves to understand the physical phenomena underlying the way the material is removed from the surface of the composite material during the cutting process this guided the setting of the various conditions such as the speed at which the tool should move the cut the best orientation of the composite material to achieve an efficient cut and quality products the work also led to the development of mathematical finite element models to simulate how forces are generated during the cutting process and how they vary under the influence of the heat generated during the process
1580,el mansori said biocomposites especially those with long continuous fibers present many challenges during near net-shape processing where requirements include accurate dimensional tolerancing drilling holes for assembly and controlled surface characteristics finishing operations such as machining or polishing are mandatory for fabricating the biocomposite part to meet service requirements however finishing operations should not cause excessive damage in order to preserve the required industrial functionality of the biocomposite part (ie mechanical frictional thermal acoustic or damping properties) the main damage source emanates from the severe contact between the abrasive tools and the biocomposite due to the high-generated tribological and thermal stresses addressing these challenges required expertise in multiple areas understanding the mechanism of the cutting process is essential for creating quality products especially those of interest to the automotive industry bukkapatnam said besides the two of us this research effort brought together the expertise of drs jn reddy and bruce tai of mechanical engineering (at texas a&m) and two project associates drs zimo wang and faissal chegdani who have since graduated and now serve as assistant professors in suny binghamton us and arts et métiers france respectively because of the wide range of applications that exist for these natural composites the impact of their research on cutting techniques can be enormous combinations of natural fibers and biobased polymers have been shown to have appealing composite properties offering the enticing prospect that fully biobased composites are an increasing commercial reality el mansori said green image weight savings shorter cycle times scratch resistance and above all a lower (carbon) footprint are important factors for this development plus the demand from designers manufacturers and consumers for environmentally friendly products will inevitably drive the rapid development of other biocomposite materials and products as well and future developments in fully biobased composites of consistent quality natural-fiber products could also be required at an affordable price in appropriate forms for composite molding and secondary mechanical processing technology the next few decades will witness a major transformation in the materials that we use in our daily lives and for various applications bukkapatnam said there will be a major push toward using materials and products that use a minimal carbon and economic footprint and are environmentally benign this research leverages texas a&ms initiatives in smart manufacturing to lead a major thrust toward smart secure and sustainable manufacturing systems these efforts are central to the current transatlantic partnership led by texas a&m and arts et métiers
1581,from corpus christi to canada and around the world salt marshes and other ecosystems act as barriers for coastal communities against storm surges and natural disasters normally the resiliency of these natural barriers – or the ability for them to bounce back and recover – allows them to continue to function and protect the communities they separate from the sea however with changing climates and rising sea levels these natural barriers are being broken down across the globe engineers like dr orencio duran vinent assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university are taking a deeper look into the fundamentals of coastal ecosystems and how engineering with nature elements can be used to fortify and in some cases recreate these vital protections for these coastal ecosystems to be more useful in engineering applications we need to know how they respond how they adapt how easy they are restored and in case they fail how easy it is to create them said duran vinent salt marshes are some of the most valuable and vulnerable ecosystems in the world duran vinent and his team have discovered that their threshold for recovery is lower than previously thought using a simplified formulation for sediment transport his research identified that the marshes do not need to completely fall beneath rising sea levels to begin degrading but instead begin to fragment and drown piece by piece at a lower water level every ecosystem that adapts to external conditions has a limit of adaptation a threshold above which they don't really adapt anymore and they drown or disappear said duran vinent in the case of ecosystems that are adapting to rising sea levels the threshold is dependent on how fast the sea level is rising if they're able to keep above the water then they restore themselves and stay healthy the issue that coastal engineers and scientists have been facing he continued is that they dont know what that threshold is meaning that they dont know which regions of the ecosystem are most vulnerable or at risk of degradation
1582,through the use of computational modeling duran vinent and his team determined a vital new piece of information to aid in solving the mystery of salt marshes: there is more than one threshold he explained that while it was originally believed that the drowning of a marsh occurred when the sea level rose above a certain point and overtook the land in an almost flooding manner they discovered there was a second lower threshold in which the marsh was degraded and broken down from within so what does fragmentation in a coastal wetland or marsh look like at this threshold imagine the seawater poking holes in the land little by little each hole becomes a new pond that grows larger in size and density and then stabilizes as the ecosystem bounces back and recovers in that area but then more and more appear over time we think that this is very informative of how degradation is actually taking place in many sites said duran vinent we knew that wetlands tend to develop ponds we have seen it in louisiana and maryland but it was interesting that while they are stable at first there are more holes opening with time and eventually the whole ecosystem will degrade in addition to better understanding of the current landscapes duran vinent said that he hopes the research will help to fortify the complex and ever-changing coastal environment through informed engineering decisions in the future billions of people live in coastal areas and they face the outcome of rising sea levels and increasing storminess he said the question becomes what part of the landscape can survive what part of this wonderful complex landscape whose stability is dictated by its vegetation can actually withstand these changes will all of those islands and wetlands and the value they provide disappear this is very useful information for engineering
1583,the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university presented its 2020 outstanding alumni award to cindy haven 79 who spent most of her career launching literally innovative biologically based programs at nasa cindy always took that one more chance to make an impact at nasa and now we're thrilled to recognize her many accomplishments here today said dr mike mcshane department head after graduating from texas a&m with her bachelors degree in bioengineering haven went to work in the biomedical engineering department at texas childrens hospital from there haven connected with other aggie bioengineers and took a job at nasa where she worked for 31 years she started in the life sciences project division in 1988 and was involved in various roles in spacelab missions dedicated to life sciences research i did continue to use my biomedical engineering education and relationships haven said i wasnt one of those people who got a degree and changed fields it served me well my entire career haven was a key member of the initial team that laid the groundwork for the biomedical and biological research on the international space station (iss) an effort known today as the human research facility (hrf) in 2001 haven served as hrf increment lead to watch the launch and installation of the first rack of payload equipment that started human research aboard the station an effort that continues today she also managed the iss medical project worked with the human research programs international science office to establish processes risk management and data sharing principles across all iss international partners and helped nasa transition to the exploration phase just as she had when the agency had moved from the shuttle to iss initiatives throughout her career haven made sure to maintain connections to the department and texas a&m she connected with fellow graduates used social networking to stay in touch and attended events in the college station and houston areas she gives financially and plans to leave a living legacy in the department i do believe in what the department is doing and that they're doing some amazing things haven said ive seen some of the amazing students already come past here and it makes me feel like things are in good hands over the years haven has also mentored students and provided advice especially to students who may not have received the best career guidance regarding job opportunities and the importance of preparing for the workplace beyond the knowledge gained from the classroom haven said she had not known about biomedical engineering until she came to texas a&m i want to help students with the challenges of getting into the business understanding what i call lessons learned what went wrong what went right haven said some of these lessons learned included: create your own destiny and define your goals understand why you want to do something before doing it establish your success criteria early you don't have to be the best at what you do but you want to be good at it decide what return on investment basis is to make sure you focus your energy in the right place a lifetime of learning is something that's very important haven said i've tried to make sure that i didn't stagnate make sure you get smarter change your mind along the way but never never stop learning and share with other people what you know the departments outstanding alumni award is given annually to former biomedical engineering students who shoot for the stars the award is based on peer nomination
1584,three faculty members in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university shared their experiences and explained what it is really like to be an assistant professor as an assistant professor one wears many hats – from teaching classes and advising students to drafting research proposals and applying for the top research grants – making this a very dynamic position the typical day a typical day is filled with preparing for classes teaching and mentoring students and setting aside time to work on research my typical day can be summarized in three key words: finding the balance said dr sung ii park i think if you ask any assistant professor to describe their day in one word it would probably be ‘busy said dr dileep kalathil it is challenging and busy but at the same time it is extremely enjoyable rewarding and satisfying passion for research one thing that each faculty member shared was their desire to make a difference in our world through research and perseverance the thing is that interestingly enough if you really work on something you may find that not many people are working on the same thing and that all people think differently dr hangue park said there are so many opportunities the reason i chose academia over probably a much better paying desk job in silicon valley is i am passionate about research kalathil said i work on artificial intelligence and reinforcement learning which is a really exciting research area especially at this time the opportunity to work on this research is something that i really cherish i get the opportunity to read the latest papers and then i also get a chance to contribute to this outcome which hopefully will push the boundaries of artificial intelligence having the ability to contribute to humanity even in my own minor way is a very rewarding experience the initial spark sung ii park and kalathil both shared that their initial interest to pursue this career path began in high school hangue park explained that he once worked on a project that focused on tracking tongue movement through circuit design this intrigued him but also led to his desire to study further into the human nervous system instead of just assisting a disabled individual he had a desire to make it possible for an individual to regain their lost function i am confident that state-of-the-art electronics technology arrived at the level to interact with the human nervous system hangue park said during my phd study i really saw that electronics could help the nervous system and help them regain their function which is really fascinating career goals and aspirations i am a member of the institute of neuroscience at texas a&m university so right now what we are trying to do is push the boundaries of neuroscience sung ii park said we are working at the interface of electrical engineering and neuroscience and we are trying to push the boundary toward neuroscience so hopefully in the near future we can do tool development and study neuroscience i really want to contribute to human kind with my research outcome hangue park said kalathils goals are to publish several research papers; help train and assist his students to be successful; receive research awards and grants to fund his research; and gain recognition for his work in his area of interest parting advice if you are really passionate and committed then this is the best job that you can get kalathil said no other job will give you the opportunity to learn continuously because clearly i am not going to teach the same thing that i am teaching now 20 30 years down the line no job will give you the opportunity to learn things by yourself and teach that to new generations of students there are several opportunities to pursue research more than you expect hangue park said if you are interested in research you should just go for it there is a road for you
1585,josiah coad received the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award during the texas a&m university college of engineering student awards virtual banquet that was held last month via zoom first presented in 1947 it is the most prestigious award bestowed on graduating engineering students who demonstrate outstanding achievement leadership and character originally from idaho coad was drawn to texas a&m because both of his parents are former students he began his college career at texas a&m at galveston where he developed a strong interest in computer science after completing a project where he was tasked with building and coding an extreme weather station after transferring to texas a&ms main campus in college station texas he made the decision to pursue computer science mathematics and statistics degrees simultaneously so he could explore all of his interests i like computer science because it finds applications in nearly everything said coad furthermore as a tinkerer i like that i can implement an idea quickly and see it working almost immediately i can have the craziest idea and theres no resource or financial limits to hold me back from trying it out during his time at texas a&m he has accomplished a lot both inside the classroom and out while maintaining a near 40 gpa driven by his passion for data science and education coad founded the tamu datathon which is considered to be the first data science hackathon of its kind since its inception two years ago more than 3 500 students from 120 universities around the world have participated in it he has also had internships with facebook microsoft the central intelligence agency and robotics start-up company continuous composite it was during this time that he received an international patent for the foundational path planning code that he wrote for a continuous composite manufacturing robot other honors and distinctions include being named texas a&ms most influential student in 2016 and winning first place in the la bike share data science competition walmart computer vision competition and oxford hackathon he is also a member of the engineering honors and university honors programs coad will graduate this may in the future he hopes to become a professor and do research in the areas of robotics and reinforcement learning through his work he hopes to develop educational programs to inspire talented students from underrepresented backgrounds to get involved with stem in an effort to pass forward what was done for him i'm very thankful and honored by this award because i greatly respect the donors mr and mrs brown and the review committee that selected me for it said coad in the process of applying for this award i have had the opportunity to reflect on my time at texas a&m and the amazing faculty and professors that have made my wildest dreams become possible and i am filled with gratitude texas a&m has truly lived up to its values during my time here and i am inspired to live out these values myself going forward
1586,"when it comes to giving back it's just what aggies do for jay stafford a graduate of the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering supporting the university that provided him with the education to launch a successful career was not a big deal it was simply the right thing to do like stafford however not all who join the department had a straight path to mechanical engineering the houston native first came to texas a&m university in 1943 to study in the college of agriculture and his journey included many twists and turns along the way as a sophomore stafford was drafted into the us navy where he served for nearly two years before returning to complete his agriculture degree at texas a&m but when he graduated in 1948 his path diverged from those of his classmates while many of his peers set off to serve as county agents he knew that path wasn't for him ""i'm not a public speaker so that didn't fit me at all "" stafford said ""so i kind of drifted off into something else"" something else it turned out was geophysical work a decision that would take him around the world by december 1948 he was living and working in saudia arabia stafford would stay there for five years a time he remembers fondly for frequent summer vacations in europe before getting married and moving first to australia then guatemala in 1958 stafford returned to texas a&m determined to forge a new path for himself he decided to pursue a new bachelor's degree in the mechanical engineering department having felt drawn toward mechanical engineering work during his career in geophysics as a married student several years older than his peers stafford said he remembered being a bit of a loner during his return to college station despite this he was ultimately thankful for the strong foundation the mechanical engineering department provided after graduating in 1963 stafford went to work for conoco designing seismic vibrators for their geophysical explorations equipment he would remain there until 1985 during this time stafford experienced professional success in his work developing better more efficient seismic vibrators to support conoco's explorations department holding several patents in his name for the parts he created at the same time he also experienced personal loss with the death of his wife in 1975 in 1978 stafford remarried and by 1988 he had retired now living in oklahoma stafford said he wanted to give back to the department to pay forward the education he received in mechanical engineering he and his wife millie have funded an undergraduate scholarship established in 2006 which this year supported 14 students they have plans for several additional avenues to support the department including three professorships three faculty fellowships and two graduate fellowships in looking at the impact their scholarship has already had stafford said he hopes it will continue to help students to stay in school and to achieve their goals whatever they may be ""there are many students that need help and i'm able to do it at this point "" stafford said ""it's the right thing to do aggies stick together and that's what i'm trying to do there are many more that do the same thing i just do what i can do"" dr andreas polycarpou james j cain chair professor and department head of the mechanical engineering department said the support the staffords have provided to the department will serve to make a positive impact for many years to come mr stafford embodies the aggie spirit through his sincerity perseverance and commitment to supporting future generations of mechanical engineers polycarpou said through this he exemplifies many of the valuable qualities we strive to promote in the department looking toward the future stafford said current students have a range of exciting options available to them if they're willing to work hard and adapt to all the twists and turns life often presents much as he did throughout his life and career ""things occur that you don't even think about and you really can't plan for it it just happens "" stafford said ""either you find a way to improve things for yourself or the decision will be made for you you have to be ready mechanical engineering is a big field and there is all kinds of stuff to pursue for anyone interested"""
1587,the united states generates a colossal seven million tons of sewage sludge annually enough to fill 2 500 olympic-sized swimming pools while a portion of this waste is repurposed for manure and other land applications a substantial amount is still disposed of in landfills in a new study texas a&m university researchers have uncovered an efficient way to use leftover sludge to make biodegradable plastics in the september issue of the journal american chemical society (acs) omega the researchers have shown that the bacterium zobellella denitrificans zd1 found in mangroves can consume sludge and wastewater to produce polyhydroxybutyrate a type of biopolymer that can be used in lieu of petroleum-based plastics in addition to reducing the burden on landfills and the environment the researchers said zobellella denitrificans zd1 offers a way to cut down upstream costs for bioplastics manufacturing a step toward making them more competitively priced against regular plastics the price of raw materials to cultivate biopolymer-producing bacteria accounts for 25-45% of the total production cost of manufacturing bioplastics certainly this cost can be greatly reduced if we can tap into an alternate resource that is cheaper and readily obtainable said dr kung-hui (bella) chu professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering we have demonstrated a potential way to use municipal wastewater-activated sludge and agri- and aqua-culture industrial wastewater to make biodegradable plastics furthermore the bacterial strain does not require elaborate sterilization processes to prevent contamination from other microbes further cutting down operating and production costs of bioplastics polyhydroxybutyrate an emerging class of bioplastics is produced by several bacterial species when they experience an imbalance of nutrients in their environment this polymer acts as the bacterias supplemental energy reserves similar to fat deposits in animals in particular an abundance of carbon sources and a depletion of either nitrogen phosphorous or oxygen cause bacteria to erratically consume their carbon sources and produce polyhydroxybutyrate as a stress response one such medium that can force bacteria to make polyhydroxybutyrate is crude glycerol a byproduct of biodiesel manufacturing crude glycerol is rich in carbon and has no nitrogen making it a suitable raw material for making bioplastics however crude glycerol contains impurities such as fatty acids salts and methanol which can prohibit bacterial growth like crude glycerol sludge from wastewater also has many of the same fatty acids and salts chu said that the effects of these fatty acids on bacterial growth and consequently polyhydroxybutyrate production had not yet been examined there is a multitude of bacterial species that make polyhydroxybutyrate but only a few that can survive in high-salt environments and even fewer among those strains can produce polyhydroxybutyrate from pure glycerol said chu we looked at the possibility of whether these salt-tolerating strains can also grow on crude glycerol and wastewater for their study chu and her team chose the zobellella denitrificans zd1 whose natural habitat is the salt waters of the mangroves they then tested the growth and the ability of this bacteria to produce polyhydroxybutyrate in pure glycerol the researchers also repeated the same experiments with other bacterial strains that are known producers of polyhydroxybutyrate they found that zobellella denitrificans zd1 was able to thrive in pure glycerol and produced the maximum amount of polyhydroxybutyrate in proportion to its dry weight that is its weight without water next they tested the growth and ability of zobellella denitrificans zd1 to produce polyhydroxybutyrate in glycerol containing salt and fatty acids and found that even in these conditions it produced polyhydroxybutyrate efficiently even under balanced nutrient conditions when they repeated the experiments in samples of high-strength synthetic wastewater and wastewater-activated sludge they found the bacteria was still able to make polyhydroxybutyrate although at quantities lower than if they were in crude glycerol chu noted that by leveraging zobellella denitrificans zd1 tolerance for salty environments expensive sterilization processes that are normally needed when working with other strains of bacteria could be avoided zobellella denitrificans zd1 natural preference for salinity is fantastic because we can if needed tweak the chemical composition of the waste by just adding common salts this environment would be toxic for other strains of bacteria she said so we are offering a low cost a sustainable method to make bioplastics and another way to repurpose biowastes that are costly to dispose of other contributors to this research include fahad asiri chih-hung chen myung hwangbo and yiru shao from the civil and environmental engineering department at texas a&m this research is supported by the kuwait institute for scientific research the ministry of higher education of kuwait fellowship and the fellowship from the ministry of science and technology of taiwan
1588,dr tanmay lele has been named unocal professor in the biomedical engineering and chemical engineering departments at texas a&m university the professorship awarded by the texas a&m college of engineering is in recognition of leles exceptional record as a researcher and educator lele joined the department of biomedical engineering as a full professor in summer 2020 after moving up through the ranks at the university of florida where he began his career as an assistant professor in chemical engineering in addition to his primary appointment lele also serves as a professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering he received his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from purdue university and conducted his postdoctoral research in vascular biology at harvard medical school and boston childrens hospital leles research focuses on mechanobiology the mechanical aspects of biology where he works to understand how cells sense external mechanical forces as well as how they generate mechanical forces and how these mechanical forces impact cell function a key interest is in the field of cancer mechanobiology with a focus on the role of the nucleus in the development of abnormal tissue structure and function he also holds a courtesy appointment in the texas a&m health science center and is building an experimental lab at the institute for biosciences technology in the texas medical center in may lele received a $5 million recruitment of established investigators grant from the cancer prevention and research institute of texas to further knowledge about cancer and how it progresses as such lele represents a major investment of the state and university in applying engineering to solve important problems in cancer in collaboration with world-leading life medical researchers his professorship further recognizes his leadership and will support his continued pioneering cancer research on the cutting edge of onco-engineering
1589,each waking moment our brain processes a massive amount of data to make sense of the outside world thus by imitating the way the human brain solves everyday problems neuromorphic systems have tremendous potential to revolutionize big data analysis and pattern recognition problems that are a struggle for current digital technologies but for artificial systems to be more brain-like they need to replicate how nerve cells communicate at their terminals called the synapses in a study published in the september issue of the journal of the american chemical society researchers at texas a&m university have described a new material that captures the pattern of electrical activity at the synapse much like how a nerve cell produces a pulse of oscillating current depending on the history of electrical activity at its synapse the researchers said their material oscillates from metal to insulator at a transition temperature decided by the devices thermal history materials are generally classified into metals or insulators depending on whether they conduct heat and electricity but some materials like vanadium dioxide lead a double life at certain temperatures vanadium dioxide acts like an insulator resisting the flow of heat and electric currents but when heated to 67 degrees celsius vanadium dioxide undergoes a chameleon-like change in its internal properties converting to a metal these back-and-forth oscillations due to temperature make vanadium dioxide an ideal candidate for brain-inspired electronic systems since neurons also produce an oscillatory current called an action potential but neurons also pool their inputs at their synapse this integration increases the voltage of the neurons membrane steadily bringing it closer to a threshold value when this threshold is crossed neurons fire an action potential a neuron can remember what voltage its membrane is sitting at and depending on where its membrane voltage is with respect to the threshold the neuron will either fire or stay dormant said dr sarbajit banerjee professor in the department of material sciences and engineering and the department of chemistry and one of the senior authors of the study we wanted to tweak the property of vanadium dioxide so that it retains some memory of how close it is to the transition temperature so that we can begin to mimic what is happening at the synapse of biological neurons the transition temperatures for a given material are generally fixed unless an impurity called a dopant is added although a dopant can move the transition temperature depending on its type and concentration within vanadium dioxide banerjee and his teams objective was to imbue a means of tuning the transition temperature up or down in a way reflecting not just the concentration of the dopant but also the time elapsed since it had been reset this flexibility they found was only possible when they used the boron when the researchers added boron to vanadium dioxide the material still transitioned from an insulator to a metal but the transition temperature now depended on how long it remained in a new metastable state created by boron biological neurons have memory of their membrane voltage; similarly boron-spiked vanadium dioxide has a memory of its thermal history or formally speaking how long it has been in a metastable state said dr diane sellers one of the primary authors of the study and a former research scientist in banerjees laboratory this memory determines the transition temperature at which the device is driven to oscillate from metal to an insulator while their system is an initial step in mimicking a biological synapse experiments are currently underway to introduce more dynamism in the materials behavior by controlling the kinetics of the relaxation process of vanadium dioxide said dr patrick shamberger professor in the materials science department and a corresponding author on the study in the near future dr xiaofeng qiang professor in the materials science department and banerjees collaborator on this project plans to expand on the current research by exploring the atomic and electronic structures of other more complex vanadium oxide compounds in addition the collaborative team will also investigate the possibility of creating other neuromorphic materials with alternative dopants wed like to investigate whether the phenomenon we have observed with vanadium dioxide applies to other host lattices and other guest atoms said dr raymundo arróyave professor in the materials science department and a corresponding author on the study this insight can provide us with several tools to further tune the properties of these types of neuromorphic materials for diverse applications erick j braham from the department of chemistry is a co-primary author on this study other contributors to this research include baiyu zhang drs timothy d brown and heidi clarke from the materials science department; ruben villarreal from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering; abhishek parija theodore e g alivio and dr luis r de jesus from the department of chemistry; dr lucia zuin from the university of saskatchewan canada; and dr david prendergast from the lawrence berkeley national laboratory california this research is funded by the national science foundation and the air force office of scientific research
1590,when former student dr kelli humbird came to texas a&m university she had one primary goal for the future: to find a career in which she would be able to cultivate her love of caring for and owning horses instead she ended up pursuing a double major in nuclear engineering and physics before beginning what would soon be a prominent career as a researcher and engineer most recently humbird was named the recipient of the 2020-21 department of nuclear engineering young former student award which was established in 2018 to recognize and honor former students excellence in professional leadership and their contributions to the nuclear field as an undergraduate at texas a&m humbird worked with dr marlan scully studying quantum optics works in the field of physics and dr william marlow who mentored her as an undergraduate marlow is now retired but humbird would sit in his office for hours talking about different ideas and credits him as one of her primary motivators humbird received her masters degree and began her doctorate under dr ryan mcclarren at texas a&m but moved to northern california to finish it she ended up applying for and receiving a fellowship from the philanthropic education organization (peo) which created scholarships for women pursuing a phd in any field had i not had their support i definitely would not have gotten to the place i am said humbird now employed at lawrence livermore national laboratory as a design physicist humbird helps create and model physics experiments for a variety of different applications until recently her work has revolved around inertial confinement fusion the process of making lab-created miniature stars shes also ventured into the nuclear forensics field and has assisted the global security directorates nuclear forensics group
1591,one of humbirds favorite parts about her background in nuclear engineering is how diverse it is people think that nuclear engineering is a very specific field and that if you have a nuclear engineering degree youll just get stuck working in a power plant said humbird but thats so far from the truth even at livermore we have a dozen different jobs for a dozen different engineers that are all very unique humbirds dissertation focused largely on machine learning and artificial intelligence something that came in handy when she was recently asked to help model the spread of covid-19 one of the teams i work on was asked to help model the spread of covid-19 and we were all suddenly thrown into this very immediate and tangible problem explained humbird it cant be understated how great it feels to be able to work on a problem that is actively affecting us and then to try to be a part of that solution humbirds love and care for animals never diminished in fact she still has a horse having not gone a month without having one since she was a child and continues to be passionate about animal welfare her only wish is that her mother who passed away in august was here to share the news with being recognized with this award means a lot to me because she supported me relentlessly during college and graduate school said humbird while i wish she were here pushing forward and trying to make an impact in this world is exactly what she always wanted for me
1592,"when ashwin gadgil a doctoral candidate in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston was tasked by the us army corps of engineers to design beneficial-use islands in the corpus christi bay made using dredged sediment pulled from the channel several things were on his mind perhaps most important was to design the islands in such a way that the least amount of sediment was transported back into the channel by nature this was a common theme that i observed in all the coastal projects ive worked on: everybody is really worried about where sediment ends up in a coastal region said gadgil especially when it ends up in a ship channel because dredging up millions of cubic yards of sediment from a ship channel is exceedingly expensive particularly when sediment starts showing up in places where you're not expecting it taking this observation and expanding upon it gadgil now works alongside faculty advisor dr john ""bert"" sweetman ocean engineering professor on several projects to develop models and/or methods to predict the movement of sediment in coastal areas gadgils research not only expands upon current knowledge but can also be applied by industry engineers and researchers to reduce both the cost and challenges of research and implementation when it comes to the prediction of sediment transport such as in dredging projects removing randomness the first of these projects gadgil explained aimed at removing the randomness associated with ocean waves in sediment transport through a new statistical model ocean waves are random; random waves cause random sediment transport he said at any particular location you can have this wide range of values of sediment transport that may occur depending on the underlying phases (of the ocean) one simulation might suggest its 15 million cubic yards of sediment; one might say it's 17 million one might say it's 2 million so what's the exact answer because of this wave randomness the results of time-domain simulations – those which measure parameters over a given time – can vary significantly in a given coastal environment to counteract this researchers must run multiple simulations to find the average sediment transport"
1593,the problem with that method gadgil said is that it is computationally expensive the simulations are run with time steps of a half- or quarter-second and are used to predict sediment transport over days weeks or months this requires a huge amount of computational resources to get enough data to average into an accurate prediction to remedy this gadgil developed a statistical method titled prediction of sediment transport in evolving probability space (prosteps) that predicts the average sediment transport in a single computation eliminating the randomness in prediction with an overall accuracy of more than 99% unifying pressure gradient research gadgils second project revolves around pressure gradients (the direction and rate of change in pressure at a particular location) under the mud line while pressure gradients have been studied by many researchers the literature about it is segmented and inconsistent to gain a comprehensive fundamental understanding of how pressure gradients affect sediment transportation he combined previous work on the subject to create a new formula that accounts for pressure gradient forces on the top layer of the sea bed once (the sediment) starts to move there are various transport functions and equations that you can use to predict the total transport were not going in that domain said gadgil we are trying to study and make clearer under what conditions the sediment will move or not in the first place gadgils equation which builds on the critical shields parameter that determines whether a particle will move explains how the pressure gradient at any given time will affect the critical shields parameter and thus increase or decrease the likelihood for sediment to move the effect of ship wakes the third project focuses on the effect that the immediate ship wake (the wave pattern caused by a moving boat) behind a vessel has on sediment transport immediately behind the ship is a very interesting area from a hydrodynamic standpoint because you have this huge transverse ship wake that starts with a trough and this massive drop in pressure which is combined with the propeller wash that's shooting out of the propeller of the ship a combination of these effects can affect sediment transport significantly he said he explained that this particular aspect of his research which is still in the early stages focuses on ships in a bay like corpus christi or galveston where engineers need to minimize the amount of sediment that ends up in ship channels to reduce dredging costs maintenance needs etc like my advisor dr sweetman often says: science for the sake of science can be interesting but if it's not applicable then it's never going to be used said gadgil so you want it to be interesting and new but you also want it to be applicable to real-life scenarios and to make a meaningful difference that in my opinion really is what makes a good phd thesis
1594,dr shadi balawi feels that as a professor it is his job to ensure every student who walks into his classroom fully grasps the concepts he is teaching it is this connection that inspires his passion for academia i think one of the things to maintain as a professor is that we need to encourage and inspire said balawi an associate professor of instruction in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university we need to help the students fulfill their potentials we need to make sure they are engaged and that they like what theyre doing when he gets the opportunity to see a student truly understand a topic balawi said it is gratifying to know they will be able to move forward independently that type of interaction is something that i really treasure he said balawi comes from a history of academia beginning with his graduate studies at the university of cincinnati where he was adjunct faculty in the department of aerospace engineering and received his phd it was then when he realized his passion for teaching others i liked the idea of clarifying issues that people may not have understood said balawi i figured out that i could do that i had always liked academia and i felt that maybe i had some kind of talent there with nearly 20 years of teaching experience balawi has worked for texas a&m since january of 2018 he currently teaches materials and manufacturing (meen 360 and 361) balawi wants his students to learn skills that can be applied to make important decisions to balawi teaching goes beyond numbers and words i always tell my students that you are not hired for your ability to do math and figure out what to do with the numbers in terms of equations and models balawi said it is about what these numbers actually mean and how you make use of them in real-life applications
1595,two faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering are among 175 scientists elected to the 2020 class of fellows by the national academy of inventors (nai) the new fellows are dr duncan j maitland director of research and stewart & stevenson professor i in the department of biomedical engineering and dr richard miles tees eminent professor in the department of aerospace engineering maitland and miles were named to the inaugural class of nai senior members earlier this year dr bill mccutchen associate professor and center director for the texas a&m agrilife research and extension center in stephenville was also named a 2020 nai fellow i applaud the nai for selecting these three outstanding researchers as 2020 fellows said dr mark a barteau vice president for research at texas a&m university and an nai fellow this honor recognizes their scholarship talent and innovation as well as their ongoing commitment to texas a&ms mission to produce innovations and solutions that address our worlds greatest challenges maitlands research focuses on novel treatments of cardiovascular disease with an emphasis on stroke his research projects include endovascular interventional devices microactuators optical therapeutic devices and basic device-body interactions and physics including computational and experimental techniques he founded shape memory medical inc to commercialize vascular embolic devices the company has fda-approved products intended to obstruct blood flow to treat vascular abnormalities such as aneurysms that occur in the brain as well as peripheral vessels miles research includes the use of microwaves nanosecond high voltage pulses surface dielectric barrier discharges electron beams magnetohydrodynamic devices and lasers in driving and controlling aerodynamic phenomena; stand-off detection of explosives hazardous gases and greenhouse gases by laser or microwave techniques; flow velocity measurement by laser ionization and molecular tagging; microwave and laser control of flame propagation ignition and lean combustion operation; and development of advanced laser diagnostics for surfaces and for equilibrium and non-equilibrium gases and plasmas miles is a member of the national academy of engineering fourteen current or past texas a&m faculty members have been selected as nai fellows since the organization named its charter fellows in 2012 the nai fellows program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life economic development and the welfare of society election to nai fellow is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors to date nai fellows hold more than 42 700 issued us patents which have generated over 13 000 licensed technologies and companies and created more than 36 million jobs in addition over $22 trillion in revenue has been generated based on nai fellow discoveries the class of fellows will be inducted at the 2021 fellows induction ceremony at the tenth annual meeting of the national academy of inventors in june in tampa florida
1596,how has energy consumption changed during the covid-19 pandemic this is a question that researchers in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university are hoping to answer dr le xie professor in the department and his team and collaborators have created a first-of-its-kind cross-domain open-access data hub to track the impact of the pandemic and subsequent social distancing and work-from-home policies on us electricity markets published in the september issue of joule a prestigious academic journal focused on bridging diverse disciplines of energy research the coronavirus disease – electricity market data aggregation+ (covid-emda+) hub combines data across disciplines that showcases how human and environmental habits have impacted electricity usage theres a lot to take into account when it comes to electricity consumption related to a pandemic and data hubs similar to this one have already been attempted so what makes this one different the difference is that covid-emda+ incorporates seemingly extraneous information that turns out to be quite important to our understanding of the impact of the pandemic on the electricity sector the data hub contains five major components: electricity market data public health data weather data mobile device data and nighttime light satellite data weather definitely affects electricity usage said xie for instance texas had quite a hot summer so although everyone was quarantining inside the month of august saw a surge in energy consumption from air conditioners the gps location of mobile devices a dataset that has never before been used in the analysis of the electricity sector helps illustrate patterns in mobility how many people are social distancing versus how many people are still visiting shopping centers
1597,the phenomenon of human mobility became an even greater factor to understanding electricity consumption once nasa published nighttime satellite images of large cities when looking at images of houston and new york city lit up at night from before and during the covid-19 pandemic the stark contrast is clearly visible in manhattan alone the city light at night was dimmed by about 40% between february and april this meant that as quarantine progressed fewer people were venturing outside in the evenings for a romantic dinner for two a family movie night or a visit to the shopping malls less human mobility meant less electricity needed to keep the busy cities lit their research uncovered a key finding: mobility is a strong indicator of electricity consumption changes in new york the strongest indicator of electricity consumption is the visits to the retail sector – the shopping malls and grocery stores said xie we didnt realize how much that impacts electricity consumption when visits to the retail sector decrease electricity consumption plummets moving forward xie hopes to incorporate data regarding socioeconomic status to shed more light on how the pandemic has impacted economically disadvantaged communities someone who works minimum wage on an hourly basis will be affected much differently than someone who does not have to worry about their next paycheck said xie the hub can serve as a unique lens to examine questions related to socioeconomic disparities and hopefully uncover areas of energy poverty where families may have trouble accessing reliable and affordable energy the data hub is updated daily after careful quality control to provide the most up-to-date information to the public xie and his team hope this data hub can serve as an open-access tool for system operators as well as for state and federal policy makers not only will it help policymakers make more informed decisions when it comes to allocating resources but it will also help society become more aware of how much energy we consume and how we consume it it helps everyone to be more energy conscious and cognizant especially during this once-in-a-lifetime societal crisis said xie
1598,l david black '59 is the recipient of the 2021 wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering distinguished former students award for his significant success and contributions in management manufacturing marketing and sales industries throughout his 41-year career in 1990 black was recruited as president and chief operating officer for jlg industries inc the worlds leading designer and manufacturer of access equipment headquartered in mcconnellsburg pennsylvania he retired in 2001 as chairman of the board president and chief executive officer black established the marilyn and l david black faculty fellows in industrial and systems engineering a fund to support one or more faculty fellows in the department this fund also helps support the teaching research service and professional development of the recipient black grew up in morgans point texas and graduated from la porte high school where he met his wife of 61 years marilyn he graduated from texas a&m university with a bachelor of science in industrial and systems engineering he received his graduate degree from the university of houston dr lewis ntaimo department head of the industrial and systems engineering department was a recipient of the marilyn and l david black faculty fellow award in 2017-18 i am grateful for the marilyn and l david black faculty fellow award it helped me fund my research travels during those years ntaimo said john bernheim our senior director of development and i had the pleasure of meeting both marilyn and david at their house in san antonio back in february of this year i can tell you that they are among the most humble and generous people i have met not to mention davids sense of humor! the distinguished alumni award recognizes graduates who distinguish themselves by achieving significant accomplishments in their careers and who possess the highest standards of integrity and character that enhance the reputation of the department to be eligible for this award all nominees must possess an undergraduate or graduate degree from the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering early career alumni nominees must be less than 15 years from the receipt of their last degree from the department i can attest to you that given his significant achievements and generosity to our department mr black deserves the honor of being awarded the distinguished alumni award ntaimo said
1599,in a new study published online in the journal american chemical society (acs) applied polymer materials scientists at texas a&m university reported they have designed a hydrogel membrane that may be used to house optical glucose sensing materials toward building a biosensor for monitoring sugar levels in diabetics by incorporating dangling comb-type molecular chains within a type of hydrogel called poly(n-isopropylacrylamide) or poly nipaam for short they showed that the membrane could prevent leakage of small-sized molecules like the ones for glucose-sensing while still allowing glucose to freely diffuse in and out when ready for clinical use the researchers said these membranes could be used to form biosensors that could be easily implanted under the skin of the wrist and might offer a more comfortable alternative to transdermal implants which sit partially outside the skin moreover unlike transdermal implants that need to be changed every few weeks this type of subcutaneous implant may only need to be replaced every few months we've done a lot of work on hydrogel materials looking at mechanical properties and foreign body reactions but our grand goal has always been to use poly nipaam membranes to build a subcutaneous glucose biosensor said dr melissa grunlan professor and holder of the charles h and bettye barclay professorship in the department of biomedical engineering in this study we have been able to fine-tune the diffusion properties of these hydrogels that we have previously identified as a promising candidate for building long-term functioning glucose biosensors poly nipaams are a class of organic hydrogels that have a soft texture like contact lenses one of their attractive properties is that they can undergo cyclical swelling and deswelling with small temperature fluctuations in the body since their surface is dynamically changing with temperature they deter the attachment of cells and biomolecules this active self-cleaning mechanism makes poly nipaam hydrogels appealing for implants since they minimize the attack from the immune system to use the poly nipaam membrane for monitoring blood sugar it must house enough glucose-sensing molecules or assays furthermore the longevity of the hydrogel also depends on the membranes ability to retain these assay molecules without their leaking out think about the nipaam hydrogel like a knitted sweater where the spaces between the meshes are formed by the crossing stitches right now these spaces or windows in the hydrogels are too big letting the assay molecules go right through said grunlan if the assays keep leaching out this way we're not going to have a long functioning sensor therefore grunlan and her team focused their efforts in fine-tuning the properties of poly nipaams to limit the leaking of glucose-sensing molecules while still allowing the glucose to freely diffuse through the hydrogel to decrease the size of gaps the researchers inserted dangling molecules of different charges lengths and concentrations to the poly nipaam hydrogel when incorporated into the hydrogel these molecules create comb-shaped barriers whose teeth are designed to block diffusion of small assay-sized molecules to test if this comb-like architecture can limit diffusion of glucose sensors they also put within the hydrogel fluorescently tagged molecules called dextrans which served as proxies for glucose-sensing molecules next they placed the hydrogel into water and measured the amount of fluorescence in the water due to the leaking of dextrans from the hydrogel the researchers found that when they used a negatively charged molecule called poly(2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid) or pamp the combs prevented the diffusion of dextrans furthermore they also observed that glucose molecules were unhindered in their flow in and out of the hydrogel
1600,grunlan noted that now that they have proof-of-concept that their hydrogels can curb leaking of small dextrans the next step in their research would be to build a biosensor with glucose-sensing molecules contained within the membrane even though our present study did not involve actual sensing molecules it very conclusively and precisely shows you what comb architectures can do for hydrogels to limit diffusion said grunlan this was a systematic study to show the effectiveness of our approach and the possibility of extending our findings to other areas of research other than glucose sensing for which hydrogels with limited diffusion need to be designed contributors to this research include ping dong and bradley schott from the biomedical engineering department and dr kristen means a former student from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m and current post-doctoral researcher at rice university this research is funded by the robert j kleberg jr and helen c kleberg foundation the national science foundations precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) engineering research center (erc) and the national science foundation graduate research fellowship program
1601,dr jean-louis briaud distinguished professor spencer j buchanan chair professor and regents fellow in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and program manager at the texas a&m transportation institute recently took the helm of the american society of civil engineers (asce)he assumed the role of the 2021 asce president in a virtual ceremony held in late octoberhis vision includes voting rights for asce student chapter members and increasing communication between members and the organizations leadership briaud will represent the asce on the world stage promoting the civil engineering profession and serving the organizations more than 150 000 memberswhen you are president of a large organization all you see are the tough decisions because most of the easy ones have been made before it reaches your desk he saidbriaud said a quote from dr lee lowery senior professor in the department has stuck with him and guides his work
1602,as professor lowery would say ‘the only thing that does not die with you when you do is what you have given to others i have been on the receiving end of this quote from many great colleagues in civil engineering briaud said it is now time for me to pay it forwardbriaud emphasized communication during his campaign in 2019 and he bridged gaps during his year as president-elect helping organize a summit between asce institutes and regions as well as convening a student presidential grouphelping the students understand how important it is to be a member of asce to optimize excellence in your career is one of my most important goals he saidhis election as president of the asce is another chapter in a long career of service to the civil engineering profession he has taught civil engineering for more than 40 years and views his teaching and mentoring of students as his most significant contributionasce is our professional family being a member and helping the profession is a duty briaud saidbriauds teaching career began during his time as a teaching assistant in canada when he came to texas a&m in march 1978 he stepped off the plane in a suit and tie ready for a professional job interview only to be greeted by professor and head of the geotechnical division dr harry coyle in a cowboy hat with an open-collared shirt and an old pickup truck after his initial surprise briaud discovered the people behind the cowboy culture and fell in love with the university
1603,the sistema nacional de investigadores awarded texas a&m university faculty members aldo jonathan muñoz-vázquez and ivan díaz-rodríguez the title of national researchers level 1 this prestigious honor is bestowed by the government of mexico to recognize distinguished and decorated researchers this award is a reminder of my commitment to science to produce high-quality and impactful work as well as to uphold the truth and motivate future generations to generate scientific breakthroughs muñoz-vázquez said mexicos government created the award to promote continued research and innovation they use a thorough evaluation and application process for selection looking closely at the quality and number of publications the researchers produce its contribution to society and how their research impacts graduate students it is an award both faculty members have worked tirelessly to achieve the government takes almost a year of evaluation to decide who can be part of the system díaz-rodríguez said i am extremely honored to receive such an important award it requires time effort and hard work to achieve and i feel happy to finally receive this honor muñoz-vázquez is an instructional assistant professor in the department of multidisciplinary engineering his research focuses on robotics modeling control and motion planning schemes this includes control of constrained and cooperative mechanical systems nonlinear control fractional-order control and applied mathematics this is the second time he has received this honor; he was first awarded the title in 2017 novel technologies and modern manufacturing systems demand a high degree of precision and perplexing performance specifications said muñoz-vázquez in this sense and taking into account day-to-day technological advances and necessities in automation my research aims to provide innovative and outstanding tools for control engineering theorists and professionals in the future he will work toward developing novel methodologies for teaching engineering and science as well as the development of didactic material and new technologies that allow university students to understand challenging topics he has published more than 40 articles 29 as the first author he was recognized in 2018 and 2019 by publons as the top 1% of reviewers in engineering díaz-rodríguez is also an instructional assistant professor for the department his research focuses on control systems and performance working on proportional-integral-derivative controllers used in industrial manufacturing systems his research has been highlighted at several conferences and is respected internationally he discusses his research in the book analytical design of pid controllers which was an essential component of receiving this award his future research will focus on designing controllers to better the planet my research work will provide new and alternative controller design approaches that will contribute to the best use of renewable resources and will directly benefit to the reduction of air pollution and global warming said díaz-rodríguez díaz-rodríguez will hold the title of national researcher level 1 for the next three years and muñoz-vázquez will hold the title for the next four years the award is a great honor for both researchers and a tribute to the quality of professors at texas a&m
1604,engineering students were recognized at the texas a&m university college of engineering student awards virtual banquet held via zoom on nov 5 the college of engineering outstanding graduate student award recognizes one masters student and one doctoral student who have demonstrated excellence above and beyond usual levels of achievement this years recipients were seyedmohammadhossein hosseinian a doctoral candidate in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering (operations research area) and lamees el nihum a fourth-year medical student at the texas a&m college of medicine and a pilot student in the engineering medicine program first presented in 1947 as the engineering faculty senior award the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award is the most prestigious honor bestowed on a graduating senior in the college of engineering the award is based on outstanding scholastic achievement leadership and character the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award winners: brady allendallas texasaerospace engineering allens academic career has been filled with challenges but he has proven himself to be more than up to the task despite all the rigors of the junior-year curriculum for aerospace engineering he found the time to design a 2024 lunar lander operations plan for nasas project artemis in a senior design course prototyped a novel liquid metal-shape memory alloy actuator for his honors research and prepared for a flight test engineering internship at boeing despite this allen still found time to become involved in student organizations including being an aerospace engineering student ambassador he is a member of the american institute for aeronautics and astronautics as well as the memorial student centers lt jordan institute for international awareness and has served as on-conference director for the memorial student center outstanding senior award andrew balog pittsburgh pennsylvaniamaterials science and engineering balogs story has been defined by taking the path not followed he is a first-generation aggie from pittsburgh pennsylvania who decided to go to texas a&m without knowing anyone who had ever attended the university this continued when he chose his major as he was part of the first-ever materials science and engineering undergraduate cohort which offered him many unique opportunities to establish and strengthen a program for future students to enjoy in addition to being a valuable asset in getting the new materials science and engineering undergraduate program off to a great start balog continued to maintain an exemplary gpa and received numerous scholarships and other accolades including the inaugural abraham clearfield scholarship and being named a craig and galen brown foundation scholar and president's endowed scholar he also served as a student ambassador not only in the department but also as an engineering honors ambassador for the college and a texas a&m national scholar ambassador josiah coad college station texascomputer science and engineering coad considers himself a pioneer who has been involved in a spectrum of impactful activities across texas a&m while maintaining a near 40 gpa driven by curiosity and a desire to make a lasting contribution coad has applied himself both inside the classroom and out with internships at microsoft the central intelligence agency facebook and carnegie mellon during this time he published a paper on sketch recognition and was granted an international patent coad attended the university of oxford during study abroad and is pursuing three majors in the department of computer science and engineering while participating in the engineering honors and university honors programs while at texas a&m coad created a consulting firm that has been hired by fortune 1000 clients and is the founder of the tamu datathon which garnered international acclaim as the first event of its kind bringing in over 2 000 applications from 110 schools internationally in over 100 majors other honors include taking first place in an la bike share data science competition and the walmart computer vision competition he also is an ambassador with the texas a&m foundations maroon coats is a technical advisor for the texas a&m data analytics club and is a national association of engineers grand challenge scholar kiersten pottercollege station texaschemical engineering chemical engineering major potter is honing her leadership skills at texas a&m by serving as president of the student engineers council (sec) where she helped start a self-directed internship program as a response to the covid-19 pandemic the program helped engineering students whose summer internship plans were sidelined by the pandemic those who know potter note her leadership skills and what a strong team player she is potter was chosen as a member of the zachry leadership program the bain texas womens leadership summit and the mays business schools business fellows class xxxviii in addition to sec she is a member of the texas a&m foundations maroon coats horizons consulting group fish aides freshman leadership organization and took part in the aggie_challenge michael sporkin katy texaselectrical and computer engineering describing himself as restlessly curious sporkin has made an indelible mark in his academic pursuits he has maintained a gpa of 40 throughout his undergraduate years worked as an intern for the boeing company and has conducted research on wireless transmission using visible light he can also build his own electric guitar in addition to his academic excellence sporkin has shown tremendous leadership through his role as a student ambassador for his department and as a texas a&m foundation maroon coat he has also served as a member of the zachry leadership program and is the president of the century mens society sporkin is also the recipient of several awards including the buck weirus spirit award and mays 2019 texas a&m case challenge award zachary williams houston texaselectrical and computer engineering for williams leadership roles come naturally during his school years he served as a boy scout and attained the highest rank of eagle scout when enrolled at texas a&m he continued his commitment to leadership by serving in the corps of cadets once again rising in rank from first sergeant to commanding officer on the academic front williams has been an outstanding student securing a gpa of 40 on all of his courses furthermore despite the covid-19 pandemic he still strived to be productive one of his achievements includes developing an astrophotography camera that can take high-resolution movies of the night sky williams is also the recipient of several recognition honors including an aggie band hallmark award and a most outstanding cadet in the aggie band he is also been on the deans honor roll for eight consecutive semesters jon williamson college station texasmechanical engineering and computer science and engineering williamson is considered an inspiring individual who is determined to succeed no matter the obstacles he will graduate with two bachelors degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science during 45 years of study williamson has shown academic excellence in these fields throughout rigorous course loads and was named a university scholar a texas a&m president's endowed scholar and an association of former students scholar among others while a member of the memorial student centers aggie leaders of tomorrow williamson won an excellence award as an executive overseeing tedxtamu he also was a member of the texas a&m chamber orchestra for four years and was first chair in the texas a&m philharmonic orchestra he performed undergraduate research on autonomous vehicles and had three internships in three different industries at boston consulting group rolls royce and bhp
1605,dr luay nakhleh 98 will become the william and stephanie sick dean of rice universitys george r brown school of engineering on jan 1 2021 nakhleh earned his masters degree in computer science from texas a&m university in 1998 and his doctoral degree at the university of texas at austin his first exposure to computer science came in high school when his computer science instructor taught his class how to solve logic problems for three years he took classes in computer science when his school didnt even own a computer he then applied and was accepted to the technion – israel institute of technology where he earned his bachelors degree in computer science and decided he wanted to pursue an academic career nakhleh came to texas from israel in 1997 to further his education he applied to several graduate schools in the united states and decided on texas a&m he fell in love with texas and after earning his masters and doctoral degrees he joined the department of computer science at rice university in 2004 while there he received many accolades but nakhleh said that his favorite part of his job has been working with students he enjoys interacting with students so much that he plans to shirk tradition and continue teaching nakhleh plans to continue to teach in the spring despite his new role typically being a purely administrative role if i find that the end of the semester that teaching made my schedule unsustainable then i will rethink it for subsequent years but i enjoy teaching especially teaching freshman he said i feel it's at that point that we can make the most difference he offers this advice to engineering undergraduates engineers need to realize that that they can play a huge role in confronting the crises that arise in our world he said covid-19 is all the proof they require from ppe and ventilators to health treatments and therapeutics all of those things are engineered and have an impact wider than themselves he also recommends that engineers should consider furthering their education i hope more students think about graduate school he said it's a game of patience because engineers can often find a job that pays you well while graduate school wont but that thinking is short-term in four or five years one gets a phd and you have no idea how it can change your life nakhleh also gave advice to mid-level engineers who are considering pursuing leadership positions in the corporate world and academia one thing i would say is that you should not listen to cynical people about leadership leadership is very rewarding when you think of the impact you can create and the changes you can make in the lives of students the hard work is worth it he said i would also encourage those who are interested in leadership to prepare for it because it doesnt just happen leadership is about communication skills
1606,the texas a&m college of engineering is proud of our former students like nakhleh who display aggie core values such as excellence selfless service and leadership if you know an aggie who is celebrating an accomplishment and would like them to be recognized by the college please contact the office of alumni relations
1607,"dr limei tian assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has received the trailblazer r21 award from the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering part of the national institutes of health to support her research developing biosensors for renal function monitoring ""we are very excited about receiving support to do this work "" tian said ""detecting acute kidney injury (aki) at an early stage is very important but challenging"" tian's group is researching biosensors specifically those that can continuously monitor different molecules and physiological processes in the body ""when sensing targets we are very interested in acquiring and analyzing biochemical information in a continuous manner "" tian said ""many proteins have been discovered and validated as disease-specific biomarkers"" however existing biosensors cannot continuously monitor proteins in many cases protein concentrations can change rapidly making knowledge about those levels even more valuable tian's project a collaborative effort with dr ayse akcan-arikan medical director of inpatient dialysis services at the texas children's hospital and associate professor at the baylor college of medicine is focused on developing sensors to detect biomarkers for aki ""if we have an approach to continuously monitor the levels of molecular biomarkers in body fluids it would provide very valuable information for diagnosis and treatment of many diseases including aki heart injury sepsis and respiratory illnesses such as covid-19"" tian said current biomarkers used in the clinic often fail to detect aki at an early stage and other biomarkers have been difficult to track due to a lack of technology to continuously monitor them a gap tians team is working to solve arikan said intermittent monitoring in the clinic is typically done daily meaning that the window of opportunity to detect aki and intervene can often be missed ""continuous monitoring of aki biomarkers will facilitate dynamic real-time assessments of renal function for optimal treatment "" arikan said the trailblazer award is an opportunity for new and early stage investigators to pursue research programs such as this that integrate engineering and the physical sciences with the life and behavioral sciences high-impact projects will have the potential to transform understanding or practice by applying an innovative approach to an appropriate biomedical challenge to generate informative and impactful data or craft a solution to a significant problem the team was awarded $589 100 for use over a three-year period"
1608,"the association of former students at texas a&m university honored dr clayton mulvihill a former student in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering as one of its 2020 distinguished graduate student award recipients he was one of eight university-wide recipients for the association's research award mulvihill who graduated with his bachelors degree in 2013 his masters degree in 2015 and his doctoral degree in 2019 said he was surprised to receive the award but grateful to those who have helped him in his academic journey most of all he said the achievement reflected the guidance he received from his advisor dr eric l petersen ""i think this award speaks a lot to dr petersen and just the quality of work that he does "" mulvihill said ""it's a huge reflection on him and i'm super grateful to have had his guidance"" petersen who serves the mechanical engineering department as nelson-jackson chair professor and director of the turbomachinery laboratory called mulvihill an ideal graduate student and said he expects him to have a bright future ""coming from the excellent a&m undergraduate mechanical engineering program we were fortunate to have him stay in aggieland for this graduate work "" petersen said ""his intelligence hard work and a natural proclivity for scientific research in the laboratory formed a perfect combination"" mulvihill now works at argonne national laboratory researching theoretical chemical kinetics a shift from the experimental research he conducted while in the mechanical engineering department ""basically what i used to work on measuring in the laboratory at texas a&m i'm now trying to calculate theoretically "" mulvihill said ""experiments and theory have always complemented each other or pointed out new areas to do research so i just flipped to the other side of things"" mulvihill said his best advice to current undergraduate and graduate students is to not be afraid to explore areas outside of their academic comfort zone and specifically for graduate students to remember that hard work will pay off in time ""don't be afraid to branch out and have experiences in areas different from what you're studying that was something i never regretted "" mulvihill said ""and for grad students just know that a lot of your productivity is going to be measured a few years down the road the gratification may be delayed but it's worth it"""
1609,dr r stanley williams hewlett packard enterprise company chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was the keynote speaker at the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine board on physics and astronomy condensed matter and materials research committee workshop held last year in washington dc the workshop focused on understanding the current state and future potential of memristive technologies particularly polymer and ion dynamics based and what will be needed to achieve energy-efficient neuromorphic computing based on these technologies williams who is also director of the hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research presented his keynote titled an overview of memristor technologies williams research focus areas lie in nonlinear dynamical systems attractor-based computing dynamical bayesian networks and neuromorphic hardware
1610,paul burke a doctoral student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university was one of 25 winners selected to have their submission to an idea competition published at a symposium hosted by the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine the symposium imagining the future of undergraduate stem education brought together innovators in higher education policymakers funders and representatives from associations and industry to discuss ambitions and next steps for the future of stem (science technology engineering and math) education contributing to this conversation were burke and the other winners responses to the competitions question: what should undergraduate stem education look like in 2040 and beyond to meet the needs of students science and society burkes submission titled the democratization and future ubiquity of stem education (available here) promotes a future where stem education is widely accessible takes an interdisciplinary approach and cultivates a society of lifetime learners i have strong feelings about the future of stem education and entered the idea competition as a way to express these ideas and contribute to the conversation said burke one thing burke is passionate about is the priority of interdisciplinary coursework and personalized degree planning we all know stem majors have little room for nontechnical electives but sometimes it is the course outside of your department that gives you a huge insight into the world around you that you may not have known otherwise in his paper burke also highlights the accessibility of online learning and the critical value it will provide as technology continues to revolutionize the world whether it is ambitious high schoolers taking open coursework self-taught programmers or factory workers whose jobs have been automated and are learning new skills we are all stem students said burke to quote the last line of my paper ‘in 2040 the students of the past will again be the students of the present a lifetime of learning will be expected to keep up with the rapid unimaginable advances of the future the winners of the competition were invited to attend the symposium and participate in discussions burke whose aspirations are to enter academia after graduation viewed it as an opportunity to continue learning about ways he can aid students in their educational pursuits and learn from leaders in the field who are already shaping the future of stem education i hope to take what i have learned from this experience and put it into practice he said last year i completed the texas a&m academy for future faculty and i hope to use what i learned from the symposium and idea competition to foster a community of graduate students here at texas a&m and across the country who are interested in faculty roles
1611,"texas a&m university college of engineering faculty dr tracy hammond and dr vinayak krishnamurthy are part of an investigative research team that recently received a $15 million collaborative research grant from the national science foundations (nsf) division of undergraduate education to improve undergraduate students ability to draw representations of structures and systems sketchtivity an intelligent tutoring system that teaches engineering students how to draw these representations will be used in this project to examine the impact of drawing instruction on student learning ""many engineering schools now recognize how important it is for every single one of their students to know how to sketch 3d objects quickly and accurately to support design generation and communication however few engineering schools have the capabilities to teach these vital skills said hammond director of the institute for engineering education and innovation and professor in the department of computer science and engineering ""sketchtivity provides instant personalized feedback on students' drawing skills just as if they had an expert art teacher looking over their shoulder with these new skills we will create more confident creative and capable engineers with effective visual communication skills"" the projects investigative team also includes dr julie linsey associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at georgia tech; wayne li professor of practice in design and engineering at georgia tech; dr kerrie douglas assistant professor in the department of engineering education at purdue university; and dr vimal vishwanathan associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at san jose university the grant titled ""collaborative research: fostering engineering creativity and communication through immediate personalized feedback on 2d-perspective drawing "" will be shared by the four respective universities during the transition from hand drafting to computer-aided-design free-hand drawing and its associated benefits were unintentionally removed from the engineering curricula this eventually resulted in a lack of proficiency by students and faculty when it came to free-hand drawing sketchtivity provides real-time feedback on 2d drawings made on a screen instead of paper this application developed by the research team helps students with iterative personalized feedback on the drawing and facilitates their overall learning experience this project will support reestablishing 2d-perspective drawing in the engineering curricula to meet the practical needs of students once they enter the workforce this research is expected to have extensive significance in undergraduate stem education ""by enabling students to sketch better we are already beginning to see higher engagement and exploratory behavior in students "" said krishnamurthy assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering through this project around 5 000 diverse undergraduate and graduate students at the four partnering institutions would receive the sketchtivity software this would include a large percentage of women engineers and other students who are underrepresented in the stem field the project aims to bring crucial knowledge about drawing-based artificial intelligence (ai) tools and increase cognizance of the effects that feedback and reflective prompts have on drawing skills learning and creativity assessments made by humans will be compared to ai-based assessments to provide supplementary information about the development of intelligent tutoring systems the project will investigate the students drawing ability how it is impacted by their creativity and spatial reasoning skills and whether it is transferable to other engineering courses in order to determine the project outcome a mixed-methods approach that uses surveys validated assessments for engineering design creativity and drawing quizzes will be implemented the nsfs improving undergraduate stem education: education and human resources program seeks to improve the effectiveness of stem education for all students through research and development projects the program supports the creation exploration and implementation of promising practices and tools through the engaged student learning track"
1612,the online graduate engineering program at texas a&m university was again ranked no 1 in the state of texas according to the 2021 rankings of the us news & world report best online graduate engineering programs released jan 26 the program was no 9 in the us among public universities and was tied for no 11 overall the program also was no 14 overall for best online graduate engineering programs for veterans the publication also ranks texas a&m no 6 in online graduate industrial engineering no 8 in electrical engineering and engineering management programs and mechanical engineering is ranked no 11 the faculty and staff of the college of engineering are dedicated to producing professionals who are ready to engineer creative and workable solutions for current problems and those in the future we embrace our mission as a leading land-grant institution serving the needs of the state and the nation by continuously updating our knowledge through fundamental and applied research said dr sunay palsole assistant vice chancellor for remote educationthis improvement-driven approach translates to continuously adapting our academic offerings to help new and seasoned engineers reach their goals our national ranking reflects a strong commitment to maintaining and expanding high-quality distance learning now and in the future the publication notes that since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic that has disrupted college classes throughout the country the need for quality online programs has never been greater web-based education had already been gaining momentum in higher education and nearly 33 million higher education students enrolled exclusively in distance education programs in fall 2018 according to the national center for education statistics us news editors said the rankings include public and private colleges and universities with degree-granting programs offering online classes needed to complete the degree programs are rated on graduate indebtedness course delivery and academic and career support made available to students remotely the college of engineerings online graduate program currently offers 12 online masters degree options with more planned for the future and two doctoral degree options
1613,shelby and carl jaedicke 73 have established the class of 1973 nuclear engineering endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in nuclear engineering at texas a&m university carl graduated from texas a&m in 1973 with a degree in nuclear engineering so carl and shelby want the scholarship to have an impact on students pursuing a nuclear engineering degree in the nuclear engineering program at texas a&m our hope is that this endowment will help deserving students earn a college degree support our nuclear department which is one of the top programs in the world and support the field of nuclear engineering carl said the jaedickes are also making this gift in appreciation of his education and experiences at texas a&m which he said had opened many doors for him shelby and i believe in higher education and want to help deserving young students with their college expenses he said through this donation carl aims to highlight the need for scholarships in the nuclear engineering department at texas a&m and is hopeful that his classmates from the nuclear engineering class of 1973 will join him and make additional gifts to make the endowment larger the larger the endowment the more students we can help he said
1614,the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m was established in 1958 and is the largest nuclear engineering program in the united states based on enrollment it is ranked second nationally among undergraduate and fifth nationally among graduate programs in public universities by us news and world report endowments supporting the students in the department have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the nuclear engineering department or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
1615,dr nick duffield the royce e wisenbaker professor i in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2020 fellow by the association for computing machinery (acm) for his contributions to network measurement and analysis acm is the world's largest and most prestigious society of computing professionals the acm fellows program recognizes the top 1% of acm members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to acm and the larger computing community fellows are nominated by their peers with nominations reviewed by a distinguished selection committee duffield is director of the texas a&m institute of data science (tamids) at which he and his collaborators pursue new approaches to data science research education operations and partnership the work conducted within tamids spans multiple disciplines and connects researchers from across texas a&m to bring together elements of data science from engineering technology science and the humanities and inform wider social challenges duffield also holds a courtesy appointment in the department of computer science and engineering duffields research focuses on data science and computer networking with current projects concerning algorithms for data streaming and machine learning computer network measurement and resilience and applications of data science to urban science transportation agriculture and hydrology
1616,byron l black has established a planned gift to create the byron black 86 engineering technology excellence endowment distributions from this endowment will be used at the discretion of the department head to support the operation and needs of the engineering technology program black has also established the byron black 86 engineering technology endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students pursuing an undergraduate degree in engineering technology at texas a&m university black graduated from texas a&m in 1986 with his degree in engineering technology he said he knew that going to texas a&m would open doors to a lot of opportunities not only in texas but across the south as well as internationally black decided that splitting his contribution will allow him to continuously support both the administrators of the department as well as the students who choose this discipline my main desire is to give back to a program that has given me so much and enabled me to reach both my career goals and financial goals he said i would like to see the engineering technology program grow and to help others achieve their goals as it allowed me to do gig em aggies!
1617,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states endowments supporting the students and the departments have a direct and immediate impact on the program and the students experience if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah simonds assistant director of development
1618,with employees' lives and a companys costs on the line its imperative for engineers to design offshore and floating structures with materials that can withstand the hazardous environment of the ocean but there is more to keep in mind than the constant beating of the waves corrosion for example causes materials to weaken and decompose eating away at them until they give way and deform or completely deteriorate and in the saline-rich waters of the sea corrosion is an engineers enemy to help combat this dr marcelo paredes assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston has been working on materials modeling – especially for engineering materials widely used by automotive offshore and nuclear industries – and researching how corrosion affects high entropy alloys (heas) being part of this department which has a lot to do with corrosive environments the corrosion resistance of metallic materials has always been a critical aspect in safety and design protocols for marine infrastructures paredes said this study is widespread in many areas of knowledge such as materials science chemistry mechanical engineering etc with important contributions toward its full understanding despite those efforts still very little is known about corrosion-resistance properties of heas as paredes explained heas – or alloys that are formed by mixing equal or relatively large proportions of five or more elements – offer new opportunities for applications in engineering areas due to their enhanced qualities the main driving force behind these advances is the necessity to discover new materials that will be stronger and resistant with improved mechanical and chemical characteristics for energy production and offshore installations and low-density low-cost alloys for transportation he said in an international and multidisciplinary effort to both better understand the corrosion process and to design two distinct corrosion-resistant heas (fealnicu-cr and fealnicu-ti) paredes has teamed up with researchers from the national corrosion and materials reliability lab in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and dr pradeep konda from the indian institute of technology madras in chennai india together they aim to understand how corrosion influences various mechanisms of deformation at different acidity levels and loading modes the materials mechanical behavior will be analyzed at texas a&m and the materials phase formation stability and evolution will be analyzed – down to near-atomic resolutions – at the indian institute of technology madras i believe that tackling this challenging problem of materials design is a very productive joint cooperation that could be established to explore the potentials of hea as next-generation materials for engineering applications in aggressive environments paredes said
1619,"dr gretchen miller associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been elected to serve as the 2021 chair of the board of directors of the consortium of universities for the advancement of hydrologic science inc (cuahsi)cuashi represents more than 140 academic and affiliate members including nongovernmental organizations and international members cuahsi receives support from the national science foundation (nsf) to provide programs and services that support interdisciplinary water science advancement""i am excited to be serving as chair of the cuahsi board of directors during 2021 the board develops cuahsi's strategic plan and guides the overall direction of the nonprofit organization "" she said ""my position as chair also means that i get more opportunities to meet and interact with water researchers from across the country""cuahsi is well known for its service to the hydrologic sciences research community such as its hydroshare repository an easy-to-use web-based hydrologic information system that enables users to share and publish data and models in a variety of flexible formats the institute in partnership with the national weather service hosts the national water center innovators program summer institute each year to engage the academic community in research projects related to water prediction and flood forecasting""during my term in 2021 i plan to work to broaden cuahsi's reach to those in undergraduate institutions and those groups traditionally underrepresented in the geosciences "" miller said ""i have been involved with our new diversity equity and inclusion plan from its initial stages and am proud to be overseeing the developments coming directly from it such as the expansion of our membership""according to miller one of cuahsi's newest projects is particularly important to her acting as a coordinating hub for the national science foundations critical zone collaborative network the critical zone is the near‐surface layer of the earth including vegetation soil water and rocks all of which are essential elements for supporting life this hub will support discovery through community synthesis activities and through access to community data and modeling cyberinfrastructure integrate and establish cyberinfrastructure and enhance collaboration among critical zone researchers""i consider myself to be part of that research community and am looking forward to the new networking and educational opportunities that cuahsi will be organizing "" she said ""it represents a chance to promote a rich field of interdisciplinary science and to keep current on new developments in it"""
1620,"dr neilon j rowan professor emeritus in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university passed away jan 8he leaves behind a legacy that impacted the transportation industry and the careers of hundreds of transportation professionals throughout his 30-year career as an educator and researcherin lieu of flowers the family requests contributions be sent to hospice brazos valley visitation and services for rowan will be held on saturday feb 27 2021 at first baptist church of bryan a lifelong texan rowan earned his bachelors degree in civil engineering from texas tech university in 1957 he went on to texas a&m for his masters and doctoral degrees and joined the faculty in 1959 from 1979-89 he served as assistant department head for undergraduate programs in the civil engineering department and guided many young professionals through the maze of the engineering curriculumrowans warm and outgoing personality down-home demeanor and genuine concern for students and young professionals aided their entry into the profession and enhanced their professional development he encouraged students to participate in the institute of transportation engineers (ite) and other professional organizations he led by example and his peers elected him to serve in 1981 as the ites international presidentrowan was also a retired texas a&m transportation institute (tti) research engineer cv wootan retired tti director hailed rowan as ""the father of high-level illumination work his work from the late 1960s is now a national standard he also was instrumental in the development of the breakaway sign technology used internationally todayduring his career rowan served as an expert witness in highway design and operations rail-highway grade crossings roadway lighting and highway safety his research on these topics and other areas of highway safety is well known across the country having published more than 25 definitive papers and reports he was active developing the continuing education program in traffic and highway engineering for texas and the federal highway administrationin 1993 rowan was awarded the highest honor by the international institute of transportation engineers selecting him as an honorary member he was the first texan and at the time only the 46th person to receive the honor in the organizations long historyhe garnered many faculty citations including the 1989–90 zachry teaching excellence award for which he was nominated by his students he was also named outstanding professor in 1985 and was inducted into the texas tech engineering hall of fame read a tribute to dr rowan from former students and tti"
1621,even before the covid-19 pandemic hit providing hands-on experiments in radiation detection for nuclear engineering and health physics students was a challenge not all institutions have access to the appropriate equipment and materials for these experiments and access to sources can be further restricted by certifications and liabilities the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) initially developed a remote detection laboratory to make radiation detection courses feasible for distance education students nsspi graduate grant emery designed the original proof-of-concept lab in 2018 under the guidance of dr craig marianno nsspi deputy director and assistant professor of nuclear engineering anthony galindo a nsspi masters student also working with marianno has now taken on the task of expanding the capabilities of the remote lab to include even more experiments for remote education under the current impact of the covid-19 pandemic remote education capabilities have proven to be an essential component of an institutions services galindo said i have had the pleasure of providing the service of a remote laboratory to the texas a&m department of nuclear engineering during this time to continue undergraduate and graduate courses in radiation detection
1622,galindo developed several new experiments for radiation detection and physical security education these experiments involve the use of industry-standard detectors and software to train students and professionals in nuclear security the proof-of-concept remote laboratory included the following radiation detection experiments: gamma source identification uranium enrichment quantification and geiger-mueller dead time determination galindo made improvements to these existing experiments and added several new radiation detection experiments including labs on alpha spectroscopy and attenuation compton scattering and attenuation coefficients the physical protection experiments he developed explore material reflectivity object surveillance and remote object measurement using the lego mindstorms ev3 education core set (a programmable science and engineering kit that allows students to expand their robotics skills) and accompanying light ultrasonic and infrared sensors students completing these experiments gain an understanding of how sensors can be used in a facilitys physical protection system this has been especially helpful for providing the same laboratory experience to remote students in the face of in-person class size restrictions said galindo texas a&m students in the nuclear detection and isotope technology laboratory course used the remote laboratory in spring of 2020 while the university was closed due to covid-19 and it will be used again for this same class in spring 2021 the remote laboratory will also soon become a model for similar installations in other parts of the world outside of texas a&m the remote laboratory will be installed at amity university in india to be used as a regional center for training students and professionals in nuclear security galindo said galindo anticipates graduating with a masters degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m and a graduate certificate in advanced international affairs from the bush school of government and public service in may 2021 he graduated with a bachelors degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m in may 2019 as an undergraduate student galindo worked with marianno to develop a multi-deployable radiation detection system for radiological emergency response as a nsspi student galindo spent a week at los alamos national laboratory for the 2020 safeguards education experience the course was designed for the training of new inspectors with the international atomic energy agency (iaea) making it an extremely rewarding experience galindo was a summer safeguards intern at pacific northwest national laboratory (pnnl) where he worked on a scoping study on advanced radiation detection materials for the iaea additionally he has participated in intensive safeguards and nonproliferation courses at pnnl and los alamos national laboratory galindo was also selected to be a science and technology intern for the defense intelligence agency however covid-19 restrictions resulted in the cancellation of the internship program after graduation galindo will work as a staff engineer at ib3 global solutions in knoxville tennessee
1623,the engineering concepts minor was created by the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university to highlight the overlap between engineering and other disciplines its goal is to help expand the rate of innovation and technology by equipping those who work alongside engineers with knowledge about fundamental engineering concepts and principles cameron brown is an aspiring business management major in the mays business school after reading about the engineering concepts minor he felt it was the perfect opportunity to combine his interests i was torn between doing a business or engineering degree brown said i feel the engineering concepts minor will give me the ability to work on the business side of an oil and gas company this unique minor is open to undergraduate students outside of the college of engineering students will learn the general engineering design process throughout the program and the differences between different engineering fields students will also use basic quantitative methods which are commonly used in engineering to develop a deeper understanding of how engineers solve issues i felt like it would help me understand engineers more than the average business major and will help me think in a different way said brown it's been great learning about how engineers think what problems and possible solutions engineers generally experience and it will certainly give me an edge in the competitive job market working collaboratively with engineers the minor highlights that many real-world problems can only be solved by transcending the boundaries of a single discipline together graduates of texas a&m engineers and nonengineers will be ready to positively impact society
1624,after impressing judges with their hard work and creativity in the 2020 nasa moon to mars ice and prospecting challenge an interdisciplinary team of 13 engineering students from the college of engineering at texas a&m university was invited back to the 2021 competition the 2020 nasa challenge encouraged these aggies to design and build an impressive next-generation drilling rig prototype for space use they ended up as one of only 10 teams selected to showcase their efforts at nasa langley with a video submission both the moon and mars feature underground ice deposits so nasa wants to harvest this resource for energy agriculture and other uses the students were asked to create a drilling and ice-harvesting system that could be used remotely with minimal human interaction they devised a plan that incorporates standard drilling systems on earth where sensors and actuators are found on and behind the drilling bit but included an adjustment for use in an airless environment the aggie team then constructed a prototype drilling rig that is self-deployable automated and can perform more than one operation without changing any equipment
1625,their creation the drilling and extraction automated system nicknamed dreams has four main benefits that make it perfect for use on the moon or mars the rigging is an advanced tensegrity structure made of a strong but lightweight system of rods cables and rotary motors this configuration reduces the rigs weight and allows it to unfold or fold itself up as needed for deployment the drilling system uses a short drill bit length connected to drill pipes so it can potentially carve through solid rock and reach estimated depths of hundreds to thousands of meters the drilling heating and extraction components needed for prospecting into the soil for ice are one integrated system meaning they can work individually or together to save time and expense the computer hardware controls and algorithms work together in an automated drilling system one that can assess measure and ‘feel its way through the different materials it travels through speeding up or slowing down as needed without human intervention to maintain safe operations the students faced several challenges during the development of dreams since tensegrity structures havent been applied to drilling before the students worked with the susu and mark a fischer 72 engineering design center staff in the zachry engineering education complex to 3d print unique parts and components for testing before making final parts they situated a heating element right behind the drilling bit to be activated when data indicated they were drilling in ice but found the heating element melted the delicate nano-sized wiring of the monitoring system also located behind the drill bit they overcame this problem by contacting professors in mechanical and chemical engineering who suggested an insolating chemical paint to protect the wiring the students were guided by several faculty members dr eduardo gildin from the harold vance department of petroleum engineering advised them on automated control systems and helped with fundraising dr george moridis also in petroleum engineering had previous work experience with nasa and mentored them on fluid flow and harvesting frozen materials aerospace engineering and ocean engineering professor dr robert skelton a renowned expert on tensegrity provided advice with the rig configuration petroleum engineering associate professor of practice dr sam noynaert offered his experience with student competitions and drilling systems they came up with ideas that are amazing said gildin it was the students who suggested in the very beginning to create the tensegrity components using 3d printing so they could assemble and check measurements as things progressed the students had separate meetings apart from their mentors that were led by team leader mohamed khaled ideas were encouraged from every student in their meetings with faculty the team dealt with the details of how to integrate their ideas into one fully functioning machine now that they have been invited back for the next-level challenge the aggies are increasing their effort gildin remarked that their creations are already patent-level one of the main things i learned through this experience is that these students regardless of graduate or undergraduate level have exceptional ideas said gildin they are here to learn and they are dedicated students original 2019-2020 team members (listed alphabetically): ayodeji (ayo) avis adeniran doctoral student in mechanical engineering muhao chen doctoral student in aerospace engineering jessica ezemba undergraduate student in mechanical engineering mohamed khaled (team lead) doctoral student in petroleum engineering emily kincaid undergraduate student in mechanical engineering le linh masters student in petroleum engineering thomas j lopez doctoral student in interdisciplinary engineering ahmed madi undergraduate student in mechanical engineering luis rodriguez masters student in mechanical engineering srivignesh srinivasan masters student in mechanical engineering alkassoum toure masters student in petroleum engineering teresa valdez undergraduate student in computer engineering uthej vattipalli masters student in civil engineering
1626,to enter the world of the fantastically small the main currency is either a ray of light or electrons strong beams which yield clearer images are damaging to specimens on the other hand weak beams can give noisy low-resolution images in a new study published in nature machine intelligence researchers at texas a&m university have unveiled a machine learning-based algorithm that can reduce graininess in low-resolution images and reveal new details that were otherwise buried within the noise images taken with low-powered beams can be noisy which can hide interesting and valuable visual details of biological specimens said dr shuiwang ji associate professor in the department of computer science and engineering to solve this problem we use a pure computational approach to create higher-resolution images and we have shown in this study that we can improve the resolution up to an extent very similar to what you might obtain using a high beam ji added that unlike other denoising algorithms that can only use information coming from a small patch of pixels within a low-resolution image their smart algorithm can identify pixel patterns that may be spread across the entire noisy image increasing its efficacy as a denoising tool instead of solely relying on microscope hardware to improve the images resolution a technique known as augmented microscopy uses a combination of software and hardware to enhance the quality of images here a regular image taken on a microscope is superimposed on a computer-generated digital image this image processing method holds promise to not just cut down costs but also automatize medical image analysis and reveal details that the eye can sometimes miss currently a type of software based on a machine-learning algorithm called deep learning has been shown to be effective at removing the blurriness or noise in images these algorithms can be visualized as consisting of many interconnected layers or processing steps that take in a low-resolution input image and generate a high-resolution output image in conventional deep-learning-based image processing techniques the number and network between layers decide how many pixels in the input image contribute to the value of a single pixel in the output image this value is immutable after the deep-learning algorithm has been trained and is ready to denoise new images however ji said fixing the number for the input pixels technically called the receptive field limits the performance of the algorithm imagine a piece of specimen having a repeating motif like a honeycomb pattern most deep-learning algorithms only use local information to fill in the gaps in the image created by the noise said ji but this is inefficient because the algorithm is in essence blind to the repeating pattern within the image since the receptive field is fixed instead deep-learning algorithms need to have adaptive receptive fields that can capture the information in the overall image structure to overcome this hurdle ji and his students developed another deep-learning algorithm that can dynamically change the size of the receptive field in other words unlike earlier algorithms that can only aggregate information from a small number of pixels their new algorithm called global voxel transformer networks (gvtnets) can pool information from a larger area of the image if required when they analyzed their algorithms performance against other deep-learning software the researchers found that gvtnets required less training data and could denoise images better than other deep-learning algorithms furthermore the high-resolution images obtained were comparable to those obtained using a high-energy light beam the researchers noted that their new algorithm can easily be adapted to other applications in addition to denoising such as label-free fluorescence imaging and 3d to 2d conversions for computer graphics our research contributes to the emerging area of a smart microscopy where artificial intelligence is seamlessly integrated into the microscope said ji deep-learning algorithms such as ours will allow us to potentially transcend the physical limit posed by light that was not possible before this can be extremely valuable for a myriad of applications including clinical ones like estimating the stage of cancer progression and distinguishing between cell types for disease prognosis equal contributors to this research include zhengyang wang and yaochen xie from the computer science and engineering department this research is funded by the national science foundation the national institutes of health and the defense advanced research projects agency
1627,in 1922 the tradition of the 12th man was born when coach dana bible called on e king gill to stand and be ready to play for the aggies this tradition of volunteered service lives on in the hearts of all aggies and has few better examples than dr john junkins who answered that call to service on nov 24 when texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp asked junkins to act as the interim president of texas a&m university professor junkins as he likes to be called never set out to be university president he never aspired to be a department head or dean of a college his true love has always been people and leading from his heart; those passions that ignite a fire within him he is known as a prolific researcher however he often says the teamwork that results in changing the lives of his collaborators is more important than the research results he is also a principled and goal-focused leader who has led presidential searches and participated in frequent service activities at texas a&m sharp and the texas a&m system board of regents recognized junkins legacy of leadership and service and chose him to lead the university with the knowledge that he would bring the right set of values to the job junkins accepted recognizing this role as perhaps his ultimate service to the university im very excited to make an important service contribution to this university that ive grown to love over the 35 years ive been here said junkins in an introductory letter to the campus junkins promised not to bring a bold new agenda but rather to help texas a&m navigate along its currently planned course and work closely with senior leadership and faculty to solve problems as they arise im having to learn how to work to pull a large group of people together while still exercising my best judgment on many small and large issues that define the way forward said junkins dr john hurtado professor of aerospace engineering and deputy director and chief technology officer of the bush combat development complex believes that junkins is well suited for the job dr junkins is a big thinker said hurtado he brings a large vision to whatever challenge he encounters and he genuinely sees the good in people this allows him to build trust consensus and motivation
1628,junkins joined the faculty of the aerospace engineering department in 1985 after previous appointments at the university of virginia and virginia tech dr walter haisler professor emeritus recruited junkins knowing he would help lead texas a&m to national prominence in the space program calling him a visionary haisler says of junkins he was key to building the departments space program he was a tireless unselfish leader who always was the first to do whatever was needed he personifies ‘lead by example junkins was instrumental in advancing an unranked department with only 13 faculty members by focusing on recruiting other great leaders to help set the tone for the department creating what is now a pinnacle of research and engineering education within the university and home to more than 45 faculty members the departments undergraduate program is ranked seventh and the graduate program is ranked fifth among public institutions by us news & world report with a nation-leading eight national academy of engineering members the department is rapidly rising in national rankings he was a role model for both students and faculty said haisler and he instilled enthusiasm and motivation for seeking perfection and doing it with integrity he focused on developing others faculty and students alike and his actions were always for the good of the department he is one of very few faculty i know who has voted with his life savings to advance texas a&m he and his wife elouise left their estate to establish an endowed chair for the department in 1999 vision 2020 was adopted an aspirational outline designed to elevate the university among its national public peers over the next 20 years junkins was so inspired by this document that he came up with the idea for the hagler institute for advanced study in what he calls speed dating for nobel laureates the institute brings renowned faculty from all over the world to study and conduct research with texas a&m faculty and students approved by the board of regents in 2010 junkins held off launching the institute until he had enough funding to make it accessible across the entire campus i felt like i had to make it matter from the onset to every college and the entire university junkins said if i didnt it would become associated with one or two colleges and would never be adopted as something to elevate every department in the university the institute became a fully funded reality in 2011 attracting more than 80 eminent scholars to texas a&m in the past nine years including 11 who are now permanent faculty members fifteen colleges have already attracted two or more fellows the institute has raised more than $40 million of endowment and gift commitments to secure its place on campus permanently junkins believes that his track record and experience with the institute will be helpful in his role as president i think my leading the institute shows that im not a person who thinks engineering first last and always ive really tried to lead the institute to elevate the university said junkins so i hope people can see my heart is in the right place acknowledging that there are many challenges to face in his new role junkins jokes that if i could get a b-plus out of the spring semester right now id take it he believes the best thing hes done so far is choosing dr mark weichold to assume the provost position mark has a really wide set of skills and experience said junkins he complements me well with more administrative experience i'm looking forward to seeing how we work out as a tandem when the presidential search is over and a new president is named junkins looks forward to going back to being professor junkins and his true passion of mentoring and developing great people he believes development and motivation of the next generation is the most important thing the university does junkins said the ultimate output of research is not a paper book patent or new technology; it is rather a younger persons advancement this person will usually build their early career on the ideas and take it to the next level junkins proudly says that he has about 160 doctoral descendants with three generations of professors almost half of my 55 graduate students became professors which as far as i know is a national record says junkins among his descendants are hurtado dr manoranjan majji and dr rao vadali interim department head of aerospace engineering these texas a&m faculty members are part of the living legacy junkins will leave to the university junkins believes the hagler institute for advanced study is an excellence engine that will infuse new talent and ideas every year forever he hopes that his time as interim president will provide stability and a smooth transition to launch the tenure of the next great president of texas a&m i hope that my historical record here buys some forgiveness when i hit speed bumps making tough decisions this spring i trust that people will see my hearts in the right place and im trying to preserve whats great about texas a&m and when possible find ways to make us better
1629,"dr sara abedi assistant professor and stephen a holditch faculty fellow in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university recently received the national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award overseen by the faculty early career development program career awards are one of the nsfs most prestigious form of recognition and support for up-and-coming researchers who exemplify the role of teachers/scholars through outstanding research excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations the award involves monetary support of a five-year research project integrated with education outreach such support aims to help build a basis for a lifetime of faculty leadership and direction in the integration of research and education abedi's research project an integrated experimental-theoretical framework for understanding the multiscale mechanical response of rock-reactive brine interactions will study the impact of reactive brine interactions on the properties of rocks at multiple length scales using advanced experimental and modeling techniques our department is very proud of dr abedi for achieving this very deserved level of recognition "" said department head dr jeff spath ""we look forward to realizing the results of her valuable research this award allows the interaction between rock and reactive brine comes into play in several applications such as carbon sequestration reservoir stimulation stability of cliffs and slopes dam foundation seepage and creep contaminant transport and enhanced geothermal systems to name a few while rocks seem to be a stable substance harsh environments and corrosive brines can erode their mechanical structures characterizing and modeling how rock properties change when exposed to these destructive elements and fluids remains a challenge because of the complex microstructure of rocks and the intricacy of rock-fluid interactions abedi's project will acknowledge the multiscale and nonhomogenous aspect of rock-fluid interactions and aims at gaining a fundamental insight of the coupling between the chemical microstructural and mechanical processes involved abedi an affiliated faculty member in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering tailored her research for a broad application that aligned with the civil mechanical and manufacturing innovation area within the nsf particularly for advancing infrastructure resilience and sustainability ""the research results will lead to better efficiency in resource and energy systems enhanced resiliency in infrastructure systems and improved safety in fluid or gas storage "" said abedi since the integration of education and research is essential in this career project abedi will use a collaborative interdisciplinary and collective educational and outreach plan her goal is to broaden the participation of high school students and underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students in chemical and physical sciences through a program she titled rocks and fluids ""i hope to reach out to the general public as well "" said abedi ""i am so excited that nsf gave me this opportunity"""
1630,brenda f and ralph faxel jr have established the brenda f and ralph faxel jr '87 90 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time first-generation students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university ralph is one of the first in his family to attend college he had many inspirations for establishing this endowment including his belief that access to an education at texas a&m makes a difference i had a four-year mcfadden scholarship that helped me to attend texas a&m but it also gave me the confidence to be there he said i had thought about establishing a scholarship for a while now and with covid-19 and retirement it pushed things to the forefront ralph said that through his relationship with his family and with texas a&m he learned to make a difference i have worked with texas a&m engineering campus recruiting since 2001 and i believe that to hire diverse students we need to educate diverse students he said i want to help maintain and improve the diversity among engineering students a&m is better when we can all have a chance to experience the aggie traditions when ‘the aggie war hymn plays we put our arms on each others shoulders and all sway together growing up ralph was familiar with texas a&m and attended many campus events and football and basketball games additionally he was inspired to attend texas a&m through his fathers work for a prominent aggie lf peterson for whom the peterson building on campus is named as an early teen i wanted to go to texas a&m as i liked the comradery and being part of the aggie family he said ralph graduated with his bachelors in petroleum engineering in 1987 during the downturn in the petroleum industry i decided to stay at a&m to get my masters in chemical engineering to diversify myself and still have access to the campus recruiting center he said as a shell engineer i was involved with campus recruiting from 2001 to present day and helped recruit 127 aggies to shell now as i am retiring after a gratifying career i want to keep encouraging aggie engineers to reach their goals
1631,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown assistant director of development
1632,dr vladislav yakovlev professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university received the 2021 harold e edgerton award in high-speed optics from the international society for optics and photonics (spie) it is a major award by a large photonics society and i am extremely fortunate to be recognized by this award yakovlev said in a sense it is almost a lifetime award since it is awarded for the work i was doing for the past 25 years yakovlevs career reflects an enormous amount of pioneering work across high-speed optics some of those achievements include his work in optical parametric amplifiers of white-light continuum widely adapted as broadly tunable sources of ultrashort laser pulses used for high-speed imaging and spectroscopy; using shaped optical pulses for spectroscopy and imaging including the first experimental demonstration of coherent quantum control of molecular dynamics; and applications of ultrashort laser pulses such as cornea reshaping broadband coherent anti-stokes raman scattering random raman lasing and imaging and nonlinear brillouin imaging yakovlev received his phd in physics and quantum electronics from moscow state university in 1990 when he arrived in the us in 1991 he initially worked at a startup novatec laser systems where he built a femtosecond ti:sapphire oscillator amplifier system and used it for cornea ablation discovering what is now known as bladeless lasik a spie member since 1995 and a fellow since 2014 yakovlevs commitment to spie has included serving as an editorial board member of the journal of biomedical optics a program committee member for multiple spie conferences his outreach participation with spie student chapters and more than 160 contributions to spie journals and conference proceedings dr rick trebino chair of ultrafast optical physics at the georgia institute of technology said he has known yakovlev for the last quarter-century during his career vlad has made several seminal contributions to the field of ultrafast nonlinear optical spectroscopy resulting in high-profile publications and more than 4 500 citations trebino said he has taught a number of courses with emphasis on optics optical spectroscopy and applications of optics and has trained numerous graduate students who are now working in the optics industry and academia around the world
1633,trish and j christopher cook have established the trish and j christopher cook '93 mechanical engineering scholarship distributions from this generous endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at texas a&m university while researching universities in high school christopher said he was drawn to the culture of texas a&m i had a friend who attended a&m who said that it was a big school that felt like a small school and it was great for me because i was able to grow into the person i am today because of my experiences there trish and christopher have been supporters of the mechanical engineering department at texas a&m for many years but recently decided to go a step further and establish this scholarship to have a larger impact when department head dr polycarpou personally visited me at my company to propose this option i knew i wanted to make a more lasting contribution christopher said through this scholarship christopher and trish aim to give more students the ability to attend the world-class engineering school at texas a&m and make the world better for everyone i believe that most of our problems will be solved by scientists doctors and engineers christopher said christopher graduated with his degree in mechanical engineering in 1993 and is the first in his family to attend college he and trish have two young kids in elementary school and the family resides in allen texas
1634,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
1635,"lithium-ion batteries have enabled the use of numerous technologies from smartphones and tablets to electric vehicles but their convenience and versatility come at a cost the potential for flammability dr olivier mathieu research associate professor in the j mike walker '66 department of engineering at texas a&m university is working with his team to alleviate these concerns and reduce the risk of fire with the support of a three-year national science foundation grant although these battery fires are relatively rare mathieu referenced two high-profile consumer examples to demonstrate the problem's impact: samsung's 2016 recall of nearly 2 million smartphones following several fire events related to the device's battery and general motor's 2020 recall of more than 50 000 bolt electric cars over battery fire concerns during charging if successful mathieu said he hopes consumers will not even realize the research's implementation into their daily lives ""ideally the average person will not see how this research will impact their lives and the batteries of their phones connected devices or electric vehicles will never catch fire "" said mathieu ""they will just see the positive aspect of new technology around them and not experience this particularly dangerous but fortunately rare aspect of it"" mathieu noted that the increased prominence of electric vehicles on the roadways is an added motivation for accelerating the search for a solution particularly in the case of a vehicle collision mathieu said the dangers posed to electric vehicle batteries could be quite different from a traditionally fueled car ""the battery of electric vehicles is large and can be damaged during an impact "" mathieu said ""this could lead to a short-circuit a scenario where the battery will heat up and eventually burn due to the flammable electrolyte"" mathieu said first responders had reported difficulty in putting out the fires caused by these lithium-ion batteries in some cases he said the batteries have even been reported to reignite up to a day later ""preventing the fire from happening in the first place is therefore the best solution and i hope our research will allow identifying the right fire suppressants that will suppress the flammability issue of the electrolyte "" said mathieu to address this problem mathieu and his team are investigating how the electrolytes of lithium-ion batteries burn and searching for the best fire suppressants that could be added to reduce flammabilitymathieu said his team's approach to the problem is largely based on fundamental science allowing them to use predictive models to identify the ideal fire suppressants for the task ""to find fire suppressants that are efficient at the chemical level it is important to understand first the detailed combustion chemistry of the electrolyte "" said mathieu ""therefore our approach consists of studying experimentally the combustion chemistry of the various constituents of the electrolyte developing and validating detailed kinetics models and finally to using this knowledge to identify the best fire suppressants and their ideal concentration"" this approach contrasts with similar research into the same topic which mathieu said often involves long trial and error procedures that typically place the batteries in conditions unlike those it would experience in the real world when overheating moving ahead the most significant challenge mathieu and his team anticipate is applying the necessary concentration of the identified fire suppressant without compromising the performance of the battery ""degrading the battery performance or longevity must of course be avoided "" mathieu said ""this would eventually require working hand-in-hand with a lithium-ion battery manufacturer research in this area is just starting and i hope to be able to have this kind of partnership in the future"" as a research associate professor working primarily with the turbomachinery laboratory mathieu said he and those in his position serve a valuable role in the lab alongside tenure-track faculty in addition to bringing in financial support through research contracts and grants such as this project research professors can be a steady presence in the lab always available to answer the infinite number of questions students have and make things run a bit faster and easier for the group leader in the end mathieu said there is a large one-on-one teaching role in the lab and because they are also devoted to research i think research professors can benefit the department by providing even more exposure at the research level"
1636,with the year coming to a close the 2020 virtual project showcase (vps) was a cumulative experience for participants and judges alike highlighting student accomplishments in a time unlike any other allowing students an opportunity to expand their creative and innovative potential the virtual project showcase offers a platform for students to share their projects with those in industry magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships and instructional associate professor said that the competition attracted 100 industry judges from over 60 organizations in the showcase students are able to submit a video of their work along with engineering analyses with the aim to provide a comprehensive overview of their teams success in the past year industry judges are then able to view these videos remotely and rate the projects novelty among other qualities among many accomplishments made by the teams the judges found the long-range thermal survey platform streamlining the nomination process and the bi-axial material testing device projects impressive the long-range thermal survey platform project placed first earning $750 within the electrical and computer engineering capstone category the project used unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs) thermal imaging and long-range transmission to survey remote areas for conservation and search and rescue applications one judge said the solution was a great piece of engineering and computer science work with its premise one for a great cause in the industrial and systems engineering capstone category the streamlining the nomination process project ranked second winning $500 this project reviewed the current nominations and scheduling process at tc energy and found ways to optimize the process one of the judges of the project was impressed in its ability to reduce the time required for the process of four hours to just half an hour similarly the bi-axial material testing device placed first in the mechanical engineering capstone category receiving $750 the project is a stand-alone bi-axial material testing stage designed to apply and measure forces to a cruciform-shaped compliant material to determine material properties the judge remarked on its unique hand drawings and calculations that resembled old-fashioned engineering and felt that it was a testament to what true engineering is with over 450 students participating this year lagoudas congratulated those who were able to partake in this years virtual project showcase these projects and many more from the competition were made possible by the support of various industry project sponsors this years award sponsors are baker hughes emerson jacobs and shell we would like to thank project sponsors for providing our students an opportunity to work on real-world projects and our industry judges for taking the time to review video submissions and provide valuable feedback to the teams lagoudas said the vps is a great partnership between industry and the college of engineering at texas a&m university a list of the 2020 virtual project showcase winners are listed below
1637,senior capstone design teams overall capstone winner $1 000 - engineering technology and industrial distribution - icarus cosmic dust collection system electrical and computer engineering 1st place: $750 - long-range thermal survey platform 2nd place $500 - smartclimb 3rd place: $350 - 3d occluded object vision system eset and mxet (first semester – etid 419) 1st place: $750 - eset 419 - icarus cosmic dust collection system 2nd place: $500 - ara (kinematically assisting robotic arm) 3rd place: $350 - palantir com/nav module – hypertech industrial and systems engineering 1st place: $750 - increase capacity of natural gas pipeline 2nd place: $500 - streamlining the nomination process 3rd place: $350 - sesco warehouse layout project mechanical engineering 1st place: $750 - bi-axial material testing device 2nd place: $500 - walk-on piano 3rd place: $350 - lockheed martin fourth generation fighter aircraft emergency power unit non-capstone design teams 1st place: $500 - mental health evaluation and lookout program for college students 2nd place: $300 - tamu robomasters 3rd place: $100 - sae baja
1638,dr jean-louis briaud has been honored with the 2021 distinguished service award from the united states universities council on geotechnical education and research (usucger) briaud is a distinguished professor spencer j buchanan chair professor and regent's fellow in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and program manager at the texas a&m transportation institutebriaud served as an usucger board member from 2001-06 and as president from 2003-05 during that time he was instrumental in the transition of the organization's name and increasing the purview from research only to education and researchduring his tenure he was one of the leading proponents of usucger membership in the geo-coalition providing the organization with a seat at the table in the organization that strives to coordinate the activities of geotechnical professionalsa nomination letter highlighted his 30-plus year career and the commitment to and passion for service to the geotechnical profession both within the academic usucger organization as well as within the broader community of practicing geotechnical and civil engineers through asce (american society of civil engineers) and issmge (international society for soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering) he was instrumental in expanding the awards that recognize usucger members and supported various mentorship activities for young faculty in geotechnical engineeringbriaud received his bachelor's degree from the ecole speciale des travaux publics in france in 1972 and his doctorate from the university of ottawa in canada in 1979 his expertise is in foundation engineering and more generally geotechnical engineering he pioneered bridge scour in geotechnical engineering and helped drastically reduce the number of bridge failures to scour his influential contributions include developing a patented soil erosion device and calculating the depth of scour around the bridge supports based on a targeted risk of failure his techniques are used worldwidewhen i was growing up in france my dream was to be successful as i grew older my dream changed to wanting to help others briaud said indeed i feel that my dream has come true and i want to dedicate the rest of my life to help make dreams come true but remember that even if your dream doesnt come true happiness is a choicebriaud has taught civil engineering for more than 40 years and views his teaching and mentoring of students as his most significant contribution among his many publications he authored introduction to geotechnical engineering a first introductory geotechnical engineering textbook to cover both saturated and unsaturated soil mechanics he also recently took the helm as the 2021 asce president
1639,we are pulled toward the earths surface at approximately 98 meters per second squared otherwise known as acceleration due to gravity and measured as 1g (g-force) in space there is microgravity or 0g as astronauts leave earth and shoot into space and onto other planetary surfaces their experience is unique as they could be exposed to altered gravity somewhere between 0g and 1g many astronauts have experienced this phenomenon but little is known about how the body reacts to different gravitational environments nasa ‘s human research program is funding two proposals led by dr ana diaz artiles assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university to study the effects of altered gravity on bimanual coordination and cardiovascular and ocular health we cannot recreate microgravity per se but we can manipulate the gravity vector and learn from that diaz artiles said we have proposed to run a set of experiments using devices here on earth to understand gravitational effects on human performance and then extrapolate what would happen in space and on other planetary surfaces her first proposal looks at uncovering the effects of altered gravity on bimanual coordination subjects will participate in a parabolic flight a flight that maneuvers in the shape of a parabola creating gravitational changes ranging from 0g to 18g the subjects will be asked to complete a series of tasks during the parabolic flight that require bimanual coordination the ability to move both upper limbs to manipulate objects or perform tasks an example of bimanual coordination is force coordination (pushing down on force sensors in a specific pattern) or movement coordination (moving both arms in a specific pattern) the tasks will be completed at 0g 25g 5g 75g 1g and 18g to demonstrate the differences in performance at different gravity conditions in a parabolic flight there is true partial gravity diaz artiles said the beauty of this flight is that depending on the parameters of this parabola you can create any partial gravity level that you want with a parabolic flight we will investigate how the gravity level affects a humans ability to perform bimanual coordination tasks at different levels in between 0g and 1g co-investigator dr deanna kennedy from the health and kinesiology department at texas a&m specializes in bimanual coordination and will be aiding in these experiments another critical aspect of parabolic flight research is motion sickness in a spaceflight many astronauts are given medicine for example promethazine to counteract nausea or vomiting this medicine is known to have adverse side effects such as drowsiness and a reduction in the ability to perceive tilt motions little is known about the effects of anti-motion sickness drugs on sensorimotor functions and part of the study will investigate how promethazine affects bimanual coordination since this skill is often critical in tasks like driving a rover and piloting a spacecraft the second proposal will look at the health of subjects who experience altered gravity specifically concerning ocular and cardiovascular changes that have been associated with spaceflight the first way the researchers will investigate the effects of altered gravity is with a standard tilt table by tilting subjects at different angles they will experience multiple gravity vectors in the head-to-toe direction causing pronounced fluid shifts similar to what astronauts experience during spaceflight researchers believe that altered gravity can cause changes in vision such as blurred vision as well as changes to the cardiovascular system such as changes in fluid distribution the researchers will use the tilt table to look at how the blood distributes throughout the body while experiencing altered gravity and how this affects these ocular and cardiovascular functions secondly the researchers will use an lbnp device which stands for lower body negative pressure this device generates negative pressure on the lower parts of your body moving fluid back from your upper body toward your lower body once you put the lbnp on you are subjected to negative pressure pulling the blood down back to your legs diaz artiles said it is a way to create orthostatic stress similar to a gravitational stress we can also generate positive pressure and the opposite effect happens like youre standing upside down we want to generate gravitational dose-response curves and study the difference between altered gravity responses and normal responses at 1g the last method used in this study will be a human-rated short radius centrifuge which is being installed at texas a&m a co-investigator on both research proposals dr bonnie j dunbar professor in the aerospace engineering department and former astronaut will facilitate the move of this centrifuge from the university of texas medical branch in collaboration with nasa the centrifuge spins subjects around simulating gravity effects commonly used in astronaut training the researchers will use this machine to study the health impacts of gravity as well as create gravitational response curves the researchers will then make conclusions based on data collected from all three tools both research projects are in their beginning stages while different in method they look to solve complex problems associated with human health and performance during spaceflight a general theme of my research is understanding gravitational impacts on human performance and this includes multiple physiological systems such as muscular cardiovascular or sensorimotor said diaz artiles i am very excited to conduct this research and gain a better understanding on how gravity affects human performance
1640,nuclear engineering professor dr jim morel was recently named a 2020 distinguished alumnus of the university of new mexico today morel is one of the worlds leading experts on computational methods especially for particle transport problems morel completed his phd in nuclear engineering at the university in 1980 and worked at los alamos national laboratory as a technical staff member and group leader he also taught as an adjunct professor for many years he periodically taught a graduate course on computational radiation transport served as a member of numerous student dissertation research committees and supervised the dissertation research of three students he was also named the first national laboratory professor in the universitys chemical and nuclear engineering department there is no doubt that my experience at the university of new mexico significantly contributed to texas a&ms decision to offer me a full professor position with tenure on arrival in 2005 said morel morel who has been with the department of nuclear engineering for more than 15 years is the director of the center for large-scale scientific simulations as well as the co-director of the joint center for resilient national security
1641,dr shaheen dewji assistant professor in texas a&m universitys department of nuclear engineering will participate in an expert panel webinar on jan 21 2021 hosted by the american nuclear society the webinar titled talking about low-dose radiation risk will include a panel of five experts who will discuss how to communicate the risk of low-dose radiation to the general public dewji is a faculty fellow for the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives where she oversees the radiological engineering detection and dosimetry (red2) research group her research interests include radiation protection and dosimetry nuclear medicine emergency response and defense and monte carlo computational detector validation as dewji will discuss with her colleagues it is well known that high levels of radiation exposure can prove fatal or lead to the development of cancer however researchers are still trying to understand the effects of low-dose radiation on the human body americans are exposed to trace amounts of radiation every day about half of which comes from natural background radiation from the earth the other half comes from medical commercial and industrial sources such as x-ray examinations or the natural radiation in food the small amounts of radiation that humans are exposed to have not been shown to cause any harm but the data are still inconclusive the webinar will discuss the efforts of a sustained low-dose radiation research program and how to improve risk communications practices with the public the panelists include dr amir bahadori from kansas state university dr donald cool from the electric power research institute dr paul locke from johns hopkins university bloomberg school of public health and mary lou dunzik-gougar from idaho state university and american nuclear society president
1642,traffic lights at intersections are managed by simple computers that assign the right of way to the nonconflicting direction however studies looking at travel times in urban areas have shown that delays caused by intersections make up 12-55% of daily commute travel which could be reduced if the operation of these controllers can be made more efficient to avoid unnecessary wait times a team of researchers led by dr guni sharon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has developed a self-learning system that utilizes machine learning to improve the coordination of vehicles passing through intersections the researchers published their findings in the proceedings of the 2020 international conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems many traffic signals today are equipped with signal controllers which are essentially the brains of an intersection they are programmed with various time settings to tell the traffic display when to change colors depending on the time of day and traffic movement this gives the signals the ability to handle fluctuations in traffic throughout the day to minimize traffic congestion recent studies have shown learning algorithms based on a concept in psychology called reinforcement learning where favorable outcomes are rewarded can be used to optimize the controllers signal this strategy enables controllers to make a series of decisions and learn what actions improve its operation in the real world in this instance the result would be a reduction in the buildup of traffic delays but sharon noted that these optimized controllers would not be practical in the real world because the underlying operation that controls how it processes data uses deep neural networks (dnns) which is a type of machine-learning algorithm they are commonly used to train and generalize a controllers actuation policy which is the decision-making (or control) function that determines what actions it should take next based on the current situation its in it consists of several sensors that give information about the current state of the intersection despite how powerful they are dnns are very unpredictable and inconsistent in their decision-making trying to understand why they take certain actions as opposed to others is a cumbersome process for traffic engineers which in turn makes them difficult to regulate and understand the different policies to overcome this sharon and his team defined and validated an approach that can successfully train a dnn in real time while transferring what it has learned from observing the real world to a different control function that is able to be understood and regulated by engineers using a simulation of a real intersection the team found that their approach was particularly effective in optimizing their interpretable controller resulting in up to a 194% reduction in vehicle delay in comparison to commonly deployed signal controllers despite the effectiveness of their approach the researchers observed that when they began to train the controller it took about two days for it to understand what actions actually helped with mitigating traffic congestion from all directions our future work will examine techniques for jump starting the controllers learning process by observing the operation of a currently deployed controller while guaranteeing a baseline level of performance and learning from that said sharon other contributors to this research include dr josiah p hanna research associate in the school of informatics at the university of edinburgh and james ault doctoral student in the pi star lab at texas a&m
1643,ronald ledbetter professor of practice and director of subsea engineering began working for texas a&m university in august of 2019 ledbetters credibility stems from more than 40 years of a successful career in the oil and gas industry his experience provided him a broad and strong foundation for helping new generations learn engineering processes specifically in subsea engineering subsea engineering offers the chance to work on real-life challenges posed by an environment rivaling the space program ledbetter said a few of the challenges include remote operation of equipment hundreds of kilometers away in water depths of 3 000 meters and more external pressures exceeding 1 500 pound-force per square inch (psi) internal pressures exceeding 15 000 psi and a corrosive external environment combined with a highly corrosive internal environment where temperatures range from extremely low to extremely high subsea engineers are responsible for the control and direct flow of oil and gas from deep marine wells in addition to broadening their engineering skills students will learn about the economic and operational drivers that are critical to designing selecting and configuring subsea systems students will also learn subsea project management and execution including experience-based lessons learned according to ledbetter the department focuses on taking challenges subsea engineers have come across in the industry and creating innovative solutions if you are interested in learning more about the subsea engineering program visit the about the subsea engineering program page
1644,the idea came to texas a&m university students austin burt and jorge arroyo one day in may after stopping at a gas station to use the restroom arroyo was back in texas after being sent home from an exchange program in ireland when the novel coronavirus took hold the students friends since middle school had stopped at the gas station while driving down to the coast faced with touching the dirty door handle to the public restroom it occurred to them that it shouldnt be the only option i cant tell you how many times throughout my life ive reached up with my foot to grab the handle burt said theres no telling whos touched it as the covid-19 pandemic began to spread around the globe they noticed the numerous safety and health hazards that are commonplace in public settings with door handles being a major culprit of virus-spread their research also opened their eyes to a sobering fact: only 31% of men and 65% of women wash their hands after using the restroom with people returning to stores schools and offices they decided to confront the challenge: how to give the public a safer alternative to potentially contaminated door handles already less than ideal under normal circumstances simply opening a door during a global pandemic is now a health risk after all its a dilemma many people face several times a day often resorting to grabbing a handle with a paper towel or turning to inventive techniques when only hand dryers are available burt and arroyo who both study renewable energy and natural resources in the college of agriculture and life sciences and their friend jack cooper an industrial distribution major in the college of engineering started to look for an answer their solution: the sanitarypull a hands-free sanitary door opener similar products have entered the market or grown in popularity during the pandemic but arent widely used or particularly user-friendly the students said
1645,after walking the aisles of hardware stores for inspiration burt arroyo and cooper bought a gutter drain filter and started cutting and tweaking before arriving at the desired shape that they sent to a manufacturerthe sanitarypull was designed with human muscle behavior in mind the aluminum device has a curved arc that a user positions their foot under to pull open the door an inclined bottom plate supports the foot for balance the design lends itself to optimal grip and safety plus a powder-coated finish prevents it from leaving scuff marks on shoeswe had seen products similar to this before but its a different kind of motion where you step down arroyo said with ours you pull with the back of your foot which actually provides a lot more leverage to open the doorfor the student entrepreneurs – burt is a junior and arroyo and cooper are seniors – the experience has been a trial by fire if they had a motto they said it would be figure it outthings theyve had to figure out: how to form an llc apply for a patent contact distributors design a website fill orders file monthly tax reports and more they also pored over hundreds of patent applications to make sure they werent infringing on any existing designswill hall an agricultural economics senior was also instrumental in helping with business strategy and finding potential clients and distributors
1646,initially working out of the garage of burts parents home they moved the operation in september into a storage unit off jones butler road in bryan that serves as their office and headquarters its there that burt arroyo and cooper have spent seven days a week packing up orders communicating with customers contacting potential distributors and all of the other tasks associated with running the business the team started advertising their product about two weeks ago and are in the process of learning how to negotiate deals with distributors cooper said the sanitarypull is already in use at college station restaurants harvey washbangers stella southern café and napa flats wood-fired kitchen beyond texas arroyo said there have been buyers and potential distributors in california tennessee virginia and missouri were really getting the ball rolling and starting to build credibility cooper said were building our reputation and trying to get our name to where people recognize it their first order from the manufacturer was about 3 500 units and another 10 000 are on the way they envision the product being used everywhere from schools and offices to health care facilities and commercial businesses around the world if a couple of doors have them we might as well have them on all doors arroyo said people should have the option
1647,jq engineering llp has established the jq engineering endowed fellowship in sustainability distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more fellowships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a graduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering with a focus in sustainable development at texas a&m university jq engineering ceo stephen lucy and his partners were the driving forces behind this fellowship my partners in jq engineering christopher story '95 and john hoenig '00 are texas a&m aggies and civil engineering graduates lucy said we all wanted to give back and provide support targeted at first-generation and underrepresented groups through our shared commitment to texas a&m we have established several fellowships within the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering lucys father dan h lucy '48 was also a texas a&m civil engineering graduate and was a first-generation college student since second grade i told everyone i was going to attend texas a&m and be a civil engineer lucy said both myself and my brother dan class of 1981 followed in our fathers footsteps and became civil engineers ultimately lucy said that texas a&m is second only to his family in regards to the positive impact on his life education opens up so many opportunities he said in addition to a great education texas a&m also provides access to the aggie network which is of immeasurable value lucy said that he had always planned to give back to texas a&m based on all the financial support he received during his time there i received the president's endowed scholarship which not only benefited me financially but also provided me a relationship with my donor robert guyler that lasted until his death he said i visited with mr guyler and his wife priscilla one weekend every semester until i graduated with my masters and then continued to see him after my time at a&m lucy said he was a great mentor and generous with his time and advice my engineering firm still works with mr guyler's construction company to this day lucy and his wife lisa have one daughter kaitlyn in addition to his father and brother lucy had two uncles and has several cousins who also attended texas a&m
1648,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment fellowships encourage collaboration between the faculty students and industry mentors while allowing graduate students to further their education and thus having a greater impact on the industry if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
1649,the national cemetery administration (nca) has awarded a contract to the texas a&m engineering experiment station as part of ncas veterans legacy program (vlp) to engage texas a&m university students in the development of an immersive and interactive digitized national cemetery experience we are excited to be partnering with texas a&m university said under secretary for memorial affairs randy reeves with this contract we will make great progress towards our goal of ensuring that every veterans story continues to be told – even when it is not possible to visit a va cemetery this is an important step in ensuring ‘no veteran ever dies the $249 832 contract will provide support to faculty and graduate students from texas a&ms college of engineering department of geography and department of history researchers will develop geographic information system (gis)-based applications to allow public contributions to memorialize veterans interred in three va cemeteries: houston national cemetery and san antonio national cemetery in texas and alexandria national cemetery in virginia the one-year contract was awarded on sept16 2020 capturing us veterans legacies and enabling virtual visits to their headstones through technology requires a transdisciplinary approach said dr stacey lyle texas a&m engineering and geosciences professor of practice who leads the project by transcending disciplinary boundaries between history geoscience and engineering we will preserve and make accessible the stories of american veterans great contributions to our freedoms for all people to experience students from texas a&ms corps of cadets will contribute biographical research of veterans interred in those cemeteries and others the texas a&m project team will partner with klein independent school district in houston to create gis-based learning opportunities for students and professional development for steam (science technology engineering arts and mathematics) teachers programs like the veterans legacy program are important to our country for many reasons they allow us to preserve our nations history and legacy while using that same knowledge to shape our future said brig gen joe e ramirez jr 79 commandant of cadets at texas a&m im proud that the corps of cadets is involved with this project as guardians of tradition we take pride in honoring our past while preparing leaders for the future for over 140 years the corps has taken great care to preserve and execute the most time-honored traditions at texas a&m it will be no different with the stories of our nations veterans this work will contribute to ncas efforts to enhance the on-site national cemetery experience through technology while also extending that experience to citizens who are unable to visit a national cemetery
1650,six undergraduate students from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university have received seven honorable mention awards over the past two years as part of the computing research associations (cra) outstanding undergraduate researcher awards five of the awards went to students who have done research with the sketch recognition lab (srl) at texas a&m led by dr tracy hammond director of the institute for engineering education and innovation i am proud of the hard work and dedication demonstrated by these outstanding researchers and believe they will serve as role models for future students said hammond the cra which is a coalition of more than 200 north american organizations recognizes exceptional undergraduate researchers from universities in the united states and canada for their potential in an area of computing research the 2019 and 2020 awards were sponsored by microsoft research and mitsubishi electric research labs respectively angel pina pina who has now received honorable mentions for the second year in a row is currently a senior pursuing a computer science degree with a minor in statistics as part of the srl he used the python scikit learn package to perform machine learning and data analysis on eye-tracking data his project was part of a national science foundation-funded grant that used eye-tracking to determine how likely an industry recruiter is to select a candidate while reviewing resumes i have enjoyed working on this project and look forward to submitting a first-authored journal publication on this work with dr hammond next month said pina lina zhang zhang was honored in 2020 for her research on how users can recognize numerical values in messages from a wearable device using overlapping vibrotactile patterns she also worked on vibrotactile communication and haptics research as part of the undergraduate research scholars program with hammond as her thesis advisor and mentors josh cherian and dr paul taele im very honored to receive this award and grateful to have a community of mentors and educators that inspire me to pursue research said zhang benton guess guess was honored in 2019 for developing an automated system for grading the rey-osterrieth complex figure (rocf) test while working at the srl under hammond the rocf test is an examination administered by neuropsychologists to assess the mental state of patients testing visuospatial abilities memory attention planning working memory and executive functions he said his research dealt with computers and psychology which in [his] perception is an intersection where we will build the systems of the future guess completed his thesis with hammond was mentored by raniero lara-garduno and recently submitted a paper on computer-human interaction with his mentors on this work this was a very rewarding experience that let me not just learn about academic research but also meaningfully contribute to the project said guess i really enjoyed getting to know the research process and development work which is very different from regular class projects justin lovelace lovelace was honored in 2019 for his work in researching the intersection of natural language processing and interpretable machine learning for medical research including datasets from intensive care units to develop predictive models for readmission and mortality outcomes he started in research early in his undergraduate career first working in the srl under hammond as a freshman and sophomore and then working with dr bobak mortazavi in his later years his research focuses on the development of machine-learning models that handle structured time series data as well as unstructured text data in the form of medical notes to estimate clinical outcomes after patients leave the intensive care unit this work and his undergraduate thesis earned him an outstanding undergraduate honors thesis award in 2019 i am thrilled that he joined systems and technology for medicine and iot (stmi) lab in 2018 and i know he will do great in his carnegie mellon university graduate program said mortazavi reginald frank frank was honored in 2020 for his research on synchronizing clocks in a distributed computer system which needed to overcome uncertain delays in communication he is currently a senior with a dual major in computer science and applied mathematics working with dr jennifer welch and dr dmitri loguinov he also won the 2018 deans excellence award in engineering it's really incredible to get recognition for my work in parallel and distributed computing said frank i feel very fortunate to have worked with both of my advisors and getting this recognition makes me want to work more to see where that might take me next kexin feng feng was honored in 2019 for researching the development of computational models of human behavior through signal processing and machine learning techniques with applications in well-being and education working with dr theodora chaspara feng who is has been part of the human bio-behavioral signals lab since spring 2018 said he wanted to understand the connections between basic emotionsto help with diagnosing and alleviating mental health-related problems as part of his undergraduate work he published two conference papers and submitted one journal paper as a first author
1651,cyberattacks are a growing threat to aerospace systems in response to this emerging safety concern the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) has identified cybersecurity as a priority area of focus garrett jares a doctoral student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has joined an aiaa initiative in this area the aerospace cybersecurity working group (acwg) the acwg is composed of cybersecurity-interested members from across the aiaa and provides opportunities to educate those involved with conceptualization design development testing deployment operations maintenance and management of aerospace systems the working group seeks to engage in active information exchange among those involved in aerospace-related cybersecurity documenting the results and making those results available to the broader aerospace systems community the goal of the acwg is to enable organizations to improve the confidentiality integrity and availability of aerospace systems and data jares educational experience and doctoral research aligns with the acwgs purpose his doctoral dissertation is focused on investigating cyberattacks that are designed to take control of an aircraft by targeting the vehicles sensor data this research which was supported by a 2020 national science foundation graduate research fellowship will help to identify and better understand the vulnerabilities in current systems and develop safeguards against these attacks jares earned his bachelors degree in computer science from texas a&m with minors in cybersecurity and mathematics (cryptology) and graduated magna cum laude in 2017 he has been working in the vehicle systems and control laboratory with his advisor dr john valasek aerospace engineering professor since his undergraduate senior capstone project jares is also a recipient of the 2018 lechner graduate fellowship
1652,gastric bypass surgery is sometimes the last resort for those who struggle with obesity or have serious health-related issues due to their weight since this procedure involves making a small stomach pouch and rerouting the digestive tract it is very invasive and prolongs the recovery period for patients in a new study researchers at texas a&m university have described a medical device that might help with weight loss and requires a simpler operative procedure for implantation researchers said their centimeter-sized device provides the feeling of fullness by stimulating the endings of the vagus nerve with light unlike other devices that require a power cord their device is wireless and can be controlled externally from a remote radio frequency source we wanted to create a device that not only requires minimal surgery for implantation but also allows us to stimulate specific nerve endings in the stomach said dr sung ii park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering our device has the potential to do both of these things in the harsh gastric conditions which in the future can be hugely beneficial to people needing dramatic weight-loss surgeries further details about their device are published in the january issue of nature communications obesity is a global epidemic furthermore its associated health problems have a significant economic impact on the health care system in the united states costing $147 billion a year additionally obesity puts people at risk for chronic diseases such as diabetes heart disease and even some cancers for those with a body mass index greater than 35 or who have at least two obesity-related conditions surgery offers a path for patients to not only lose the excess weight but maintain their weight over the long term in recent years the vagus nerve has received much attention as a target for treating obesity since it provides sensory information about fullness from the stomach lining to the brain although there are medical devices that can stimulate the vagus nerve endings and consequently help in curbing hunger these devices are similar in design to a pacemaker that is wires connected to a current source provide electrical jolts to activate the tips of the nerve however park said wireless technology as well as the application of advanced genetic and optical tools have the potential to make nerve stimulation devices less cumbersome and more comfortable for the patient despite the clinical benefit of having a wireless system no device as of yet has the capability to do chronic and durable cell-type specific manipulation of neuron activity inside of any other organ other than the brain he said
1653,to address this gap park and his team first used genetic tools to express genes that respond to light into specific vagus nerve endings in vivo then they designed a tiny paddle-shaped device and inserted micro leds near the tip of its flexible shaft which was fastened to the stomach in the head of the device called the harvester they housed microchips needed for the device to wirelessly communicate with an external radio frequency source the harvester was also equipped to produce tiny currents to power the leds when the radio frequency source was switched on the researchers showed that the light from the leds was effective at suppressing hunger the researchers said they were surprised to uncover that the biological machinery coordinating hunger suppression in their experiments was different from conventional wisdom in other words it is widely accepted that when the stomach is full it expands and the information about stretch is conveyed to the brain by mechanoreceptors on the vagus nerve our findings suggest that stimulating the non-stretch receptors the ones that respond to chemicals in the food could also give the feeling of satiety even when the stomach was not distended said park looking ahead he said that the current device could also be used to manipulate nerve endings throughout the gastrointestinal tract and other organs like the intestine with little or no modifications wireless optogenetics and identifying peripheral neural pathways that control appetite and other behaviors are all of great interest to researchers in both the applied and basic fields of study in electronics material science and neuroscience said park our novel tool now enables interrogation of neuronal function in the peripheral nervous systems in a way that was impossible with existing approaches other contributors to the research include woo seok kim sungcheol hong and milenka k gamero from the electrical and computer engineering department; dr vivekanand jeevakumar clay m smithhart and dr theodore j price from the university of texas at dallas; and dr richard d palmiter and dr carlos campos from the university of washington this work has been supported by grants from the interdisciplinary x-grants program a narsard young investigator award from the brain and behavior research foundation the national science foundations engineering research center for precise advanced technologies and health systems (paths-up) and the university of washington diabetes research center and the national institutes of health
1654,growing up in fort worth texas lauren gibbens ‘10 always had a fascination and appreciation for fighter jets however she had no idea it would ultimately lead her to where she is now working for lockheed martin aeronautics in greece the graduate of the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering fell in love with texas a&m university the moment she stepped foot on campus i know there was only one right decision for me and the college of engineering sealed the deal gibbens said the value of improvement and innovation is at the heart of industrial engineering industrial engineers are trained to break down processes work through a series of complicated constraints understand the key elements of safety quality cost and schedule all the while building trust through analytics one of the favorite skills that she learned was understanding the benefit of simulation modeling in an age where data is plentiful it is exceptionally valuable to break down a process in a manner through which information can be gleaned a story can be told and a conclusion drawn in an effort to bring about improvement gibbens said upon graduation gibbens was offered an entry-level industrial engineering position at lockheed martin aeronautics the past 10 years have been nothing short of amazing as i remember the opportunities that have been afforded to me i am encouraged by those who boldly stand up for what is right and a series of mentors who continually challenge me to step outside my comfort zone in 2020 gibbens was afforded one of the most challenging tasks yet to become the lead industrial engineer for a new program startup to upgrade a series of aircraft for greece it has always been a dream of mine to live and work in another country she said
1655,gibbens said the move wasnt only a challenge for her but for her family amid the covid-19 pandemic this meant completely uprooting her family and getting limited quality time with friends and family before departing when she was offered the position she asked her husband who recently completed his doctoral degree to take a deviation in his career for this new adventure and without hesitation he accepted the challenge living in greece has presented many challenges for gibbens due to the periods of time where the entire country was in lockdown and just being able to make the move was a feat in itself due to an abundant number of items causing delays and interruptions to the program the jet fell further and further behind in the first two quarters of the year gibbens says that since relocating in june it has been a never-ending battle to get back on schedule but her industrial engineering mentality has always pushed her forward with uncompromising ethics one thing this aggie can count on is the value of a high-performing team the greece team truly understands the value of teamwork and courage which has enabled us to overcome many challenges and move the program forward in the words of our site lead ‘light the fire and kick the chocks we are ready to fly this jet! gibbens said sometimes it does not feel like there are enough hours in the day but that is nothing new for gibbens becoming an ex-pat has ignited a new fire and passion for the important work she and her team do every day she said that even though the future is an unknown she can walk confidently knowing she is following her calling made possible through the foundation set at texas a&m gibbens has been a member of the advisory council for the industrial and systems engineering department since 2018 she says it is a privilege and honor to be able to share lessons learned and help shape the future for the fast-growing field of industrial engineering its truly fitting that lauren is now a force in the birthplace of western civilization how can you argue with a career like laurens she truly has lived the industrial and systems engineering mantra of attacking any problem any time any place we are very proud to count lauren among our graduates and as an exemplary advisory council member her technical acumen in system simulation her growth as a leader in her field and now launching a new program in greece is great not only for the department and texas a&m but even more so for the free world said dr mike graul associate professor of practice in industrial and systems engineering the department looks forward to our continued association with lauren and we look forward to the day when she can come back to aggieland and help cultivate the next generation of industrial and systems engineering graduates to tackle issues in the global economy the best advice i can pass on to a student is to live out your calling and love what you do because when you do you will naturally add value walking out of texas a&ms industrial and systems engineering department you will have unique opportunities afforded to you gibbens said i learned very early through my dad ‘if it is worth doing it is worth doing right at my core i enjoy critical thinking and share the aggie value for excellence in all things
1656,ann and bill martin 58 have contributed to the computer science excellence endowment in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university distributions from this endowment are at the discretion of the department head and allow the department to have a direct and immediate impact on its programs and students bill was first attracted to texas a&m because of its sizable engineering program and credits his success to the university texas a&m directly prepared me to accomplish success in my career he said ann and bill decided to add to this endowment to aid the department we want to help get the department on its feet with enough scholarship money to attract top level students into the program bill said ultimately ann and bill hope that contributing to this endowment will enable students to get an education that will fulfill their life's ambitions bill graduated from texas a&m in 1958 with a degree in electrical engineering he and ann have three children who all followed in their fathers footsteps and also graduated from texas a&m their daughter connie graduated in 1979 with a degree in accounting their eldest son alan received his bachelors degree in medicine in 1982 and his doctor of medicine in 1984 and their youngest son chris graduated in 1987 with his degree in finance bill served as the vice president of texas instruments until his retirement and he and ann currently reside in austin texas
1657,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1658,dr daniel a jiménez professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named a fellow of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) for his contributions to neural branch prediction in microprocessor research and design fellow is one of the most prestigious honors of the ieee and is bestowed upon a very limited number of senior members who have contributed to the advancement or application of engineering science and technology bringing significant value to our society the number of ieee fellows elevated in a year is no more than one-tenth of one percent of the total ieee voting membership jiménez joined the texas a&m faculty in 2013 he received his doctorate in computer sciences from the university of texas at austin and his masters in computer science and bachelors degree in computer science and systems design from the university of texas at san antonio his research interests include computer architecture and compilers with an emphasis on characterizing and exploiting the predictability of programs
1659,dr daniele mortari professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been elected a member for engineering sciences of the international academy of astronautics (iaa) the iaa is a leading organization of the worlds foremost experts in astronautics their mission is to foster and promote international cooperation in the development and advancement of astronautics and aerospace science since its founding in 1960 members from approximately 83 countries have come together to explore and discuss cutting-edge issues in space research and technology and provide direction and guidance in the peaceful uses of space and the ongoing exploration of the solar system new members are elected by their peers for their outstanding service achievement and leadership in space and aeronautical activities in their respective countries mortari is honored to be elected to this group of world-class experts in astronautics first because of the prestigious world-wide recognition of his past achievements and scientific activities second because he was the last student of dr luigi broglio father of the italian satellite launch san marco programme and one of the founders of iaa along with theodore von karman yuri gagarin wernher von braun and neil armstrong to mention a few mortaris research has focused on orientation and position estimation of spacecraft attitude sensor data processing satellite constellations and various topics in linear algebra and numerical algorithms his recent mathematical framework theory of functional connections has found applications in almost all scientific fields dealing with differential equations and constraint optimization this theory will be the subject of a forthcoming book
1660,irene and curtis lohr have established the irene and curtis lohr 82 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university curtis decided to attend texas a&m because of its quality ocean engineering program and proximity to his parents home in arkansas although i spent my boyhood years in oklahoma and arkansas i developed a love for the ocean during our family vacations to various beaches and lakes around the country he said in high school i realized that my love for the ocean coupled with my interests in math and science was leading me to investigate ocean engineering programs at a few select universities while attending texas a&m curtis met his wife irene at the hall of fame dance hall she was not a regular there but had gone that night with a friend of hers he said i asked her to dance and we have been dancing together ever since we moved to houston together for my first job out of college so irene transferred from texas a&m to finish her bs degree at the university of houston curtis feels that earning his ocean engineering degree from texas a&m helped him get his job at shell where he was employed for 34 years i worked on several high-profile deepwater projects first as an engineer and eventually as project director for the groundbreaking stones project which is the deepest floating production system in the world at 9 500 feet he said i hope that my endowment will help other students achieve their dreams after retiring from shell in 2017 curtis and irene moved to college station in 2018 to be closer to family living in bryan and to be near texas a&m we have a desire to help students gain a quality education while also supporting local businesses and the university curtis said i would like to see my gift help students who have done well in high school but need financial assistance to be able to attend texas a&m and get their degree in ocean engineering curtis is the first aggie in his family and graduated from texas a&m in 1982 he and irene are blessed with three wonderful daughters katie is married and works as a school teacher in illinois jessica is a professional ballet dancer in chicago allison lives in denver and works in the food industry curtis and irene have a rough collie dog named sherlock and a micro sheepadoodle dog named watson living with them at home in college station
1661,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
1662,with a goal of achieving a diverse and dynamic workforce by encouraging excellence in engineering and professional development the national action council for minorities in engineering (nacme) has offered grants for students to pursue their passions in engineering the program delivers up to $3 million in scholarships a year aiming to encourage representation of underrepresented minorities within the engineering workforce graduate student joene gileguy-konan and undergraduate student stephanie nguyen-okwu who are studying energy and electrical engineering at texas a&m university respectively are two recipients of this grant and have found positive impacts from it in more ways than monetary support nacme has allowed me to network with aspirational minorities in engineering nguyen-okwu said this has helped me reinforce the idea that i can achieve anything without forgoing my social identities this aspect of diversity is both something that nguyen-okwu and gileguy-konan have found important in todays society gileguy-konan believes that it is incredibly important to the success of the national and global workforce because different perspectives on issues provide more comprehensive solutions i highly enjoy working with people of different backgrounds and skill levels because it is important that you not only challenge and learn from yourself but others as well gileguy-konan said likewise nguyen-okwu has found that the key to human progress is recognizing diversitys intrinsic value nguyen-okwu said that diversity is a complementary medium between technological and social development especially concerning the engineering experience in her encounters as a minority in a notoriously difficult field it has not always been easy
1663,these experiences show that breaking into the industry with people from different backgrounds and cultures has become even more pressing others are similarly aligned with nacmes mission which has also become the forefront of many industries with a similar global perspective gileguy-konans favorite program at texas a&m is study abroad which offered her the opportunity to journey abroad several times with aid from nacme working and other scholarships she was able to graduate debt-free and simultaneously gain these unique experiences being a minority in such a male-dominated homogeneous field means that you do have to work a little harder to be heard or gain certain opportunities gileguy-konan said i believe that the nacme program provides those opportunities and spaces to hone your professional and social skills to adequately be heard and have more experiences out of what the program has offered both gileguy-konan and nguyen-okwu can agree that the community with the other nacme scholarship recipients has been the most worthwhile aspect the program has also improved my ability to take initiative and communicate within my interpersonal relationships nguyen-okwu said my advice for others applying for the program is to always be open-minded and determined to exceed the expectations of others and themselves as society evolves one thing remains the same increasing the role of minorities in any field is not a small endeavor gileguy-konan and nguyen-okwu are two of the many who are taking this in stride to break down barriers and bring meaning to their role in their fields i hope that there are more minorities in engineering to advocate for conditions that do not contribute to environmental racism and can help solve it over time gileguy-konan said i value this position because i know i am providing a perspective that needs to be heard and i hope more minorities have the opportunity to do so too this aspiration is one that the nacme program hopes to encourage in students like gileguy-konan and nguyen-okwu who set to inspire others and make a change in the world that they live in
1664,four students from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have been awarded the 2020 vertical flight foundation scholarships from the vertical flight society (formerly american helicopter society) the students won the merit-based scholarships for their cutting-edge research in vertical flight technologybochan lee received the barry j baskett scholarship in the doctoral degree category for his research on novel methods for autonomous helicopter ship landing farid saemi winner in the masters degree category received the tom wood honorary scholarship for his research on electric powertrain design frameworks for unmanned aircraft systems grant erickson won the geoff byham scholarship in the bachelors degree category for his research on tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicles grant mccurdy also a winner in the bachelors degree category won the bob lynn memorial scholarship for his research on tube-launched micro air vehicles the students work in the advanced vertical flight laboratory under the guidance of dr moble benedict associate professor in aerospace engineering this is the sixth year in a row that advanced vertical flight students have won scholarships sponsored by the global vertical flight society past winners include: david coleman (two-time winner) joel white atanu halder james mcelreath kanika gakhar adam kellen and brett himmelberg
1665,dr yassin hassan from the department of nuclear engineering and the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was recently named a university distinguished professor the designation is the universitys highest faculty honor it identifies faculty members who are preeminent in their fields and have made at least one landmark contribution to their discipline university distinguished professors retain their current rank and title as well as the additional distinction hassan joined the nuclear engineering department at texas a&m as an associate professor in 1986 and has since served as the associate interim and full-time department head (from 2013-18) he is a member of the national academy of engineering and a fellow of the american association for the advancement of science the american nuclear society and the american society of mechanical engineers he was the recipient of the 2020 distinguished alumni award from the grainger college of engineering at the university of illinois his awards include the 2008 american nuclear society seaborg medal the 2003 george westinghouse gold medal the 2004 thermal hydraulics technical achievement award the 2003 arthur holly compton award of the american nuclear society and the 2017 james n landis medal of the american society of mechanical engineers most recently he received a regents professor award from the texas a&m university system
1666,texas a&m university researchers have recently shown superior performance of a new oxide dispersion strengthened (ods) alloy they developed for use in both fission and fusion reactors dr lin shao professor in the department of nuclear engineering worked alongside research scientists at the los alamos national laboratory and hokkaido university to create the next generation of high-performance ods alloys and so far they are some of the strongest and best-developed metals in the field ods alloys consist of a combination of metals interspersed with small nanometer-sized oxide particles and are known for their high creep resistance this means that as temperatures rise the materials keep their shape instead of deforming many ods alloys can withstand temperatures up to 1 000 c and are typically used in power generation and engines within aerospace engineering as well as cutlery the nuclear community has a high need for reliable and durable materials to make up the core components of nuclear reactors the material must be high strength radiation tolerant and resistant to void swelling (materials develop cavities when subjected to neutron radiation leading to mechanical failures) nuclear researchers like shao are consistently seeking to identify quality creep-resistant and swelling-resistant materials for their use in high-temperature reactors in general ods alloys should be resistant to swelling when exposed to extreme neutron irradiation said shao however the majority of commercial ods alloys are problematic from the beginning this is because almost all commercial ods alloys are based on the ferritic phase ferritic alloys classified by their crystalline structure and metallurgical behavior have good ductility and reasonable high-temperature strength however the ferritic phase is the weakest phase when judged by its swelling resistance therefore making the majority of commercial ods alloys fail in the first line of defense shao known internationally for his pioneering work in radiation materials science directs the accelerator laboratory for testing alloys under extreme irradiation conditions shao and his research team collaborated with the japanese research group at hokkaido university led by dr shigeharu ukai to develop various new ods alloys we decided to explore a new design principle in which oxide particles are embedded in the martensitic phase which is best to reduce void swelling rather than the ferritic phase said shao the resulting ods alloys are able to survive up to 400 displacements per atom and are some of the most successful alloys developed in the field both in terms of high-temperature strength and superior-swelling resistance details of the complete project were published in the journal of nuclear materials along with the most recent study the team has since conducted multiple studies and attracted the attention from the us department of energy and nuclear industry the project resulted in a total of 18 journal papers and two doctoral degree dissertations
1667,robert holt mendleski a postbaccalaureate undergraduate in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university has been interning with los alamos national laboratorys (lanl) criticality safety division since summer 2020 i felt like i was in over my head from the start mendleski said but it has been really awesome they are really receptive its been a super positive experience and i feel more confident in my future as an engineer now guided by associate professors dr pavel tsvetkov and dr sunil chirayath and a representative from lanl and the y-12 national lab mendleskis course project centered around evaluating a glovebox that contained a v-blender used for mixing various uranium powders a large job for current safety analysts is doing crude safety evaluations he said so operations are done in gloveboxes which are basically like an oversized oven with some lead-lined rubber gloves that extend into the oven and a lot of the materials that are handled in gloveboxes are fissionable so they have to ensure that there isnt too much of that material in the glovebox under certain conditions at the same time which could inadvertently cause a criticality accident what mendleski found during his course project was several necessary criticality safety calculation problems after his final presentation and an internship interview mendleski started his work with lanl – albeit virtually due to covid-19 restrictions one of his first assignments was to revise the monte carlo n-particle code (mcnp) input files that are associated with several criticality benchmark studies as he explained while previous revisions had taken place no formal documentation had been made – something that lanl has been working hard to correct in order to provide a large centralized repository this collection of information will ultimately allow metrics including fissile material type and average neutron energy to be compared across a wide range of studies involving criticality while working on this assignment a material card error was discovered which mendleski argued was significant and caused a significant effect on the keff value encouraged by his mentor to write a paper on this instance mendleski was ultimately selected to speak at the american nuclear society winter conference
1668,dr shikha prasad and dr jean ragusa are recipients of development fellowships from the 2020-21 edition of the texas a&m university system national laboratories office collaborative research program with los alamos national laboratory (lanl) the collaborative research program was designed to increase the number and depth of research collaborations that benefit the a&m system lanl and researchers development fellowships are awarded to researchers who have the skills knowledge and interest in developing lasting collaborative relationships with lanl researchers prasad and ragusa were both awarded their fellowships for their individual research projects prasad an assistant professor who has been with the department for two years works primarily in the field of nuclear security and nonproliferation alongside matthew devlin and andrea favali with lanl prasad will measure neutron multiplicity from spontaneous fissions of plutonium-240 a human-made isotope and major constituent of several proposed advanced reactor designs despite such promising characteristics and efforts to utilize these characteristics there is a lack of plutonium-240 measured nuclear data said prasad the plutonium-240 measurements will help improve our understanding of reactor safety parameters used nuclear fuel and other derivative man-made isotopes (plutonium-241 and americium-241) after data collection the team will perform uncertainty quantification and validation to finalize the research for dissemination the techniques used in prasads measurement campaign will be used to teach nuen 405: nuclear engineering experiments ragusa a professor who has been with the department for 16 years researches computational and data sciences applied to national security and nuclear engineering he received his fellowship for his computational research in the field of high-energy-density physics (hedp) hedp is a subfield of physics where condensed matter physics and nuclear physics combine and it plays an important role in lanls national security missions due to the interactions of coupled physical phenomena and large systems of equations involved running these simulations can be incredibly challenging and require using leadership-class supercomputers ragusa and his team will investigate various machine-learning approaches to speed up thermal radiative transfer simulations with dr andrew till and dr pete maginot team members and former nuclear engineering students i will investigate several data-science approaches to significantly reduce the computational complexity of thermal radiative transfer simulations said ragusa our goal is to enhance algorithmic efficiency and build accurate surrogate models for faster simulations approximately 40% of the proposals in each category of the collaborative research program were selected for funding and the review process involved numerous technical experts across the a&m system and lanl
1669,texas a&m university professors dr karen kirkland and dr lin shao from the department of nuclear engineering have been named american nuclear society (ans) fellows ans is the number-one organization for those passionate about furthering nuclear science and technology members include nuclear engineers and scientists as well as doctors students educators soldiers advocates government employees and more ans fellows hold the highest rank of membership in the organization and only seven were selected ahead of the 2020 virtual winter meeting fellows are known for their renowned research and influence across the discipline they exemplify the capabilities and potential of the society as a whole kirkland an active and devoted member of ans since she was an undergraduate student was selected as a fellow for her significant research contribution in two-phase flow condensation heat transfer reactor safety and severe accident management strategies as an ans member i have enjoyed attending conferences for networking and technical exchange said kirkland for many years i participated in the committee activities of the thermal hydraulic division as a new engineer those meetings were exciting and the warm fellowship made the meetings seem like a friendly vacation! also selected as an ans fellow was shao who has been a member of the professional organization since 2007 shaos understanding of fundamental radiation materials science as well as his development of accelerator ion beam techniques have set him apart as a nuclear engineer within the society the society provides us with many opportunities for networking and career improvements said shao i am honored to be named a fellow and have enjoyed every ans meeting i attended
1670,marilyn and l david black have established the marilyn and dave black '59 endowed scholarship in the wm michael barnes '64 department of industrial and systems engineering distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university david chose to attend texas a&m not only because it was the nearest state school but also for its great stature and reputation he decided to study engineering because growing up most of the local businesses he was familiar with were run by engineers although i never wanted to be in the refining or chemical side of engineering i wanted an education that would set me up for success and guide me toward leadership roles so i chose industrial engineering he said that its hard for him to quantify just how much texas a&m impacted his career it wasnt only in the classrooms where i got an education but also in the corps of cadets and through the traditions of the school he said texas a&m was able to give me a way of looking at things that aided me in my success and i am very thankful i chose this university david was inspired to give back as he noticed there was a huge need for more scholarships to be awarded to students in the department he wanted to support the program that had helped him have a successful career while also keeping the departments reputation at a high level to attract the best and brightest students david and marilyn would like their scholarship to be awarded to students who are in the bottom half of their industrial and systems engineering class at texas a&m these students can still have the same financial needs as those in the top half of their class but they do not have as many opportunities for scholarships which is why i decided to establish this endowment with this additional preference david said ultimately david and marilyn hope that their scholarship will allow students that otherwise may not have been able to afford college complete their degrees at texas a&m david was a member of the corps of cadets and graduated from texas a&m with his degree in industrial engineering in 1959 now retired he and marilyn reside in the san antonio area
1671,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact john bernheim senior director of development
1672,nasa has selected four new flight directors to oversee operations of the international space station the newest inductees in the class of 2021 includes an aggie engineer diane dailey who graduated with a bachelors degree from the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university in 2005 dailey along with the other new inductees will work in the mission control center at nasas johnson space center in houston these individuals lead teams of flight controllers engineers and many others agency wide and internationally they go through a rigorous training program to further develop technical knowledge and leadership skills before being ready to oversee human spaceflight missions dailey has worked at nasa since 2006 where she began her career in the space station environmental control and life support systems (eclss) group and logged more than 1 700 hours of console time supported 10 space shuttle missions and led the eclss team for expedition 22 she was the lead flight controller for the 10th and 21st commercial resupply services missions for spacex dailey was the integration and system engineering lead for nasas spacex demo-1 and demo-2 crew spacecraft test flights contributing to the successful return of american spaceflight capability from the united states to the space station she is also a capsule communicator controller and instructor most recently she served as the group lead for the electrical and mechanical systems team these outstanding individuals bring with them an array of different skillsets leadership styles and meaningful hands-on experience that will lead nasa and human spaceflight far into the future i have the utmost confidence they will excel in their new roles said holly ridings nasa chief flight director with the addition of this new class the role of flight director has been held by only 101 individuals across nasas history the new class will follow in the footsteps of apollo-era flight directors such as gene kranz and the namesake of the mission control center christopher c kraft this story originally appeared on the nasa website
1673,"matthew nguyen sophomore in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university recently joined the zachry leadership program (zlp) in the college of engineering he has already made connections with people he likely would not have met without the program ""we're all engineers trying to be better people but that doesn't mean our personalities are the same "" nguyen said ""we're drastically different each and every one of us i've met people in the college of engineering that are outstanding human beings but because we're so different i don't think i would have met them if it weren't for zlp"" nguyen heard about the zlp from a friend who was already involved in the five-semester program and it sparked his interest the program's purpose is to help engineering students gain leadership communication teamwork and critical-thinking skills nguyen said he set a goal to learn from his fellow cohort members and guest speakers ""i also promised to be someone who would ask the tough questions "" he said ""i'm not one to be complacent so i always ask personal questions on how can i grow i promised myself and the rest of the cohort that i would do the same with them"" nguyen started at texas a&m in microbiology but decided to transfer to mechanical engineering before his sophomore year his long-term goal is to become a doctor specifically orthopedic surgery and he saw the opportunities engineering provides on allowing students to think differently about problem-solving ""you have to be very methodical about approaching a problem and it's a very systematic solution "" he said ""i realized i wanted to incorporate that problem-solving into my patient care"" he said he chose mechanical engineering because he wanted to diversify his education and pursue other interests outside of the biological environment to focus on mechanical systems ""i know that you can definitely draw parallels between mechanical systems and the body systems "" nguyen said ""fluid dynamics is very much a system in the body with blood flow and whatnot being able to draw those parallels in the future is going to be really vital to my understanding as a doctor and as an engineer-doctor"" along with his academics and zlp nguyen also works as an emt administering covid tests to members of the athletic department he earned his certification over the summer he also is involved in the big event the sophomores leading in developing and educating organization and the msc abbott family leadership conference one piece of advice he had for freshmen interested in zlp is not to be intimidated by the application nguyen said current cohorts don't share too much about the program's day-to-day activities because that ruins the surprise for incoming students ""it's frustrating but valuable we're trying not to spoil it for others "" nguyen said ""the application may seem intimidating it's a lot of work but it's so rewarding and i'm only just beginning i'm super excited for what's to come"""
1674,within the earths crust layers of rock hold bountiful reservoirs of groundwater oil and natural gas now using machine learning researchers at texas a&m university have developed an algorithm that automates the process of determining key features of the earths subterranean environment they said this research might help with accurate forecasting of our natural reserves specifically the researchers algorithm is designed on the principle of reinforcement or reward learning here the computer algorithm converges on the correct description of the underground environment based on rewards it accrues for making correct predictions of the pressure and flow expected from boreholes subsurface systems that are typically a mile below our feet are completely opaque at that depth we cannot see anything and have to use instruments to measure quantities like pressure and rates of flow said dr siddharth misra associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering and the department of geology and geophysics although my current study is a first step my goal is to have a completely automated way of using that information to accurately characterize the properties of the subsurface the algorithm is described in the december issue of the journal applied energy simulating the geology of the underground environment can greatly facilitate forecasting of oil and gas reserves predicting groundwater systems and anticipating seismic hazards depending on the intended application boreholes serve as exit sites for oil gas and water or entry sites for excess atmospheric carbon dioxide that need to be trapped underground along the length of the boreholes drilling operators can ascertain the pressures and flow rates of liquids or gas by placing sensors conventionally these sensor measurements are plugged into elaborate mathematical formulations or reservoir models that predict the properties of the subsurface such as the porosity and permeability of rocks but reservoir models are mathematically cumbersome require extensive human intervention and at times even give a flawed picture of the underground geology hence misra said there has been an ongoing effort to construct algorithms that are free from human involvement and yet very accurate for their study misra and his team chose a type of machine-learning algorithm based on the concept of reinforcement learning simply put the software learns to make a series of decisions based on feedback from its computational environment imagine a bird in a cage the bird will interact with the boundaries of the cage where it can sit or swing or where there is food and water it keeps getting feedback from its environment which helps it decide which places in the cage it would rather be at a given time said misra algorithms based on reinforcement learning are based on a similar idea they too interact with an environment but it's a computational environment to reach a decision or a solution to a given problem so these algorithms are rewarded for favorable predictions and are penalized for unfavorable ones over time reinforcement-based algorithms arrive at the correct solution by maximizing their accrued reward another technical advantage of reinforcement-based algorithms is that they do not make any presuppositions about the pattern of data for example misra's algorithm does not assume that the pressure measured at a certain time and a certain depth is related to what the pressure was at the same depth in the past this property makes his algorithm less biased thereby reducing the chances of error at predicting the subterranean environment when initiated misra's algorithm begins by randomly guessing a value for porosity and permeability of the rocks constituting the subsurface based on these values the algorithm calculates a flow rate and pressure that it expects from a borehole if these values do not match the actual values obtained from field measurements also known as historical data the algorithm gets penalized consequently it is forced to correct its next guess for the porosity and permeability however if its guesses were somewhat correct the algorithm is rewarded and makes further guesses along that direction the researchers found that within 10 iterations of reinforcement learning the algorithm was able to correctly and very quickly predict the properties of simple subsurface scenarios misra noted that although the subsurface simulated in their study was simplistic their work is still a proof of concept that reinforcement algorithms can be used successfully in automated reservoir-property predictions also referred as automated history matching a subsurface system can have 10 or 20 boreholes spread over a 2-5-mile radius if we understand the subsurface clearly we can plan and predict a lot of things in advance for example we would be able to anticipate subsurface environments if we go a bit deeper or the flow rate of gas at that depth said misra in this study we have turned history matching into a sequential decision-making problem which has the potential to reduce engineers efforts mitigate human bias and remove the need of large sets of labeled training data he said future work will focus on simulating more complex reservoirs and improving the computational efficiency of the algorithm dr hao li from the university of oklahoma was a contributor to this work he is currently working as research scientist at facebook this research is funded by the united states department of energy
1675,dr keshawa shukla a subsea engineering professor of practice in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university will speak at the american society of mechanical engineers' (asme) 40th international conference on ocean offshore and arctic engineering the conference will be held virtually in june where he will discuss his upcoming research paper a new transient thermal model for predicting cooling temperature and cooldown time of a subsea pipe-in-pipe flowline system transporting waxy hydrocarbons subsea engineering production systems are offshore wells located on the seabed in shallow deep or ultradeep waters controlled remotely from several miles away the petroleum is extracted from the seafloor and brought to production platforms through undersea flowlines when these complex systems need to be shut down for emergency purposes for several days or weeks operational challenges may arise due to the flow assurance issues of solids depositions in the production systems especially in deep water environments if the correct procedures are not in place this may pose severe challenges to restart the system for normal operations causing a loss of production assume that we have a subsea production system in the gulf of mexico for example and due to a hurricane we shut down the system said shukla this can take two days one week or maybe longer depending on situations in that case we need to shut down the system before a particular hour before the formation of hydric walks and asphaltene these are the solids that can clog the system presenting challenges the current practice uses commercial transient multiphase flow simulators to adequately determine cooldown time and corresponding thermal insulation requirements for retaining sufficient heat to prevent solid blockages in production systems in unplanned shut-in operations and normal operations these systems work well at obtaining reasonable cooldown times for the assumed reservoir fluids however they are not cost-effective and require special skills the most recognized commercial software for multiphase flow transient analysis of subsea production systems is very expensive where a single license can cost to any engineering company upward of a quarter-million dollars along with the separate cost of annual maintenance for the license said shukla the cost sometimes becomes difficult to justify for procuring for small companies/operators his paper focuses on developing an analytical transient thermal model for determining the cooling temperature and cooldown time for emergency (unplanned) shut-in operation of a subsea pipe-in-pipe production system transporting waxy crude oils to the host facility his method requires shutting the system down before the wax appearance temperature is reached in the flowline systems to prevent solid wax formation his findings also show how to optimize dry insulation in pipe-in-pipe production systems and discusses different pipe materials with low thermal conductivity for various pipe configurations this is a very simple model based on the rigorous thermodynamics heat transfer derived from the energy of conservation and fluid dynamics where we are taking care of the transition of heat to create stable and steady temperatures and their variations during shut-in operations said shukla in this paper i applied that idea to the pipe-in-pipe flowline system which is the first time anyone has done this using the limited flowline configurations and fluid properties the model is accurate efficient and economical for any subsea applications shukla will speak at the virtual conference presenting these findings
1676,"even as autonomous vehicles continue to hold a growing role in modern transportation the role of human judgment remains critical for implementation an article written by drs james hubbard jr and srikanth saripalli was featured in the national academy of engineering's (nae) 50th-anniversary issue of the bridge magazine highlighting their work in the area of autonomous systems and necessary inclusion of human participation hubbard who serves as oscar j wyatt jr '45 chair i professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university said their goal in writing the article was to emphasize the necessary role that human decision-making plays in modern autonomous systems as an example of autonomous operations the magazine article outlined a self-driving shuttle project led by saripalli professor in the mechanical engineering department in the city of bryan although the program's shuttles do not have a safety driver behind the wheel each autonomous vehicle has a safety navigator located in the front passenger seat and is monitored from a state-of-the-art teleoperations center while the sophistication of autonomous vehicles is increasing rapidly hubbard said it is important to recognize that human intervention is an inevitable component for safe operation ""the public should know that there will always be a need and a role for humans in collaboration with autonomous systems "" hubbard said ""our research is focused on a better understanding of the role of humans and machines working in collaboration in order to improve decision-making for both humans and machines"""
1677,jim tronolone a second-year doctoral student in the department of biomedical engineering develops usb-sized devices that can help test drugs outside of the body despite the covid-19 pandemic complications tronolone made the most of the situation by reassessing his work and publishing a review paper tronolone works in dr abhishek jains lab at texas a&m university he focuses on developing methods to advance lab-on-a-chip research where human cells can be grown into microfluidic devices that mimic how various organs veins and systems operate in the body tronolone works to add vascularization to these devices allowing researchers to view better how blood vessels tissues and drugs interact tronolone recently had a review paper published in the journal advanced functional materials that reviewed different combinations of elements in a microfluidic device – growth factors cell types/lines biomaterials and physical forcesor other biomaterials im trying to find an optimal combination the things that gave the highest score and seeing if that can translate to tissue-specific microfluidic models tronolone said these models with a vascularized element could impact how researchers understand drug interaction and toxicity in human subjects tronolone said many drugs travel through your bloodstream until they reach their target where they then have to cross the vascular network into the target tissue so you would have to see first that it can cross the endothelial barrier he said you have to test that its not harming the vascular network because if you injure the network it releases its own distress signals and that can in turn injure other cells and tissues
1678,tronolones end goal for his doctoral work is to develop a vascularized microfluidic device to monitor pancreatic islets and how they release insulin in response to high glucose levels using a vascularized device could advance the understanding of how to treat type 1 diabetes where islets die at the onset of the disease due to an autoimmune response before the covid-19 pandemic tronolone said he struggled to form the microvascular network when co-culturing islets in the devices when the lab lockdown started he had to stop lots of his culture work which then took time to restart once he could reenter the lab however tronolone said it wasnt all bad news its what allowed me to do this review paper and really look at the literature to see what i need to focus on to get the vascularized networks to form when working with more complex microfluidic models he said by reviewing the literature tronolone said he could find what components that formed vascularization were critical and develop a plan to test amounts of each element to achieve a repeatable network formation to start translating vascularization to tissue-specific models you need to start getting more complex he said i feel that my work fits into that because if i were to sit down and focus on what components of my own device can form the vascular network maybe people can use that in their own tissue-specific microfluidic models tronolone receives funding from the national excellence fellow position in the department of biomedical engineering and the graduate research fellowship program from the national science foundation his advice for other students who also find themselves struggling in their work: dont be afraid to take a step back when things arent working look at the literature and see if you can deduce any information thats similar between all these reports that somehow you can apply to your own research tronolone said
1679,"dr daniel a jiménez professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was chosen to serve as the guest editor and selection committee chair of the 2021 institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) micro publication's ""top picks from the computer architecture conferences"" issueeach year ieee micro collects and features the most influential and insightful computer architecture papers published at any top conference held during the previous year being recognized as a top pick is a prestigious honor in the fieldout of the 120 papers submitted this year 12 were accepted to be featured and another 12 were given honorable mentions the selected works are chosen based on their novelty and potential to significantly impact the computer architecture research community or industry over the next several years as the committee chair jiménez leads the production of the issue including being the guest editor some of his responsibilities included writing the forward putting together the ""call for papers"" and publicizing it selecting the committee members running the selection committee meeting overseeing what papers to accept and working with the authors of the chosen pieces to submit their revised manuscripts to the journal formally it was an honor and a privilege to be chosen as the top picks chair "" said jiménezthe revised papers will be published in the may/june 2021 issue of the journal"
1680,the annual susan m arseven 75 conference for women in science and engineering will be held virtually on saturday feb 20 the conferences mission is to provide a space for women who have interconnecting passions to share their struggles triumphs and advice to others who face similar situations as women in stem (science technology engineering and math) as an attendee of the virtual conference students will partake in interactive workshops engage in meaningful conversations and listen to knowledgeable speakers who used their passions to spark their careers women in science and engineering (wise) began when several women graduate students from the department of chemistry at texas a&m university noticed the lack of women in scientific and engineering fields and the alarming rate of women dropping out of graduate studies when a survey revealed that women desired to make connections throughout their educational experience they assembled to make a difference for women on campus the wise organization brings students together from all technical and scientific colleges to create better conditions and provide a support system for women in these fields it is an organization full of diverse women focusing on different research areas – it represents women in science and engineering's voice said min huang a graduate student in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering this organization provides a platform for women to share personal experiences and discuss problems we may encounter or already have two attendees of last years conference held in february 2020 were huang and tanvi katke who is also a mechanical engineering graduate student katke who is pursuing her masters degree researches multiphase flows in the turbomachinery laboratory she said the conference noted strides toward a more positive view of women in science and engineering it was a great experience said katke the sessions were informative they spanned a range of topics from work etiquette – being the only woman in the room – to financial management they consistently portrayed an improving mindset toward women in stem huang is seeking a doctoral degree and studies electron beam processing and low-temperature plasma applications her current research focuses on material property and functionality testing of medical devices after sterilization by an electron beam x-ray gamma and plasma huang mirrored the words of katke when speaking of her experience at last years wise conference i had the chance to meet women in different areas of engineering and i was able to connect with women from industry and academia huang said i spoke with successful and like-minded women who gave me insight into career decisions their experiences encourage me to pursue a career either in industry or in academia
1681,for nearly five decades the student paper contest held by the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university has provided a critical professional development opportunity for junior senior masters and doctoral students in the department this year was no exception even though the local contest was held virtually for the first time over the years weve gone from transparencies on an overhead projector to powerpoint presentations on a screen to modern teleconferencing technology said dr duane mcvay director of the contest however our mission remains the same the contests objective is to help students develop proficiency in presenting technical papers or research projects both orally and visually before a panel of experts traditionally the contest takes place on two concurrent saturdays: the last saturday in january for the preliminaries and the first saturday in february for the run-offs because of the new virtual format needed to align with pandemic restrictions preparations for this years contest began in september 2020 several tests evaluations and small mock sessions were held to ensure the students could gain as much feedback and interaction as possible with judges valuable assets of the in-person contests on jan 30 the contest went live with 16 zoom breakout rooms simultaneously airing six junior sections six senior sections two masters sections and two doctoral sections throughout the day faculty moderators for each section guided their allotment of the 217 participating students through 15-minute presentation intervals and 5-minute question-and-answer sessions in front of volunteer industry judges competition coordinators quickly overcame the few technical difficulties that occurred the mechanics of student presentations using zoom were quite satisfactory said emeritus contest director dr w john lee the students demonstrated flexibility in dealing with inevitable technical glitches no one lost their poise or cool
1682,"on feb 6 the top students from each section competed again in run-offs where the final first- second- and third-place division winners were determined dedicated staff were on hand to help with technical issues on both days the first- and second-place winners from the senior masters and doctoral divisions will advance to the society of petroleum engineers (spe) gulf coast north america regional competition to be held later this spring former students and other personnel from companies hiring petroleum engineers generously fund the contest and volunteer annually to judge with 69 attending this year to critique the students' performance william d (bill) von gonten jr '87 is an excellent example of this hands-on dedication he founded and runs several companies and donates his academic support with scholarships and faculty fellowships but took time out of his weekend to judge the senior run-off division due to dedication and training for the student paper contest a&m graduates stand out in the industry compared to graduates from other colleges when making professional presentations "" von gonten told the contestants at the end of the run-offs ""our students take the writing contest very seriously which is evident in their challenging research and topics it was a proud moment for me as a young student to win this contest and advance to the international competition winning the undergraduate division in the spe international student paper contest was an accomplishment that still drives me to strive for excellence the achievement is still displayed in my office recent participants also consider the event a key component in preparing to be part of the oil and gas industry the contest is a valuable tool said gabrielle joubran 20 it allows you to practice public speaking and present over a technical topic these experiences have helped me become more confident when i am speaking in front of others and help me better express my ideas in a work setting there are 14 regional student paper contests held globally and coordinated by spe undergraduate masters and doctoral students compete against peers from their region for the opportunity to move on to the spe international student paper contest scheduled to take place during the spe annual technical conference and exhibition this fall texas a&m petroleum engineering students have an outstanding record of placing and winning in both the regional and international contests thanks in part to their experiences at the local level participating in the competition has definitely been a rewarding experience said hussain albahrani 20 who took second place in the doctoral division at the 2020 spe international student paper contest not only was i provided with an opportunity to present and validate the new ideas of my research to different panels of industry experts but i was also able to test my performance under pressure 2021 division winners juniors: first - victoria clark; second - katelynn kinslow; third - william bridges seniors: first - anthony small; second - carli siller; third - dean murphy masters: first - oluwatobiloba adebisi; second - keyla gonzalez; third - jincheng li doctoral: first - debora martogi; second - i wayan rakanada saputra; third - yongzan liu"
1683,stephanie and donald murph'' murphy have established the stephanie ‘00 & donald murph murphy ‘97 aegis endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university although neither stephanie nor donald graduated with an engineering degree from texas a&m they decided to give a gift in the college of engineering because their aerospace and commercial space businesses depend on talented engineers from every discipline we hope this endowment can help a student whatever their situation may be to stay focused on school and set them up for a professional engineering career stephanie said we want current students to have the same positive experience that we had in aggieland and we hope that this scholarship will help ease their burden a little bit donald said stephanie was drawn to texas a&m as a transfer student for her undergraduate degree mostly because of family members who attended the university and loved it it didn't take long for me to understand the impact of the aggie network especially in my industry so when i decided to go back for my (master of business administration) mba texas a&m already had my heart she said combining that with the national rankings of the mays business school and flexibility of the executive mba program meant i could apply what i learned right away in my career and set me up for future growth and starting a new company since earning her masters degree stephanie has stayed involved with texas a&m and has learned more about the college of engineering i am so impressed by the initiatives within the college and want to be a part of making a positive impact for students she said my parents also have established endowments with the university and seeing their service and pride when they learn a student has benefitted from their gift is also very inspiring the murphys ultimately hope to provide the financial assistance necessary for a student to graduate from texas a&m and go on to have a successful career we would be especially pleased to know that our scholarship is helping a student who is supporting themselves through school a first-generation student or a female stephanie said stephanie graduated from texas a&m with a degree in agribusiness in 2000 and later returned to get her masters degree in 2014 donald graduated from a&m in 1997 with a degree in kinesiology and was a member of the corps of cadets both stephanies dad and brother are also aggies along with her cousins and donalds sister is an aggie as well stephanie and donald have three children and the family resides in seabrook texas
1684,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
1685,amelia bradley and claire rodgers students from the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university were selected as members of the zachry leadership program (zlp) as members of the program they will spend the next two and a half years developing their leadership and interpersonal skills to prepare them for a future in engineering what really stood out about the program was the focus on developing personal leadership styles and prioritizing authenticity and selflessness rodgers said i've always thought that leadership is based on being aware of yourself of others and the dynamic created between the two i felt like the zlp truly embodied that perspective rodgers and bradley are among 32 students selected for the program out of 220 applications picked for their strong communication skills and desire for achievement they exemplify excellence both in and outside the classroom the zlp members will participate in various activities from a pre-semester retreat to immersive multi-day events to improve themselves as communicators as business leaders and as people weekly classes will include discussions with peers and seminars with leaders from around the country each semester students will review a different leadership style and put it into action the program is focused on the development of students to prepare them for success in their careers rodgers is majoring in interdisciplinary engineering with minors in design and simulation of mechanical systems and industrial engineering this program will be an invaluable tool for improving myself and preparing me for not only a successful but meaningful career in engineering said rodgers for me being accepted into the zlp is a sign that i am headed in the right direction for what i want to accomplish bradley is an architectural engineering major with a concentration in structural building systems the zlp strives to find students with different engineering majors backgrounds and hobbies so that we can learn several different things from each member bradley said although architectural engineering is a fairly new discipline it was the perfect choice for me because of my passions for art and design i believe that my choice of engineering and passion for art helped me stand out another aspect of the program is aiding students in finding their voice and talents students must take classes that focus on self-awareness leading for impact and using their strengths in leadership roles i hope to find my voice as a member of the zlp said bradley the zlp emphasizes that everyone has a different style of leadership i hope to find my style of leadership and develop more confidence in myself i plan to challenge myself to keep an open mind and explore all of the opportunities that the zlp offers the zlps primary purpose is to highlight the integration between communications leadership engineering and business by creating this connection students will be capable of conquering obstacles and tackling their goals being a part of this program is very important to me because it offers so many opportunities to expand my world through new friendships mentorship leadership and business experience said bradley i am so thankful to be a part of this program and i cannot wait to see where it takes me in the next few years
1686,"angie 99 and doug turk 99 have established the herbert ed turk endowed scholarship in honor of dougs late father distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at texas a&m university herbert ""ed"" turk passed away in december 2020 and is survived by his son doug '99 daughter-in-law angie '99 and their children doug and angie established the scholarship with the department of electrical and computer engineering in honor of ed's lifelong interest in rural power system design and operation that he shared with his son and grandchildren although ed did not attend texas a&m he was a proud aggie dad born on a cotton farm in rural hill county ed spent over 45 years in the service of rural electric cooperatives in texas both as an employee and a consultant his son doug followed in his footsteps and graduated from texas a&m with his degree in electrical engineering in 1999 and is currently the ceo of sam houston electric cooperative his wife angie also graduated from texas a&m in 1999 with her degree in health"
1687,the texas a&m college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah walker-simonds assistant director of development
1688,"wind turbines in clean energy production are like giant pinwheels that convert wind energy into electricity some of the strongest and most constant winds are those found offshore feeding the need for floating wind farms and further research to advance renewable energy technology and methodology dr shu dai a doctoral graduate from the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university worked alongside dr john ""bert"" sweetman ocean engineering professor to investigate the methodology of floating offshore wind turbines (fowt) specifically predicting power wind speeds and blade fatigue they theorized that current statistical models of short-term wind processes are inaccurate leading to poorer maintenance and monitoring of wind turbine performance the new short-term wind speed model we are investigating and developing may change the mainstream method of wind power estimation and blade fatigue analysis dai said as he explained current wind process models such as those used in turbsim (a 3d wind-filled simulator developed by the national renewable energy laboratory) assume that the short-term wind process is a gaussian process that is it is a random or stochastic process with a normal distribution however our field wind measurement records suggest that the short-term wind speed process is a non-gaussian process he said as a result the current method of power estimation and blade fatigue analysis is not accurate dai applied the non-gaussian process to both field experiments and numerical research in order to prove and remedy these inaccuracies predicting power he started his research by including ocean environment conditions such as wind speed wave height etc into the prediction of wind power to do so he utilized and processed ocean environment conditions recorded by buoys from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration he also proposed a new method to predict the mean and standard deviation of power harvested by a fowt using the statistical parameters of wind processes the fowt deployed in the ocean is a complicated nonlinear dynamic system dai said and the numerical simulation of it costs a lot of computer usage as dai explained his technique considers the effects of varying turbulence intensity and higher statistical moments it also allows the performance of an operating wind turbine to be characterized using a limited number of factors that can be from time-domain simulations or measured field data applying this new technique based on random process theory the ideal power curve of wind turbine can be converted into a practical power curve of different wind conditions ultimately this allows researchers to predict turbine performance in different wind conditions much more quickly"
1689,his full findings were presented at the 26th international ocean and polar engineering conference in a paper titled rational selection of floater designs for offshore wind farms using power transfer functions and has been published by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers in a paper titled transformation of wind turbine power curves using the statistics of the wind process recalibrating coastal sea breezes the second area of dais research takes a small step away from wind turbines; instead it focuses on creating a new technique for the recalibration of cup anemometers which are widely used to measure wind speed and direction understanding the dynamic motion of cup anemometers he designed a new recalibration method for the actual wind data captured by such instruments in the field in addition to developing the recalibration method dai applied this method to field work conducting two two-month-long field measurement campaigns on the texas coast the coastal breezes were found to be non-gaussian according to the post-process field records as he suspected with his work with sweetman his findings will be published in two articles: a methodology to recalibrate cup anemometers with application to statistical analysis of sea breezes and field measurement campaigns and identification of sea breeze and land breeze estimating fatigue the final aspect of dais doctoral research involved developing a new method of estimating the blade fatigue damage in a non-gaussian wind field due to the random and turbulent nature of wind coupled with a saline ocean environment offshore wind turbines structural components undergo various levels of stress that lead to fatigue wearing down over time and needing maintenance and replacement for the system to function properly one aspect of a composite wind turbine imperative for operation is the blade the accurate estimation of blade fatigue analysis helps engineers to choose the best type material design etc of blades for wind turbines installed at certain locations dai said it also tells engineers when to check and replace the parts with potential fatigue damage his new methodology combines several tried-and-true techniques (such as using the oc3-hywind turbine model to identify fatigue hotspots on blades) with a long-term wind process model (the weibull distribution) and a short-term wind process model (gaussian and non-gaussian) to produce a more accurate and reliable fatigue simulation additionally dais work provides a vital tool for researchers to use to convert the wind field data generated by current models to the non-gaussian oriented methods that he has developed it is detailed in his upcoming journal publication titled impact of non-gaussian winds on blade fatigue life of floating offshore wind turbines
1690,dr dileep kalathil is working to make the promises of the artificial intelligence evolution attainable by addressing the resiliency scalability and data efficiency of the system
1691,"artificial intelligence (ai) and machine learning have transformed our daily lives our phones keep getting smarter we have smart home devices that can control everything in our home by voice command even social media platforms and web browsers have a good understanding of what we really want to see and do based on the data provided in addition to all of this progress artificial intelligence promises something else – large societal-scale engineering systems such as self-driving cars and large-scale power systems with more capabilities dr dileep kalathil assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is working to make these promises attainable kalathil recently received the faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) for his proposal titled ""towards a principled framework for resilient data efficient and scalable reinforcement learning for control"" the nsf career award is one of the most prestigious recognitions given to researchers early in their careers kalathil will use his career award to address three major challenges of the ai evolution – resiliency scalability and data efficiency of the system to address these challenges he is using reinforcement learning principles resiliency refers to the robustness and safety integration of an artificial intelligent machine for example if a self-driving car is used to driving conditions in central texas and there is an unexpected snow day the adaptability of that vehicle to adjust to those conditions and continue to drive safely is critical this is an area of machine learning that is not very well addressed kalathil said and that is what reinforcement learning is about reinforcement learning is essentially machine learning for making active decisions additionally kalathil is investigating the issue of scalability so that machine learning systems can be integrated for large-scale technologies such as massive power systems he is also exploring ways in which progress in this area of machine learning can continue even with a limited amount of data to go on in order to make progress data collection is needed however when looking at large-scale systems data is naturally limited due to cost suppose you want to design a machine-learning algorithm to control a self-driving car or drone you will need to fly that drone kalathil said however flying the drone or employing a self-driving car to learn and gather data is not a cheap proposition you need to deal with the idea that in many cases you will have a really limited amount of data kalathil will also utilize an experiential learning approach to integrate this reinforcement learning research into his educational curriculum by working with students on the aggie deep racer project which is a tiny autonomous toy car where reinforcement learning models can be tested the idea is that the reinforcement learning algorithm can be integrated into the toy cars system and the application can be put to practice on a real track one thing i believe we should do as an engineering department is to give students the opportunity of experiential learning kalathil said they should be able to try things work on real-world problems and act as engineers"
1692,dr karen wooley has been named a fellow of the american association for the advancement of science (aaas) for her contributions to the fields of organic and polymer chemistry particularly for the synthesis and applications of functional polymer materials and nanoscopic objects wooley is the wt doherty-welch foundation chair in chemistry and a professor in the department of chemistry and the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university wooley said she and her students are constantly evolving their research directions and research targets to adjust to emerging societal needs her current research focuses on the design synthesis and characterization of novel polymers that are inspired by biology like viral capsids lipoproteins and even dolphin skin she then uses these nature-inspired molecular building blocks to develop novel materials for real-world applications in particular her research applies concepts from synthetic organic chemistry analytical/physical chemistry biology and engineering to the synthesis and investigation of functional polymer materials – macromolecules – designed for purpose and technological applications in addition to addressing the growing plastics pollution crisis she designs materials that can be used as nanomedicines for the treatment of infectious diseases or environmental remediation agents such as superabsorbent degradable materials that can prevent flooding and mitigate drought she is also an active collaborator and has a publication coming out soon that details research toward degradable and recyclable organic radical battery materials being developed with dr jodie lutkenhaus this year 489 members have been awarded this honor by aaas because of their scientific research or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications fellows were formally announced in the aaas journal science on nov 27 a virtual fellows forum an induction ceremony for the new fellows will be held on feb 13
1693,a team of researchers including dr madhav erraguntla dr mark lawley dr josef zapletal and dr neda najmitabrizi from the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university are investigating strategies to overcome mosquito-borne illnesses by introducing a self-eliminating mechanism (sem) or biodegradable genetic modification into a mosquito population this research will provide a pathway for designing gene drives that can be safely transitioned for evaluation in the field and will permit rigorous field-based testing of gene drives by establishing strict time limits on the existence of gene drive transgenes in nature in this research lawley and erraguntla in collaboration with dr zachary adelman and dr kevin myles and their students from the department of etymology develop partial-differential equations-based mathematical models to characterize the effectiveness of sem for reversion of gene drive transgenes this research allows us to safely test and deploy genetic manipulations and in the long-term control of vector borne diseases erraguntla said the published research can be found in philosophical transactions of the royal society b gene drive systems have long been sought to modify mosquito populations and thus combat vector-borne diseases such as malaria the zika virus and dengue fever the goal with the sem is for the modified gene to disappear after a few generations given the size of a mosquito network then the mosquito genetic code can return to what it was prior to the modification it is important to make this change biodegradable so the effects are only temporary and can be evaluated in the field the mosquito in question is the aedes aegypti the species known for carrying yellow fever and the zika virus this species was chosen because it is one of the main vectors of these potentially deadly infections this research provides the scientific evidence for policy makers to have the confidence that gene drive systems can be safely deployed in the field without risks of unintended consequences lawley said powerful gene drive systems have been developed in laboratory experiments but may never be used in practice unless they can be shown to be acceptable through rigorous field-based testing such testing is complicated by the risk of unintended consequences and the difficulty in removing gene drive transgenes from nature inclusion of sem into the design of transgenes provides a mechanism for safe excision of transgenes to achieve creating a sem a set of models or differential equations were developed that were then simulated under different scenarios including temperature and rainfall and hatching and life cycle once the genetic modifications were created then began the experimentation process through different gene designs the models suggest that even at a modest rate of success configurations of sem can provide temporal and spatial control and will result in reversion of gene drive transgenes involvement from industrial and systems engineers is crucial because of the systemic modeling involved with gene design as well as having that gene be biodegradable the systemic modeling involved in making genetic changes biodegradable can also be applied in other domains such as health care systems and transportation
1694,in a recent study texas a&m university researchers have described a new process to purify astatine-211 a promising radioactive isotope for targeted cancer treatment unlike other elaborate purification methods their technique can extract astatine-211 from bismuth in minutes rather than hours which can greatly reduce the time between production and delivery to the patient astatine-211 is currently under evaluation as a cancer therapeutic in clinical trials but the problem is that the supply chain for this element is very limited because only a few places worldwide can make it said dr jonathan burns research scientist in the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear engineering and science center texas a&m university is one of a handful of places in the world that can make astatine-211 and we have delineated a rapid astatine-211 separation process that increases the usable quantity of this isotope for research and therapeutic purposes the researchers added that this separation method will bring texas a&m one step closer to providing astatine-211 for distribution through the department of energys isotope programs national isotope development center as part of the university isotope network details on the chemical reaction to purify astatine-211 in the journal separation and purification technology astatine is one of the least abundant elements on earth furthermore it is short-lived undergoing quick radioactive decay by releasing positively charged alpha particles to achieve nuclear stability hence astatine particularly its isotope astatine-211 is an attractive candidate for a form of radiation therapy for cancer treatment called targeted alpha-particle therapy unlike other forms of radiation that can penetrate deeper into the body damaging both healthy and cancerous tissue alpha particles travel a short distance and lose their energy thus when astatine-211 is positioned in or near cancerous tissue its emitted alpha particles travel deep enough to destroy the cancer cells but leave healthy tissue minimally harmed also the short half-life of astatine-211 or time taken for half of its atomic nuclei to decay means that it loses its radioactivity quickly and is less toxic than other radiopharmaceuticals that are long-lived burns noted however that the half-life of astatine is a double-edged sword since the element has a very low natural abundance astatine-211 is artificially made by bombarding bismuth with high-speed alpha particles once created astatine-211 begins to decay immediately he said starting the clock on how long it will last every 72 hours half of the produced astatine-211 decays away and is no longer usable for treatment said burns so the time taken from when it's produced to when it can go into the patient becomes very critical if a purification process takes 4 hours for example that means its around half of astatines half-life; you've lost a third of the material you've made in an attempt to simplify the purification process burns and his colleagues sought to use nitric acid for extracting the astatine-211 from bismuth for their experiments they filled a chromatography column that is often used for separating mixtures with tiny porous beads infused with organic chemicals called ketones next the researchers made astatine-211 by bombarding bismuth with alpha particles at the texas a&m university cyclotron institute they then dissolved the bismuth in nitric acid when they passed this solution through the chromatography column the researchers found that only astatine-211 formed a chemical bond with the ketones furthermore since the ketones are hydrophobic they were repelled away from nitric acid sticking to the beads the net effect was that bismuth passed through the column whereas pure astatine-211 remained collected within the beads this procedure the researchers found takes roughly 10 to 20 minutes unlike other astatine purification processes that can take hours although a cyclotron is needed in producing medical-grade astatine-211 burns said many hospitals are already equipped with the machine for producing other chemicals like fluorodeoxyglucose f 18 that is needed for positron emission tomography but even for hospitals that might rely on astatine-211 delivery from an offsite location the short purification procedure offers more time for transportation texas a&m university for example is in a really nice geographical location we're right in the middle of five of the top 20 largest cities in america and we're right next to one of the major cancer centers in the united states said burns we are aiming to produce purify and ship astatine in batches large enough for pre-clinical and clinical trials we are not there yet but we have made significant progress through this elegant separation technique other contributors to the research include dr evgeny tereshatov geoffrey avila kevin glennon andrew hannaman kylie lofton laura mccann mallory mccarthy dr lauren mcintosh steven schultz dr gabriel tabacaru amy vonder haar and dr sherry yennello from the cyclotron institute at texas a&m the research is funded by the united states department of energy isotope program managed by the office of science texas a&m university through the bright chair in nuclear science the texas a&m system national laboratories office and us department of energy
1695,esu ekeruche is a sophomore in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university moving from nigeria to the united states at a young age brought a new perspective to her life and a passion for service and listening to others stories she is a member of the zachry leadership program and the national society of black engineers she is also an electrical and computer engineering student ambassador and a blogger for the engineering student blog ingenium q what drew you to the zachry leadership program a i was intrigued by the zachry leadership program because of its mission to build authentic leaders they want to really help us lead authentically and be true to ourselves q can you share about your experience with the national society of black engineers (nsbe) a having my sights on an engineering career i thought it would be wise to get involved with an engineering community to find a support system and also learn more about the field since texas a&m offers a general engineering program for freshman year i talked to a few people in nsbe and they helped me figure out what specific engineering i might be interested in pursuing q how has your experience moving to the us from africa when you were younger impacted you a i moved to the us a few months before i turned 11 even at that early age it started to broaden my perspective i was always a forward thinker but it further accelerated my growth i started learning even more about my identity in christ and gods purpose for my life i formed a closer relationship with my family and i began volunteering in my community there were some challenges but relocating helped me think about what i would want to do in the future and started formulating my ideas and perspective of the world it also made me more eager and open to listening to peoples stories which i have become very passionate about
1696,q has anything surprised you coming to college a as a freshman i was overwhelmed with all of the people that were doing so many cool things i remember thinking that i didnt really know what cool things i wanted to do yet since then i have learned that while a lot of people are doing a lot of amazing things we each have to find our own purpose and walk in that its been a fun experience to learn more about myself and how i fit in and contribute to my community q why did you decide to study electrical engineering at texas a&m a i have said i wanted to be an electrical engineer for years now through the years i found out that i really love math and i still do my junior year of high school i took a digital electronics class and i really enjoyed the class attending department information saturday and completing the general engineering coursework freshman year helped me filter what aspects of engineering i was and wasnt interested in i was also able to talk to some mentors who helped me decide that electrical is what i want to go for q what advice would you give to another student who has relocated to the us a i would say you belong here and you are going to find your place here i would also say that you do not need to rush the process be confident that you will find your place at texas a&m and in whatever area you are studying you might also sometimes feel like you have two homes and theres beauty in embracing the entirety of your story q what is something you would like people to know about you that they might not know a i like to write i also enjoy problem-solving and community outreach and service ive said i want to start a nonprofit foundation to educate children for a while now while im still learning more about this passion on my journey with god im always excited at the opportunity to give back to my community q what drew you to texas a&m a it was the reiteration of community that drew me to texas a&m while i do believe that getting a degree is important the community we build is also really important and helpful through the journey too
1697,"former texas a&m university industrial and systems engineering student amanda thompson recalled how she started down the path to becoming an engineer citing one of her former teachers as a mentor although she wasnt originally familiar with engineering or the career paths associated with it it was through her high school teachers that she learned of her strong calculus chemistry and physics skills to be honest when i decided to go be an engineer i thought ‘i dont know what that is but i looked into it because my physics teacher said ‘with your math skills you should be an engineer thompson said now she is hoping to spark that same interest by making stem learning fun and applicable for elementary aged students thompson joined explore interactive as a co-founder in 2018 with the goal of using augmented reality (ar) to bring interactive highly visual and hands-on science and engineering experiences to elementary aged children through mindlabs a series of tabletop games coupled with an augmented reality mobile app aimed at driving self-efficacy and interest in stem (science technology engineering and math) in elementary aged students there are a lot of things like electric currents for example that young students cant see cant directly observe they can see the result of it but they cant see it happening thompson said that abstract learning is hard for them and so ar can bring visualization to those concepts"""
1698,as a student thompsons co-founder wesley virt initially tried to launch a similar product for high school teachers the feedback they received was that the biggest need for this type of education is in elementary schools mindlabs is made up of curriculum units for the students to follow and an augmented reality game the actual digital component making this a great learning option during the covid-19 era mindlabs is for the parent who is looking for more self-driven learning opportunities at home for the child parallel to school and for the teacher delivering the lessons in a school setting since an elementary school students brain has not developed enough to understand concepts it cannot visualize or interact with the goal of mindlabs is to bring those problems to life with the use of a game and augmented reality making these problems fun and interactive also helps garner interest in stem with younger students thompson said thompson believes that among the growing options with technology augmented reality is among the most compelling and effective particularly in the classroom
1699,existing stem activities can be difficult to set up and clean up which can create a difficult experience for both parents and teachers there is a lot of planning ahead and many materials involved so there is potential for something to break or get lost to mitigate these issues mindlabs games include a card game and app or augmented reality segment providing a much easier setup process for teachers and parents this enables the students to work through problems and activities that are closely correlated with physical builds but doesnt include the time and energy associated with setup facilitators can guide conceptual understanding even deeper with corresponding curriculum or as a free choice activity for the students where its possible for the students to play through on their own another challenge thompson and explore interactive have identified is the difficulty teachers have figuring out how to deliver these concepts to young students most of (the teachers) would not have said that ‘engineering is my skill set right when they went into teaching thompson said we want to make this material easy to use and to teach as well the feedback thompson has received through classroom studies shows that these students are learning and building confidence when they work through the game and many end up coming away with more science vocabulary and conceptual understanding of the content they just worked through and kids can learn stem concepts while having fun hopefully after this they can you know go take a flashlight apart and think about why its not working and fix it or mess with their christmas lights and understand that if ones burnt out then its not a complete circuit thompson said every experience at that age helps them decide ‘am i capable of this would i like to do this she hopes to influence the answer to this critical question as absolutely!
1700,scott c saenger 83 a civil engineering graduate has contributed to the engineering entrepreneurship program and the first-generation engineering mentorship program in the texas a&m university college of engineering to support students involved in either of the programs growing up scotts family had no ties to texas a&m but he said he was always being called an aggie others saw the aggie in me from an early age he said it felt like i was destined to be an aggie but when i arrived in aggieland i had only an inkling of what it meant to actually be one ultimately my time at texas a&m was instrumental in helping me to build a foundation for a career in civil engineering in planning for his year-end giving scott reached out to the director of development true brown to ask what needs the college had when he mentioned the two programs this gift supports i loved the idea of supporting those initiatives he said based on what was described to me these are great programs that most people dont know about scott said his stewardship and philanthropy thinking was greatly shaped when he was asked to give a ‘temple talk at church on stewardship as i thought through examples of stewardship and giving three things came to mind he said firstly my dad he would give the shirt off his back to help others i remember how on many days he would come home from work be dog-tired and yet find the strength to go help a neighbor or friend in need secondly i thought of aggies and their giving the aggies i knew growing up were proud to be aggies and stood ready to give back lastly i thought of church leaders who live their stewardship with their time talents and treasures scott is grateful to have been able to be informed of the various opportunities to support the university which have led to these newest gifts to the engineering entrepreneurship program and the first-generation engineering mentorship program i'm hopeful that this most recent gift will facilitate engineering entrepreneurial endeavors that will set a foundation for success for those in that program scott said likewise engineers are needed to solve the world's problems i would hope that the first-generation mentorship program will help to reduce the challenges that first-generation students face and hopefully this gift will also help those students form a foundation for their success in ultimately helping to solve world problems scott believes that life is about growth; physical emotional professional and spiritual you should always look for opportunities to grow and learn he said philanthropic giving is simply another growth opportunity this gift is about stewardship recognizing the many gifts and blessings i have received recognizing what allowed me to receive them and giving back in an appropriate manner
1701,the engineering entrepreneurship program allows students to spark their creativity discover new skills prepare for the future and launch ideas into reality the primary goal of the first-generation engineering mentorship program is to enhance first-generation engineering students educational and social experiences on campus by leveraging university and community resources that help provide a sense of community to these students if you are interested in supporting either of these programs please contact true brown senior director of development
1702,hunter denton and farid saemi graduate students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university each won a best paper award at the vertical flight societys 2020 annual forum for their unmanned aerial system (uas) research the vertical flight societys annual forum is the preeminent conference for vertical flight technology dentons paper design development and flight testing of a gun-launched rotary-wing micro air vehicle tied for the best paper award in the advanced vertical flight session this is the second time in a row that denton has won this award dentons research to launch small in-flight reconfigurable hover-capable uas with grenade-or mortar-launch systems has the potential to significantly increase the range of operation of these systems since the vehicles do not have to expend as much energy flying to a designated area saemis paper development of a brushless dc motor sizing algorithm for a small uas design framework won the best paper award in the propulsion session saemis research to optimize the electric motor battery and power electronics of uas also has the potential to significantly increase the performance of these systems since their electrical components are often selected from rules of thumb rather than physics-based calculations aerospace engineering associate professor dr moble benedict advises both students in the advanced vertical flight laboratory in past years denton and saemi have each earned the us army research laboratorys prestigious journeyman fellowship for their graduate studies both students are currently working toward their doctoral degrees
1703,dr paul gratz and dr jiang hu in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university are utilizing machine-learning models to detect performance bugs within processors and create a more efficient method to combat this real-world problem as consumers we upgrade to a new phone gaming system or smart device for the home because the newer model offers better battery life graphics performance and overall capabilities when these bugs go undetected and are released into ‘the wild in our homes and into our everyday lives – the performance we lose out on as a result can have a greater long-term effect than we might realize when it comes to computer bugs there are two main types: functional and performance a functional bug means an error within a processor creates a computing result that is simply wrong for example if a processor is asked to solve three plus two and its result is seven there is clearly an issue with that result a performance bug is not as simple to detect suppose you want to drive from college station to houston said hu professor in the department at one point you somehow make a mistake and drive toward dallas thats a big mistake and its pretty easy to tell but there are different paths to houston some are shorter some are longer – that difference is hard to tell because you still arrived at your desired destination unlike functional bugs which have an expected output and can be caught more easily performance bugs can fly under the radar and remain unnoticed forever – ultimately diminishing the progress to be made in all facets of modern technology from smartphones to the technology aiding in the fight against climate change the need for processors free of such bugs is paramount fortunately gratz and hu are working with collaborators at intel corporation on a promising answer
1704,by utilizing machine-learning models and automating the process gratz and hu are hopeful that the effort currently spent on performance validation can be drastically reduced ultimately leading to technologies that reach their full potential more efficiently and effectively this is the first application of machine learning to this kind of problem said gratz associate professor its the first work we have really found that actually tries to tackle this problem at all gratz and hu explained that their procedure allows them to do in a day with one person what currently takes a team of several engineers months to accomplish the first hurdle in detecting these bugs is defining what they might look like the computing industry faces this challenge during initial performance analyses when a new technology shows a performance somewhat better than the previous generation it is hard to determine if that processor is running at its full potential or if a bug is reducing the outcomes and they should expect better results if you have a 20% gain between one generation to the next how do you know that the 20% gain couldnt have been 25% or 30% gratz said this is where the teams machine-learning models come into play from a group of various prior architectures the models are learning the relationships between the size of the structures the way the programs work and what their expected performance should be the models are able to guess what the performance of the new machine will be based on these relationships so that the team can see if there is a divergence because chips are more compact and complex than ever before there is a higher chance for such bugs to appear as the complexity of chip design grows the conventional method to detect and eliminate bugs manual processor design validation is increasingly difficult to maintain thus a need for an automated solution became apparent intel contacted hu in june 2019 with hopes of collaboration to solve this critical issue other contributors include doctoral student erick carvajal barboza and masters student sara jacob from the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m; and mahesh ketkar and michael kishinevsky from intel corporation this work has been supported by a grant from the semiconductor research corporation the researchers published their current findings in a paper that was accepted into the 27th institute of electrical and electronics engineers international symposium on high-performance computer architecture a top tier conference in computer architecture
1705,a new detonation research test facility (drtf) will be built and opened next year on the rellis campus adding to its array of capabilities for solving complex global problems dr elaine oran a world authority on the physics and chemistry of explosions will lead a team at the drtf examining how flammable gases and other materials interact and sometimes though not always detonate on a massive scale the discoveries could help prevent horrific mining industrial and home accidents predict the path of wildfires and make high-speed engines run more efficiently it even could improve the understanding of supernovas the texas a&m university system board of regents on thursday approved a plan to invest $5 million for construction of what is likely to be the largest university-based facility of its kind in the world the centerpiece is a 2-meter diameter 200-meter-long detonation tube that is made of steel walls at least 3/4-inch thick it will sit on concrete supports two feet above ground in a secure isolated and open area near the runways of the former air force base funding for the facility is split evenly between the governors university research initiative which gov greg abbott began in 2015 and the chancellors research initiative which chancellor john sharp began in 2013 this investment is bound to lead to remarkable breakthroughs sharp said well make texas oil gas and chemical industries and the entire world safer from accidental explosions the governors and chancellors research initiatives were designed to attract more top faculty to texas and they both played a role in the 2019 hiring of oran she is an aerospace engineering professor and the odonnell foundation chair vi in the texas a&m college of engineering she came from the university of maryland and previously served as the senior scientist for reactive flow physics at the us naval research laboratory there she led a research team that used a smaller-scale detonation facility in the mountains of eastern pennsylvania (now closed) to measure how gases liquids and solids interact and sometimes cause explosions researchers call these issues reactive flow problems oran pioneered computational technology to address reactive flow problems unifying concepts in chemistry physics engineering and computer science in a new methodology were looking at explosions: the physics that cause accidental explosions and how to stop them; or in the case of high-speed engines how to promote them quickly and control them oran said its all about safety control and advancing knowledge she said she was attracted to texas and texas a&m by the willingness to invest in a detonation facility that could get us to the next level of discovery and information it was just an amazing opportunity oran said its the kind of thing you really couldnt say no to the drtf will have a protective earth berm between the steel detonation tube and a control building for researchers at the opposite end a concrete wall and berms will surround a muffler pipe to keep the noise down the facility will be near two other testing ranges being assembled for the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) in partnership with army futures command to advance warfare-related technology one bcdc range is an enclosed highly instrumented tube for testing lasers and other materials traveling at hypersonic speed; the other is an outdoor range for experimenting with high-tech combat vehicles and their communication systems while the detonation facility is not part of the bcdc per se discoveries there could have applications for the department of defense detonation-related discoveries also could advance the work of the mary kay oconnor process safety center which is operated by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) to promote safety in chemical processes in the oil gas and pharmaceutical industries the safety center was established in memory of an employee killed in a 1989 explosion at the phillips petroleum complex in pasadena texas the initial blast registered 35 on the richter scale and an ensuing conflagration took 10 hours to control in all 23 employees died and 314 were injured the drtf will be operated by tees as well it will join a wide array of new cutting-edge facilities at the rellis campus on the western edge of bryan including the bcdc the center for infrastructure renewal the texas a&m transportation institute and the secureamerica institute
1706,pam and bill hannes have established the pam and bill hannes '81 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering at texas a&m university bill grew up in a small rural town in central texas called west and was always interested in engineering when i visited texas a&m i found a world-class engineering department and a campus with a hometown feel he said i quickly discovered the values and traditions aggies hold true and knew i had made the right decision i know the university has grown significantly since i left but it still feels like home to me the hanneses have been longtime supporters of texas a&m and felt that now was the right time to give back to the petroleum engineering department we chose to focus on a student from a rural area and with all thats going on in our world today now was the right time bill said he and pam have realized the significant impact a petroleum engineering degree from texas a&m has had on the quality of life for their family ultimately they hope to provide a student the opportunity to achieve a quality education in a positive environment and to join the aggie network which will benefit them for life bill graduated from texas a&m in 1981 with a degree in petroleum engineering together he and pam have two children who attended texas a&m and five grandchildren they hope will also be aggies
1707,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
1708,as humankind steps into new frontiers in space exploration satellites and space vehicles will need to pack more cargo for the long haul however certain items like dish antennas used for wireless communication pose a challenge since they cannot be very densely packed for flight because of their signature bowl shape now researchers at texas a&m university have used the principles of origami the ancient japanese art of paper folding to create a parabolic structure from a flat surface using a shape-memory polymer when heated the researchers showed that the shape-memory polymer changes its shape in a systematic way that mimics folds this reshaping lifts the material into the shape of a dish further they also showed that their origami-engineered dish antennas performed as efficiently as conventional smooth dish antennas initially we were largely focused on self-folding origami structures: how would you make them how would you design them into different shapes what material would you use said dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering having answered some of these questions we turned to some real-world applications of origami engineering like adaptive antennas for which there has been very little work done in this study we combine folding behavior and antenna performance and address that gap the researchers have described their antenna design in the journal smart materials and structures antennas come in various designs and their major function is to transmit or receive information in the form of electromagnetic waves some antennas like the ones for communicating between a television and a space-bound satellite are curved in the shape of a parabola this ensures that the electromagnetic waves hitting the bowl-shaped antenna are reflected and converge to a small point of focus by extension when these antennas transmit electromagnetic waves they do so in a narrow direction a feature known as directionality thus parabolic reflectors are a natural choice for space applications since they either pick up or send information in a specific direction however their shape makes them inconvenient to store in space vehicles where there is limited room this problem is exacerbated when many antennas need to be stored onboard one way to address this hurdle is origami engineering using this technique flat 2d structures can be folded into elaborate 3d shapes if parabolic antennas can be made flat using origami they can be stacked or rolled up inside of a rocket and when ready for deployment be unrolled and folded into a parabolic shape however hartl explained that folding a piece of flat material into a smooth bowl is difficult and nonintuitive conventional origami design entails folding thin sheets of material at sharp creases engineering structures on the other hand have a thickness and the choice of material can make it hard to get these sharp creases he said consequently we need to create folds that exhibit smooth bending to facilitate paper-like folding at the creases the researchers turned to shape-memory composites that change their shape when heated in addition these materials are inexpensive lightweight flexible and capable of being stretched multiple times without being damaged first they built a flat 2d surface using strips of shape-memory composites and cardstock simply put pieces of stiff cardstock which formed flat facets were held together by the shape-memory composites similar to how the ribs of an umbrella hold the fabric in place further at the vertices where the composites meet they cut out tiny holes to serve as corner creases when the assembly folds into a 3d parabola when heated the researchers showed that the composites changed their shape by bending systematically eventually lifting the cardstock pieces into a parabolic bowl-like shape they also tested if their multifaceted parabolic reflector worked as efficiently as a smooth parabolic antenna and found that the two antennas performed comparably hartl said this research is an important step toward using the principles of origami to make highly functional engineering structures that can be stowed compactly and easily deployed when needed in addition to other applications future advances based on this research will likely result in morphing reflector antennas for military and space telecommunication applications he said other contributors to this research include sameer jape milton garza and dr dimitris lagoudas from the aerospace engineering department; joshua ruff and francisco espinal from the department of electrical and computer engineering; deanna sessions and dr gregory huff from pennsylvania state university; and edwin a peraza hernandez from the university of california irvine this research is funded by the national science foundation and the air force office of scientific research
1709,the gram-negative bacteria helicobacter pylori (h pylori) colonize the stomachs of the majority of the worlds population although most people may never experience major complications due to the pathogen h pylori infections increase the risk of certain types of gastric cancer as well as other illnesses such as peptic ulcers and gastritis currently h pylori infections are treatable with a cocktail of antibiotics but the rapid emergence of antibiotic resistance in h pylori is a significant concern to counter these threats dr pushkar lele assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university investigated how h pylori locate their ideal environment within a hosts stomach motile bacteria such as h pylori swim by rotating string-like appendages called flagella they navigate by sensing chemical signals in their environment a process known as chemotaxis an intracellular signaling pathway – the chemotaxis network – aids navigation by controlling the direction of rotation of the flagella current understanding of how the chemotaxis network operates is based on studies of escherichia coli (e coli) which is a model system for bacterial chemotaxis and motility the chemotaxis network in e coli modulates the probability of clockwise rotation in otherwise counterclockwise-rotating flagella to help the cell migrate toward favorable chemical environments how the chemotaxis network modulates flagellar functions in h pylori is not known popular techniques that use probes to study chemotactic function in bacteria do not work well in h pylori this creates significant challenges in understanding flagellar functions in this species to overcome these challenges leles group pioneered a novel probe-free approach to study flagellar functions in h pylori their approach exploited the fact that cells swam around in clockwise circles near glass surfaces when their flagella rotated counterclockwise and counterclockwise circles when their flagella rotated clockwise in a paper published in elife lele and his research team used this approach to report the probability of the clockwise rotation in h pylori for the first time jyot antani a doctoral student in leles group performed the experiments that further showed that h pyloris chemotaxis network modulates flagellar functions similar to that in e coli lele said the similarity in the form of flagellar control in the two bacterial species is intriguing given that they differ in many key aspects whereas h coli prefer the stomach e coli are found in the lower gastrointestinal tract the physical characteristics of h pylori are such that they run forward and reverse unlike e coli which run forward and then tumble as a result the modulation of the probabilities of clockwise flagellar rotation which suits e coli very well is predicted to cause errors in chemotaxis in h pylori lele predicts that future work with their new approach will reveal how h pylori reach their targets despite the errors and how dietary interventions can be developed to inhibit chemotaxis this research was supported by a high impact high risk awards grant from the cancer prevention and research institute of texas
1710,perhaps the most common turn of phrase for complexity is its not rocket science its usually said to offset a task that is becoming more difficult than it otherwise should be in the case of one ocean engineering senior design capstone team however its the opposite working as a trio konnor chappell robert jackson and daniel jansen are designing an offshore rocket platform for launches and landings basically we're taking a large vessel – a big drilling ship semisubmersible one of these big vessels – and converting it into a rocket pad said chappell it sounds kind of simple when you put it that way but it's not really been done a lot historically we have seen it a little bit in the late 90s to kind of base our design off of but really this is an emerging technology to even think about using an offshore launch platform the previous example of using a floating platform as a rocket launch pad came from the petroleum industry in which an old drilling platform was converted into a launch pad for smaller rockets and satellites unfortunately most of the technical information about the launch pad used at that location is proprietary and not available to the public economic and financial issues closed the operation and led to no further advancement in the technology as jackson described the openness of the ocean offers both safety and convenience for professionals and spectators making it a viable and obtainable location option for future launches with every rocket launch there are exclusion zones – areas that must be kept clear of people as rockets get bigger as they will need to be with mars missions and other space exploration plans the exclusion zones will also get larger to accommodate them so youre either going to have to move people or youre going to have to move the rockets to being launched from the middle of a mountain range and develop an entire infrastructure for it said jackson he explained that while converting an already existing vessel negates the need for new infrastructure there are still several challenges that the team faces in the design of their project for example the motion dynamics of a launch in addition to a massive rocket sitting on a floating structure they have to take into account the millions of pounds of thrust that will push down on the launch pad and find a way to counteract it calling upon their ocean engineering background the team has already started brainstorming ways to counteract such issues chappell who will be leading the computational modeling and simulation front explained that the team plans to utilize technology from several ocean and marine industries – combining the best characteristics of each to help offset the stress the platform will be under its a complex project but if we can design it we can help bring ocean engineering into the spotlight and show how important this small field is to the petroleum aviation and aerospace industries said jackson inspired by nasas space exploration missions as well as the visions of spacex and their reusable rockets the team is eager to continue their work and develop their idea further throughout the spring i think actually proving that this thing will do it and doing a response simulation and being able to show you plain as day the platform is holding up as the rocket takes off is exciting said jackson youd be able to see some of the different responses it might go beyond the scope of what the capstone project is to do a simulation animation model and rule but to be able to actually prove that our work would fit into this and benefit the platform and hold up under the stresses would be my goal i want to add to that there is some software that i've been looking into that we can use to model the force from the rocket onto the vessel itself said chappell i think something really exciting will be to show anybody this simulation and how it works and have them be like ‘holy cow that's a rocket taking off on a boat
1711,among the many avenues that viruses can use to infect humans drinking water may pose only a tiny risk for spreading certain viruses like the coronavirus however in cases where there is unauthorized wastewater disposal or other events of inadvertent mixing of wastewater with water sources the possibility of transmission through drinking water remains unknown using a surrogate of the coronavirus that only infects bacteria researchers at texas a&m university have now presented strong evidence that existing water purification plants can easily reduce vast quantities of the virus thereby protecting our household water from such contagions in particular the researchers showed that the water purification step called coagulation could alone get rid of 99999% of the virus markedly decontaminating water for consumption we did not want to wait till drinking water became a potential cause for concern for coronavirus transmission said dr shankar chellam professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering this study shows that decontamination technologies that are already in place in water treatment facilities can remove or inactivate the coronavirus and other viruses that are structurally similar details of their study were published in the american chemical society journal environmental science and technology viruses can be categorized between two structural types: those that have an outer fortress called an envelope and those that do not this envelope consisting of a lipid bilayer and attached proteins has multiple functions including aiding the virus in entering into host cells several infamous viruses have a protective envelope including coronaviruses and the ebola virus studies have found both enveloped and nonenveloped viruses in wastewater however most research has solely focused on the survival of nonenveloped viruses after wastewater and water treatment it is well known that wastewater mixes with drinking water supplies in fact in many countries including the united states wastewater is purified and used as drinking water said chellam if enveloped viruses persist in wastewater there could be a minuscule chance that these viruses make it into our drinking water supplies we just dont know for sure at treatment facilities raw water generally undergoes a three-step purification process: coagulation followed by filtration and finally disinfection in the coagulation step certain metallic salts are added to initiate particles suspended in water to join together into millimeter-sized clumps these clumps then settle down as sediment and are easily separated from the water and so chellam and his collaborators tested to see if enveloped viruses also assembled into bundles during coagulation for their experiments they added a surrogate of the coronavirus ɸ6 a strain that specifically infects bacteria to clean water next they separately tested the action of a coagulant commonly used in water treatment plants after coagulation they studied small samples of the virus-infused water under an electron microscope and found that ɸ6 assembled on the coagulants forming clusters they then checked the presence of infectious viruses in the water after removing the clumps and they found there was a 100 000 reduction the us environmental protection agency mandates 9999% of the viruses must be removed or inactivated from drinking water and we found that even without filtration and chlorination we were getting rid of 99999% of the viruses said chellam the researchers noted that although they used ɸ6 for their study the results are readily generalizable to other viruses that have similar surface characteristics notably a lipid bilayer envelope and similar spike proteins however chellam said that in the real world wastewater contains a whole slew of viruses unlike their experiments that included just a single strain of virus hence in their next set of experiments they plan to investigate if coagulation is still as effective at decontamination in these scenarios our work suggests that surface water treatment plants might be already well equipped to meet virus regulations for drinking water said chellam and coagulation is just the first step in the water purification pipeline this is very encouraging since additional purification steps will only attenuate enveloped viruses further alleviating associated health risks even more other texas a&m contributors to this research include doctoral student kyungho kim and dr anindito sen this research is funded by the national science foundation
1712,in 2019 team tupa from rio de janeiro brazil placed first at texas a&m universitys invent for the planet (iftp) competition their cutting-edge technology featured an extraordinary way to help the visually impaired navigate while walking replacing a cane since winning the team has experienced great success and recently launched their company tupan featuring the product originally designed during iftp when we came back from texas we received a lot of positive feedback the majority being from the visually impaired said felipe macedo a member of the team some of them just wanted to buy the version that was a prototype we thought we created such a cool functional and cheap technology we decided to create tupan to combine technology accessibility and innovation in just one purpose to improve the quality of life of those people invent for the planet is a worldwide intensive design competition hosted by texas a&m that focuses on finding helpful solutions to pressing global problems students form teams at their local universities and compete in a 48-hour competition where they research and propose a solution develop a prototype create a business plan and pitch their product to a panel of renowned judges winners at each university then submit a videotape of their presentation and send it to texas a&m where another set of judges selects the top five these five teams are then asked to travel to texas a&m where they compete head-to-head for the ultimate prizes the intent of iftp is to get the students to have an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset said don bailey a coordinator for the competition i think that (iftp) prepares the engineers for success better than any other program for their future careers team tupa consisted of macedo breno ferreira caio de lima giovanni enokibara luã guedes and victor hugo benicio the team included undergraduate and graduate students from both the universidade federal do rio de janeiro and centro federal de educação tecnológica celso suckow da fonseca the team was inspired to help others through technology and used this as a catalyst to propel them to victory we found passion in what we were doing said ferreira passion empathy and hard-work from after iftp until now that's what brought us (here) today to what we are we believe that more than developing this equipment we are creating something that really changes people's lives we are impacting an entire social branch and we are working on something that we really love team tupa was the first brazilian team to take first place for their efforts they were awarded $3 000 and recognition worldwide on their flight home to brazil the students met one of their partners iii comunicação who believed in the product's tremendous potential it was from there they began determining the future of their product they traveled extensively in brazil showing the product at events and demonstrations and realized their desire to form a company they found an enthusiasm and a passion for what they were trying to solve bailey said they were able to put that passion forward in selling their product to everybody they talked to because they believed in it and they truly wanted to go forward with it their company tupan is selling a complete and working version of the technology drafted at iftp the technology itself is called eva and was created as a modern and cost-friendly alternative to the walking stick that many visually impaired people use daily the technology consists of a hat and a small pointer which are equipped with sensors powered by rechargeable batteries both devices can recognize obstacles and hazards within a range of two meters the hat works through mechanical sensors that detect obstacles and send vibrations to the user while the pointer works by electromagnetic waves i think the biggest challenge that we've had is to transform our prototype that we made at texas a&m into a final product and create our own technology said macedo we created equipment that can work with visual impairments and we wanted something else we want to work not only with visual impairment and improve their quality of life in general we also want to work with hearing impairments work with autism and more disabilities the team is expanding their brand and pride themselves on their companys message they want to be seen as an accessibility company a company that helps improve quality of life and a company focused on innovation the team experienced many opportunities over the past two years that have stemmed from their experience at iftp this certainly opened many doors for us was a really good career opportunity and brought us more than we expected said ferreira we encourage people that are thinking about participating in next years competition iftp 2022 to participate it maybe can bring you more than you expected the next invent for the planet will take place in 2022
1713,the texas a&m university system board of regents on wednesday confirmed dr m katherine banks as the 26th president of texas a&m university banks who is currently vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories and dean of the texas a&m college of engineering assumes her duties june 1 banks also will carry the title vice chancellor of national laboratories and national security strategic initiatives because of her continued involvement with los alamos national laboratory and the george hw bush combat development complex at the rellis campus banks who has led texas a&m engineering for the past decade was selected after a national search led by board of regents chairman elaine mendoza vice chairman tim leach and a 15-member search committee after a robust national search which drew top-notch competitive candidates our board today unanimously confirmed dr katherine banks as the next president of texas a&m university mendoza said with her decade of accomplishments evident right here on campus dr banks will be ready and able to move forward from day one texas a&m is a great university and under her leadership we are expecting it to be even greater; we are excited to see this next chapter unfold we have all worked with dr banks for many years and we know what she has done to transform our engineering college to be among the biggest and best in the world said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp dr banks is going to do for the university what she has already done for engineering she is going to be a great president i am truly honored that the board of regents has selected me to be the next president of this great university said banks crucial listening sessions will begin soon with key stakeholders across campus and the state to gather perspectives concerning the issues challenges and opportunities that we face today i look forward to working together as we take texas a&m university to new levels of preeminence
1714,continuing its reputation for excellence in research and teaching texas a&m universitys engineering graduate program was ranked as the top engineering program in texas in the latest us news & world report survey americas best graduate schools 2022 the college of engineering ranked 11th overall nationally and seventh among public institutions the first day that vice chancellor (kathy) banks got here she had a plan to take engineering to the highest level said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp shes now no 1 in texas and i suspect she wont rest until shes no 1 in the us seven departments in the college of engineering were also ranked among the top 10 public universities in the us the complete list of individual programs and their rankings are: aerospace engineering no 9 (6 public); biological and agricultural engineering 3 (3); biomedical engineering 40 (21); chemical engineering 28 (17); civil engineering 14 (9); computer engineering 22 (12); electrical engineering 20 (12); industrial and systems engineering 13 (8); materials science and engineering 23 (14); mechanical engineering 17 (9); nuclear engineering 4 (3); and petroleum engineering 2 (2)
1715,"both oil production and geothermal energy need fluids to move through fracture channels within subsurface rocks yet accurately mapping and measuring fractures created for fluid flow is challenging because what happens underground goes unseen seismic surveys created when sound bounces against subsurface features can produce reflective imaging but these are not detailed pictures and are difficult to decipher by anyone untrained in geosciences texas a&m university graduate researcher aditya chakravarty believes a different sound source will create clearer and more accurate pictures at least when it comes to depicting fractures under the supervision of his mentor dr siddharth misra of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering chakravarty is using machine-learning algorithms to focus on the passive sounds made by rocks as they crack and break underground so the fractures can be accurately assessed and mapped the research is supported by a grant awarded to misra from the department of energy (doe) and continues work chakravarty did as an intern for the lawrence berkeley national lab during the summer of 2020 both the current research and the internship are associated with the enhanced geothermal systems collaborative project (egs collab) created by the doe geothermal technologies office while it may seem strange for a student getting his doctoral degree in petroleum engineering to participate in a project advancing geothermal methods so they may one day power millions of homes chakravarty disagrees ""petroleum engineers have a very solid grasp of underlying geothermal energy concepts like drilling completions fluid flows and so on "" said chakravarty ""i found out most of the leading people in geothermal projects previously worked as petroleum engineers or reservoir engineers"" fluid flows have been studied in enough detail to have well-defined equations available to predict their behavior but fluid flow travel in underground reservoirs can be tricky many reservoir rocks are so tightly-grained that fluids can't flow through them unless they are cracked or fractured most of these rocks are also highly heterogeneous meaning of all different types so the fracture shapes sizes and lengths can be quite varied and consequently difficult to predict getting oil to flow out of a tightly compacted shale reservoir or water to flow down through hot rock to become an upward vent of steam depends on better visualization of the actual fracture channels underground ""to understand and be sure that we create the right fractures we need to be able to image and characterize them properly "" said chakravarty ""for example we may pump in water to create steam but the fluid will just get lost below ground if we don't have fractures in the right places to guide it back to the geothermal plant"" chakravarty is working with data collected by the egs collab from the sanford underground research facility at homestake mine in south dakota where injection fracture and production tests were performed monitored and recorded at depths of over 4 800 feet his role is to apply blind or unsupervised machine-learning methods to these underground data measurements to better understand what the signatures say about the state of the fractures in the subsurface there are two broad types of machine-learning algorithms: supervised and unsupervised supervised machine learning is somewhat like taking an exam where all the questions were covered somewhere within a memorized textbook; everything is known it just has to be identified unsupervised learning deals with things that are not known but could be relevant the algorithms must filter data through a general understanding of a subject and extract what seems important from what probably isn't because of the complexities of understanding the unseen fractures underground unsupervised learning is perfect for this job the algorithms sift through the data collected by the egs collab measuring equipment and sort out what they find based on guidance from chakravarty ""with clever processing pieces of the puzzle appeared from the random underground noise and started telling a tightly coherent story "" said chakravarty ""for me the petroleum engineering student who has limited exposure to seismology it's an epiphany"" chakravarty might not be adept at seismology but he does have a bachelor's and master's degree in geoscience and a master's in petroleum engineering he came to texas a&m to finish his petroleum engineering education and after working for misra on a machine-learning project based on using passive sounds to characterize cracks in rock found a deep appreciation for the science chakravarty was able to get a coveted internship with lawrence berkeley to further his interests in machine learning and it introduced him to the egs collab project he is proud of his affiliation with the geothermal project and advocates the advantages of a broad-based education ""i have this rather interdisciplinary approach which involves geophysics and petrophysics as well as the core engineering concepts "" chakravarty said ""this gives me an appreciation of how all these different disciplines come together and make sense of what's going on"""
1716,dr chao ma assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has been selected to receive the 2021 outstanding young manufacturing engineer award by the society of manufacturing engineers (sme) this award is given to engineers age 35 or younger who have made exceptional contributions and accomplishments in the manufacturing industry sme is an international association whose mission is to promote manufacturing technology and develop a skilled workforce ma said the honor from such a prestigious organization suggests that the manufacturing research conducted at tees (the texas a&m engineering experiment station) as one of its strategic areas is internationally recognized ma received his bachelors degree from tsinghua university in 2010 masters degree from the university of wisconsin–madison in 2012 and doctorate from university of california los angeles in 2015 all in mechanical engineering he was a senior mechanical engineer at cymer from 2015-16 before joining texas a&m mas research interests include additive manufacturing laser manufacturing and metal matrix composites
1717,when the covid-19 pandemic hit and schools were shut down educators throughout the us scrambled to find new ways to teach students remotely in the texas a&m university college of engineering many things had to be considered so students would continue to get a quality education including how to get to get the enormous amount of extra equipment that remote teaching would require meeting this need required significant contributions from executive leadership finance property management and it fully demonstrating how exceptionally well the college of engineering collaborates as team said mitch wittneben associate director of information technology (it) the college of engineering acquired funding from the previous coronavirus relief bill and collaborated to develop the method by which faculty would request equipment then organized the results and worked with vendors to secure products available in the supply chain (as many items were in short supply) created the purchase orders and then coordinated the configuration and distribution process until covid hit a majority of engineering education was done in person said wittneben faculty were accustomed to coming into a lecture hall or classroom and using the technology in the space to deliver their course material they had to quickly rethink how this was to be done – no whiteboards chalk-boards etc our team needed to provide a way for faculty in a remote environment to continue to educate students in a manner that was familiar to them as there was insufficient time to completely redesign their courses wittneben said with the funding for the 2020-21 school year his team acquired 756 devices in the fall and 264 devices in the spring instructors were given the option of six core pieces of technology: lenovo p15 16-inch macbook pro microsoft surface book 3 microsoft surface pro 7 microsoft surface laptop 3 and an ipad pro in addition to the core items faculty could choose from usb-a and usb-c hubs headphones with microphones document cameras and webcams to enhance the teaching experience the equipment allows faculty to closely mimic the services available to them in a traditional classroom environment said wittneben speaking with faculty over the past six months their resourcefulness and dedication to providing a quality education to students coupled with the technology has provided additional flexibility in lecture delivery with less dependency on a ‘classroom
1718,on sultry summer afternoons heating ventilation and air conditioning (hvac) systems provide much-needed relief from the harsh heat and humidity outdoors these systems which often come with dehumidifiers are currently not energy efficient guzzling around 76% of the electricity in commercial and residential buildings in a new study texas a&m university researchers have described an organic material called polyimides that uses less energy to dry air furthermore the researchers said polyimide-based dehumidifiers can bring down the price of hvac systems which currently cost thousands of dollars in this study we took an existing and rather robust polymer and then improved its dehumidification efficiency said dr hae-kwon jeong mcferrin professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering these polymer-based membranes we think will help develop the next generation of hvac and dehumidifier technologies that are not just more efficient than current systems but also have a smaller carbon footprint the results of the study are described in the journal of membrane science as their name suggests dehumidifiers remove moisture from the air to a comfortable level of dryness thereby improving air quality and eliminating dust mites among other useful functions the most commonly available dehumidifiers use refrigerants these chemicals dehumidify by cooling the air thereby reducing its ability to carry water however despite their popularity refrigerants are a source of greenhouse gases a major culprit for global warming as an alternative material for dehumidification naturally occurring materials known as zeolites have been widely considered for their drying action unlike refrigerants zeolites are desiccants that can absorb moisture within their water-attractive or hydrophilic pores although these inorganic materials are green and have excellent dehumidification properties zeolite-based dehumidifiers pose challenges of their own scaling up is a big problem with zeolite membranes said jeong firstly zeolites are expensive to synthesize another issue comes from the mechanical properties of zeolites they are weak and need really good supporting structures which are quite expensive driving up the overall cost thus jeong and his team turned to a cost-effective organic material called polyimides that are well-known for their high rigidity as well as tolerance for heat and chemicals at the molecular level the basic unit of these high-performance polymers are repeating ring-shaped imide groups connected together in long chains the attractive forces between the imides gives the polymer its characteristic strength and thus an advantage over mechanically weak zeolites but the dehumidification properties of the polyimide material needed enhancement the researchers first created a film by carefully applying polyimide molecules on a few nanometers-wide alumina platforms next they put this film in a highly concentrated sodium hydroxide solution triggering a chemical process called hydrolysis the reaction caused the imide molecular groups to break and become hydrophilic when viewed under a high-powered microscope the researchers uncovered that the hydrolysis reactions lead to the formation of water-attractive percolation channels or highways within the polyimide material when jeongs team tested their enhanced material for dehumidification they found that their polyimide membrane was very permeable to water molecules in other words the membrane was capable of extracting excess moisture from the air by trapping them in the percolation channels the researchers noted that these membranes could be operated continuously without the need for regeneration since the trapped water molecules leave from the other side by a vacuum pump that is installed within a standard dehumidifier jeong said his team carefully designed their experiments for partial hydrolysis wherein a controlled number of imide groups become hydrophilic the strength of polyimides comes from their intermolecular forces between their chains said jeong if too many imides are hydrolyzed then we are left with weak material on the other hand if the hydrolysis is too low the material wont be effective at dehumidification although polyimide membranes have shown great promise in their potential use in dehumidification jeong said their performance still lags behind zeolite membranes this is a new approach to improve the property of a polymer for dehumidification and a lot more optimizations need to be done in order to further enhance the performance of this membrane said jeong but another key factor for engineering applications is it has to be cheap especially if you want the technology to be reasonably affordable for homeowners we are not there yet but are certainly taking strides in that direction jeong is also an affiliated faculty member in the department of materials science and engineering sunghwan park in the chemical engineering department also contributed to this study this research is funded by the national science foundation and the qatar national research fund
1719,nancy and bob dehart '75 have established the nancy and bob dehart '75 isen endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the wm michael barnes '64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university the deharts were inspired to give back to texas a&m because of bobs own experiences in the industrial engineering masters program my graduate degree from a&m has opened up numerous doors and presented various opportunities throughout my life bob said because of his degree from texas a&m bob said he has been able to serve in numerous positions from 1982-88 he was a director on the board of certified safety professionals and president in 1986 from 2016-20 he served as a director on the board for global environmental health and safety credentialing he also served on the center for chemical process safety risk assessment committee for the american institute of chemical engineers from 1986-1993 in addition to this scholarship bob and nancy are also establishing similar scholarships at nancys undergraduate and graduate schools the university of tennessee the university of kentucky and bobs alma mater for his undergraduate degree west virginia university institute of technology through these scholarships we hope to assist industrial engineering students who need financial assistance bob said bob earned his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from west virginia university institute of technology in 1972 and later graduated with his masters in industrial engineering from texas a&m in 1975 bob is the first aggie in his family and he and nancy currently reside in the western mountains of north carolina
1720,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact john berheim senior director of development
1721,madison mj saunders a sophomore student in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering came to texas a&m university from georgia with a posse scholarship and has since made an impression even claiming a spot in the zachry leadership program (zlp) the posse foundation identifies recruits and trains individuals with extraordinary leadership potential and a keen attention to diversity posse scholars receive full-tuition leadership scholarships from posse's partner colleges and universities similarly zlp is a scholarship that also aims to help students realize the power of collaboration and diverse thoughts while also learning to become more selfless i never visited (texas) a&m prior to my nsc (new student conference) saunders said i actually wasnt introduced to a&m until i was nominated for the posse scholarship and as i was going through my application/interview process i knew i wanted to attend the university as a posse scholar saunders was able to bond with others in the program and mentors from texas a&m before arriving growing attached to the familial atmosphere there saunders said that texas a&m was not something she could pass up and she found her voice as a woman engineer to be even more profound being a woman and particularly an african american woman in engineering is challenging however i wouldnt change it for anything strictly because of how its impacted my confidence saunders said looking back on my freshman year i believe i am a completely different person from who i am today saunders said that she has been able to find her confidence and is grateful that she has been able to grow which she believes every woman in engineering should be able to do also her acceptance into zlp meant a lot to her as well and she fondly remembers the experience at that moment i felt so validated saunders said i know i can struggle with my confidence in myself and im getting better but little and especially major things like this really remind me to continue to believe in myself outside of these engineering programs saunders advocates for black women in engineering saunders said that striving for this diversity is important because it takes a lot to be the only one in the room it can be so draining mentally to the point where you can begin to question yourself and your abilities even when you are one of the best at what you do saunders said through programs like zlp and posse she credits the people she has met in both to her success getting the chance to be the best person she can be ultimately between the two scholarship programs and commitments in several other organizations saunders realizes the importance of pushing herself it will be hard to see but there is a light at the end of the tunnel saunders said you just have to be willing to run toward it
1722,five faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering were selected to receive a 2021 distinguished achievement award from texas a&m and the association of former students they were among 24 outstanding members of the universitys faculty and staff to be honored the college of engineering recipients recognized for their research were dr mahmoud el-halwagi professor and bryan research and engineering chair in chemical engineering artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and managing director of the gas and fuels research center; and dr svetlana sukhishvili professor department of materials science and engineering and director of the soft matter facility dr ibere alves professor of practice harold vance department of petroleum engineering and dr aakash tyagi professor of practice department of computer science and engineering were recognized for teaching; and dr gerard l coté texas a&m regents professor james j cain professor i in biomedical engineering and director of the center for remote health technologies and systems was recognized for graduate mentoring the university-level distinguished achievement awards were first presented in 1955 and have since been awarded to those who have exhibited the highest standards of excellence at texas a&m in recognition of their achievements each recipient receives a cash gift an engraved watch and a commemorative plaque see the complete list of honorees on the dean of faculties website
1723,i've always loved the ocean said ashley mullen a graduate student in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston i've always been so intrigued by it because it's just so massive and so vast and there's so much we don't know about it a recipient of the 2021 engineering graduate merit doctoral fellowship mullen was introduced to ocean engineering as a freshman in galveston when her love for math and science inspired her to pursue a degree in engineering now she is working toward her masters and doctoral degrees the prestigious fellowship awards one student from each participating department a scholarship for two years for a masters degree or three to four years for a doctoral degree in addition to a stipend and other coverages im super blessed and thankful to not only have the rest of my education paid for but also to be paid to do what i love mullen said it's one thing to be an undergrad and to do well but this fellowship is a reminder that people want me here as mullen described her main interests lie in wave energy a branch of power generation and renewable energy in which power is produced by floating devices placed on the surface of the ocean while she hasnt had the chance to dive deep into her graduate research studies yet she has dipped her toes into wave energy research during her undergraduate experience i participated in undergraduate research my senior year and was able to aid in part of the design process for a wave energy converter with applications in desalination she said then i got to do a little bit more detailed design of my own last semester mullen is excited to begin her graduate research project get hands-on experience and see something that she designs come to life possibly as a prototype for industry use regardless of where the sea may take her mullen advises students to take advantage of the small size of the ocean engineering department and connect with their peers and professors some departments are massive and i feel like it's easy for people to just go into class and leave she said but the ocean engineering department is so small i really thrive in an environment of having people know you and being close to your professors i think it helps because it can be intimidating to ask questions but when you know them personally and they know you it becomes a lot easier and you can just walk in their office and have a conversation i think all of that starts with just being involved
1724,the engineering genesis award for multidisciplinary research was presented to 26 texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers and their teams during a virtual award ceremony on dec 15 the award which is presented to tees researchers who have secured significant research grants of $1 million or more were given to the following: pi: roozbeh jafari biomedical engineering $123 million grant from the department of defense-defense threat reduction agency for covid-19: rate-covid: rapid analysis of threat exposure operationalization pi: ranjana mehta industrial and systems engineering co-pi: saurabh biswas biomedical engineering $5 million grant from the national science foundation for b2: learning environments with augmentation and robotics for next-gen emergency responders pi: ankit srivastava materials science and engineering co-pis: patrick shamberger ibrahim karaman svetlana sukhishvili raymundo arroyave and yu xie materials science and engineering; alaa mohamed elwany industrial and systems engineering; mohammad naraghi aerospace engineering $47 million grant from the department of defense-army research laboratory for materials and manufacturing processes for the army of the future pi: le xie electrical and computer engineering co-pis: prasad enjeti and pr kumar electrical and computer engineering $4 million grant from the department of energy for secure monitoring and control of solar power distribution system through dynamic watermarking pi: pavel tsvetkov nuclear engineering co-pis: sean mcdeavitt and mark kimber nuclear engineering $36 million grant from the natura resources llc for research and development support for molten salt research reactor licensure pi: roozbeh jafari biomedical engineering co-pis: jack mortazavi computer science and engineering; melissa grunlan biomedical engineering; thomas ferris industrial and systems engineering $35 million grant from the national institutes of health for an unobtrusive continuous cuff-less blood pressure monitor for nocturnal hypertension pi: zachary grasley civil and environmental engineering co-pi: jeffrey bullard dallas little junuthula reddy thomas lacy civil and environmental engineering; arthur schwab soil and crop sciences $28 million grant from the department of defense for concrete and composites experiments and modeling for army applications pi: zheng oneill mechanical engineering $27 million grant from the department of defense-washington for securing grid-interactive efficient buildings through cyber defense and resilient system pi: swaminathan gopalswamy mechanical engineering co-pis: swaroop darbha and sivakumar rathinam mechanical engineering; dylan shell and zhangyang wang computer science and engineering; john valasek aerospace engineering; gholamreza langari george hw bush combat development complex $25 million grant from the department of defense-research laboratory for arl: air ground coordination pi: james wall texas a&m center for applied technology (tcat) co-pis: keith biggers tcat; john walewski civil and environmental engineering $17 million grant from the department of energy for facility data and technology integration pi: patrick shamberger materials science and engineering co-pi: emily pentzer and svetlana sukhishvili materials science and engineering; choongho yu and jonathan felts mechanical engineering; charles culp college of architecture $15 million grant from the department of energy-washington for salt hydrate eutectic thermal energy pi: mustafa akbulut chemical engineering co-pi: joseph kwon chemical engineering $15 million grant from the department of energy-office of fossil energy for dynamic binary complexes as super-adjustable viscosity modifiers for hydraulic fracturing fluids pi: samuel noynaert petroleum engineering co-pi: fred dupriest petroleum engineering $15 million grant from the department of energy for changing the way geothermal wells are drilled: physics-based drilling parameter selection workflow implementation and training in order to reduce non-productive time and increase rop pi: stephen cambone cro co-pis: jeyavijayan rajendran electrical and computer engineering; rainer fink ana goulart byul hur and wei zhan engineering technology and industrial distribution; gholamreza langari cybr $15 million grant from the department of defense-air force-research laboratory for hardware integrity verification utilizing scanning electron microscopy pi: arum han electrical and computer engineering $14 million grant from the national institutes of health for developing extracellular vesicle-based therapeutics against pre-term birth through the use of maternal-fetal interface on a chip pi: jim morel nuclear engineering co-pi: raymundo arroyave materials science and engineering; amine benzerga aerospace engineering; jean-luc guermond and bojan popov mathematics $14 million grant from department of energy-national nuclear security administration for collaborative research and development supporting llnl missions pi: jim morel nuclear engineering co-pis: marvin adams jean ragusa and mauricio tano retamales nuclear engineering; jean-luc guermond mathematics $14 million grant from the department of energy-national nuclear security administration for collaborative research and development supporting stockpile stewardship pi: mary mcdougall biomedical engineering co-pis: jim ji qemg; steven wright electrical and computer engineering; peter nghiem veterinary integrative biosciences $13 million grant from the national institutes of health for multi-coil multi-nuclear add-on system for clinical field strength nmr-based biomarker detection for duchenne muscular dystrophy pi: christopher limbach aerospace engineering co-pis: rodney bowersox and richard miles aerospace engineering $12 million grant from the department of defense-air force-office of scientific research for canonical validation experiments for hypersonic aerodynamics pi: yu ding industrial and systems engineering co-pis: jiang hu and pr kumar electrical and computer engineering; sarbajit banerjee chemical engineering $12 million grant from the national science foundation for cps: medium: real-time learning and control of stochastic nanostructure growth process through in situ dynamic imaging pi: mahmoud el-halwagi chemical engineering co-pis: joseph kwon chemical engineering; lucy mar camacho chico environmental engineering $12 million grant from the department of energy for deploying intensified automated mobile operable and novel designs diamond for treating shale gas wastewater (108) pi: amy martin civil and environmental engineering $11 million grant from the texas department of transportation for balanced mix design system for superpave hot-mix asphalt mixtures with rap pi: jack mortazavi computer science and engineering; co-pi: ricardo gutierrez-osuna computer science and engineering $11 million grant from the national science foundation for sch: int: personalized models of nutrition intake from continuous glucose monitors pi: danny davis public service and administration; co-pis: stephen cambone cro; william norris international affairs $11 million grant from the department of defense-office of net assessment for assessing warfare in the digital age pi: mladen kezunovic electrical and computer engineering $1 million grant from the department of energy-washington for big data synchrophasor monitoring and analytics for resiliency tracking
1725,though sophomore chemical engineering student ally moore had a start at texas a&m university that was unlike some peers her experience has emboldened her perspective as an aggie engineer and allowed her to embrace her diversity moore began her academic career in the chevron engineering academy at austin community college a co-enrollment program that gives students an option to enroll in mathematics science and core curriculum classes at a community college for up to two years providing them a cheaper alternative to immediately enrolling at texas a&m since then moore has been able to further expand her opportunities even earning a spot in the zachry leadership program (zlp) that grants scholarship money and focuses on enriching students leadership abilities like many i fell in love with the traditions comradery and welcoming atmosphere of texas a&m and knew this was the place for me moore said as the time grew near for me to make a decision the price of tuition seemed quite daunting and i decided to apply for the chevron engineering academy unfortunately moore felt a little embarrassed for initially choosing to go to the chevron engineering academy in lieu of attending texas a&m as a full-time student she said that explaining that she was attending community college to her friends that were going to ivy league schools after graduation and had similar gpas was the last thing she wanted after getting into the engineering academy though i realized i was looking at it all wrong moore said the engineering academy gave me this unique opportunity to stay close to home for an extra year save myself from a lot of student debt and get the same classes i would right here in college station during the program moore was able to meet people from various cultural backgrounds and different life experiences she found that it was a program for everyone as those from her cohort either served the country worked full-time to make ends meet were parents or faced great adversity to get where they are today
1726,after transitioning full-time to texas a&m moore was accepted into the zlp program along with 31 others from her cohort it is refreshing to have an atmosphere where i can be vigorously honest and open about my life experiences values and passions while getting to know each individual on a deeper level as they express their authentic self to me moore said within these experiences and her own role as a female engineer she realizes the importance of what she is doing in breaking down the stigmas attached to women in the engineering field it is so empowering to see other women pursuing their dream in engineering as our generation tears down these preconceived notions about the ideal image of who an engineer should be or look like moore said diversity opens up new doors for growth and innovation that couldnt be brought to the table before when we allow diversity to spread its roots new authentic leaders can be formed throughout all engineering industries through the bonds she is able to make in zlp and her classes at texas a&m moore continues growing and excelling beyond the expectations required of her
1727,jeanette and bill robbins have established the jeanette and bill robbins '70 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in industrial and systems engineering in the college of engineering at texas a&m university bill chose to attend texas a&m for its esteemed engineering school and to become a commissioned officer through the corps of cadets when i first visited a&m it was impressive especially after seeing my brother in uniform in the corps he said my memories at a&m are filled with many great times in the corps student activities academic challenges inspiration lasting friendships and many more life-changing experiences bill said that after everything he learned at texas a&m he was more than prepared to begin his career texas a&m prepared me for leadership and service the ability to use my skills in industrial engineering and to understand and apply the values that aggieland gave me he said those traits and skills prepared me for a career in health care systems that allowed me to work in occupations from engineering systems to management and consulting the value of a degree from texas a&m is immeasurable after all that he had gained throughout his time at texas a&m and in the industrial and systems engineering program bill felt that it was time to give back some of what he had received i realized that the knowledge and diversity of skills gained from this degree allowed me to move in many directions in my career which was both successful and rewarding he said jeanette and i wanted to honor all that i had received from a&m and this department by establishing this gift ultimately bill and jeanette hope their scholarship will provide assistance for a student to continue his or her degree in industrial and systems engineering by lightening the financial burden bill received his bachelors degree in 1970 and his masters degree in 1975 in industrial engineering from texas a&m he and jeanette have four children two of whom also graduated from texas a&m carrie '97 and bill jr '04
1728,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact john bernheim senior director of development
1729,in 2020 the world watched as spacex launched a two-man crew in a commercially built and operated spacecraft to the international space station they then watched as they safely splashed down two months later long before the actual liftoff however researchers with nasa worked with staff from texas a&m university to ensure the crew would land safely under emergency conditionsthree years ago a team from nasa worked out the design of the life raft that would have protected the crew in the event of an emergency in the gulf of mexico the first water landing of nasa astronauts in 45 years at a texas a&m facility in college stationcody kelly 10 an aerospace engineering graduate who currently serves as deputy for national affairs with the nasa search and rescue mission office worked closely with the offshore technology research center (otrc) staff to perform extensive and detailed testingnasa used this testing to make an initial down-selection for the life raft design that became the nasa baseline for all human-rated spacecraft across all existing human spaceflight programs kelly said the raft ops were the first look at rescue beacon integration into our spacesuits early in the design cyclelocated in texas a&ms research park the otrc is a graduated national science foundation (nsf) engineering research center supporting the offshore oil and gas industry that conducts basic engineering research and develops systems for the economic and reliable recovery of hydrocarbons at ocean depths of 3 000 feet or more it is jointly operated by texas a&m the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the university of texas at austins cockrell school of engineeringadditionally we were able to test rescue beacon designs prior to manufacturing kelly said early testing provided the opportunity for efficient data sharing between the orion program and our commercial crew counterpartsdr richard mercier professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m has been director of the otrc since 2001 and manages all wave basin projects and the research program
1730,otrc has conducted numerous projects for nasa and associated contractors (boeing united space alliance jacobs engineering) since the facility opened in 1991 he said codys project was the fourth in a series that was executed between 2004 and 2017 having to do with testing of life preserver units life rafts and miscellaneous vehicle egress equipmentthe otrc wave basin is capable of large-scale simulations of the effects of wind waves and currents on fixed floating and moored floating structures the wave basin is 150 feet long and 100 feet wide with a depth of 19 feet the pit located in the center of the basin has a depth of 55 feet with 48 individually controlled paddles the wavemaker can generate various wave conditions including unidirectional and multidirectional regular and irregular (random) waves sixteen dynamically controlled fans can generate prescribed gusty wind conditions from any direction a modular current generation system consisting of banks of submerged jets can generate sheared current profilesnasa provided all equipment and test protocols for these projects but the facility offered capabilities of producing wind and waves for prescribed sea states and also safety divers to assist nasa personnel in the waterour staff and student workers are always eager to support and participate in these projects mercier saidnasa shared videos photos and facility test data with their partners at spacex and boeing to help engineers certify and fly the design following testing at otrcastronauts robert behnken and douglas hurley were on the spacex crew dragon spacecraft that took off into orbit from the kennedy space center in florida with their landing fully protected by the life raft design that was decided upon in 2017 at the otrc
1731,al leo 83 has established the al leo '83 eset endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in electronic systems engineering technology in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university leo said he recently came across memorabilia from his time at texas a&m and various accomplishments of his career it brought back great memories of a&m and how it prepared me for life and my career he said as i thought back over the years i was inspired to establish this gift by all the good things that came from my time at texas a&m hopefully this endowment enables the same for more young aggies leo is thankful he was able to attend texas a&m and he credits his success to what he was able to learn and experience while there not only did i get a quality education i learned a lot about life and made life-long friends he said all of these things laid the foundation for success in my life and my career when he graduated leo said texas a&m had given him the baseline knowledge required to participate in the tremendous change going on in digital and wireless telecommunications at the time this enabled me to hold various engineering strategic sales and business development roles during the transition from analog cellular all the way through early 5g deployments he said leos endowment is targeted towards junior electronic systems engineering technology students with a grade point average between 225 and 275 the electronic systems engineering technology curriculum prepares students for great jobs across a number of exciting industries and hopefully this small gift will help students achieve their goals he said ultimately leo hopes this scholarship will help its recipients finish out their education at texas a&m earn their degree and pursue the future career of their choice
1732,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah simonds assistant director of development
1733,in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic kaya mariello a senior in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university found herself balanced on the precipice between academia and medicine during her internship at the university of texas health science center at san antonio thank you to jennifer cerecero dr kenneth peddicord dr holly paschall dr mike charlton and everyone over at the university of texas health science center at san antonio for making my unique summer so amazing mariello said working in the radiation safety department her internship was broken into three main aspects first she had engineering-based responsibilities such as geiger counter calibration radiation lab inspections and area surveys which were conducted in the health science center second she conducted an independent research project when she measured and confirmed the decay activity of fluorine-18 using a liquid scintillation counter third she took part in medicinal-oriented tasks that brought her into the hospital to interact with patients it was the latter that left a lasting impression on mariello i never thought i was going to like patient interaction she said but then the first patient i interacted with i remember calling my mom after because she's a nurse and being like ‘i can't believe people do this on a daily basis because it's difficult to watch people go through some of the hardest times in their life but it was amazing to be there and it was an honor to be part of the team that was helping and supporting them while in the nuclear medicine department of the hospital mariello not only worked with patients during their radiation and other nuclear treatments but also gained first-hand experience and knowledge about various machines imaging technologies injections proper handling of nuclear materials and basic treatment methods as she explained examples of this included learning how to match up ct and mri scans how much treatment a cancer patient will need and determining the dose amount for an iodine treatment for outpatient surgeries her experience was so impactful that it eventually led mariello to changing her career path entirely shifting away from a lab scene and into a scenario where she would be more involved with patients i initially thought i was going to go into med school for something like genetic research mariello said i always thought id just do something in a lab with a close-knit team but then there's whats called medical physics dosimetry where you work on treatment plans and now i want to help patients and i want to be part of the treatment process i want to be that support system i want to be able to interact with people and actually see a change
1734,twenty-seven students from texas a&m university participated in the international collegiate programming contest (icpc) south central usa regional competition that was held march 6 the south central usa region consists of texas oklahoma and louisiana typically held in the fall the regional competition was delayed due to the global pandemic and held virtually this year 55 teams participated in the event texas a&m was represented by nine teams three of which finished second fourth and seventh with the others placing in the top half of the region overall dr john keyser professor in the department of computer science and engineering serves as a coach for the students a team from the university of texas at dallas placed first overall the texas a&m teams that placed second and fourth qualified to advance to the divisional championship which takes place on april 22 with the hopes of earning a spot in the north america championship from there if they qualify they will go on to compete in the world finals the origins of the icpc can be traced back to a small competition that was held at texas a&m in 1970 by members of the upsilon phi epsilon computer science honor society now spanning more than 100 countries it is the largest and most prestigious international college-level programming competition in the world during the competition the students are given real-world problem statements and have to figure out what algorithms are needed to solve them and implement a program to do so the teams are then ranked based on the number of problems they solve within a five-hour period and then how long it takes them to solve each problem despite how challenging these competitions are they are extremely beneficial to the students that participate i think competitions like icpc are a great opportunity to be able to test and improve one's problem-solving abilities in both a team setting and a time-constrained environment said sophomore computer science student dhruv patel additionally participating in the competition offers a way for contestants to learn new algorithms and problem-solving techniques that they may not otherwise have encountered and can use these skills outside of competitions as well to prepare for the competition the students held practice sessions every week where they held their own contests and attempted to solve new problems in an environment similar to the actual competition they also dedicated several hours of their time outside of these practices to keeping their algorithmic abilities sharp and learning about new techniques that could be used my team is really excited and honored to be one of the two teams that will represent texas a&m at the divisional round said patel we know that we have a lot that we can improve and can only strive to get better with more time having been my first time competing in icpc my experience has been great thus far and i want to continue to do well! to the view the final scoreboard visit the south central regional contest's website
1735,dr vladislav yakovlev professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is part of a multiuniversity team researching how electrical and optical pulses can benefit cell absorption of materials including vaccines the team investigated the optical and electrical breakdown of materials those effects which describe material modification in the presence of extreme optical or electrical fields have been studied since the 1950s however the simultaneous application of optical and electrical fields especially to biologically relevant systems hasnt been explored before yakovlev said by investigating the synergistic action of electrical and optical pulses they were able to promote highly localized breakdown while reducing the threshold for such breakdown the newly discovered synergistic effect is particularly important if there is a need to selectively disrupt cellular membrane in a highly localized manner typically electroporation a technique that applies an electrical field to cells to increase the permeability of the cell membrane is used alternatively an optoporation which uses ultrashort laser pulses to form a small hole in the cell membrane can be employed a powerful combination of electroporation and optoporation can provide the benefits of both approaches leading to new ways drugs and vaccines can be delivered to cells and tissues one of the impacts of paramount significance of this effect which can be of great interest to a general audience is improved accuracy of vaccine delivery for covid-19 the team said in an impact statement the team recently published a paper in the journal photonics research where it was selected as editors' pick the research is funded by the air force office of scientific research with dr sofi bin-salamon serving as project manager salamon facilitated the collaboration between the three different research teams involved in this project while this technology would be a new addition to a laboratory the research team noted that creating the effect doesnt require sophisticated equipment allowing it to be used in a broad range of facilities we believe that a unique combination of a new fundamental science and a broad range of high-impact applications ranging from extreme light-matter interactions to nano- and biotechnology would be of great interest for a broad audience yakovlev said
1736,andrew bainbridge a junior in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was recently named the 2021-22 deputy corps commander for the texas a&m corps of cadets the corps is the largest oldest and most-visible student organization and leadership-training program at texas a&m as deputy corps commander bainbridge will be serving in one of three top senior leadership positions a third-generation aggie with a family history of corps involvement and military service bainbridge is excited to continue a legacy of service and leadership getting this position is really exciting because i can make a larger impact on many people bainbridge said the current deputy corps commander passed on his rank to me and it said ‘be the light that meant a lot to me because ill be able to serve and be a resource for people throughout the corps i am in more of a support role which i actually enjoy because i help other people find where they want to go i am super excited and honored to be in this position as deputy corps commander bainbridge will assist and work closely with the corps commander to establish policies and vision for the corps and its cadets he will also serve as a resource for numerous special units to help them accomplish their specific goals
1737,to earn this role cadets must complete a thorough selection process that consists of an application and an interview with a panel of peers and staff all applicants are then evaluated on academic performance performance in the corps success in previous leadership positions peer and staff evaluations and their leadership vision for the future the corps does a good job of teaching life skills time management discipline being able to work with other people he said there are several benefits you can get from the corps whether you want to go into the military or not throughout his time at texas a&m bainbridge has learned that not everyones academic and professional journeys will be the same he has embraced the value of challenges in life and the opportunities they bring to discover more about himself and moving forward i think what is wonderful about the corps is that it pushes you to challenge yourself and get out of your comfort zones bainbridge said my biggest piece of advice is just being willing to view those difficult times as opportunities and know that its going to build you as a person in terms of engineering its going to be tough if you enjoy it at the end of the day i think its totally worth it upon graduation bainbridge plans to follow his grandfathers footsteps and commission into the united states air force
1738,"dr iman borazjani has been named a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) borazjani is an associate professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he earned his doctoral degree from the university of minnesota in 2008 and received a 2015 national science foundation career award his research interests include fluid-structure interaction computational fluid dynamics high-performance computing biofluids cardiovascular flows bioinspired propulsion and suspensions ""it is a great honor to become a fellow of asme "" borazjani said ""it is humbling to be recognized as a fellow by my peers"" an asme fellow grade is conferred upon worthy candidates to recognize their outstanding engineering achievements fewer than 3% of all asme members are fellows"
1739,betsy and mike carrell have established the betsy '77 and mike carrell '75 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university after winning a high school contest designed to explore his career interests mike discovered he wanted to pursue a degree in civil engineering after searching i found the best engineering school to be at texas a&m he said i got accepted but did not have the financial resources until at the last moment i received a scholarship mike arrived on campus a week early and during that time he was able to learn more about the corps of cadets i ended up deciding to join and that decision along with majoring in civil engineering changed my life forever he said betsy always knew she wanted to attend texas a&m because of her dad and other relatives who had graduated from the university besides a degree in education i've received so much from my connection to a&m she said that's where i met my husband established relationships with those that are still best friends and proudly sent our two children who are now graduates betsy said that one of her proudest moments as an aggie was when her father dr sam a nixon jr '46 was given the distinguished alumnus award in 1990 mike and betsy were inspired to establish this endowment by mikes own experiences with financial need i lived through the structure and limitations of continuing to work and need financial aid throughout college and it changed my life mike said if i hadnt received a scholarship i wouldnt have been able to attend texas a&m and join the corps of cadets and my life today would be very different because of texas a&m i met my wife gained lifelong friends received military training and discipline and became a registered professional engineer both mike and betsy intend for this scholarship to help high school graduates that want to attend texas a&m but need financial aid they have stated additional preferences that the scholarship be awarded to freshman students and those who are members of the corps of cadets we hope this scholarship will encourage students who believe in the importance of military training and the value it can add to the college experience and want to be a member of the corps of cadets mike said hopefully upon graduation the recipients will be very proud of all that they've accomplished both academically and personally and in how much they've grown ultimately mike and betsy feel they owe a lot to texas a&m in both their professional and personal lives and want to pass that on betsy and i are very blessed to have been exposed to all that a&m has to offer and we want to help the next generation seek access to what can be gained through the texas a&m experience mike said mike graduated from texas a&m with both his bachelors and masters degree in civil engineering and betsy graduated from texas a&m with her degree in educational curriculum and instruction both of their children mark '06 and mason '18 also graduated from texas a&m along with numerous other family members
1740,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
1741,since the early industrial revolution in the mid-1700s fossil fuels have acquired an ever-growing footprint in energy production however the environmental concerns of fossil fuels use and their inevitable depletion have led to a global shift toward renewable energy sources these transitions however raise questions about the best choice of renewables and the impact of investing in these resources on consumer cost in a recent study published in the journal nature communications researchers at texas a&m university have devised a metric that reflects the average price of energy in the united states much like how the dow index indicates trends in stock market prices the researchers metric reflects the changes in energy prices resulting from the type of energy sources available and their supply chains energy is affected by all kinds of events including political developments technological breakthroughs and other happenings going on at a global scale said stefanos baratsas a graduate student in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m and the lead author on the study it's crucial to understand the price of energy across the energy landscape along with its supply and demand we came up with one number that reflects exactly that in other words our metric monitors the price of energy as a whole on a monthly basis today the energy industry is largely dominated by fossil fuels like coal natural gas and petroleum an increase in fossil fuel consumption particularly in the last few decades has raised increasing concerns about their environmental impact most notably the intergovernmental panel on climate change has reported an estimated increase at 02 degrees celsius per decade in global temperature which is directly linked to burning fossil fuels but only around an 11% share of the total energy landscape comes from renewable sources although many countries including the united states have committed to using more renewable energy sources there isnt a way to quantitatively and accurately measure the price of energy as a whole for example an establishment might use a combination of solar and fossil fuels for various purposes including heating power and transportation in this case it is unclear how the price would change if there is an increased tax on fossil fuels or subsidies in favor of renewables are introduced energy transition is a complex process and there is no magic button that one can press and suddenly transition from almost 80% carbon-based energy to 0% said dr stratos pistikopoulos director of the texas a&m energy institute and senior author on the study we need to navigate this energy landscape from where we are now toward the future in steps for that we need to know the consolidated price of energy of end users but we don't have an answer to this fundamental question to address this research gap the researchers first identified different energy feedstocks such as crude oil wind solar and biomass and their energy products so for example crude oils energy products are petrol gasoline and diesel next they categorized the energy end users as either residential commercial industrial or transportation further they obtained information on which energy product and how much of it is consumed by each user from the united states energy information administration last they identified the supply chains that connected the energy products to consumers all this information was used to calculate the average price of energy called the energy price index for a given month and forecast energy prices and demands for future months
1742,as a potential real-world use of this metric the researchers explored two policy case studies in the first scenario they studied how the energy price index would change if a tax on crude oil was imposed one of their main findings upon tracking the energy price index was that around $148 billion could be generated in four years for every $5-per-barrel increase in crude oil tax also this tax would not significantly increase the monthly cost of energy for us households in the second case study that explored the effect of subsidies in the production of electricity from renewable energy sources they found that these policies can cause a dip in energy prices even with no tax credit baratsas said their approach offers a way to optimize policies at the state regional and national level for a smooth and efficient transition to clean energy further he noted that their metric could adapt or self-correct its forecasting of energy demands and prices in the event of sudden unforeseen situations like the covid-19 pandemic that may trigger a drastic decrease in the demand for energy products this metric can help guide lawmakers government or non-government organizations and policymakers on whether say a particular tax policy or the impact of a technological advance is good or bad and by how much said pistikopoulos we now have a quantitative and accurate predictive metric to navigate the evolving energy landscape and thats the real value of the index other contributors to this research include dr alexander niziolek dr onur onel dr logan matthews and the late dr christodoulos floudas from the texas a&m energy institute; and dr detlef hallermann and dr sorin sorescu from mays business school at texas a&m this research is funded by the texas a&m energy institute and mays business school
1743,alex rubin ‘17 former student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university joined the united states navy after graduation as a division officer and nuclear engineer he describes what hes learned as a sailor and where his journey will take him next q: what made you want to study nuclear engineering a: i was always interested in science and engineering even in high school my grandfather and his two brothers attended a&m so i had some strong family ties already i knew that i wanted to study engineering but in the end it came down to nuclear and aerospace nuclear was considered a potential source of energy for the world and i was really excited about it i wanted to be part of that q: youre currently employed with the united states navy a promising option for many nuclear engineering students due to the nuclear-powered submarines what has the job-hunting industry been like a: i became interested in the navy when i was a sophomore and met with a recruiter i learned about the nuclear power prototype schools they offered and the opportunities i would have to operate a reactor or go work on either a submarine or aircraft carrier they had a lot of incentives and benefits and around nine months later after six rounds of technical interviews it was a no-brainer for me q: you chose to work on surface ships correct whats that experience like a: surface naval officers oscillate between nuclear work and navy work for instance my first tour was a two-year tour with a seven-month long around-the-world deployment where i learned all about ship driving and combat control we also learned about the refueling and maintenance process we stopped in san diego singapore thailand; dubai bahrain marseille france and cartagena colombia now im stationed in charleston attending the navys nuclear power school q: thats a lot of traveling where do you think youll go next a: there are only four places where aircraft carriers are stationed so my options are either japan san diego washington state or virginia and im hoping for japan
1744,q: what else are you learning right now a: right now im at prototype which means we visit a training submarine to learn the ins and outs of everybodys job on the ship we also learn about basic plant operations and accident scenarios submarines are very different than a commercial power plant for example the ship takes in water from the ocean so making sure that our water is pure and clean is a really big deal theres a lot more educated piping too what happens when potentially different grades of water are exposed to each other thats a bad day on the submarine q: whats your favorite part about your job a: my favorite part is truly the dynamic lifestyle youre never doing one thing for too long as soon as you learn one skill and get comfortable doing that youre moving on to the next thing ive learned a lot of life lessons in a very short amount of time everything from the intricacies of engineering submarines to how to adjust my sleep schedule and adapt to being away from family and friends from extended period of times q: how long would a sailor normally be at sea for a: it depends on the situation but most ships follow a three-year cycle that includes several training exercises a six- to eight-month deployment period and then a long maintenance period q: what advice would you give to a nuclear engineering student considering pursuing a career in the navy a: i would advise them to do as much as possible to learn about things you want to do as an undergraduate maybe youll hear someone mentioning working in the navy or perhaps operating a nuclear power plant its easy to pinpoint on one thing and say oh this is the career im going to pursue and thats it but theres a lot of things to consider that they dont always tell you about: what sort of lifestyle do you want to live do you want to travel do you want to make a name for yourself what sort of hours are you looking to invest are you interested in starting a family soon id also remind students that jobs arent forever you can always change your mind and figure it out as you go of course joining the navy is a very big commitment its not easy to quit but you certainly can so be aware of the decisions youre making and the type of commitments they may carry too
1745,researchers from the texas a&m university department of materials science and engineering and los alamos national laboratory (lanl) materials science at radiation and dynamics group are improving the metals used to construct nuclear technology this collaboration is made possible by the texas a&m university system national laboratories office and lanl dr michael demkowicz and dr kelvin xie from texas a&m and dr yongqiang wang from lanl are investigating hydrogen retention in metals that are exposed to nuclear processes with the intent of improving how these materials perform over time hydrogen retention in metals is a serious concern in nuclear technology nuclear reactions and transmutations by reactor neutrons cause changes to chemical elements and isotopes thus introducing additional hydrogen into materials often hydrogen accumulates to levels that exceed the solubility limit a material can absorb the excess of hydrogen in the material causes brittleness and weakness limiting its functionality over time another issue with excess hydrogen is that it accumulates at trapping sites such as in spaces in the material and at grain boundaries most metal alloys are actually made up of lots of microscopic crystals packed closely together these little crystals are called grains and the planes where adjacent grains are fused together are called grain boundaries in the reactor environment the defects created by the irradiation process such as vacancies and dislocations also become new traps for hydrogen when many hydrogen atoms are trapped together they form gas bubbles in the metal similar to carbon dioxide bubbles in soda these bubbles can facilitate the formation of large voids that can cause severe damage to the material one way to manage the hydrogen accumulation and subsequent damage is to remove as much of it as possible from the material unfortunately most materials do not contain a good pathway for hydrogen to travel through in this project the researchers will create composites where pathways for hydrogen motion are built into the structure of the material the novel materials to be developed and tested as part of this project are expected to exhibit ‘self-healing behavior whereby damage would be removed from the material even as it is created demkowicz said this would be an outcome of their unique internal microstructures in order to test the materials for hydrogen retention diffusion and outgassing the researchers will use the unique collection of ion implantation and ion beam analysis tools available at lanls ion beam materials laboratory these tools will allow the researchers to introduce and track the amount of hydrogen in the material with designer microstructures thus providing data for the amount of hydrogen that is outgassed the ideal outcome for this project would be to identify composite materials that allow enough hydrogen outgassing to keep the retained hydrogen levels at or below their threshold such materials would be able to withstand nuclear reactions better than materials currently in use in addition to advancing basic science this project will explore technical issues that are crucial to the development of future fusion reactors demkowicz said this article originally appeared on the texas a&m university system national laboratories office website
1746,erica schabert a private school teacher is committed to helping her middle school students gain a deeper understanding of math and science however like many educators and campuses around the country the pennsylvania teacher has limited financial resources to spend on professional development due to the economic downturn caused by the covid-19 pandemic fortunately the hope lutheran christian school teacher learned about the stem 4 innovation conference hosted by texas a&m universitys college of engineering thanks to a generous contribution from chevron this event which was held virtually jan 11-12 was free for all participants and will continue to be available through july 13 to any pk-12 teacher on-demand a total of 576 teachers registered for the conference which is a 218% increase from the 2020 face-to-face event held in college station by offering this conference virtually the college of engineering was able to reach 416 first-time attendees including educators from 44 us states and 13 countries schabert who was one of those first-time attendees came away impressed it was the best professional development ive seen in a long time she said everybody was willing to share and the conference had such an open and warm environment deep roots in stem the stem 4 innovation conference has a long and rich history that goes back to 2008 previously offered as a face-to-face conference in college station the event brings teachers together to learn about innovative stem (science technology engineering and math) strategies and tools that they can immediately utilize in the classroom in addition conference coordinators take advantage of texas a&ms designation as a tier-one research institution to create a unique attendee experience that includes interactions with world-class researchers the emergence of covid-19 forced conference coordinators to rethink the event leading to the decision to go virtual still the interactive conference continued to offer expert presentations resources chat rooms and exhibits the virtual experience was great said christina campos a first-time attendee who teaches at west oso junior high in corpus christi it felt like we were in person except without any walking the 2021 conference continued to tap expertise from across texas a&ms campus workshops presentations and exhibits were offered by faculty from the college of engineering the college of science college of education and human development college of geosciences college of agriculture and life sciences college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences texas a&m forest services and texas a&m university at galveston four interactive workshops were designed to give teachers a better understanding of the engineering process for example one session taught by experts from the college of agriculture and life sciences asked participants to brainstorm a new food product pitch it to consumers and investigate bringing the product to market another session organized by the college of education and human development encouraged teams of teachers to design a functional and aesthetically pleasing office that was economical while also meeting social distancing requirements breakout sessions also were offered these sessions which addressed a variety of topics that focused on either elementary or middle/high school level needs included jobs of the future: exploring stem careers in natural resources with project learning trees green jobs guide bringing the great outdoors indoors through virtual field trips stem challenges using sphero robotics and critical precollege stem knowledge the virtual conference created an environment where teachers who feel especially isolated and stressed during the pandemic could connect to each other and find help this conference has opened my eyes beyond anything i can even imagine said campos i am the stem coordinator and i was struggling to get resources but this conference enabled me to sit in the comfort of my home and meet some amazing people conference coordinators believe that 2021s virtual experience offers lessons that will be incorporated into future stem 4 innovation conferences this has helped people realize that you can have some authentic learning experiences virtually said john peterson conference coordinator and associate director of the college of engineerings spark! pk-12 engineering education outreach many people still prefer face-to-face but maybe we can plan some hybrid version of the conference for the people from california pennsylvania or australia who cant travel to texas a&m for two days participants left the conference feeling very motivated to bring what they learned into the classroom and to continue their relationship with texas a&m i fell in love with everything i saw: wonderful research possibilities great projects equipment friendly staff and outreach programs said georgina grillo a secondary teacher at golden valley school in heredia costa rica who already plans to attend the 2022 conference the conference made me wish that i could go back to college at texas a&m's college of engineering
1747,sickle cell disease (scd) is the most prevalent inherited blood disorder in the world that affects between 70 000 to 100 000 americans however it is considered an orphan disease meaning it impacts less than 200 000 people nationally and is therefore underrepresented in therapeutic research a team led by dr abhishek jain from the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is working to address this disease im trying to create these new types of disease models that can impact health care with the long-term goal of emphasizing on applying these tools and technologies to lower health care costs said jain assistant professor in the department we strategically wanted to pick up those disease systems which fall under the radar in orphan disease category jains research is in organ-on-a-chip where cells from humans can be grown on usb-sized devices to mimic the way the organ would work inside the body this sort of system is ideal for testing new drug treatments as drugs cannot be tested on humans and animal models have not shown to be a good representation of how a patient and disease would interact with a treatment for scd patients the organ-on-a-chip would also be beneficial because patients can present with mild to severe cases jain works with tanmay mathur a fourth-year doctoral student who trained as a chemical engineer in his undergraduate years his research focused on microfabrication techniques and simulations skills he said merged well into the organ-on-a-chip research he now performs in jains lab the team collaborates closely with the texas medical center in houston
1748,building blocks the work was recently published in the journal bioengineering & translational medicine their paper builds off a 2019 publication in the journal lab on chip where the team demonstrated that endothelial cells (cells that line the blood vessels) could be used to model the disease physiology of a patient without having to stimulate the model to perform differently than a healthy vessel traditionally these cells were not used for disease modeling so in that way our approach is very novel mathur said we are one of first to harness these cells and employed them in disease modeling research current research mathur and jain demonstrate that these models can be used to differentiate between patients the first step: build a blood vessel that mimics a patients vessel for that the team would need two components patient blood and endothelial cells collecting the blood involved a simple blood draw they faced a challenge with the endothelial cells however they would need to take a biopsy of the cells or use stem cells to grow their own neither of which was ideal then they found the answer was in the blood what we learned is within blood samples are some endothelial cells also circulating jain said we call them blood outgrowth endothelial cells that we can harness very easily thats what is new about this work you can get those cells grow them so thats theres enough in number and then you can make blood vessels impact now that they could build the vessels the next step was to see if these models would show how the disease has various biological impacts in different patients again the goal was to be able to test treatments on these models so the closer they mimicked their human patient the better
1749,were able to differentiate a very severe sickle cell patient in terms of their phenotype from very mild patients mathur said moving forward we can take a larger population of any sickle cell disease patients and assess them using our organ-chip technology and then categorize them into different groups based on symptoms their findings indicate that these organs-on-a-chip could lead to patient-centric personalized treatment improving how clinicians approach this and other cardiovascular diseases when you take it to the field now it can become a predictive device jain said now you do not have to know whether the patient is mild or severe you can test for that you can predict if patient is serious and can dictate their therapeutic needs the next step is to continue to expand the patient cohort to collect more results a long-term goal would be to use the patient information collected to develop a database to better predict disease progression you take a history of a lot of these patients and their cardiovascular health with this device and you can predict which patient might have better chance of having a stroke and you start treating them early on jain said mathur said even with future challenges he looks forward to continuing their research i think even though it may take 10 15 years we will at least push forward some of the research that were doing and get it out in the clinical field he said we are one of the only groups in the world that have started this field of personalized treatment i feel that our impact is pretty high and im sure we will be able to expand the same treatment to other cardiovascular diseases and attract more attention and deeper insights into the biology that we are looking at this work is funded by a trailblazer award jain received from the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering
1750,the process of fabricating materials is complicated time-consuming and costly too much of one material or too little can create problems with the product forcing the design process to begin again advancements in the design process are needed to reduce the cost and time it takes to produce materials with targeted properties funded by the national science foundation researchers at texas a&m university are using advanced computational and machine-learning techniques to create a framework capable of optimizing the process of developing materials cutting time and costs our general focus is working on materials design by considering process-structure-property relationships to produce materials with targeted properties said dr douglas allaire associate professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering in our work we demonstrate a microstructure sensitive design of alloys with a bayesian optimization framework capable of exploiting multiple information sources bayesian optimization-based frameworks use prior knowledge as models to predict outcomes in the past researchers have used this framework in correlation with a single information source (simulation or experiment) if that method failed the process starts again with the hopes of making the right adjustments based on this model the researchers have rejected this notion and instead believe that many information sources can be pulled using a bayesian framework to develop a more complete picture of underlying processes they have combined multiple information sources to create materials with targeted properties more efficiently by looking at data in its entirety rather than its parts what we think that is very different is that you can have many different potential models or information sources said dr raymundo arróyave professor in the department of materials science and engineering there are many ways to understand/model the behavior of materials either through experiments or simulations our idea is to combine all of these different models into a single ‘fused model that combines the strengths of all the other models while reducing their individual weaknesses their research titled efficiently exploiting process-structure-property relationships in material design by multi-information source fusion was recently published in vol 26 of the acta materialia journal these model chains have historically not considered the breadth of available information sources said allaire they consider single models along the chain from process through structure to property as a result they are not as efficient or accurate as they could be the researchers are currently testing this framework by developing dual-phase steels typically used on automobile frames dual-phase steels are made out of two phases with very different and complementary properties there are two phases; the martensite phase makes this particular steel very strong said arróyave the ferritic phase is softer and makes the steel more compliant and amenable to deformation with only martensitic microstructures these materials are strong but they break easily however if you combine the strength of martensite with the ductility of ferrite you can make steels that are very strong can absorb energy during impact and that can be fabricated into complex shapes such as car frames using the method developed in this work the goal is to develop a framework that more precisely and effectively predicts the needed composition and processing (recipe) for a specific design in turn this decreases the number of simulations and experiments required drastically reducing costs the knowledge that we gain about the material design process as a whole using our framework is much greater than the sum of all information extracted from individual models or experimental techniques said dr ankit srivastava assistant professor for the materials science and engineering department the framework allows researchers to efficiently learn as they go as it not only collects and fuses information from multiple models/experiments but it also tells them which information source ie a particular model or experiment provides them the best value for their money or time which really enhances the decision-making process in the future they hope their framework is widely used when attempting tasks that involve integrated computational materials design our hope is that by presenting these model fusion-based bayesian optimization capabilities we will make the search process for new materials more efficient and accurate said allaire we want any researcher to use the models that they have available to them without worrying as much about how to integrate the models into their own modeling chain because our bayesian optimization framework handles that integration for them graduate students who assisted with this research include danial khatamsaz from the mechanical engineering department and abhilash molkeri richard couperthwaite and jaylen james from the materials science and engineering department
1751,"dr kinsey skillen experienced in large-scale testing of structures and structural components has joined the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university as an assistant professorhe will be working in the department's structural engineering group teaching the structural concrete design course this semester and said his favorite part of teaching is the interaction with students both in the classroom in the laboratory""what is great about structures is that we are surrounded by them on a day-to-day basis and yet often take them for granted unlike other engineering disciplines civil engineers rarely have the luxury of testing the final full-scale product sure we can test parts and pieces but we must get it right the first time he saidwith his background in large-scale testing of structures he said he could not have selected a better fit than texas a&m""in engineering nothing is true until it has either been tested or experienced experience comes at a price however often learning from past mistakes it is best we learn from those mistakes in the laboratory rather than in practice in civil engineering we deal with large-scale specimens and it is often difficult to project results from the small scale to the large scale this is what makes the large-scale structures lab at the cir (center for infrastructure renewal) such an invaluable resource to the department the laboratory resources accompanied with the applied research funding opportunities by txdot (texas department of transportation) give me the best opportunities to succeed as an assistant professor "" he said ""i also can't speak highly enough to the level of camaraderie between the civil engineering faculty very proud to be a faculty member here at a&m "" he saidin preparing students to be a professional in the field skillen stresses the importance of engineering judgment""nothing is exact in this business students should be conscious to the practicality and degree of certainty behind the calculations they make he said ""engineers love to make exact analyses of approximate models but is this better than an approximate analysis of the exact structure im not convincedskillen's research focuses on large-scale testing of structures and structural components""in recent years advances in material science have shown a need for testing high-performance materials for use in structural applications i hope to be at the forefront of those efforts which will result in stronger tougher and more reliable structures "" he saidskillen holds a bachelors degree in civil engineering from montana state university and a master's and doctoral degree in civil engineering from purdue university his other research interests include field monitoring of structures bond and anchorage of steel reinforcement strengthening existing structures and design and reinforced concrete behavior"
1752,dr george m pharr professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has been recognized by the minerals metals and materials society (tms) with the 2021 william d nix award for development of methods for the quantitative determination of material mechanical response by nanoindentation and its use to elucidate fundamental mechanisms of material behavior pharr has made significant contributions in materials science during his distinguished academic career at texas a&m rice university and the university of tennessee pharr is a fellow of the materials research society asm international and the minerals metals and materials society he was elected to the national academy of engineering in 2014 according to the tms website this award was established to honor william d nix and the tremendous legacy that he has developed and shared with the minerals metals and materials community and to highlight and promote continued progress and innovation relevant to research into the underlying mechanisms and mechanical behavior of macro- micro- and nanoscale materials pharr will be presented a cash prize of $5 000 a certificate and medal at the tms annual meeting and exhibition to be held virtually march 15-18 due to the covid-19 pandemic pharr will not present a lecture on his research as part of the award at this years tms meeting this aspect of the prize has been postponed until the spring 2022 tms meeting which will be held in anaheim california in march 2022
1753,"in the world of transportation engineering it's essential to have the most reliable highway safety data to help shape policy and provide decision-makers with tools and models dr dominique lord professor and ap and florence wiley faculty fellow in the zachry department of civil and environment engineering at texas a&m university co-authored a new book ""highway safety analytics and modeling "" that comprehensively covers these key elementsother co-authors of the first edition book are dr xiao qin professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the university of wisconsin-milwaukee's institute for physical infrastructure and transportation and dr srinivas r geedipally research engineer in the center for transportation safety at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti)the book includes all aspects of the decision-making process from collecting and assembling data to developing models and evaluating analysis results it discusses the challenges of working with crash and naturalistic data identifies problems and proposes well-researched methods to solve themgiven the global objective known as ‘vision zero (significantly reducing if not eliminating fatal crashes) set forth by several governmental agencies it is the hope the material contained in the book can help in this endeavor lord said the textbook amassed more than 40 years of research in highway safety into a single documentthe book examines the nuances associated with safety data analysis and shows how to best use the information to develop countermeasures policies and programs to reduce the frequency and severity of traffic crashesthe book complements the ""highway safety manual"" by the american association of state highway and transportation officials the book provides examples and case studies for most models and methods and includes learning aids such as online data examples and solutions to problemslord has been a member of the faculty since 2004 and his research interests include fundamental work in traffic safety statistical modeling evaluation of countermeasures crash risk human factors transportation policy and crash data analysis he is also a research associate research scientist at the center for transportation safety at tti"
1754,an innovative model in the world of undergraduate capstone projects there are a number of different models used to provide engineering students experiential learning opportunities that help prepare them for the start of their professional careerswithin the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university the public-private-academic (ppa) model is continuing to add significant value to scientists and researchers at nasas johnson space center through texas space technology applications and research (t star) a tech startup companyover the past several years this model has expanded from its original format to include multiple teams working collaboratively to develop integrated solutions in competition to develop alternative solutions and across different disciplines to develop more robust solutionswhat is the ppa model it was established and pioneered by matt leonard president of t star and professor emeritus dr joseph morgan the model links a public sector entity that has technical problems challenges and opportunities to a private sector entity that has project management operations and long-term support capabilities to an academic entity that possesses the resources to design develop document and deliver working prototypes for evaluation and testingbeginning with relatively small projects for researchers within nasas astromaterials research and exploration science (ares) division the model has expanded to undergraduate capstone teams providing intelligent monitoring and control systems that have flown on the international space station to perform microgravity experimentsinitially based on the need for electronics-based solutions the electronic systems program capstone teams were chosen to participate as the academic element of the model however as the need for other technical disciplines increased the newly-formed mechatronics program students were included in the formation of the student development teamsrecently increased need for innovative mechanical systems resulted in the inclusion of manufacturing-mechanical program capstone teams to form industry-like multidisciplinary groups to meet the expanding lunar and planetary exploration needs of nasa scientiststhe ppa model is now supporting three long-term space exploration system development projects
1755,mobile analytic laboratory platform a resurrection and expansion of a nasa-supplied six-wheeled vehicle that is being transformed into an astronaut trainer for earth-bound control and operation as a remote lunar and planetary exploration capabilitycapstone teams have worked collaboratively to restore the vehicle to operational status and have developed and integrated multiple subsystems into the platform for both local and remote operation these include power motion lighting wireless network-based communication with simulated time delay for operation on the moon or mars and a four-axis robotic arm for sample identification collection sorting and transport three capstone teams have participated in this project thus far to meet the vision of lee graham nasa ares scientist
1756,cosmic dust collection system the cosmic dust collection system concept was developed as an innovative approach for a long-term lower-cost cosmic dust collection capability by dr marc fries cosmic dust curator at the nasa johnson space center fries oversees nasa's collection of asteroid and cometary dust which is the official past present and future repository for their returned materials it has been a gratifying experience working with such capable and innovative young men and women on these projects said fries i have been impressed with their ability to work collaboratively and competitively in solving a complex nasa need using the ppa modelsix electronic systems mechatronics and manufacturing-mechanical teams are currently developing systems that will be flown as a payload on high-altitude balloon missions of up to 30 days while autonomously collecting specific-event dust particles over a selected seven- to 10-day period
1757,gandalf staff as astronauts perform lunar and planetary exploration activities dr michael evans and his research colleagues are developing a swiss army knife-type walking stick to assist them not only in navigating the rough terrain but to provide voice and data communications collection of multifaceted sensor data multiple work lighting configurations and power monitoring and distributioncommunications will include both ultra-high frequency voice capabilities and wireless data communications and relay data collection includes 3d lidar inertial measurement units and environmental information led-based lighting is being developed to support the general work area spotlight and navigation while the power subsystems regulate and track power consumption of all other subsystems at present there are four capstone teams collaborating on subsystem development and integration
1758,a model for the future with the expansion of the ppa model multidisciplinary projects such as these are now possible the reputation of the model over the past years and associated successes of the partnership have given nasa scientists the confidence to move from small single-development efforts to much larger long-term development activities covering multiple semesters teams and disciplines the model has been proven to provide a highly motivating real-world educational experience for undergraduate students to better prepare them as they graduate and move into entry-level employment
1759,industrial and systems engineering senior chase dickson and materials science and engineering senior gavin van skiver were part of a team that won the 2021 lockheed martin ethics in engineering case competition the team defeated brigham young university in the final round of the competition on feb 25 each group was tasked with evaluating how to ethically proceed with a manned test flight of a hypersonic commercial aircraft and were required to present these solutions to a panel of judges the competition included teams from 24 different institutions across the country dickson said that despite some risks outlined in the case he and van skiver were able to come up with suggestions allowing for a safe flight at supersonic speeds i feel great coming out of this competition because we represented texas a&m well on a national level and it was great to see the time and effort the faculty at a&m put in to assist us with the competition dickson said i think the most rewarding part of this experience was how realistic it was during the competition the judges hit us with hard questions and really made us think on our feet van skiver said the most rewarding part of the competition for him was having the opportunity to represent texas a&m at the national level this win is a testament to the amazing education we're receiving and the quality of our respective programs we also would not have been able to achieve this without our amazing advisors and texas a&m faculty that provided input on the case van skiver said the official faculty members assisting the texas a&m team include dr magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships and instructional associate professor in the college of engineering; dr shayla rivera director of engr[x] and professor of practice in the college of engineering; dr martin peterson professor of history and ethics in professional engineering in the department of philosophy; and dr nancy currie-gregg professor of practice in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial engineering lagoudas said this competition provides students a distinguished opportunity to immerse themselves in a challenging real-world scenario where project managers are required to make tough decisions involving engineering uncertainty safety ethics and ultimately the economic survival of their company the texas a&m team was well prepared understood the various stakeholders and their concerns and articulated a solid recommendation that allowed the project to move forward with minimum risk lagoudas said they competed against very strong teams such as the two-time winner brigham young university and we are super proud of them taking first place dicksons goals after graduation include pursuing a career in defense and aerospace ideally working in the areas of process improvement system simulation or reliability engineering van skiver will be returning to texas a&m this fall to complete his master's in materials science and engineering before beginning his career in industry
1760,this year at the offshore technology conference (otc) a texas a&m university college of engineering graduate joe r fowler 68 will be awarded the otc distinguished achievement award for his leadership entrepreneurship and contributions to higher education fowler graduated with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and continued his studies at texas a&m earning both his masters and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering as well in 1972 fowler co-founded stress engineering services where he and his co-workers problem-solved engineering inquiries most recently fowler served as stress engineerings president before his retirement in december of 2014 the distinguished achievement award is awarded to outstanding leaders and fowler has certainly proved himself to be one after founding stress engineering the company received many awards including the aggie 100 (recognizing the 100 fastest-growing aggie-owned businesses) and various best place to work honors in houston and other cities as a leader he always tried to create a culture of excellence while making his employees happy i think it is about getting everyone to ‘buy in to the mission of the company and to see the mutual advantages of internal cooperation he said stress is an engineering problem-solving company and every client needs the ‘right answer on time wrong answers and late answers are worthless stress is a 100% employee-owned company and everyone shares in the profits working together becomes second nature because that is what wins in the marketplace it is very very similar to the culture of the aggie spirit in many respects outside of work fowler stayed very involved in academic and professional societies he even served on the otcs board of directors which he said helped him see the true value of this award being board chair helped me realize the incredible depth and breadth of otc and it was an honor and privilege to be entrusted with its leadership he said otc is successful because the 400-500 technical papers and 2000+ exhibits work together to provide attendees the latest in equipment and technology it is also the largest social ‘event of the oil and gas industry and one of the largest trade shows in the us it has expanded to four shows including otc houston otc asia otc brazil and arctic otc fowler has had the opportunity to teach some of his leadership skills to young aggies after his retirement several times in the last year he spoke to engineering entrepreneurship classes taught by jim donnell professor of practice in the college of engineering this is just one of the many things keeping him busy postretirement i am active on several nonprofit boards and talk to student groups about career choices he said my wife and i provide college scholarships for 39 students at texas a&m and an inner-city church seeing these young people develop makes us very happy i was chair of the advisory council of the college of engineering from 2003-2020 and am happy had to have had the privilege of helping to make it better his advice to young engineers is to find work that they love there are lots of opportunities to get involved in research and service projects and i urge students to take advantage of as many as you can he said i found that i loved the consulting business by helping on professors consulting while i was at a&m
1761,during the start and onrush of the covid-19 pandemic all hospitals in the state of texas restricted visitation for intensive care unit (icu) patients and their families because of the infectious nature of the virus family members were unable to visit or even communicate with their loved ones leaving many individuals with feelings of anxiety confusion and fear of the unknown a group of doctors from houston methodist and researchers from texas a&m university identified a novel approach of adapting a virtual icu or vicu to make family visitations possible the vicu involves physiological sensors that are monitored 24/7 in the operations center of the hospital the system also includes two-way audio/video communication technology in the past this technology has been reserved for virtual visits by doctors and consultants but it was instrumental in connecting icu patients with their family members especially when dealing with the highly infectious coronavirus a new process was designed and rapidly implemented to allow family members to book a visit with their loved ones virtually after speaking to a virtual registered nurse (vrn) family members receive a link in a text which would connect them to the audio/video equipment installed in the patients room
1762,this improvised solution was important since bringing in outside technology such as phones or tablets into the icu was no longer possible because it posed sanitation threats and subjected medical staff to much higher risks of infection often patients werent able to use everyday technology themselves due to sedation and intubation restrictions and would require assistance from medical staff to use this particular equipment using vicu technology not only provided more accessible technology for the patient but also posed less of a risk of infection for health care workers even though some patient assistance could be needed depending on the severity of the patients condition we needed to think outside the box and use something that wasnt intended for this purpose at all said dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m this is an example of effective improvisation and adaptation which are key characteristics of resilient health systems we know from the literature that family engagement is extremely important it has positive impacts on patient outcomes to evaluate this improvised solution the research team interviewed 230 family members after using this technology to communicate with their loved ones and overall the responses were very positive albeit emotional a majority of users reported feelings of joy and relief being able to see their family member still there were reports of sadness with family members seeing their loved one in a difficult situation particularly when the patient was intubated or unable to speak there were also some responses recorded from family members who lost their loved ones while in icu and reported that they were grateful to have had this option to see them and get closure some users reported potentially making this available on demand to enable initiating calls on their own the adoption of a vicu for family visitation shows promise during an unusual and trying time for many however several areas for modification and improvement were identified that need to be addressed i believe our family-centered approach provides an opportunity to take us closer to a real open-icu concept in which family members are engaged more efficiently and effectively sasangohar said this will have a significant positive impact on patient outcomes
1763,"opportunities to gain relevant directly applicable work experience while in school are invaluable for lauren williams a former student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university high-impact experiences helped lead her to her current position as a nuclear fuel analysis engineer at general electric nuclear regulatory commission internship before graduating in the fall of 2020 williams was hired by the nuclear regulatory commission (nrc) in the division of advanced reactors and nonpower production and utilization facilities as a nuclear engineering intern while covid-19 prevented williams from being stationed in washington dc she still gained valuable experience virtually her initial assignment was to assist in an audit of the university of texas research reactor license renewal process responsibilities included understanding the problem areas identifying gaps in the license amendment and then developing proposed resolutions to those issues to effectively amend the license application utilizing her year of experience from working on the texas a&m research reactor williams took the initiative to propose a new project idea ""i have always been interested in probabilistic risk analysis (pra) for nuclear plants because my grandfather is a nuclear engineer and has worked with pra his entire career "" said williams ""i recognized that working solely on research reactors would not be a sufficient career path for me since i was familiar with that work from my own direct experience at the texas a&m research reactor"" williams idea was to develop a pra framework for an advanced reactor with support from her nrc mentor she was able to pursue the project and gained highly applicable experience the experience was enlightening for me as i became more familiar with pra methods and the level of technical detail required to develop a technically acceptable analysis said williams framatome internship during her time at texas a&m williams was also able to work with framatome as a neutronics engineering intern in the branch of core design she was able to assist with designing a reactor core for a commercial nuclear power plant that could operate on a 24-month cycle with four less fresh fuel bundles i have always enjoyed problem solving and i was able to exercise those skills in this job said williams williams presented her findings to her supervisor and team at the end of the internship and successfully removed four fresh fuel bundles to reduce reload costs for the plant looking ahead after graduating in december williams was offered a full-time position at general electric as a nuclear fuel analysis engineer she cites these and other high-impact experiences such as study abroad in greece as crucial during her time at texas a&m having both of these internships has helped me with my class work at texas a&m and has helped me understand where and what i would like my career to be in the nuclear industry said williams"
1764,dr matthew yarnold assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been chosen to deliver the 2021 robert j dexter memorial award lecturethe award was given by the steel bridge task force oversight council of the american iron and steel institute the national steel bridge alliance and the american association of state and highway transportation officials t-14 technical committee for structural steel designyarnold will present a lecture on his past and current research findings at the next meeting of the steel bridge task force on aug 12 2021 in philadelphia pennsylvaniathe robert j dexter memorial award lecture program provides an opportunity for individuals early in their careers in structural engineering to present a lecture on their steel bridge research activities to the steel bridge task force and participate in its semiannual three-day meeting recipients become invited guests of the steel bridge task force comprised of leading steel bridge expertsthe program was instituted in 2005 in memory of robert j dexter an associate professor of civil engineering at the university of minnesota who was an internationally recognized expert on steel fracture and fatigue problems in bridgesyarnolds research includes structural steel behavior bridge engineering the experimental assessment of structural systems novel techniques for structural health monitoring and engineering education he has extensive experience with the experimental testing of structural systems and has led research projects for the national science foundation state departments of transportation and private engineering firms he is an active member of several national committees through the american society of civil engineers and the transportation research board yarnold has more than 17 years of structural engineering research and design experience he began his career at lehigh university where he received his bachelors and masters degrees following graduation he accepted a position with the engineering firm ammann & whitney where he contributed to more than 15 bridge design and rehabilitation projects while also obtaining his professional engineering license after a successful career as a consultant he returned to academia and completed his doctoral degree at drexel university he joined the civil and environmental engineering department at texas a&m in 2017 yarnold is also an affiliated faculty member and researcher at the center for infrastructure renewals structural and materials testing lab
1765,dr emily pentzer associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering and the department of chemistry at texas a&m university has been named a recipient of the 2021 rising star award by the american chemical societys (acs) women chemists committee (wcc) pentzer received this honor for her significant contributions to the field of polymer and materials science for training and educating students and postdocs and for service to the scientific community pentzers research focuses on applying fundamental organic chemistry reactions to architect new structures for diverse energy related applications her group has pioneered the use of 2d particles as surfactants for nonaqueous emulsions and used this platform to encapsulate active liquids such as ionic liquids and perfluorinated gases one of pentzers current projects aims to utilize 3d printed phase change materials to include built-in heat storage for temperature regulation of existing and new infrastructures the products have applications in carbon dioxide uptake solvent purification imaging and energy storage her other areas of research include polymer-based optical data storage in a quaternary code development of new polymer chemistries and 3d printing of multifunctional materials for pressure and gas sensing or thermal energy management her cross-disciplinary research is enhanced by collaborators across science and engineering members of my lab come from many different scientific backgrounds which makes it fun for us to think about different ways we can approach research problems said pentzer we are always inspired by a specific application we then architect new structures with enhanced performance the wcc rising star awards occur annually and recognize up to 10 exceptional women chemists from all disciplines of chemistry the awards were established in 2011 to help support careers in science and is open to female acs members working in all sectors of chemistry and chemical engineering applicants can be self-nominated or nominated by another individual recipients are required to submit an abstract outlining their research and eligibility for the award and will present a 10-minute talk highlighting their work an award symposium will tentatively be held on april 7 2021 where recipients will present their talk at the annual acs meeting i was beyond excited to hear that i was selected as an acs wcc rising star and that ill join the impressive list of previous awardees said pentzer im grateful to my current and former group members for choosing to work with me and for creating a foundation from which to grow our research successes
1766,"whenever a scientific experiment is conducted the results are turned into numbers often producing huge datasets in order to reduce the size of the data computer programmers use algorithms that can find and extract the principal features that represent the most salient statistical properties but many such algorithms cannot be applied directly to these large volumes of datareza oftadeh doctoral student in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university advised by dr dylan shell faculty in the department developed an algorithm applicable to large datasets it is a useful machine-learning tool because it can extract and directly order features from most salient to leastthere are many ad hoc ways to extract these features using machine-learning algorithms but we now have a fully rigorous theoretical proof that our model can find and extract these prominent features from the data simultaneously doing so in one pass of the algorithm said oftadehtheir paper describing the research was published in the proceedings from the 2020 international conference on machine learninga subfield of machine learning deals with component analysis the problem of identifying and extracting a raw dataset's features to help reduce its dimensionality once identified the features are used to make annotated samples of the data for further analysis or other machine-learning tasks such as classification clustering visualization and modeling based on those featuresthe work to find or develop these types of algorithms has been going on for the past century but what sets this era apart from the others is the existence of big data which can contain many millions of sample points with 10s of thousands of attributes analyzing these massive datasets is a very complicated time-consuming process for human programmers so artificial neural networks (anns) have come to the forefront in recent yearsas one of the main tools of machine learning anns are computational models that are designed to simulate how the human brain analyzes and processes information they are typically made of dozens to millions of artificial neurons called units arranged in a series of layers that it uses to make sense of the information it's given anns can be used in various ways but they are most commonly used to identify the unique features that best represent the data and classify them into different categories based on that informationthere are many anns that work very well and we use them every day on our phones and computers "" said oftadeh for example applications like alexa siri and google translate utilize anns that are trained to recognize what different speech patterns accents and voices are sayingbut not all features are equally significant and they can be placed in order from most to least important previous approaches use a specific type of ann called an autoencoder to extract them but they cannot tell exactly where the features are located or which are more important than the othersfor example if you have hundreds of thousands of dimensions and want to find only 1 000 of the most prominent and order those 1 000 it is theoretically possible to do but not feasible in practice because the model would have to be run repeatedly on the dataset 1 000 times said oftadehto make a more intelligent algorithm the researchers propose adding a new cost function to the network that provides the exact location of the features directly ordered by their relative importance once incorporated their method results in a more efficient processing that can be fed bigger datasets to perform classic data analysisto verify the effectiveness of their method they trained their model for an optical character recognition (ocr) experiment which is the conversion of images of typed or handwritten text into machine-encoded text from inside digital physical documents like a scanner produces once its trained for ocr using the proposed method the model can tell which features are most importantcurrently the algorithm can only be applied to one-dimensional data samples but the team is interested in extending their algorithm's abilities to handle even more complex structured data""breaking down multidimensional data directly is a very active challenging mathematical field of research with many challenges of its own and we are interested in exploring it further "" said oftadehthe next step of their work is to generalize their method in a way that provides a unified framework to produce other machine-learning methods that can find the underlaying structure of a dataset and/or extract its features by setting a small number of specificationsother contributors to this research include jiayi shen doctoral student in the computer science and engineering department and dr zhangyang ""atlas"" wang assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at the university of texas at austin also instrumental in identifying the research problem and guiding oftadeh was dr boris hanin assistant professor in the department of mathematics at princeton universitythis research was funded by the national science foundation and us army research office young investigator award"
1767,katharine and blaine larson have established the katharine '10 and blaine larson 09 family scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students who are the first in their family to attend college demonstrate a financial need and are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university katharine graduated from texas a&m in 2010 with her degree in political science during her time there she was a member of the aggie muster committee and kappa alpha theta after graduation katharine attended the university of houston and graduated with her law degree in 2012 while at the university of houston katharine was the managing editor at the houston law review and a member of the order of the barons and the aggie law society katharine now works as an attorney at norton rose fulbright in houston blaine graduated from texas a&m in 2009 with his degree in electrical engineering while at texas a&m he was a member of the aggie recruitment committee tau beta pi fish camp pre-law society the institute of electrical and electronics engineers inc and eta kappa nu after graduation blaine also attended the university of houston where he earned his law degree in 2012 while at the university of houston blaine was a member of the houston law review and the order of the barons he is currently a partner at heim payne & chorush llp in houston and focuses on patent infringement litigation related to electrical and computer engineering technologies
1768,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown assistant director of development
1769,when a coastline undergoes massive erosion like a hurricane flattening a beach and its nearby environments it has to rebuild itself – relying on the resilience of its natural coastal structures to begin piecing itself back together in a way that will allow it to survive the next large phenomena that comes its way drs orencio duran vinent assistant professor and ignacio rodriguez-iturbe distinguished university professor and wofford cain chair i professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university are investigating the resilience of barrier islands and coastal dunes after high-water events and storms in doing so they are helping engineers and researchers assess the vulnerability of coastal landscapes their full findings were published as related articles in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences titled probabilistic structure of events controlling the after-storm recovery of coastal dunes and stochastic dynamics of barrier island elevation if you understand how dunes grow then you can take action for example in terms of vegetation or artificial barriers to protect the coastline rodriguez-iturbe said but you cannot protect or manage in this case dunes and barrier islands if you dont first understand the dynamics taking place in general there are two types of high-water events along the coast: natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis which cause waves that devastate the shoreline and lesser storm surges which do not cause widescale damage but still affect the coastal environment as duran vinent explained it is these smaller routine events that control the post-storm resiliency of dunes and barrier islands that play a key role in protecting coastal communities by absorbing some of the impact from surges those events are not really strong enough to erode a mature dune completely but they are strong enough to prevent one from growing in the first place after a storm that erodes the dunes and the vegetation ecosystem he said with that in mind the research team first studied the structure and properties of such smaller high-water events from around the world utilizing buoy and other data to calculate characteristics like beach elevation wave runup and water level to analyze them
1770,their findings were twofold: first they confirmed that the high-water events happen randomly and unrelatedly to one another then the team discovered that high-water events around the world shared the same general characteristics and had the same typical frequency per year with a given intensity when measured at beach level this means that we can actually say something about the typical size of these nuisance flooding events or the typical size and frequency of events affecting the recovery of the coastal environment duran vinent said regardless of location we have a unified description and this simplifies the work for policymakers or managers a lot because then they don't need complex calculations the team took their newly discovered information and applied it to developing a model that would determine the elevation of a barrier island and ultimately whether or not a dune would be able to succeed additionally this model provides a valuable tool in rebuilding coastlines that have been broken down and deteriorated over time as it gives engineers a way to see how tall a dune or barrier island needs to be in order to prevent frequent overwashes and thus ensure ecosystem survival the dynamic between high-water events and the geomorphology of barrier islands is complicated because the impact of any high-water event depends on how big the dunes are rodriguez-iturbe said and then while the dune is growing you have these high-water events randomly interrupting its growth duran vinent said this means that there is a competition between the frequency of the high-water erosional event and how fast the dune is growing this competition became the base of their analytical equation developed to determine whether or not a dune would be able to succeed mathematically mapping in which conditions a barrier island would be resilient or vulnerable dunes on barrier islands are vitally important duran vinent explained because they prevent water events from breaching the island and protect the vegetation on the back of the island from flooding allowing a diverse set of vegetation to grow that is otherwise intolerant to seawater the research team also included ocean engineering graduate students tobia rinaldo and kiran adhithya ramakrishnan as well as collaboration with dr benjamin e schaffer research associate at princeton university
1771,"dr siddharth misra and dr hadi nasrabadi associate professors in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university each received round 4 funding for research projects accepted by the texas a&m triads for transformation (t3) program the program which is a component of the president's excellence fund supports faculty by encouraging interdisciplinary research projects performed by faculty teams with three members called triads misra and nasrabadi were each given $30 000 in january 2021 this seed funding finances the initial work and equipment needed to explore their research topics their goals are to perform a preliminary investigation and gather the data and results necessary to attract industry or academic interest leading to additional funding for more intensive research another $2 000 is available from t3 to support any undergraduate student assistance the projects may require misra's project is titled ""machine learning for monitoring geothermal and carbon-sequestration operations"" his triad is investigating the use of machine-learning applications to improve real-time assessment of the dynamic behavior of dominant fluid-flow paths and fracture networks as they evolve in the subsurface thousands of feet below the focus is to produce a system that blends together engineering artificial intelligence geoscience and environmental knowledge to better monitor geothermal energy production and underground carbon dioxide storage nasrabadi's project is titled ""solar thermal desalination of oilfield brines using nanogels"" his triad is investigating the increasing environmental and economic pressures tied to the production of subsurface water from wells more than 60 million 42-gallon barrels of this highly salinated water is produced daily from oil and gas operations in the united states the project aims to find economic desalination solutions for this brine using nano gel materials jointly with existing water treatment techniques ""if we can find an economical way to convert produced water and feed it through reverse osmosis techniques for agriculture use it can be beneficial for oil-producing areas like qatar and california that have water issues "" said nasrabadi ""with this t3 support we'll build a small-scale solar pond test this gel material and get some good data to show to industry and get support for the next level"" t3 is a multidisciplinary seed-grant program designed to move innovative ideas from vision to proof of concept the program supports texas a&m's commitments to three key pillars: advancing transformational learning enhancing discovery and innovation and expanding the impact on our community state nation and world both faculty members adhered to the t3 rule that each triad's three members must come from at least two separate texas a&m colleges schools or campuses misra will be working with dr duan benchun from the department of geology and geophysics in the college of geosciences and dr kan wu from the petroleum engineering department nasrabadi will be working with dr debjyoti banerjee from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering in the college of engineering and dr nayef alyafei from the petroleum engineering program within the texas a&m university at qatar"
1772,a new texas a&m university-developed technique that allows for the creation of building materials using local soils could prove key not only to the success of future space missions to the moon and mars but also to establishing a solid and safe foothold on both a futuristic concept that came one step closer to reality with last weeks successful landing of nasas perseverance rover on the surface of mars thanks to a 2021 nasa innovative advanced concepts (niac) program grant awarded to a team led by texas a&m researcher and nasa niac fellow dr sarbajit banerjee innovation that began with boggy water-logged soils from canada to texas may soon be applied to the rocky razor-sharp regolith that dominates the lunar and martian landscapes in order to help solve a three-part problem banerjee says has plagued the space agency since the apollo missions: excessive dust unnecessary damage and untold danger five of the six apollo landings had issues with dust blocking the astronauts view of the surface forcing them to guess at the final landing location and sometimes landing on slopes dangerously close to the maximum tolerance one time precariously close to a major crater said banerjee professor in the department of chemistry with an affiliated appointment in the department of materials science and engineering if nasa and its commercial partners are to mount a sustained presence on the moon and mars and land on outer solar system bodies we need to find a way to tame surface materials for landing and mobility banerjee in collaboration with colleagues in the texas a&m college of engineering and college of architecture proposes to do just that in his teams niac effort regolith adaptive modification system (rams) to support early extraterrestrial planetary landings and operations their publication is one of 16 selected by nasa for phase i awards out of nearly 300 proposals submitted for consideration each award provides nine months of seed funding that allows researchers to further develop their ideas in order to compete for up to $500 000 more in phase ii funding that will help them further advance and refine their technology over the course of two additional years in addition to banerjee the niac research team features dr bjorn birgisson jl corky frank/marathon ashland petroleum llc chair in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and researcher at the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) nicole shumaker research specialist v in the texas a&m department of construction science and dr kevin cannon professor in the department of geology and geological engineering and member of the space resources program at the colorado school of mines for more than two decades the niac program (which started out as the nasa institute for advanced concepts) has nurtured visionary ideas capable of transforming future nasa missions with the creation of breakthroughs radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts while engaging americas innovators and entrepreneurs as partners in the journey the program seeks innovations from diverse and non-traditional sources selecting projects that study innovative technically credible advanced concepts that could one day change the possible in aerospace there is an overwhelming number of new participants in the program this year said jason derleth niac program executive all but two of the researchers selected for phase i awards will be first-time niac grant recipients showing nasas early-stage opportunities continue to engage new creative thinkers from all over the country in much the same way they previously created an economical environmentally friendly alternative to concrete using clay-based soil from a backyard in texas or a geopolymerized wood fiber prototype suitable for all-weather roads using mucky canadian muskeg soil banerjee and birgisson are confident their niac team can create landing pads and other prepared surfaces on mars out of regolith to address what they see as one of the most critical surface-related developments since the apollo program the big difference moving forward from the apollo missions is that the proposed artemis missions are targeting repeated landings in the same area said birgisson if not controlled dust will compromise operations sensors solar panels and other sensitive equipment and will infiltrate interiors of the spacecraft and eventually into the gateway the texas a&m teams proposed rams approach relies on sequentially delivered microcapsules chemically tuned to react with the components of regolith through a series of exothermic reactions to create geopolymerized subsurface slabs by employing a similar process that helped them perfect the development of sustainable building materials which quickly gain strength after being 3d printed the team will use a sequence of chemical reactions to coat all surfaces and make high-strength vanadium steel skins and anchors using a de facto nano steel mill powered by locally harvested minerals and highly exothermic reactions as an added bonus banerjee notes the nanothermite and encapsulating systems necessary to run it are both lightweight and safe to fly we see our research as more than a possible means of remediating roads or replacing concrete and one that allows for construction in difficult environments shumaker said we absolutely envision a new paradigm of construction that uses naturally sourced materials and has great economy of materials use and significantly less production of waste because of the use of additive manufacturing methods from 3d printing to nanotechnology using such materials and building methodologies will further pave the way to adoption of building design specifically adapted to the needs of local climates including that of mars or the moon shumaker notes that the team is a subset of the texas a&m lunar surface experiments program comprised of both faculty and student researchers whose purpose is to design and build fundamental science experiments and technology demonstrations to be delivered to the lunar surface as payloads aboard commercial lunar landers thereby making the moon a new laboratory for texas a&m view a complete list of niac awards for 2021 and previous years this article originally appeared on the texas a&m college of science website
1773,"it's oct 23 2021 and tensions are high at the indianapolis motor speedway engines are roaring the crowd is cheering and racecars are lining up without a driver in sight the green flag waves to start the race thats taking hands-free to a whole different level there will be no drivers competing at the speedway on this date instead autonomous racecars programmed by teams across the world including a team from texas a&m university will go head-to-head in the first-ever indy autonomous challenge in pursuit of $15 million in rewards the texas a&m indy autonomous challenge team otherwise known as reveille racing began their journey over two years ago it started with dr ivan damnjanovic professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering damnjanovic was a member of an exploratory committee determining the plausibility of a completely autonomous race the event was announced in november of 2019 ""there are cars that have some autonomy such as lane-keeping cars that can recognize the left and right side of the lane and steer the wheel "" said lance decker a doctoral student in the department of multidisciplinary engineering and member of the team ""the difference is that autonomous cars on the road are going 30 miles per hour with the help of a driver and we'll be going 200 miles per hour without human intervention"""
1774,"after the announcement teams began to work on their racecars although they do not physically have the car yet the teams were provided with software and tools capable of communicating with a modified dallara il-15 racecar the team's responsibility is to develop code that propels the racecar around the track while avoiding other cars in the fastest time possible since every car will be the same the quality of programming is what differentiates the teams ""all of the teams will have the same hardware "" said damnjanovic ""what we are replacing is the driver the autonomous driver should be able to perceive the environment while also applying some sort of strategy this can include things like the car's path or how aggressive you want to be around the corners the driver is essentially the computer code"" the teams are competing in increasingly difficult virtual reality events to test and improve their coding before they receive their car ""an original task was to drive a lap around the indianapolis motor speedway "" said decker ""the next competition was competing for the fastest lap and trying to avoid an obstacle on the road we are writing code that is transportable to the real car then we will make adjustments to create connectivity between the virtual world and reality"" to help understand driver strategy and close the gap between simulations and actuality the team is working with dr wendi zimmer professor in the department of health and kinesiology sport management division zimmer is providing insight into the science and strategy of racecar drivers that separates the average driver from the outstanding driver outstanding drivers understand the best routes around the track how to pass other cars effectively and the fastest methods for tackling corners the driver can also react immediately to what he/she perceives is happening the challenge is to replicate the actions of an experienced driver in computer code ""strong racers can ‘feel what their car will do in relation to racing variables such as the track conditions car functionality (or loss of) and other vehicles on the track "" said zimmer ""racers adjust and adapt as variables change with the autonomous factor the ‘feel is removed still the variables remain how can you control for the variables when you lose that ‘feel we have a fantastic team working on software to control for changing variables and recreate the ‘feel in an autonomous approach"""
1775,"the competition has spanned over two years and the team has encountered and overcome many obstacles damnjanovic hopes that the work put into this challenge will benefit the students far beyond race day ""we are bringing in students to work on realistic projects that integrate different competencies which is of enormous value as they advance in their professional careers "" said damnjanovic ""we hope the students hold a sense of accomplishment of pride and of ownership of a two-year project in which they are going on a worldwide stage"" the team is currently preparing and raising funds for the competition if the team wins they plan to use the prize money to endow a scholarship at texas a&m ""right now this is a one-off event "" said decker ""our goal is to turn it into something perpetual where other students can come along take the same car and continue to compete it would be amazing to help provide this opportunity to others who share this interest"" students on the team include yangwoo kim jerry cazares aaron angert tom nan chen liang caleb peck daniel haseler krishna kumar sunil and michael rawlins other members involved from texas a&m include dr dezhen song dr stephanie paal dr david c breeding dr jinjin pan and steve t cox"
1776,the texas a&m university system board of regents today named dr m katherine banks as the sole finalist for the position of president of texas a&m university this is a tremendous honor banks said the core values of texas a&m its rich traditions unique culture and commitment to the greater good is the very foundation of this great university and resonates deeply with me i hope to build upon that framework in our pursuit of preeminence without losing what makes texas a&m so special texas a&m is one of a kind and theres nowhere else id rather be banks is currently vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories and dean of the texas a&m college of engineering in those roles she spurred unprecedented growth in the college of engineering while also being a pivotal leader in some of the a&m systems greater accomplishments including recruiting the army futures command to the rellis campus and winning a federal contract to help manage los alamos national laboratory on wednesday chancellor john sharp recommended banks as sole finalist and the board approved under state law regents name a finalist for at least 21 days before making the appointment at a subsequent meeting the board was excited to know the search yielded tremendous interest and many qualified candidates said elaine mendoza chairman of the board of regents this speaks to the stellar reputation credibility and positive momentum of texas a&m university the board is confident that dr banks will lead the university to even greater heights while celebrating the traditions and spirit that make texas a&m unique for more information see the full press release about banks being named sole finalist
1777,"researchers at texas a&m university are developing a new approach to geometric modeling that could have applications in a wide breadth of products ranging from prosthetic devices and protective equipment to automotive parts and miniaturized electronics dr vinayak krishnamurthy assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is among the recipients of the 2021 national science foundation faculty early career development (career) award which will support his research into next-generation designs the career award is an honor designed to allow promising junior faculty to pursue cutting-edge research while simultaneously advancing excellence in education he hopes the award will provide him with the resources to make long-lasting contributions to the areas of design research and education ""the funds from this award will help me define new directions at the intersection of geometric modeling design theory human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence "" said krishnamurthy ""the award will allow me to continue my efforts on building a solid foundation for my long-term goal to create the next generation of design tools that augment the designers' cognitive ability for creative problem-solving what this research hopes to accomplish in the long term is to give the control back to the designer by making complex geometric modeling available to all real-time and intuitive to interact with useful for serious engineering design and usable for recreational learning"" krishnamurthys research introduces a new type of geometric modeling paradigm called partitive solid geometry which is expected to enable the intuitive and interactive design of complex 2d and 3d patterns known as space-filling shapes when paired with others of the same shape these geometric shapes could have the potential to fill a space completely leaving it watertight and without any gaps between them by making the design of complex shapes and patterns intuitive and interactive krishnamurthy said his research could enable designers to create more robust materials with better architecture or safer products that may ultimately improve the average person's quality of life ""imagine a computer tool where a designer could simply sketch out a shape to design a complex 3d jigsaw puzzle that has special mechanical thermal acoustic or optical properties "" he said ""the research specifically focuses on developing the basic mathematical principles and subsequently new algorithms and interactive software workflows to enable such design"" in addition to its commercial applications krishnamurthy said he also sees value in the shapes for the amateur or student further equipping them with the tools necessary to explore new ideas and creative solutions ""with maker culture on a steep rise more people are interested and invested in designing making and personalizing their own products "" he said ""it is now possible for a small group of individuals in fact even an individual to buy a 3d printer or a laser cutter and create small businesses on a shoestring budget making complex geometric modeling accessible to more designers and engineers is key to facilitating disruptive innovations in many engineering disciplines including automotive aerospace construction additive manufacturing mechanics thermo-fluids acoustics and many other fields"" in addition to his research krishnamurthy's career award will also help him to bring these design tools to k-12 students through a learning mechanism he calls ""design-prototype-play"" using these tools students could easily generate complex shapes and structures use 3d printing to prototype them as puzzles and discover the basic principles of geometry by playing with the created puzzles ""this will fundamentally transform the way children develop their spatial reasoning ability through hands-on design and prototyping activities "" he said krishnamurthy is creating a comprehensive plan for implementing the educational tools that will include internships for undergraduate students a new graduate-level course on generative design partnerships with outreach programs and a free web-based modeling tool available to the public"
1778,two faculty members in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university can now say they have held the position of editor-in-chief for the iise transactions journal the flagship journal of the institute of industrial and systems engineers (iise) dr wilbert e wilhelm professor emeritus in industrial and systems engineering was the editor-in-chief of the iise transactions journal from 1993-96 and dr yu ding mike and sugar barnes professor of industrial and systems engineering is serving as the editor-in-chief from 2021-24 i enjoyed this assignment and appreciated the opportunity to hold this position the editor-in-chief who preceded me al soyster had taken a most useful step of defining four focused issues each of which was to publish articles in a focused area of interest the four focused issues also allowed us to increase paper submissions thus enhancing quality wilhelm said we also were able to publish special issues each on a particular timely topic to generate interest in the journal wilhelms research interests were devising new optimization methods notably related to integer programming and applying them in scheduling biofuel supply chain design assembly system design and health care systems being able to pick up the baton from dr wilhelm means a great deal to me this appointment also presents a wonderful opportunity for me to give back to my profession and society in which i have worked for 20 years ding said my goal is to sustain and strengthen the position of iise transactions as the flagship journal promoting methodological and interdisciplinary research and pushing the knowledge boundaries of the ise (industrial and systems engineering) field ding is an accomplished and leading researcher in data and quality science and has applied his methodology to important engineering applications most noteworthy in wind energy systems and manufacturing/materials informatics his research work was recognized by receiving the 2018 texas a&m engineering research impact award the 2019 iise technical innovation award and the 2020 texas a&ms association of former students university level distinguished achievement award in research
1779,a texas a&m university researchers collaborative study titled an integrated approach for managing microgrids with uncertain renewable sources demand response and energy markets has been chosen for a 2020-21 los alamos national laboratory (lanl) collaborative program award in the category of research projects dr natarajan gautam professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering has partnered with lanl staff scientist dr harsha nagarajan for a four-year research project focusing on energy needs demand and future power supply for small communities and microgrids using solar and wind power this four-year research project is a part of a collaboration between the texas a&m university system and lanl it is designed for a&m system researchers to collaborate with lanl researchers on an identified topic suitable for joint-effort funding from national laboratories office and lanl one of the main goals of this program is to increase the depth and number of research collaborations between the two institutions and the individuals involved while figuring out an efficient way to bring renewable power to a small community population a question that needs to be answered is whether that power gets stored in individual batteries for future household use or if it gets sold back into the grid to be used by individuals in real time all while keeping the power available and at affordable rates we are trying to see what challenges we may face so that while we develop this kind of distributed technology we will have it in place so that everything runs smoothly gautam said you want to have quality service you never want the lights to be off but you also want to reduce the cost as much as possible and have as little inconvenience as possible having highly distributed energy means that people will create energy locally as an alternative to large-scale power grids thereby using renewable energy efficiently gautam says the research will help mitigate spiking and plummeting currents and ultimately make electricity cheaper for consumers when they are only tapping into the grid when power is needed gautam and nagarajan are going to be evaluating two possibilities for homes to manage power supply-demand imbalance: each residence having its own battery for power storage that may include a device resembling teslas powerwall or residences having one main line connected to the grid large-scale power operations have the ability to diversify their portfolio when needed it is more difficult to supply power to a community of people because of the size of a microgrid on the other hand if large-scale grids experience an interruption there are many people who are affected in addition weather poses its own set of uncertainties particularly with renewable energy which can be exacerbated when working on a community level fossil fuels provide more leeway in deciding how much power is needed on the grid at any given time and production can be cut or increased from there based on demand when working with renewables the weather on any given day is the gatekeeper for how much power if any can be produced if its a bright sunny day and there is a considerable amount of solar power being produced the next question is what to do with all of that extra power however on a cloudy day there will not be much production gautam says that with the number of statistical methods included in this research there may be a way to automatically predict this in advance ultimately leading to a more efficient grid system you dont want each individual to have to make this decision every day we want to have something in a software system that will do what is best for users gautam said this is very data driven and we have a lot of historical data we can pull from you want to make an informed decision right now but also have a good idea of how the future is going to pan out this research includes a lot of optimization modeling and uncertainty in the system especially when you talk about wind and solar it is very difficult to predict tomorrow or the day after let alone several months down the road gautam said that is part of the reason as to why we havent gone ahead with much of these renewable energy efforts is because of the amount of uncertainty thats there the foundation for this research leans heavily into the operations research and systems engineering areas of industrial and systems engineering because of the number of analytical methods needed for forecasting and creating an integrated system that can handle the fluctuation of providing renewable power to small communities of people is the ultimate goal
1780,the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university has established a new master of science (ms) in ocean engineering degree program offered exclusively at galveston – highlighting the unique waterfront location and resources of its seaside campus this nonthesis 30-credit program provides students with a unique education and career preparation filled with hands-on experience direct access to the coast on-the-water field data collection adventures industry collaboration close proximity to houston and world-class resources and in the case of graduate student hayden smith closeness to home friends and fishing having graduated in may 2020 from southwestern university in georgetown where he played football while studying physics and math smith always wanted to be an aggie and eventually enter the engineering field the fact that i would be able to get my degree in one year was really attractive said smith ill have a bachelors and a masters at 23 years old while he originally had his mind set on aerospace engineering smith found his passion for ocean engineering during an undergraduate internship involving baleen whales i just fell in love with the fact that i could be near the ocean and do a lot of different things in a field that's going to be increasingly growing over the next 10 to 20 years and i'll be right in the middle of that said smith
1781,smith plans to apply his passion for coastal protection and fisheries into his career path by designing breakwaters or artificial reefs for game fish to have a refuge to reproduce and live safely however he explained that his studies have also piqued his interest in offshore renewable energy i would like to be involved in ocean renewables specifically waves wind and tidal said smith i think that's going to be really cool and once we can figure out how to do it efficiently and modular i think there's going to be a high potential for growth and a big market all over the world ideal for students and professionals with an undergraduate degree or equivalent international degree in any engineering or related field the thorough curriculum of the ms program covers a variety of ocean engineering topics and offers the opportunity to specialize in specific areas this was something that caught graduate student morgan humphreys eye you can come in with any degree and sort of get this experience in ocean engineering she said i know that there are people from tons of different backgrounds in the program there's another girl who came from environmental a girl who came from mechanical someone who came from a physics background and we're all in the same classes and working together having obtained her environmental and civil engineering degree at florida gulf coast university humphrey plans to utilize her experience in the ms program as a stepping stone into a career about natural disaster research ive always been interested in the environment and in particular things like hurricanes and natural phenomenon like el niño said humphrey i grew up in florida so ive experienced hurricanes quite a bit my family went through hurricanes katrina and irma and then i came here and went through hurricane laura these are incredible natural phenomenon and we cannot avoid them and as climate change continues to increase they are becoming more prevalent and stronger humphrey explained that a background in ocean engineering would give her a foundation to base her research particularly in the possibility of harvesting the energy produced by natural disasters to use as backup power sources for areas affected by such phenomenon obviously i don't have experience in grad school beyond this but i think (this program) is really unique because it focuses less on getting the grades and more on learning the process and enjoying the process and discovering passions in it said humphrey before school has always been about studying and taking tests and getting the grade this is about application
1782,the national academy of inventors (nai) has named two engineering faculty members from texas a&m university to its 2021 class of nai senior members the two new senior members are from the college of engineering: dr saurabh biswas associate professor of practice department of biomedical engineering and executive director for commercialization and entrepreneurship texas a&m engineering experiment station dr roozbeh jafari tim and amy leach professor department of biomedical engineering department of computer science and engineering and the department of electrical and computer engineering nai senior members are active faculty scientists and administrators from nai member institutions with success in patents licensing and commercialization they have produced technologies that have brought or aspire to bring real impact on the welfare of society the 2021 class includes 63 accomplished academic inventors who are named on 625 issued us patents and who represent 37 nai member institutions research universities governmental entities and nonprofit institutes worldwide the title of nai senior member was established in 2019 the selection of biswas and jafari brings the number of current texas a&m faculty members who are nai senior members to 11 in addition 13 current texas a&m faculty members are nai fellows congratulations to dr biswas and dr jafari for earning this distinction said vice president for research dr mark a barteau an nai fellow also thank you to the nai for recognizing the innovations of our outstanding a&m faculty members in the ongoing quest for solutions that better the human condition and address our worlds most challenging problems nai is a member organization comprising of us and international universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes with more than 4 000 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide
1783,"samalis santini de león a doctoral student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university joined space exploration history when nasa's mars 2020 perseverance rover successfully landed on the cold planet on feb 18 2021 santini de león is a nasa science and technology research fellow and has spent the last year running countless week-long entry descent and landing (edl) simulations to identify patterns and risks and assess the system's performance in preparation for landing day making her way to mars santini de león has been working off and on as part of the edl team for the last four years but has been involved in nasa programs since her first year of undergrad at the university of puerto rico her freshman year she joined nasa's rocksat program which involved constructing experimental payloads launched by sounding rockets finding she had a fascination with space santini de león continued with the program throughout her undergrad applied for nasa's space grant project and completed internships at nasa ames research center and mitre corporation ""all of that made me realize i wanted to do research said santini de león i wanted something bigger to work on and for a longer time with research i felt like i could really get something out of it the opportunity to learn so much more and work on something i could call my own in a way"""
1784,"the research she began at cornell university and continued at texas a&m led to her fellowship with nasa her work focuses on using machine learning and cognitive assistance when analyzing edl simulations to help experts uncover vital information more quickly and with less human error ultimately reducing uncertainty and assuring a more accurate landing ""these simulations produce over 15 000 variables and thousands of trajectories explained santini de león ""having to do that manually is really complicated and then finding flaws or patterns is really difficult"" with mars 2020 she's had the opportunity to apply this approach to big datasets on a real mission the fellowship gave her the experience to learn from and contribute to a project that is improving landing accuracy for future expeditions including landing humans on mars tango delta nominal on perseverances landing day santini de león was at the nasa langley research center with part of her team surrounded by monitors showing incoming data and anxiously waiting to see the outcome of their work ""leading up to entry i did not feel like any of what was happening was real "" she said ""things were happening so fast hearing the edl callouts and successful events was calming but only for some seconds until the next events happened the critical minutes of the mission when no one speaks hearts race and everyone in the room holds their breath is referred to as the ""seven minutes of terror"" during those critical few minutes the rover traveling at 12 500 miles per hour enters the planet's atmosphere and its external heat shield reaches about 2 370 degrees fahrenheit as it descends a parachute deploys and navigation technology identifies a safe area on the terrain slowly and gracefully the rover must touch down on a small targeted landing zone the process is nerve-racking because communication from the rover takes more than 11 minutes to reach teams on earth which means perseverance has to navigate the seven-minute process all on its own"
1785,"when santini de leóns supervisor called out tango delta nominal the phonetic identifiers at nasa for ""touchdown "" she breathed a sigh of relief the teamwork and collaboration between the edl team and the other teams was astounding she said allen chen did an amazing job leading our team and i have felt extremely fortunate that my nasa mentor david way got me involved in such a big project he placed a lot of trust in me and that means a lot perseverance santini de león is proud of the part she played in successfully landing perseverance and gives credit to the support of her parents and teachers who helped her along the way since the landing shes enjoyed hearing the excitement from kids and is eager to get involved in more stem (science technology engineering and math) outreach"
1786,"i am full of joy to have had the chance to represent puerto rico in such a big milestone in space exploration she said i hope i was an inspiration to someone and it helps them believe in themselves its not always going to be easy but passion and perseverance can take you to places you never imagined being a woman and being from a latin country i want other young girls and hispanic/latinx to know that they can also do great things"""
1787,the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and lockheed martin corporation signed a master research agreement (mra) on april 29 to further cement their longstanding research collaboration bridget lauderdale vice president and general manager of the f-35 lightning ii program at lockheed martin and dr m katherine banks vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories for the texas a&m university system and director of tees signed the agreement during a ceremony in the zachry engineering education complex the two research powerhouses have developed a robust working relationship over the years collaborating on many cutting-edge research projects the master research agreement will facilitate collaborations across disciplines including hypersonics advanced networks autonomy and cyber and directed energy lockheed martin is excited to support and partner with texas a&m to solve complex problems that impact the national security of the united states and our allies the research and development we will accomplish with the master research agreement and our ongoing partnership with the university consortium for applied hypersonics will ensure our nation is prepared for the unpredictable world we live in today and far into the future said lauderdale from hypersonics to directed energy autonomous vehicles to advanced networks this partnership will elevate texas a&ms $200 million investment into the george hw bush combat development complex and its mission to support leading-edge national security research and technology development banks said we have developed a true national security innovation ecosystem and this expanded partnership with lockheed martin will provide tremendous opportunities for our faculty researchers and students this close partnership helps facilitate the adoption of these advances while supporting the next generation of hypersonic researchers said dr rodney bowersox associate dean for research at tees and ford i professor of aerospace engineering last year tees was selected by the us department of defense joint hypersonics transition office (jhto) which is led by dr gillian bussey to lead the national university consortium for applied hypersonics (ucah) bowersox who is the tees executive director for ucah commented this mra is perfectly aligned with the jhto vision of an inclusive ecosystem of university industry and laboratory partnerships to provide innovative solutions to applied hypersonics problems while educating the national workforce the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) located on the rellis campus in bryan texas will soon be the site of many kinds of research testing including the innovation proving ground (ipg) a challenging outdoor test site for autonomous aerial ground and subterranean vehicles additional state-of-the-art testing facilities are coming online soon including a one-of-a-kind ballistic aero-optics and materials (bam) test range for directed energy and hypersonics research the bcdc complex is located on 2 000 acres and includes a full complement of facilities equipment and instrumentation including the research integration center (ric) with laboratories accelerator space and offices for the army futures command and other texas a&m system collaborators construction is currently underway on the bam test range as well as the ipg which is an outdoor testing area for designing analyzing and validating new technologies in challenging environments
1788,dr jeyavijayan jv rajendran assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is partnering with intel corporation for the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) structured array hardware for automatically realized applications (sahara) project the three-year partnership enables the design of custom chips that include advanced security countermeasure technologies for widespread applications including government security there are two well-understood processor technologies in the semiconductor industry first are field-programmable gate arrays (fpgas) which provide basic functionality that can be modified post-production while this means better security in the supply chain because the manufacturer has no glimpse into the design being implemented it comes at the cost of lower performance and higher power consumption second are application specific integrated circuits (asics) which provide fixed functionality meaning the design cannot be modified post-manufacturing unlike in fpgas the manufacturers of asics are provided the design that is being implemented while this may pose security risks in the supply chain it allows for superior performance less power consumption and less area overall the sahara project which began in december 2020 is facilitating the automated conversion of fpga designs into secure asics to not only strengthen the security but also improve overall processor performance what intel is doing with this asic technology is they are taking the best of both worlds where you can have the configurability of fpga style but close to asic-like performance rajendran said intels structured asics are called easics an intermediate technology between fpgas and standard-cell asics the goal of the sahara program is to utilize structured asics to meet the performance and security needs of the electronic components used in diverse department of defense applications said kostas amberiadis asic design engineer at intel corporation to accomplish this goal intel will develop a version of its easictm technology with added security and ip (intellectual property) protection while significantly automating the whole design flow to drastically reduce its development time especially when converting from fpgas
1789,to strengthen chip security the sahara project will also explore reverse engineering countermeasures to prevent potential counterfeiting attacks fpgas are widely used in military applications today but the prospect and efficiency that structured asics deliver offer a promising look into the future sahara aims to enable a 60% reduction in design time a 10-times reduction in engineering costs and a 50% reduction in power consumption by automating the fpga-to-structured asics conversion said serge leef a program manager in darpas microsystems technology office in a press release announcing the project because of the nature of the program and the nature of the chips that we are trying to protect this project will not only bolster the semiconductor industry but will also have widespread impact in industries such as the smart grid and other critical infrastructure elements rajendran said rajendrans students and postdoctoral researchers are also working closely with intel on this project and receiving invaluable experience at this stage of their academic and professional careers to bridge the gap between academia and industry rajendran has worked with darpa in the past on partnerships such as the obfuscated manufacturing for gps program and the ongoing automatic implementation of secure silicon program this research was in part funded by the us government the views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies either expressed or implied of the us government
1790,outstanding faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering received one of the highest honors in academia at the investiture ceremony held during a virtual event on april 27 this years event recognized faculty who were named holders of endowed chairs and professorships between march 1 2019 and feb 28 2021 the faculty members who were awarded the designation of a chair or professorship were invested during the ceremony and will receive bronze medallions the medallions are engraved with the name of their chair or professorship and symbolize the honorees commitment to teaching research and service chairs anand j puppala 2019 ap & florence wiley chair in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering jodie l lutkenhaus 2020 axalta coating systems chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering yossef a elabd 2020 axalta coating systems chair ii in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering ali erdemir 2020 halliburton chair in the college of engineering stanley williams2019 hewlett packard enterprise company chair in the department of electrical and computer engineering antony jameson 2020 jack e & frances brown chair i in the college of engineering jamie c grunlan 2020 leland t jordan '29 chair in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering scott d schaefer 2020 lynn '84 & bill crane '83 department head chair in the department of computer science and engineering eric l petersen 2019 nelson-jackson chair in the j mike walker '66 in the department of mechanical engineering linda katehi 2021 o'donnell foundation chair ii in the college of engineering thomas j overbye 2021 o'donnell foundation chair iii in the college of engineering george j moridis 2019 robert l whiting chair in petroleum engineering in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering lewis ntaimo 2020 sugar & mike barnes industrial & systems engineering department head chair in the william michael barnes '64 department of industrial and systems engineering zachary c grasley 2019 zachry chair in construction integration in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering professorships miroslav m begovic 2021 carl o '51 and nina a moore professorship in the college of engineering nancy currie-gregg 2020 don lummus '58 professorship in the college of engineering guofei gu 2020 eppright professorship in the college of engineering kristi j shryock 2019 frank and jean raymond foundation inc instructional associate professorship in the college of engineering david s schechter 2020 george & joan voneiff professorship in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering swaroop darbha 2020 gulf oil/thomas a dietz mechanical engineering professorship in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering bimal nepal 2021 i andrew rader professorship i in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution nk anand 2021 james j cain professorship iii in mechanical engineering in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering mark balas 2020 leland t jordan '29 professorship i in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering anastasia h muliana 2021 linda & ralph schmidt '68 professorship in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering hae-kwon jeong 2021 mcferrin chen professorship in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering michael nastasi 2019 sallie & don davis '61 professorship in engineering in the college of engineering roozbeh jafari 2021 tim and amy leach professorship in engineering in the college of engineering tanmay p lele2020 unocal professorship in the college of engineering aakash tyagi 2020 zachry teaching professorship i in the college of engineering gregory e chamitoff2020 zachry teaching professorship ii in the college of engineering tees eminent professor warren f miller 2019 tees eminent professorship for texas a&m engineering experiment station
1791,women are leaving footprints throughout the world of science and engineering examples range from katherine johnson an influential african american scientist at nasa to rear admiral grace hopper a computer scientist who created the first programming language to use english words despite their contributions women are rarely provided the same resources or opportunities available in these male-dominated fields sara amani a department of multidisciplinary engineering student at texas a&m university recently received the women's progress award as part of the accountability climate and equity (ace) awards amani earned this honor for the numerous and impactful changes she made during her time enrolled at texas a&m university at qatar to help women especially those in science and engineering feel empowered seen and heard
1792,"""everyone should support women in engineering "" said amani ""women in engineering are incredibly talented and i feel like sometimes they're not taken seriously there is a stigma that tells women they don't belong in stem and i strive to reverse that belief my goal is to help establish women's credibility in these fields"" amani began her journey as a freshman who noticed the completely inactive state of the society of women engineers on the texas a&m at qatar campus with almost no one signed up at the time she made it her mission to grow the organization ""the engineering statistics at (texas a&m at qatar) are 50/50 male to female which is unique she said having many women on campus pushed me to make the most out of this organization"" after becoming president she increased enrollment and implemented events and initiatives that are ongoing to this day one of her most profound accomplishments is creating think pink an event occurring in october that brings awareness to breast cancer"
1793,"""think pink is an event for everyone on campus to wear pink "" said amani ""i collaborated with the qatar cancer society so they would come to our campus and share information about breast cancer symptoms how women can do breast exams for themselves and other information we had fun games and pink-themed catering from a local coffee shop the proceeds from the coffee shops earnings and extra money collected would then be donated to the qatar cancer society toward breast cancer research it became a huge event and now that i'm no longer a student at (texas a&m at qatar) it continues"" in 2019 amani was selected as one of only two women from the entire country of qatar to attend a two-week conference in vienna austria on women empowerment presented by the united nations and the ban ki-moon centre for global citizens a few of her other accomplishments include starting the annual appreciate an aggie event at texas a&m at qatar the society of women engineers sold roses and the proceeds benefitted the organization also in 2019 she traveled to the flagship texas a&m university campus to interview many female engineers and leaders including dr nancy j currie-gregg professor of practice in aerospace engineering and industrial systems and engineering she created a video based on her interviews for international womens day to share at texas a&m at qatar"
1794,"she also works very closely with dr hamid parsaei professor in industrial and systems engineering on the main campus on various research projects and studies related to engineering education ""i am delighted she received this prestigious award "" said parsaei ""however i am confident she is destined to receive many more and become an exceptional leader in the field of engineering education she has truly impressed me as a dedicated intelligent honest ethical professional and sincere person she does not shy away from challenging herself to higher goals and tackling difficult and demanding research issues"" amani is currently residing in qatar conducting a research study about women in engineering she is now taking remote classes as a student of texas a&m working toward her doctoral degree in engineering education as a student of the multidisciplinary engineering department shes working on a specialized degree plan to achieve this goal ""i take classes from the college of education and i take classes from the college of engineering "" she said ""i love how i can work with my advisor and develop my degree plan on my own i love how customizable it is and that i can participate in engineering education even though it's not an official program but falls under interdisciplinary engineering"" although she is thrilled about receiving an ace award her work has just begun ""i'm excited and i think it's a great honor "" she said ""this isn't something that ends here for me and i'm not done with helping women in engineering i hope to be a professor or an administrator at an engineering university like texas a&m i would hope to continue to start and implement further initiatives for women in engineering"""
1795,hannah lehman a doctoral student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been named a member of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) intelligent systems technical committee (istc) the committee is a group within aiaa that addresses the application of intelligent system (is) technologies and methods to aerospace systems the verification and validation of these systems and the education of the institutes membership in the use of is technologies in aerospace and other technical disciplines lehman was inducted for her technical experience in is and involvement with the institute she was previously a member of the aiaa software technical committee lehmans undergraduate research experience and doctoral research aligns with the istcs activities she is the recipient of the aiaa foundation cary spitzer digital avionics scholarship for her research contributions in reinforcement learning for the intelligent control of unmanned air systems and a co-inventor with collins aerospace on two patents for is applied to airplane ground operations at airports lehman researched is for the 2019 national science foundation research experience for undergraduates program and for a 2020 summer internship with sandia national laboratories her doctoral dissertation is sponsored by sandia national laboratories on the project tightly integrated navigation and guidance for multiple autonomous agents lehman earned her bachelors degree in aerospace engineering summa cum laude in 2020 from texas a&m as a university scholar a member of engineering honors and a 2019 gathright phi kappa phi outstanding junior in the college of engineering as a first-year graduate student lehman was awarded the college of engineerings graduate merit doctoral fellowship for 2020-23 she has been conducting research since her sophomore year in the vehicle systems & control laboratory with her research advisor and chair of dissertation committee dr john valasek
1796,artificial intelligence (ai) continues to be a growing part of our everyday lives as we become more accustomed to seeing autonomy replacing even the most mundane tasks the military is no exception as they continue to prioritize the safety of soldiers in combat dr thomas ferris associate professor in the wm michael barnes department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university is working with the crew optimization and augmentation technologies (coat) program a project under the us army futures command (afc) to support human crew members in future ground vehicle systems in addition to developing and testing advanced driver displays and interfaces coat research seeks to integrate automation with ai properties into the vehicle cockpit in order to help reduce the size of manned crews this means fewer soldiers put in harms way but brings unique challenges to balancing workload across system elements and maintaining necessary performance levels this project looks at sharing jobs between humans and autonomy this requires knowing which jobs are best suited for humans and which for the ai agents and how to ensure mission effectiveness of the human-vehicle system as responsibilities and roles change ferris said if there is a just a driver and that is his only job thats easier to understand and study now we need to think about what else does the driver do when hes not driving because the ai agent can take over at times and when and how does the human know to regain responsibility of the driving
1797,the afc focuses on the modernization of the us army and longer-term future technologies and systems one aspect of this project focuses on providing sensor data so onboard soldiers can maintain awareness of their surroundings or situation awareness but in a way that minimizes safety risks in the past soldiers would typically pop their head out of the top of the vehicle to visually survey their surroundings in real time which exposes the soldiers to enemy fire going forward and with the help of this research soldiers will have the ability to see all external activity from inside the vehicle and be protected by its armor thus making their missions substantially safer some technologies being investigated include video cameras that capture surroundings in real time and feed that data back to the soldiers inside the vehicle soldiers inside the vehicle cockpit could be using these feeds to drive the vehicle they are currently passengers in or drive a completely separate remote-controlled vehicle ultimately the soldiers task responsibilities need to be flexible in order to support flexible management of the vehicle and thus safer and more effective mission performance in a recent evaluation experiment test subjects drove military vehicles through eight different courses at camp grayling a military base in central michigan with each course requiring a different driving function to determine how the subjects perform using display configurations that included helmet-mounted and vehicle-mounted visual displays
1798,the next steps in the research include incorporating more automation into the task flow for soldiers operating the vehicle in order to allow them to focus their efforts on other tasks and ultimately optimize the safety and performance of the system then the question becomes for the human crewmembers how can we optimize performance on the tasks that theyre responsible for ferris said can we bring in artificial intelligence and can we bring in automation to make some tasks easier without sacrificing overall mission objectives so that the humans can essentially handle the responsibilities of an entire vehicle with a reduced crew size ferris role in this research began when he connected with chris mikulski the principal investigator and coat test lead as part of conversations to connect researchers at texas a&m and the afc he has since enjoyed a collaboration with a broad group of distinguished engineers and scientists in the military and academic sectors his long-term goal in working with coat is to develop reliable means of assessing soldier cognitive workload during vehicle operations and using that assessment to inform which and how mission-relevant data are displayed to soldiers what is interesting to me about this is that this is a program where theres all of the depths of resource that the us military can offer to explore the future of ground transportation ferris said i always want to make sure that where my contributions are going are toward safer and better systems for soldiers and i feel this is both an exciting and noble research effort
1799,"machine learning is widely used in various applications such as image recognition autonomous vehicles and email filtering despite its success concerns about the integrity and security of a models predictions and accuracy are on the rise to address these issues dr yupeng zhang professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university and his team applied cryptographic algorithms called zero-knowledge proof protocols to the domain of machine learning ""these protocols will allow the owner of a machine-learning model to prove to others that the model can achieve a high accuracy on public datasets without leaking any information about the machine-learning model itself "" said zhang the researchers' findings were published in the proceedings from the association for computing machinery's 2020 conference on computer and communications security machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence that focuses on algorithms that give a computer system the ability to learn from data and improve its accuracy over time these algorithms build models to find patterns within large amounts of data to make decisions and predictions without being programmed over the years machine-learning models have undergone a great deal of development which has led to significant progress in several research areas such as data mining and natural language processing several companies and research groups claim to have developed machine-learning models that can achieve very high accuracy on public testing samples of data still reproducing the results to verify those claims remains a challenge for researchers it is unknown if they can achieve that accuracy or not and it isn't easy to justify the theoretical foundation of cybersecurity and cryptography is the science of protecting information and communications through a series of codes so that only the sender and the intended recipient have the ability to view and understand it its most commonly used to develop tools such as encryptions cybertext digital signatures and hash functions there are approaches outside of cryptography that could be used one of which involves releasing the model to the public however as machine-learning models have become critical intellectual property for many companies they can't be released because they contain sensitive information essential to the business ""this approach is also problematic because once the model is out there there is a software tool online anyone could use to verify "" said zhang ""recent research also shows that the model's information could be used to reconstruct it and used for whatever they desire"" as an application of cryptography zero-knowledge proof protocols are a mathematical method that allows the owner of a machine-learning model to produce a succinct proof of it to prove with overwhelming probability that something is true without sharing any extra information about it while there has been a significant improvement in the use of general-purpose zero-knowledge proof schemes in the last decade constructing efficient machine-learning prediction and accuracy tests remains a challenge because of the time it takes to generate a proof ""when we applied these generic techniques to common machine-learning models we found that it would take several days or months for a company to generate a proof to prove to the public that their model can achieve what they claim "" said zhang for a more efficient approach zhang and his team designed several new zero-knowledge proof techniques and optimizations specifically tailored to turn the computations of a decision tree model which is one of the most commonly used machine-learning algorithms into zero-knowledge proof statements using their approach on the computations of a decision tree they found that it would take less than 300 seconds to generate a proof that would prove the model can achieve high accuracy on a dataset as their newly developed approach only addresses generating proof for decision tree models the researchers want to expand their approach to efficiently support different types of machine-learning models contributors to this project include zhiyong fang doctoral student in the computer science and engineering department; and doctoral student jiaheng zhang and dr dawn song from the university of california berkeley this work is supported by the national science foundation defense advanced research projects agency and the center for long-term cybersecurity"
1800,jana and kenric marshall 83 have established the marshall endowed engineering scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering with a preference toward those majoring in chemical engineering at texas a&m university although kenric grew up in texas no one in his family had ever attended texas a&m so he didnt have a strong preference when he started the process of selecting a university i was drawn to texas a&m by the reputation of the college of engineering and the loyalty to the university shown by the former students that i had known growing up he said i enjoyed my campus visit and felt more at home on a&ms campus than any of the other universities that i had visited kenric was also awarded scholarships through the generosity of former students and said that both encouragement and financial aid helped him to make his decision kenric said his undergraduate education at texas a&m both inside and outside of the classroom and through the co-operative education program helped prepare him for his graduate studies as well as a career in industrial research and development it shaped the direction of my life much more profoundly than i ever would have anticipated when i first decided to attend a&m he said jana and kenric said there were many aggie families that have had a positive influence on their lives including family friends hilda and walter karrer 20 mentors emily and oliver osborn 38 and sue and gus harris 66 when visiting my hometown of orange a few years ago sue and gus invited the family over and gus regaled our children with his tale of the ‘borrowing of bevo when he was a freshman at a&m kenric said apparently our kids were suitably impressed since all of them chose to attend a&m the marshalls hope that their gift will encourage talented young people to consider attending texas a&m and pursue a career in chemical engineering we are grateful to be a part of this incredible aggie family and perhaps to play a small role in continuing this legacy of friendship and service kenric said we aim for this scholarship to help offset the cost of a student obtaining an engineering education at texas a&m kenric graduated from texas a&m in 1983 with a degree in chemical engineering he and jana have four children and one daughter-in-law all of them aggie engineers: andrew 15 is a mechanical engineer nathan 18 and daughter-in-law vanessa 18 are both biomedical engineers philip 21 is a computer engineer and simone 24 is studying chemical engineering
1801,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
1802,a texas a&m university research team will receive annual funding support over the next three years from the us army research office to explore the protective potential of hybrid nanomaterials for armor applications and provide answers to unknowns about their mechanical performance in relation to their microstructure a class of hybrid 1d and 2d nanomaterials where 1d materials (eg rebars such as nanowires) are used to reinforce 2d materials (eg graphene) shows promise in providing superior resiliency for applications like armor and protective clothing however there are significant unknowns about the hybrid materials mechanical performance that the research team hopes to answer for instance it is not clear yet how its energy dissipation in response to extreme mechanical loads depends on the 1d and 2d material interfaces and rebar arrangement said dr mohammad naraghi associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering and lead researcher it is also unclear how the size of the interfacial transition zone affects toughness and strength this knowledge gap hampers meaningful progress in this field in developing ideas the team has been inspired by structures found in nature in particular tree leaves the team has compared the 1d and 2d nanomaterials to the venation system (vein pattern) and epidermis of leaves according to naraghi although the main function of the leaves venation system is arguably not load-bearing it certainly contributes to deflecting the propagating cracks the other lead researchers include dr keith nelson professor at the massachusetts institute of technology and dr chenglin wu assistant professor at missouri university of science and technology
1803,by translating the pattern of interconnections between natures food chains to industrial networks researchers at texas a&m university have delineated guidelines for setting up successful industrial communities the researchers said this guidance can facilitate economic growth lower emissions and reduce waste while simultaneously ensuring that partnering industries can recover from unexpected disturbances industries can often partner up to exchange byproducts and over time these industries might form bigger communities while these networks sound quite beneficial to all industry partners within the community they are not always successful said dr astrid layton assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering we tried to solve this problem by providing design guidelines inspired by natures food webs so that the overall system will be both eco-friendly and save money for everyone the researchers published their study in the journal resources conservation & recycling an essential part of running any industry is identifying resources such as raw materials that are economically viable rather than having each industry work out these details independently an eco-industrial park or a network of partnering industries is an emerging trend further businesses belonging to these parks work symbiotically where much like in nature industries mutually benefit from each other for example one industrys waste is another ones raw materials often saving both partners money when successful industrial symbiosis can help to reduce raw material use costs and emissions while generating sizeable financial returns however there have also been instances where eco-industrial parks have not worked when eco-industrial parks started to show success people took note and began trying to form their own community of companies that exchanged byproducts but these ‘from-the-ground-up designs can be hit or miss said layton the underlying reasons could be many perhaps economic or if for instance one company goes bust the whole system breaks down because theyre all connected to combat this problem the researchers sought to provide guidelines on how best to design these industry communities to leverage the benefits of industrial symbiosis while avoiding the downfalls for their analysis layton and her team referred to food webs that are both resilient to disturbances and produce minimal waste these biological networks are made up of multiple food chains linking predators and preys furthermore the organization of the interconnected chains in food webs has been extensively studied over the years using quantitative measures of the many metrics the researchers were especially interested in one called nestedness this metric which ranges from 0 to 1 reflects the location where connections are occurring within networks when nestedness has values closer to one there is a hierarchy in the connections in other words one actor is connected to all other actors in the network another actor is connected to a subset of those and so on for example a highly nested structure would be one where certain species of bees pollinate a variety of plants while other specialist bees pollinate only a small number of plants within this much wider set alternatively poorly nested structures have values closer to zero and every actor in the network may be connected to every other but unlike food webs many industrial networks have been shown to have low nestedness so the researchers tested if increasing the nestedness in industrial networks could promote the financial benefit and the ability for industries to recover from disturbances for their study layton and her team included nine industries including a fertilizer plant a pharmaceutical plant and a wastewater treatment facility that could participate in five types of water-based exchanges next they created 4000 different network designs broken up into 200 designs at 20 different nestedness values they found that when the network design had high nestedness freshwater usage was less and the network survived unforeseen disturbances which ultimately translated to more savings and resource conservation they also found in more specific scenarios such as when the industries were spread out geographically and the resources are very expensive high nestedness in industry networks was again more advantageous the researchers noted that they analyzed only water exchanges in the current study and their future work will address other types of resource exchanges and environmental impacts however they said the benefit of high nestedness in industrial networks was generalizable to other exchanges as well water is the worst-case scenario compared to other exchange products in terms of infrastructure costs said layton our results have identified situations when high nestedness is an advantage which can then guide the design of the network this work will support success both from an economic perspective and resilience perspective abheek chatterjee and colton brehm from the mechanical engineering department also contributed to this research
1804,a team of students including two doctoral students from the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded first place in the 2021 texas a&m institute of data science (tamids) data science competition out of 44 teams involving more than 100 students the contest held between march 3 and april 14 centered on the role of money in us presidential elections during the competition student teams developed models to predict the impact on electoral outcomes of contributions and spending by campaigns and donors and used these to develop recommendations for where funds should be directed in the future we had to observe patterns check the effectiveness of the expenditures and provide some inferences and recommendations as to where to invest the money for the next presidential elections said team member sambandh dhal eventually we were able to create an interactive website to show our project and provide a platform for others to explore and dive deep into our analyses the data noobs teams project was comprised of several analyses including that of industry donations which highlighted the sponsors for different parties; expenditures which revealed how money was spent across the us and defined a matric named return on investment (roi) for democrats and republicans during the 2012 2016 and 2020 elections; and a network analysis that showed the correlation between the datapoints through the use of clustering algorithms money spent during the 2020 election totaled $144 billion more than doubling the total cost of the $65 billion 2016 presidential election cycle along the same line the expenditures varied according to different parties and states these expenditures along with the demographics data of the state were analyzed by the data noobs team during the tamids competition according to the data noobs findings in 2012 a correlation was found between states with low expenditure and election results every state that the republican party had invested approximately less than $3 million was secured as red states similarly in 2020 the team found that the democratic party decreased their investment in states they were confident in securing the majority of votes the data noobs team also received the award for best supplementary materials the group included dhal and swarnabha roy computer engineering doctoral students; doctoral student tushar pandey from the department of mathematics and masters student ritesh singh suhag from the mays business school
1805,the yell leaders for the 2021-22 academic year have been elected and among them are junior noah ferguson and sophomore kipp knecht both industrial and systems engineering students ferguson and knecht are joined by zac cross woods johnson and head yell leader memo salinas salinas also made history as the first hispanic head yell leader ferguson is from keller texas and is a member of the corps of cadets in squadron 23 in the first semester of his junior year he set his sights on his chosen major after beginning to immerse himself in the world of industrial and systems engineering and manufacturing processes i knew growing up that engineering would be where i landed; there was no doubt that i would be doing something in that field later in life ferguson said i have loved every aspect of my experience in industrial and systems engineering so far and i am so excited to be in a major that i love while serving the university through the yell program knecht is from batavia illinois and is a member of the corps of cadets in squadron 3 he says his first time hearing about industrial and systems engineering was from another junior in his outfit i think the coolest part is how broad industrial engineering can be and how it can combine lots of engineering aspects all at the same time knecht said getting to represent texas a&m and the industrial and systems engineering department as a junior yell leader is the greatest honor and privilege i have ever had i am proud to be part of this amazing group of industrial engineers cadets ferguson and knecht are two very dedicated individuals who demonstrate the work ethic and resilience of an industrial engineer and we are very proud they will be representing our department as yell leaders this next academic year said dr mike graul associate professor of industrial and systems engineering
1806,in spring 2018 the professor abraham clearfield materials science scholarship was established which honors clearfield for his role in starting materials science and engineering education and his research efforts at texas a&m the 2021 professor abraham clearfield materials science scholarship has been presented to five students in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university this scholarship is awarded to incoming and current undergraduate students who have demonstrated resilience and excellence in academics outreach and selfless service through the broader outreach mission of the materials science and engineering program meet the students below: chinwe akuechiamaakuechiamas interests in corrosion physics polymers and ceramics led her to the department of materials science and engineering this scholarship will allow her to take various courses without worrying about how to pay for them in the future she would like to integrate her materials education into the medical or business fields akuechiama serves as the academic excellence chair of the national society of black engineers and is a member of the aggie career team the msen ambassadors and maroon and white leadership fellows marisol hernandez jaimeshernandez jaimes is a first-generation college student she will start her undergraduate degree in the department of materials science and engineering in 2021 having worked a part-time job ever since she was in high school this scholarship will help focus her attention on her studies hernandez jaimes is excited about the possibility of conducting graduate research investigating novel applications for existing materials carolina martinezmartinez is a first-generation texas a&m student when she started her undergraduate studies she was interested in chemical engineering but soon discovered she was more interested in the materials science and engineering program after meeting with the advisor and learning about the educational opportunities within the department she has conducted research in energy storage and thermal management in phase change materials at the army research laboratory she plans to get a masters degree in materials science and engineering and is grateful that this scholarship will help her achieve her academic goals joseph messmermessmer is from colorado and this scholarship has relieved some of his financial stresses allowing him to focus on his research interests in composites and corrosion science he would like to study quantum computing and pursue a degree in management in the future messmer has interned at the naval surface warfare center-crane through the x-force fellowship program he is currently serving as director of logistics and operations for the msc spencer leadership conference where he aims to capture the interests of high school and first-year students in materials science tanmay shahshah is originally from india and joined the department of materials science and engineering in spring 2020 his research interests include mathematics chemistry and the properties of soft matter shah is a career readiness officer in the texas a&m corps of cadets and a plans commander in the air force reserve officer training corps after graduation he plans to be a pilot in the united states air force (usaf) and credits this scholarship in helping him successfully continue his academic career while allowing him to reach his professional goals in the usaf
1807,the summer enrichment experience (see) hosted annually by the department of biomedical engineering celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2020 the program provides undergraduates at texas a&m university insight into practical applications of biomedical engineering in industry to enrich learning and explore career paths program highlights include: day in the life half-day or full-day unpaid experience emphasis on industry and research applications open from mid-may to mid-august past experience providers include surgeons physicians medical device companies and researchers the see program launched in 2015 as a way to provide students additional opportunities for interactions with industry to assist with career exploration and networking jacqueline havelka 87 a member of the biomedical engineering advisory board started the program maria lyons program manager for corporate relations and former student outreach in the department manages the program it has been very rewarding to see hundreds of students participate over these last years said havelka co-founder and director of inform scientific a houston-based company that specializes in freelance medical and technical writing and management of scientific and medical research programs i hope that we have provided some sparks of interest to help them pursue a particular career path all it takes is a spark to get that fire going! the undergraduate population in biomedical engineering has nearly doubled in size between 2014 and 2020 as a result see saw changes as well the program has grown tremendously from the student perspective in its first year approximately 20 students participated lyons said our fully virtual series in 2020 resulted in 94 active participants 25 of which received credit for the engrx curriculum requirement in addition the see program lined up well with a college of engineering initiative called engrx which requires all students to have an external experience such as research leadership or industry experience prior to graduation when it first started opportunities were focused on contacts in the houston and college station areas however opportunities soon expanded throughout texas in person and the entire nation virtually some examples of partnering companies include quest medical abbott the mann eye institute nasa medtronic bd and cook medical
1808,in-person opportunities prior to the pandemic included industry and hospital tours physician shadowing and networking opportunities due to covid-19 the 2020 program was moved fully online; this transition allowed the series to expand to include panel presentations from former students information sessions focused on career paths at major medical device companies talks about a day-in-the-life at a start-up company virtual product demonstrations and more companies their employees and our former students have all been extremely gracious in sharing their time and expertise with our current students lyons said at the end of the summer the department reached out to participating students for feedback on the virtual experience here were some responses: see gave me a unique experience of hearing about numerous companies and what they have to offer as an employer without having to leave my desk the virtual see program has helped jump start my job search and helped me better network with industry professionals i chose to participate because due to covid-19 my summer internship was canceled and i wanted to still accomplish something worthwhile for my degree during that same time period the exciting panels and different perspectives from different companies makes me want to ask about how their engineering jobs are like looking forward the ideal goal for summer 2021 will be to have a hybrid model of some in-person and some virtual experiences the department is monitoring the covid-19 situation and staying in touch with interested companies more than 100 student participants are expected with at least 20 hosted event opportunities the people in industry who provide these opportunities for our biomedical engineering students are incredibly impressed with the caliber of students in the department havelka said this is a credit to the amazing faculty and staff who teach and prepare these young people for industry our biomedical engineering future is bright! i encourage former students and medical device industry professionals to participate in summer 2021 it is a very rewarding experience! companies organizations and/or individuals wishing to host a see event can email bmensee@tamuedu for more information
1809,covid-19 caused by the sars-cov-2 has plagued our world over the last year in just one year we have lost over half a million americans and an estimated 25 million worldwide to this virus the uncertainties about its long-term effects as well as how and where it spreads particularly indoors continues to motivate researchers and scientists to find solutions to contain the virus dr arum han professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and his collaborators designed an experimental system to show that exposure of the virus to a very high temperature even if applied less than a second can be sufficient to neutralize the virus so that it can no longer infect another human host in march 2020 the united states began shutting down when covid-19 cases began to rise over the past year many have dealt with the severity of the virus that has negatively impacted our country in a number of ways with the pandemic still ongoing getting back to a more normal societal environment is important and this research is a step in the right direction applying heat to neutralize covid-19 has been demonstrated before but in previous studies temperatures were applied anywhere from one to 20 minutes this length of time is not a practical solution as applying heat for a long period of time is both difficult and costly han and his team have now demonstrated that heat treatment for less than a second completely inactivates the coronavirus providing a promising and efficient solution to mitigate the ongoing spread of covid-19 particularly through long-range airborne transmission
1810,medistar corporation approached leadership and researchers from the college of engineering at texas a&m in the spring of 2020 to collaborate and explore the possibility of applying heat for a very short amount of time to kill covid-19 soon after han and his team got to work and built a system to investigate the feasibility of such a procedure their process works by heating one section of a stainless-steel tube through which the coronavirus-containing solution is run to a high temperature and then cooling the section immediately afterward this experimental setup allows the coronavirus running through the tube to be heated up only for a very short period of time through this rapid thermal process the team found the virus to be completely neutralized in a significantly shorter time than previously thought possible their initial results were released within two months of proof-of-concept experiments han explained that if the solution is heated to nearly 72 degrees celsius for about half a second it can reduce the virus titer or quantity of the virus in the solution by 100 000 times which is sufficient to neutralize the virus and prevent transmission the potential impact is huge said han i was curious of how high of temperatures we can apply in how short of a time frame and to see whether we can indeed heat-inactivate the coronavirus with only a very short time and whether such a temperature-based coronavirus neutralization strategy would work or not from a practical standpoint the biggest driver was ‘can we do something that can mitigate the situation with the coronavirus their research was featured on the cover of the may issue of the journal biotechnology and bioengineering not only is this sub-second heat treatment a more efficient and practical solution to stopping the spread of covid-19 through the air but it also allows for the implementation of this method in existing systems such as heating ventilation and air conditioning systems it also can lead to potential applications with other viruses such as the influenza virus that are also spread through the air han and his collaborators expect that this heat-inactivation method can be broadly applied and have a true global impact influenza is less dangerous but still proves deadly each year so if this can lead to the development of an air purification system that would be a huge deal not just with the coronavirus but for other airborne viruses in general han said
1811,in their future work the investigators will build a microfluidic-scale testing chip that will allow them to heat-treat viruses for much shorter periods of time for example 10s of milliseconds with the hope of identifying a temperature that will allow the virus to be inactivated even with such a short exposure time the lead authors of the work are electrical engineering postdoctoral researchers yuqian jiang and han zhang other collaborators on this project are dr julian l leibowitz professor and dr paul de figueiredo associate professor from the college of medicine at texas a&m; biomedical postdoctoral researcher jose a wippold; associate research scientist in microbial pathogenesis and immunology jyotsana gupta; and electrical engineering assistant research scientist jing dai this work has been supported by grants from medistar corporation several research personnel on the project team were also supported by grants from the national institutes of healths national institute of allergy and infectious diseases
1812,a new web-based dashboard designed to predict covid-19 threats to supply chains share data and foster analysis is now available from texas a&m universitys cross-border threat screening and supply chain defense (cbts) and department of homeland securitys (dhs) center of excellence cbts covid-19 binational dashboard a project sponsored by the dhs countering weapons of mass destruction office is following a new approach said dr matt cochran cbts research director a group of experts from industry academia and government from the us and mexico are creating an open and collaborative platform to improve decision-making by generating research on potential impacts – social economic and environmental – on supply chains due to covid-19 covid-19 is a highly sensitive problem that is continuously changing cochran said dhs called for a neutral third party to look at the situation and they needed someone who knew something about modeling analyzing covid-19s impact dr zenon medina-cetina associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering within the texas a&m college of engineering and lead researcher on the multi-disciplinary project said there is a great concern some sectors of the supply chains could break and this project will monitor data and provide predictive analytics from electrical parts that are used to produce dishwashers to a wide variety of agricultural products we wanted to be responsive to what is happening and be able to provide information to improve decision-making by anyone within the supply chain medina-cetina said weve already identified more than 370 variables that are potential impacts of the supply chain rain drought hurricane earthquakes – how can they disrupt the supply chain we put those variables up front he said what is the impact of having a power outage and we cant issue vaccinations somebody will be charged for a supply chain disruption anybody trading with the us can anticipate the threats to reroute or reconnect or whatever changes that might need to be made the goal is to develop a data-lake platform concentrating near real-time analytics following a risk-systems approach that can provide strategic information about the evolution of covid-19 and related current and emerging threats the state of vulnerability of the health supply chain systems and the likely impacts a combination of these may cause to society the economy and the environment we want to help everyone and inform those who are active in trade with the us who might want to know the state of risk medina-cetina said
1813,a case study within the big picture medina-cetina said the dashboard supports two sponsored projects: one a risk scenarios modelling effort which deals with the processes of trade between the us and the world and the other a covid-19 us-mexico risk taskforce project serves as a major case study looking at trade between the us and mexicothe risk scenarios modelling effort will identify variables and processes related to all supply chains that involve us export and import ground points of entry – essentially the critical components involved in supply chains that cross us borders he saidthey came with the special request about mexico which is the number-one trade partner with the us medina-cetina said the auto defense and ag industries as well as other supply chains could be affected thats why they requested a special application to look at the risks with mexico particularly and that is our covid-19 us-mexico risk taskforce projectwith the us-mexico-canada agreement which is the updated north american free trade agreement signed in 2020 he said there was concern that covid could impact multiple and strategic supply chainsthere was a need to study the potential migration of people and supplies that could be contaminated and affect the spread of the virus medina-cetina said on the other hand you have everything related to support in a supply chain from ppe to agriculture products to manufacturing and tourismhe said it has been an intense six months building the tool that will become the point of reference for anyone making decisions on tradingas a part of the project a monthly us-mexico covid-19 risk bulletin will be published to provide scientific technological and strategic cultural support to secure the operation of us-mexico supply chains the project concentrates on five priorities: vaccination supplies personal protection equipment or ppe supply chain on the infrastructure and then state of the health of the workforce for the health manufacturing and agriculture sectorsthe risk bulletin report provides an overview of the project status general objectives and the most important initial lessons learned during the last period of covered performance the main objectives of this project are to support all health supply chain systems for both infrastructure and workforce and to do it accounting for the inherent cultural regional differences and considering the current and emerging regional social economic and environmental risks
1814,building on solid ground cochran said the vision for cbts is based on the need for enhanced risk-based decision-making in a variety of contexts – supply chain and biological threat screeningwe proposed the cbts center of excellence before covid he said we didnt know the pandemic was coming but we all have backgrounds in pandemic preparedness and risk assessment and management we brought all that together and more immediately once covid surfaced when dhs wanted more insight on covid in a binational sense we formed these research projectsdhs in assessing the threat of a border region in mexico asked that cbts partner with a mexican national lab in charge of producing everything related to covid-19 cochran said medina-cetina already had a great relationship with mexican partners allowing the task force to look at supply chains and infrastructure from a binational perspective and reflect that on the dashboardthe us statistics and information used to populate the dashboard in this initial version are from johns hopkins university a second version is expected to follow within six months that will develop cross-cutting analytics on the processes that are affecting the supply chains mechanics of the dashboard in addition to a binational dashboard viewers will have access to the mexican and us statistics on everything from confirmed cases negative cases pending results active cases deaths and recovery estimates additionally graphs will let viewers see breakdowns on the demographics of the casesthere are differences cochran said right now we are reflecting as much as possible the situation there are myriad differences in how things are counted with respect to covid not only between the countries but even between states weve treated this as apolitical research projectmedina-cetina said the dashboard steps beyond an initial look to provide concentrated information to generate a risk-guided platform and risk-management strategies based on all the evidence collected which he anticipates can become a model to other regions around the worldwe have more than two dozen people from data management to server management who worked to create this concept he said we are ingesting data so we can better inform the public we are only using publicly available data to create firsthand information on threats to supply chains and environmental impactsthe ultimate goal is to be a point of reference for anyone trading between the us and mexicowhile our main interest is agriculture any supply chain can work with us cochran said
1815,"batteries are a part of everyday modern life powering everything from laptops phones and robot vacuums to hearing aids pacemakers and even electric cars but these batteries potentially pose safety and environmental risksin a study recently published in cell reports physical science researchers at texas a&m university investigated the components of a different kind of battery a metal-free water-based battery which would reduce the flammable nature of standard batteries and decrease the number of metal elements used in their productionmost batteries are li-ion and contain lithium and cobalt which are globally strategic elements meaning they are located only in certain countries but essential to the global economy and united states battery manufacturing""this work enables the future design of metal-free aqueous batteries "" said dr jodie lutkenhaus professor and axalta coating systems chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m ""by going metal-free we can address the pressing global demand for strategic metals used in batteries and by going aqueous we replace the flammable volatile electrolyte with water""using a very sensitive measurement technique called electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring researchers were able to determine how electrons ions and water transfer in the electrode as it is charged and discharged""with this information we showed that enhanced electrode-water interactions lead to improved energy storage performance "" she saidthe energy storage capacity was lower than that of traditional li-ion batteries but this paves the way for a more sustainable and less volatile battery in the future"
1816,"the research is in its initial stages and there's opportunity for various applications in the real world one particular potential is implantable batteries for medical deviceslutkenhaus' interest began when she learned about the strain on strategic elements such a lithium and cobalt due to increased battery manufacturingby using completely different materials such as we do with polymers here we remove metals from the picture completely "" she said ""my favorite aspect of this work is our ability to deeply characterize the molecular transport processes associated with this redox polymer only in the last few years have we been able to resolve such effects on this time and mass scale""for the future lutkenhaus said they will need to identify more polymers that are compatible with the designonce we have that we can produce a high-performance full-cell for practical use she saidthis project is supported by the us department of energy-basic energy sciences program"
1817,dr karim ahmed assistant professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university will collaborate with dr anders david ragnar andersson at los alamos national laboratory (lanl) to conduct research to better understand the breakdown of nuclear fuel in order to extend the nuclear fuel cycle the heavy metals that compose the fuel must have a targeted high burnup burnup is a measure of how much uranium is burned in the reactor the faster the energy is extracted from a nuclear source the more efficient the reactor runs this reduces the downtime for refueling as well as the number of fresh nuclear fuel elements needed at high burnup values however the fuel sometimes fragments presenting a potential technical challenge that is poorly understood this is where ahmed and his research team come in they were awarded a developmental fellowship as part of the 2019-20 edition of the texas a&m university system national laboratories office collaborative research program with lanl to pursue this issue we are developing a physics-based multiscale modeling approach to understand this fuel fragmentation phenomenon said ahmed while other research groups at texas a&m and lanl have developed independent submodels to look at different aspects of the complicated physical process of fuel fragmentation ahmeds project is the first step in integrating the models the current regulatory limit of fuel peak burnup sits at 62 gigawatt-days per metric ton of uranium but the united states nuclear industry is considering increasing this limit to improve the economy and efficiency of electricity production before this extension can be approved the nuclear regulatory commission will likely require nuclear power plants to analyze a number of potential operational occurrences as well as their consequences a major factor in such analyzed scenarios is the behavior of fuel rods at high burnup we hope that our work will provide the nuclear community with guidelines to assess the most limiting conditions and possible mitigation strategies for safely extending the fuel peak burnup said ahmed ahmeds lanl collaborator andersson is an expert on atomistic modeling of nuclear materials as a long-term goal we plan on investigating the structure-composition-property relationships in nuclear materials through integrating physics-based multiscale models guided by the principles of integrated computational materials science and engineering he said
1818,nuclear power her dogs and texas aggie football are what mikayla florez 17 a former student from the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university answers when asked what she is passionate about now a system design engineer at holtec international in camden new jersey she gets to live out one of those on the daily currently she develops the smr-160 a natural circulation small modular reactor before that she worked for two years at limerick generating station as an equipment operator in both cases she explained she has been excited to play a part in providing safe clean and reliable energy as part of the operations team at limerick i directly helped in the generation of clean electricity florez said in my current role im able to help develop a safe reliable design that could help generations to come during a typical day florez generally works on one or two systems for the smr-160 at any given time for each project her duties include identifying system requirements and functions performing calculations and developing system piping and instrumentation diagrams as such communication is key to career success florez said she is constantly interacting with outside teams like mechanical instrumentation and control deterministic safety analysis and probabilistic safety analysis while developing smr-160 reactors i work in a diverse setting with engineers of different backgrounds she said you must be able to work across multiple disciplines and know a bit about each field most of the time youre dealing with a non-nuclear engineer florez reflected on her experiences in the nuclear engineering department and how they prepared her for her current position for example her summer 2015 study-abroad trip to china allowed her to not only experience another culture but also gave her the chance to tour several nuclear power plants that were in different stages of construction getting exposure to the different aspects of nuclear engineering helped me decide the path i wanted to take she said the various seminars courses tours to nuclear power plants and the study-abroad trip to china helped me discover my passion and decide to focus on utilities access to the on-campus test reactor at the nuclear engineering and science center also provided a unique experience that many studying nuclear engineering arent usually exposed to she also offered a word of advice to current students looking to prepare themselves for industry and finding a career that suits them i would say just put yourself out there and soak up as much information from the people around you as you can florez said try to secure internships and other practical hands-on experience to see where youd best fit in the industry talking to alumni or a mentor in the industry can help immensely when seeking direction and career guidance
1819,the recipients of the texas a&m university college of engineerings 2021 faculty and staff awards were recently recognized during a virtual celebration april 12 also recognized during the ceremony were the 2020 faculty and staff awards recipients presidents meritorious awards recipients and the texas a&m engineering experiment station's research impact award winners staff awardsnew employee award sharmila pathikonda strategic initiativeskey contributor awardlynn krueger tees fiscal officeengineering team awarded bassett adolfo cadena david desousa michael encinia amy klinkovsky paul onate and araceli trejo workforce development engineering academiesstaff excellence awardbonnie bustos-rios educational programsnathan howard engineering business servicesjohn maldonado petroleum engineeringbeth milam texas center for applied technologylaura olivarez educational programsjohn peterson workforce developmentkelley ragusa nuclear security science and policy institute faculty awardsresearchdean of engineering excellence awardsassistant professor level abhishek jain biomedical engineeringmanoranjan majji aerospace engineeringassociate professor level homero castaneda-lopez materials science and engineeringdiego donzis aerospace engineering professor level roozbeh jafari biomedical engineeringle xie electrical and computer engineeringservicecollege of engineering excellence award for servicecostas georghiades electrical and computer engineeringjohn e hurtado aerospace engineeringcollege of engineering excellence awards for outstanding contributionsmichael demkowicz materials science and engineeringakhilesh gaharwar biomedical engineeringtees faculty fellowricardo gutierrez-osuna computer science and engineeringvladislav yakovlev biomedical engineeringchoongho yu mechanical engineeringtees young faculty fellow award katherine davis electrical and computer engineeringxiaofeng qian materials science and engineeringfarzan sasangohar industrial and systems engineeringcollege of engineering excellence faculty awardsali mostafavi civil and environmental engineeringxiaoning qian electrical and computer engineeringteachingcollege of engineering excellence in teaching awardnancy currie-gregg industrial and systems engineeringgretchen miller civil and environmental engineeringinstructional faculty teaching awardpaul koola ocean engineeringelissa morris engineering academic and student affairsrodolfo vaghetto nuclear engineering association of former students college-level distinguished teaching awardstracy hammond computer science and engineeringdarren hartl aerospace engineeringsunil khatri electrical and computer engineeringibere nascentes alves petroleum engineeringkristi shryock aerospace engineeringpavel tsvetkov nuclear engineeringaakash tyagi computer science and engineeringvictor ugaz chemical engineering
1820,janene and david adams have established the janene and david adams '90 mechanical engineering endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university david was drawn to texas a&m because of all that it stands for the culture the values the discipline the alumni and more my time at texas a&m helped mold me into the individual that i am today and provided me the foundation i needed that has helped me throughout my career he said david and janene were inspired to establish this endowment for mechanical engineering students because of davids own experiences in the program i simply wanted to give back to the university that has done so much for me he said ultimately david wants others to have the same opportunity that he was given and is so grateful for today i hope this gift will give other mechanical engineers every opportunity i have been given throughout my life and will in some way inspire them to pass it back to fellow aggies as well he said david was the first in his family to attend texas a&m and graduated with his degree in mechanical engineering in 1990 he and janene have two daughters and their family resides in fulshear texas their oldest is a graduate of the university of houston and their youngest will graduate from texas a&m in 2022 david currently serves as the senior vice president of halliburton one of the world's largest oil field service companies
1821,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
1822,2020 marked the 80th anniversary of texas a&m universitys wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and the goal of the department was to increase the number of students scholarship gifts to mark its anniversary our 80th year was a huge milestone in that time our department has emerged as one of the leading industrial and systems engineering departments in the world said dr mark lawley professor and former department head our hope for the 80th-anniversary celebration was to renew and strengthen relationships with our former students and to solicit their help in raising funds for undergraduate student scholarships this was more successful than i ever dared to dream and i am truly humbled and grateful to all those former students who attended our events and participated in helping our current and future students the impact of so much selfless giving will be felt for years to come the first industrial and systems engineering courses at texas a&m were offered in 1918 by dr ej fermier from the department of mechanical engineering dr judson neff left harvard university to join the texas a&m faculty as the head of the newly developed department of industrial engineering in 1939 while only one student was enrolled during the 1940-41 academic year the department continued to grow the first graduate degree was granted to hall hamilton logan in 1945 his thesis was titled a study in the further industrial development of texas through an analysis of the metal industry early faculty members played an important role in further developing the department by implementing their extensive industry experience into the curriculum industry knowledge in motion and time study production engineering tool engineering plant design and personnel issues became staples that paved the way for the future of the industrial engineering education the department continued to grow significantly throughout the decades and in june 2017 lawley was appointed department head thereafter he developed a former student outreach program with a goal of increasing gifts and donations to mark the 80th year of the department with dr lewis ntaimo being appointed as department head in 2020 growth continues to be at the forefront of the department the departments fundraising team includes ntaimo; dr mike graul associate professor of practice and assistant department head; john bernheim senior director of development in industrial and systems engineering and biomedical engineering; gabrielle gutierrez manager of alumni and donor relations and cheryl kocman senior administrative coordinator we will continue the outreach efforts that dr lawley started so that our department fulfills its vision of being a top five program in the nation in the next five years and continues to attract the best students to texas a&m said ntaimo on behalf of the department i am very grateful to all our donors for their generosity especially during a pandemic their gifts will help many students for years to come prior to the pandemic the team traveled to dallas fort worth plano austin houston and san antonio to meet with former students in march 2020 the team moved to an online format to reach former students across the world during this time the department held 18 events reaching over 400 former students the following donors supported the department during the 80th anniversary: meribeth and richard t wilkinson 82 angela and michael tuller 87 sherri and todd elder 84 martha bellens-martin 85 wm michael and sugar barnes 64 stephen m johnson 73 betty and dan scarborough 63 marilyn and l david black 59 robin and william p jensen ‘85 david cotten and andria n elkins ‘04
1823,the ocean and coastal engineering industries are changing with the introduction of new and emerging technologies and policies the energy transition and the rise of blue economy (the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth improved livelihoods and preservation of the ocean ecosystem) the future is filled with possibilities and endless questions to help bring clarity to how industry is tackling the challenges it is facing and to share insight on where it is going the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university hosted a virtual industry panel with six former students the panel included: ocean engineering former students sarah dearing 08 vice president at callan marine; arun duggal 92 chief of technology at specialized offshore facilities and engineered components inc; bill hanson 79 senior vice president at great lakes dredge and dock co; richard meserole 86 senior vice president at fluor; and stein rasmussen 93 chief strategy officer at single buoy moorings offshore; and maritime systems engineering former student paula fitzpatrick 98 vice president of growth and development at wood dr sharath girimaji ocean engineering department head kicked off the event with a departmental update and formal welcome to the 83 audience members overall the panelists agreed the future for ocean engineering is vast the ocean engineering program provides you a foundation said duggal you as a person get to figure out how to use it based on your interests and where the industry leads you with the increased size of ships and the recent events that blocked the suez canal the dredging experts hanson and dearing predict a need around the world for a widening and deepening of ship channels and canals noting that their field is already experiencing a marketing boom they explained that such aid to the international trade industry is one element in how ocean engineering has worldwide applications the energy professionals fitzpatrick meserole duggal and rasmussen fielded questions about the transition to renewable resources and whether it would ever be a field that has a larger market share in the future fitzpatrick set the stage asserting that if the technology catches up to the vision for renewables she believes it will be as profitable as traditional forms of energy meserole and rasmussen added that companies are already shifting to a greener outlook due to government and public pressure to reduce their carbon footprint if you just take the us specifically the infrastructure required to make those changes is an industry unto itself and those industries have to be able to be supportable whether its offshore whether its onshore or wherever said meserole i think the time is really exciting in our space because the transition is going to continue to happen moving to the coast and climate change hanson and dearing explained how dredging continues to play a part in helping coastal communities and those at risk of being displaced by rising sea levels its about developing good solutions that are buildable and also we have to consider the long-term impacts said hanson ive already been on three calls this morning talking about the environmental impacts of dredging and how we can mitigate some of those or even enhance some of the natural infrastructure by rebuilding some of the shorelines from coast to offshore the panelists looked toward the horizon by considering where they believe the next expansion in ocean engineering will be their answers aligned automation and digitalization of engineering decarbonization public image and renewables i can still remember when i was still a student on my first day of college in norway there was a professor that came in and he said ‘if you think that in the journey that you start now youre finished learning after these three years you are wrong said rasmussen and for a split second i was thinking ‘okay this isnt the right place for me but its true you have to learn every day throughout your career these comments were part of a larger conversation for a full video version of the panel please contact meredith brown
1824,four doctoral students representing the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university placed first in the international symposium on physical design (ispd) wafer-scale physics modeling contest the event was held this spring in collaboration with cerebras systems at the 2021 association for computing machinery international symposium on physical design the contest ran from january until march it featured an innovative twist on traditional physical design which is a step in the standard design cycle for integrated circuits that shows the position of cells and routes for the interconnections between them the task was to map a 3d finite element model on a 2d grid of processing elements in a supercomputer the objective was to maximize performance and accuracy while minimizing interconnect length which involved partitioning and placement algorithms team f4@collegestation was tasked with mapping a set of models including a motorbike the motorbike model is a commonly used research object because it has nonstandard structure and various features in its shape mapping finite element models is an important step in physical modeling said team member yishaung lin a finite element model is a large and complex model that consists of numerous small and simple parts called finite elements the behavior of each finite element can be described comparatively simpler than the entire model a graphics processing unit (gpu) is a hardware device that can increase the speed of certain computer codes and algorithms according to cerebras systems their wafer-scale engine achieves a performance that is 10 000 times faster than a gpu node and is 200 times faster than any supercomputer cluster to their knowledge this is the first-ever system capable of faster-than-real-time simulation of millions of cells in realistic fluid-dynamics models team f4@collegestation included lin hailiang hu rongjian liang and yaguang li the team was advised by electrical and computer engineering professor and co-director of the departments graduate program dr jiang hu i learned a lot through the collaboration process for the contest said hailiang hu while preparing for this contest we created the coding together we brainstormed together and we held a lot of meetings to come up with a method that we all agreed on it was a good experience for all of us the ispd contest was started 14 years ago and is one of the most influential contests in the area of electronic design automation jiang hu said this is the first time that texas a&m had a team participating and the students worked hard and collaborated well i am really proud of them
1825,"dr sivakumar rathinam was recently named a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) rathinam is an associate professor in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university in 2007 he received a doctoral degree in civil engineering systems from the university of california berkeley his research is primarily focused on autonomous vehicles this includes motion planning and control of autonomous vehicles collaborative decision making combinatorial optimization artificial intelligence vision-based control and air traffic control ""i am humbled on becoming an asme fellow and to be recognized for my contributions in the area of autonomous vehicles said rathinam this award will further motivate me to pursue scholarly research of the highest quality"" the award recognizes members who have achieved excellence through engineering out of 74 788 asme members rathinam will take his place as one of the 3 427 fellows"
1826,earlier this year the student-run organization tamuhack held its seventh annual hackathon in collaboration with the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university with its beginning in 2014 tamuhack has grown to become one of the largest annual hackathons held in texas during the two-day event students get the opportunity to network with each other and industry experts from major companies across the nation while also collaborating with other students who have different skill levels and backgrounds to complete interactive competitions this year 125 teams representing 112 schools participated which included teams from india brazil ireland germany canada and the united kingdom due to the covid-19 pandemic the hackathon was held exclusively online in addition to the build anything you want prompt posed by tamuhack the students worked on various challenges presented by company sponsors including american airlines who challenged students to help boost the customer travel experience using application programming interfaces dell technologies challenged students to provide a solution to a problem that theyve seen and/or experienced in the past eight months as a result of the pandemic which could make a positive impact on a majority of people working from home for tamuhack co-presidents maggie pothugunta and anthony teo they are proud of the way the community came out to participate and enjoy the event during these unprecedented times and how students from around the world were able to connect and bring their ideas to life in a fun and safe virtual environment
1827,"hospitals are fueled by the power of technology from defibrillators to electrocardiogram machines these engineering masterpieces are essential to health care many professionals in the field develop brilliant ideas to help patients with various medical issues but the ideas are challenging to transfer from conceptualization to production engineers are necessary to close this gap dr andrew robbins research assistant professor in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university and director of admissions for engineering medicine (enmed) is working to fill this need by teaching students about the overlap between technology and health care ""enmed offers a program that fills a unique place in medical education while all medical schools train physicians to be great doctors some doctors want to create technologies to fix problems in health care "" said robbins ""medical schools do not typically train physicians in this area enmed provides a comprehensive and hands-on education program designed to prepare students to be medical innovators"" a first-of-its-kind initiative that strives to create ""physicianeers "" students learn how to diagnose patients while simultaneously studying how to develop influential medical technologies rooted in its collaboration with houston methodist hospital it prioritizes research and experimentation ""enmed is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in translating research into products that make a difference in the clinic "" said robbins ""just as i love working with startup companies developing their technology i love working with students in enmed that want to solve the biggest problems in health care robbins' focus area is biomechanics primarily working on orthopedics and orthopedic devices medical device design and translation a large part of his role is testing medical products to ensure they are safe and function properly ""i perform mechanical analysis of medical technologies including devices and tissue-engineered scaffolds to ensure that they meet the mechanical requirements of whatever application the technology is for "" robbins said ""additionally i work with startup companies developing novel medical technologies and assist them in getting federal funding for their work"" robbins aspires to be a leader in this growing field he hopes to share his knowledge with students seeking an understanding of the symbiotic relationship between engineering and medicine ""i love being part of enmed because i truly believe that we have an opportunity to impact the world in a unique way "" said robbins ""one physician can touch thousands of patients during their career but one ""physicianeer"" can create technologies that improve millions of lives"" robbins is also a research assistant professor for the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering an adjunct assistant professor of biomedical engineering and cardiovascular sciences at houston methodist research institute and the deputy director of biomechanical environments laboratories"
1828,ah that all-too-familiar ache at the back of the neck with roughly 80% of jobs being sedentary and often requiring several hours of sitting stooped in front of a computer screen neck pain is a growing occupational hazard smartphones and other devices have also caused people to bend their necks for prolonged periods but is bad posture solely to blame in a recent study researchers at texas a&m university have found that while poor neck and head postures are indeed the primary determinants of neck pain body mass index age and the time of the day also influence the necks ability to perform sustained or repeated movements neck pain is one of the leading and fastest-growing causes of disability in the world said dr xudong zhang professor in the wm michael barnes '64 department of industrial and systems engineering our study has pointed to a combination of work and personal factors that strongly influence the strength and endurance of the neck over time more importantly since these factors have been identified they can then be modified so that the neck is in better health and pain is avoided or deterred the results of the study are published online in the journal human factors a flagship journal in the field of human factors and ergonomics according to the global burden of disease study by the institute for health metrics and evaluation neck pain is ranked as the fourth leading cause of global disability one of the main reasons for neck pain has been attributed to lifestyle particularly when people spend long durations of time with their necks bent forward however zhang said a systematic quantitative study has been lacking on how personal factors such as sex weight age and work-related habits can affect neck strength and endurance for their experiments zhang and his team recruited 20 adult men and 20 adult women with no previous neck-related issues to perform controlled head-neck exertions in a laboratory setting further instead of asking the participants to hold a specific neck posture for a long time similar to what might happen at a workplace they performed sustained-till exhaustion head-neck exertions in the laboratory conducting experiments where subjects do long tasks with their neck can take several hours of data collection which is not very practical for the experimenters and of course the participants in our study said zhang to solve this problem our experiments were strategically designed to mimic workplace neck strains but in a shorter period of time in these exercises subjects were seated and asked to put on an augmented helmet that allowed them to exert measurable force by the neck then the researchers asked them to either keep their necks straight or maintain their neck tilted in a forward or backward position in this position a force was applied to their head and neck on an adjustable frame this exertion was either to their maximum capacity or half of it before testing the researchers noted their subjects age body mass index and the time of day when zhang and his team analyzed their data they found that as expected work-related factors like head/neck posture play a very important role in determining both neck strength and endurance but they also observed that while there was no significant difference between male and female subjects in neck endurance body mass index was a significant predictor of neck endurance also to their surprise the time of day affected the necks ability to sustain an exertion without fatigue it is intuitive to think that over the course of the day our necks get more tired since we use it more said zhang but roughly half of our participants were tested in the morning and the remaining in the afternoon also some of the participants had day jobs and some worked the night shift despite this we consistently found the time-of-day effect on neck endurance the researchers said their database of neck strength and endurance is also necessary for building advanced musculoskeletal biomechanical models of the neck which can then be used to for example tease apart specific neck muscles that are more vulnerable to injury looking ahead we might have the data to begin evaluating if patients recovering from neck injuries are ready to return to work based on whether their neck strength and endurance are within the norm said zhang also engineers and designers could utilize our data to make wearable devices like helmets that are more ergonomic and less stressful on the neck other contributors to this work include dr suman chowdhury from texas tech university and yu zhou bocheng wan and curran reddy from the industrial and systems engineering department this research is funded by the national institute for occupational safety and health part of the centers for disease control and prevention
1829,patricia itzel rodriguez a senior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university has been named the 2021 recipient of the society of naval architects and marine engineers (sname) alan c mcclure graduate scholarship i know that my professors were really pushing for me rodriguez said and it feels amazing to know that there are people out there who support me it really does mean something that my education means a lot to them too named after an innovator and pioneer in the field of maritime arts and sciences the alan c mcclure graduate scholarship is part of the sname graduate scholars program it is awarded to student members of the organization in good academic standing with a minimum of two years of service seeking to pursue graduate degrees in the fields of naval architecture marine engineering and/or ocean engineering for rodriguez it serves as a foundation to her doctoral degree at texas a&m where she will be harnessing her lifelong fascination with ships with a focus in naval architecture rodriguez joined sname in her sophomore year as soon as she entered the ocean engineering department serving that year as an underclassman ambassador she quickly got acquainted with and learned the dynamics of the professional organization in her junior year she served as vice president and now she serves as the president of the local student branch i like that sname introduces us to the professional side of the industry she said you don't really get to see that a lot in the classroom and being able to interact with other students in the organization has been impactful i've met a lot of people from new jersey from greece from mexico just being able to meet other students who are in the same situation as you just from a different geographic location is like ‘wow so we really are all on the same metaphorical boat sname is a global society for maritime and ocean professionals with more than 6 000 members in 95 countries around the world it works to advance the art science and practice of marine-related professions through the global exchange of knowledge and ideas engineering education and encouraging and sponsoring research and development throughout the year the local branch hosts company talks for which industry representatives are invited to speak on what they do and how they work interviews are also set up for students who show interest in pursuing an internship or work opportunity with the visiting companies the branch also puts on social events such as an annual barbecue in november additionally all members student and professional alike are offered the opportunity to converge and meet with other members from around the globe at sname-hosted professional conventions i would certainly give our ocean engineering organizations and research a shot rodriguez said there's a lot you can get out of them by participating in them even if theyre not advertised as much or even just giving them a listen from time to time
1830,to learn more about how to get involved with the local branch of sname contact faculty advisor dr mirjam fürth
1831,jeanne prestwood administrative associate iv in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2021 sustainability champion by the office of sustainability within the division of finance and operations for her efforts personally and within the department the purpose of the sustainability champion awards is to recognize and reward one student one faculty member and one staff member each year who have demonstrated exemplary effort dedication and leadership throughout the year in fostering a campus culture of sustainability anyone who knows ms prestwood also knows her passion for recycling said rebecca rice senior administrative coordinator ii in her nomination letter she once told me ‘i am trying to clean up the earth one plastic bottle at a time so from recycling efforts to angel trees to food drives to the collection of old and gently used shoes ms prestwood is always going above and beyond by putting others first and giving back what she can this is a true sign of some amazing aggie spirit that should be acknowledged and celebrated in order to be eligible for this award nominees must have demonstrated excellence and commitment to making aggieland more environmentally economically and/or socially sustainable
1832,jaime andres and yolanda veals from the texas a&m university college of engineering were selected to receive the 2021 presidents meritorious service award they will receive their award during a virtual award ceremony monday april 19 the president's meritorious service awards recognize and reward 25 individual staff members two supervisors and two teams for their commendable service to texas a&m recipients of this highly prestigious award have demonstrated their commitment to the aggie core values of excellence integrity leadership loyalty respect and selfless service a nomination period was held in january and an anonymous committee selected the award winners andres 14 20 is senior administrative coordinator in the department of chemical engineering he joined the department in november 2019 and has been with texas a&m for over six years he previously worked in the college of education and human development and the department of small animal clinical sciences andres has a business management degree from the mays business school and completed his masters degree in december 2020 hired during a time of uncertainty where the department lost key faculty and staff members andres was invaluable to the department as he took the initiative to help establish faculty affairs procedures aligning with the college's internal process as well as the dean of faculties these established procedures have reduced the time to complete faculty promotion and tenure packets he also leads by example as he expects nothing but the best from the staff and demonstrates a high level of attention to detail he asks others to follow yolanda veals is senior business administrator in the engineering business services division in the college of engineering she holds bachelors and masters degrees from texas a&m both completed while working full time she has served texas a&m for 28 years in her current role she manages the finances and business personnel for four different departments and several large research centers in addition to her formal education veals has accumulated many hours in continuing business and personnel management education which adds significantly to her abilities as a staff leader her career performance has earned her multiple staff achievement awards at the department and college levels to each of them i extend my most sincere congratulations and deep appreciation for their tremendous efforts that make texas a&m such a great place to live and work said dr john junkins interim president of texas a&m in a press release visit here for a complete list of winners
1833,the texas a&m foundation has selected dr walter haisler jr 67 as a recipient of its 2020 partner in philanthropy award haisler received the award for his lifelong devotion to texas a&m university and the department of aerospace engineering at a virtual presentation on april 12 established by the foundations board of trustees in 2016 the partner in philanthropy award celebrates aggie faculty and staff who demonstrate dedicated and lasting participation commitment and creative leadership to philanthropy and texas a&m to be selected faculty or staff must be nominated by a member of the texas a&m foundation development staff foundation gift planning officer kevin westerman 11 nominated haisler for the award dr haisler exemplifies excellence loyalty and selfless service through his many years of dedicated service to texas a&m westerman said even in retirement he continues to give of his time energy and resources to advance the aerospace engineering department leaders like dr haisler are what make texas a&m truly great added tyson voelkel 96 president and ceo of the texas a&m foundation this recognition is special in that it celebrates not just his industry success or academic reputation but also how he has set a principled example for the rest of his department and the university to follow for more than four decades haisler has gained renown as a dedicated teacher internationally recognized researcher and faithful steward for the department of aerospace engineering texas a&m university and the aerospace community heralded as an exceptional mentor by current and former students and faculty alike haisler has earned several faculty and teaching awards including two student awards four college awards and the association of former students award for excellence in teaching dr haislers leadership is a tremendous example and inspiration said kathleen m gibson 81 chair of the texas a&m foundation board of trustees in leading the progress of the department of aerospace engineering forward in teaching research facilities and enlightened philanthropy dr haisler has made career contributions of lasting and sustaining value we are deeply grateful for the example that dr haislers aggie spirit sets for us all during his 12 years as head of texas a&ms aerospace department haisler launched the 1985 initiative to construct the harvey r bum bright building to provide new facilities more conducive to the departments research and added a dozen faculty with particular emphasis on space-related research haisler and his wife delores have since created a scholarship endowment for aerospace engineering students and pledged a gift in their estate to fund a chair for future department heads of aerospace engineering this generous pledge will ensure the department can recruit candidates of the highest caliber who can use the chair funds for departmental and professional development as department head i realized the value of being able to utilize endowed chair funds for recruiting faculty enhancing development providing seed money for promising teaching and research ideas and for the department heads personal development activities haisler said recipients of the partner in philanthropy award receive $10 000 that they can use to advance their research and teaching or direct to an area of their choice haisler has chosen to dedicate his monetary award to support fellowships for aerospace engineering graduate students prior to the partner in philanthropy award haisler was awarded the charles w crawford service award in 2001 the texas a&m university college of engineering faculty fellow award in 2004 and the charles w crawford service award again in 2007 my hope for the department and texas a&m is twofold haisler continued first that both quality instruction and research contributions continue to increase in stature while maintaining the special aggie spirit that makes texas a&m so unique; and second that my giving encourages aerospace engineering faculty and former students to consider making gifts that have long-standing impact for this department and help make it the best in the nation
1834,story written by the texas a&m foundation the texas a&m foundation is a nonprofit organization that aspires to be among the most trusted philanthropies in higher education it builds a brighter future for texas a&m university one relationship at a time to learn more visit the texas a&m foundation website
1835,originally from colombia valentina alarcon a student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university and participant in the zachry leadership program (zlp) moved to oklahoma during the first grade since then shes lived in four countries including brazil and the united arab emirates and her passion for traveling and helping others has only grown alarcons mother a petroleum engineer inspired alarcon to get into engineering at texas a&m originally enrolled as a mechanical engineering student alarcon was hoping to find a creative field where she could combine her love of art and physics after attending a entry-to-a-major presentation by nuclear engineering professor dr lin shao alarcon began to think about changing her major i like to say that nuclear engineering found me said alarcon i didnt know how it connected to things like radiology in health or propulsion for aircrafts or how many career paths it could open up to me i was just amazed by it alarcon had already enrolled in the zlp by the time she joined the department and she credits the program for helping her discover what she truly wanted to study alarcon originally applied for the zachry leadership program because she knew it would look good on her resume the zlp is a five-semester long program with an accompanying academic certificate in holistic leadership and students emerge from the program with an appreciation for the power of collaboration and the diversity of thought while also learning to become a better leader in any and every aspect of their lives but alarcon wasnt prepared for how much of a revolutionary experience it would be or how little her resume would matter throughout the interview process they didnt ask any engineering questions at all said alarcon they didnt even want my gpa they just wanted to know who i was as a person what is holistic leadership and what does it look like the zlp stresses the importance of self-awareness and self-management students continue to delve deeper into understanding who they are and what they want out of life before they begin to learn how to lead others
1836,each semester of the program includes a mandatory pre-semester retreat that is an intensive multiday event consisting of experiential learning interactive exercises and dialogue while elaborate the retreats are often everybodys favorite part of the zlp journaling is an amazing tool that i picked up from the first retreat and have used ever since commented alarcon as well as how to use a vision board theyre both great for visualizing your future your goals in life and the steps you need to take to get there according to alarcon some of the best qualities a leader can cultivate are vulnerability and the ability to collaborate with others i think when youre vulnerable with others people are more likely to respond and relate to you said alarcon being vulnerable and authentic helps you earn the right to influence others and thats what makes you a good leader earning respect said alarcon adding that this is especially important in engineering where you have to be able to work well with others both academically and professionally business is one of the three pillars of the zlp along with leadership and service and alarcon has already been using the entrepreneurial skills shes learned from the program so far shes helped design a portable air purifier prototype as part of the national science foundations innovation corps program and a fitness app that connects trainers and trainees as part of the student engineers council directed internship i still crave that creative innovative side of engineering said alarcon but the zlp has taught me that being a leader doesnt necessarily mean achieving something amazing or incredible it just means leaving the world a little bit better than you found it every day
1837,will it be possible to design materials that are unfazed by extreme temperatures in the near future in a study published in the journal nature computational materials researchers at texas a&m university have described a computational tool to evaluate a materials suitability for high-temperature applications such as gas turbines for jet engines and electrical power generators the computational framework which incorporates artificial intelligence and basic physics can forecast how materials will behave under harsh conditions in a fraction of the time compared to other algorithms we have used an innovative and interdisciplinary approach for screening materials that is a million times faster than traditional techniques said dr raymundo arróyave professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and corresponding author on the study currently these types of calculations even for a small temperature above absolute zero are an enormous challenge because they are computationally expensive
1838,since the late 1800s gas turbines have been the workhorse of power generation this drum-shaped machine lined with a series of bent or curved blades converts chemical energy from burning fuel into mechanical energy when the turbines blades rotate this motion is then exploited either to propel an aircraft or generate electricity gas turbines operate in high-temperature corrosive conditions making them prone to damage and progressive deterioration and so designing materials that can withstand extreme temperatures has been an ongoing pursuit among an array of high-temperature tolerant materials ceramics known as max phases are known to have properties that bridge the gap between conventional ceramics and metals in other words they are less brittle than ceramics and have higher temperature tolerance than many metals these materials are ideal candidates for structural components for gas turbines and heat-resistant coatings said dr miladin radovic professor in the materials science and engineering department and a senior author on the study however only a few out of hundreds of possible max phases have been experimentally verified to be high-temperature corrosion and oxidation-resistant the researchers noted that given the vast number of elements that can be used to make max phases and an even greater number of ways of combining them the task of experimentally verifying how each composite will behave at high temperatures becomes impractical on the other hand computational techniques such as purely machine-learning algorithms have not been as robust at predicting the materials behavior at nonzero temperatures as an alternative to experiments and machine learning physics-based mathematical models offer a rigorous method to evaluate the properties of max phases at different temperatures among these models the most established one called density functional theory can account for the behavior of materials with minimal input data but this theory best applies to materials at their lowest energy state called the ground state to predict their behavior at elevated temperatures more complex and time-consuming calculations are needed these calculations scale very poorly said arróyave for perspective if we want to use density functional theory to calculate the properties of a candidate material at the lowest temperature of zero kelvins that is at the ground state it might take about a day of computational time but now if you want to calculate the same properties at a finite temperature say 1000 kelvins it can take weeks further he noted that predicting the behavior of materials when exposed to oxygen at elevated temperatures is more complicated and may take months or longer even when using thousands of supercomputer processors at a time hence instead of relying solely on just one method arróyave and his team used a three-pronged approach that included a combination of density functional theory machine learning and computational thermodynamics the researchers first calculated some fundamental properties of max phases at zero kelvins with density functional theory next those calculations were used as inputs to a machine-learning model in this way the researchers replaced otherwise computationally expensive calculations from density functional theory with machine-learning models then they used computational thermodynamics to determine the most stable compounds for a given temperature and a certain max phase composition lets consider a max phase made of titanium aluminum and carbon at higher temperatures we could have for example carbon dioxide carbon monoxide and other combinations of carbon and oxygen that might compete to exist said arróyave using our framework one can now determine which phases or combinations we can expect at that temperature how much of it and whether that can be detrimental simply put we can now quickly tell whether the material will decompose at a given temperature the researchers noted that although they tested their computational framework on a few candidate max phases the algorithm can be used for gauging the behavior of other existing or novel materials as well the research will help in rapidly ruling out those elements that might form unstable oxides at the material design phase said arróyave we can then use these materials to build superior gas turbines and other machines that can withstand even the harshest environmental conditions with minimal wear and tear over time these high-performance turbines will benefit not just the aviation and energy industry but also consumers who will see reduced costs other contributors to the research include daniel sauceda dr prashant singh andrew falkowski yexiao chen thien doung guillermo vazquez and dr miladin radovic from the materials science and engineering department this research is funded by the designing materials to revolutionize and engineer our future grant from the national science foundation
1839,students at texas a&m university are bringing vintage into the future with a new virtual reality (vr) experience for aspiring engineers the retro rocket teams from the department of aerospace engineering and j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering have worked to repurpose an old metal rocket car from a 1950s carnival ride and turn it into a vr flight simulator the end product will travel with spark! pk-12 the college of engineerings stem (science technology engineering and math) outreach group to introduce young minds to the excitement of engineering the project idea originated from the rocket cars donor eric schulte who also owns the historic local hullabaloo diner along with jim mabe aerospace engineering visiting scholar from the boeing company the duo formed the idea to transform the rare antique into an interactive experience to inspire the next generation of engineers with funding from boeing the student groups endeavored to turn the idea into reality the aerospace students a senior capstone design team advised by dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department and director of the multifunctional materials and aerospace structures optimization (m2aestro) vr studio kicked off the project
1840,it was neat to have 10 intelligent self-selected people in a room going after a mission said hartl it felt just like a startup company every time i would walk into a team meeting the retro rocket aerospace design team developed the flight simulator software and integrated vr hardware after a year of planning designing and developing the retro rocket emerged as an immersive vr experience rooted in real-world dynamics the view from the cockpit when the user sits in the cockpit and slips on the vr headset they find themselves in the pilots seat of a maroon and white aircraft (keeping true to texas a&m style) their environment a custom-built map of the texas a&m college station campus embedded in mountainous terrain for added adventure the pilot can fly freely over campus but to add a fun engagement piece large golden rings hover in the sky near the retro rocket as an in-game challenge the pilot can test their skills by flying through the rings collecting as many points as possible something thats fun will stick in your head at a young age and youll remember that for a long time said armando gonzalez-feuchter member of the retro rocket team kids want to be creative and make their own things and we can show them aerospace is one way they can do that
1841,although entertainment is a high priority for the project to keep the young audiences interest it was also important to the team to introduce young students to some of the realistic mechanics of flight to fly the virtual rocket the team integrated a physical yoke (aircraft steering wheel) that gives the user control over their virtual aircraft's speed direction and altitude their steering in real life is reflected by the virtual yoke seen in the vr turning left and right in sync with their hand movements along the dashboard users can also see interactive indicators reflecting their speed and orientation and if they look around outside of the aircraft they can even see the vapor trails they leave behind much like the real experience its kind of the wow factor said team member keaton dodd having something like this where they can put it in their mind that ‘aerospace engineers built this and thats cool in addition to the visual elements the retro rocket team created fun and realistic audio to fully package the immersive environment as the pilot flies changing their speed and direction they can hear wind alarms and engine noises through the vr headset the team even included haptic feedback that creates vibrations to bring the rumbles of the engine to life
1842,like a roller coaster ride at an arcade the end goal is to combine the vr experience they created with mimicked movement of the rocket car to test and show how this integration can work retro rocket engineers designed a small-scale model that informed a team of mechanical engineering students as they built the accompanying motion platform that the rocket car will be mounted on the platform controls the rocket car's motions emulating the experience seen by the pilot in the virtual environment
1843,i really like the idea that this project has an actual product that will be used said team member hannah lehman one of the big appealing factors for me was that this would actually exist years after i (graduate) since the original team completed their developments in the spring of 2020 a follow-up team of aerospace students has been handed the baton they are completing the integration between the vr simulator software and the hardware needed to move the rocket and its pilot as well as fine-tuning the user experiences based on k-12 teacher input it is envisioned that completing the fully developed flight simulator will be a group of architecture students who will focus on replicating the aesthetics of the vintage rocket car honoring its 1950s style while also showcasing texas a&m the retro rocket ride built by students for students will be a memorable example of the exciting things one can do create and be with an education in stem
1844,linda and joe fowler have established the linda and joe r fowler '68 engineering scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university when deciding where to attend college joe knew of texas a&ms stellar reputation and because he was good in math and science knew he wanted to study engineering my two older brothers had gone to a&m to study engineering and my dad felt that a&m was the best fit for me he saidjoe and linda were married as undergraduate students after joes freshman year and called aggieland home for several years a&m was a great place to finish growing up together and develop a life it is a welcoming place where all the faculty and staff showed they wanted you to succeed joe said after graduating with his degree in mechanical engineering in 1968 joe stayed at texas a&m for graduate school while getting my masters i was introduced to the engineering consulting business by working for some professors and realized i really liked the work he said that convinced me to stay for a phd a few years after leaving texas a&m joe started in the consulting business by co-founding stress engineering services inc joe said that his time at texas a&m positively impacted his career in several respects he also highlighted that texas a&m was as hard academically then as it is now which resulted in strong graduates with employers wanting to hire aggies the aggie traditions and aggie spirit are great building blocks for developing character he said the fowlers are longtime contributors to the college of engineering and have established numerous endowments to support both students and faculty as of 2021 16 students have benefitted from the fowlers various endowments our inspiration to give back stems from students greatest needs and the fact that texas a&m has remained true to its core values and is still a place where students of all incomes can succeed joe said we wanted to do our part to grow and maintain this great legacy joe said that supporting education is their priority because of the leverage it provides to improve lives for generations while he was an undergraduate student joe received a scholarship from mr la priester 17 of dallas receiving this scholarship made a huge difference in our finances and our confidence that we would succeed he said we learned how important giving back to the next generation is mr priester was more than 40 years older than us and never met us but his generosity inspired us to do the same our hope and prayer is that it will enable more students to attend texas a&m and inspire them to give back when they are able just as mr priester did it for usalthough the fowlers have been great financial contributors to texas a&m they have also given back through their time and involvement often the university needs more than money it needs advice wisdom and sometimes action to help it solve a problem or continue to improve joe said i was chair of the advisory council of the college of engineering from 2003-20 and the council was able to provide help and support to the university when speaking to others who are considering establishing a gift joe encourages individuals to pick an area they like thats a need of texas a&m alumni understand the needs of the university and the aggie spirit and therefore are in the best position to give back he saidmy advice to current and future aggies is to stay involved find your passion while on campus and look for opportunities to help he said we have given to texas a&m as god has blessed us and our goal is to leave it better than we found it
1845,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president of development
1846,each year 16 of the nations brightest students head to washington dc to discuss the issues facing nuclear energy policy education and research with key policymakers traditionally composed of only nuclear engineering students the washington nuclear engineering student delegation has broadened over the years to include students from a diverse assortment of disciplines including but not limited to nonproliferation national security health physics and environmental science and policy the application process consists of a short essay resume and interview with the delegation officers brent hollrah mechanical engineering graduate student who is serving as this years vice chair for the delegation said theyre primarily looking for effective and persuasive communicators since well be interacting with policymakers were looking for students who can communicate highly technical ideas to the nontechnical audience said hollrah our goal is to encourage legislators to take action on the issues were bringing to light prior to the actual visit to washington student delegators will meet to research the current climate and policy issues surrounding nuclear energy and research on capitol hill this unique opportunity allows students to have an insiders perspective about the legislative side of nuclear energy students can expect to meet with other organizations such as the nuclear energy institute and congressional fellows from the american nuclear society we already know the textbook definition of how a bill becomes a law said hollrah but reading a textbook doesnt give you the same experience as meeting with these different professional organizations were able to see all of the work that goes into it from lobbying to the unofficial likelihood that a bill will pass the delegation is tentatively scheduled to be in person sept 26-oct 1 2021 the option of a virtual delegation is reserved if necessary applications to join this years nuclear engineering student delegation are now open and the deadline to apply is april 30 2021 both undergraduate and graduate students of all majors with an interest in nuclear policy issues are encouraged to apply for the delegation
1847,"dr tim davis and dr roozbeh jafari were recently named recipients of the texas a&m engineering experiment station's research impact award the award recognizes research that has had an impact broadly defined as leading to outcomes that extend beyond conventional boundaries including opening new lines of research solving a long existing problem or producing tools or products that have become widely adopted in practice by industry and/or government davis received the award for developing novel methods for solving graph problems using linear algebra and creating widely used algorithms and software for sparse matrix computations jafari was recognized for pioneering context-aware physiological monitoring devices based on wearable computers davis is a professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university his research is focused on two main areas: sparse linear algebra on graphics processing units (gpus) and methods for solving graph algorithms in the language of sparse linear algebra over semirings gpus provide the promise of high performance and lower energy use but they work best on very regular problems the challenge is to map the irregular nature of sparse matrix algorithms to perform well on gpu architectures davis many honors include receiving the 2018 walston chubb award for innovation and a dean of engineering excellence award from the college of engineering he was elected as a fellow of the society for industrial and applied mathematics for ""contributions to sparse matrix algorithms and software including the university of florida sparse matrix collection"" he also is a fellow of the association for computing machinery and the institute of electrical and electronics engineers dr davis work on sparse matrices and graphblas is extremely impactful and found in a variety of products and tools said dr scott schaefer department head and holder of the lynn ‘84 and bill crane ‘83 department head chair in computer science and engineering the interest from industry in his recent work has been extraordinary jafari is a professor with joint appointments in the department of biomedical engineering the department of computer science and engineering and the department of electrical and computer engineering he is also the director of the embedded signal processing lab his research focuses on wearable computer design and signal processing with applications in health care wellness and enhancing productivity and safety of the users he has received numerous honors and awards including several best paper awards and is a presidential impact fellow at texas a&m a recipient of the national science foundation career award and a fellow of the american institute for medical and biological engineering the potential for dr jafaris work on wearable computers to monitor health status and predict infections or other negative events is tremendous said dr mike mcshane department head and holder of the james cain professorship ii in biomedical engineering of course the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has heightened interest in developing such advanced tools for the welfare of all"
1848,before your phone can be a source of endless tiktok videos you must first acquire it through a global supply chain but when these supply chains are disrupted whether due to a global pandemic unexpected winter storms or a massive cargo ship blocking a busy trade canal it can affect everything from the food you eat to the toilet paper on the shelves of local grocery stores dr eleftherios lefteris iakovou the harvey hubbell professor of industrial distribution at texas a&m university and director of manufacturing and logistics innovation initiatives for the texas a&m engineering experiment station is utilizing his years of expertise in supply chain research to bolster current supply chains and develop new resilient supply chain systems he recently published an extensive look into supply chains and how to build a more resilient system in the united states so what exactly is a supply chain at its core it is the network or process involved in the creation and sale of a product to consumers and industrial customers iakovou also the co-director of the global value chains program at the bush school and director of supply chain management for the secureamerica institute of the texas a&m university system explained that it is far more intricate than just that however a supply chain is an extended enterprise over which we do five things: we plan we buy we make we move we sell he said over this extended enterprise we manage four flows we manage flows of products flows of processes flows of information and financial flows and unless we do this synergistically we cannot add value to the supply chain itself defining disruptions when one part of this delicately balanced network fails and disrupts the process the rest of the supply chain consumers companies and the nation included are directly affected this can be a disruption in supply or production such as when a manufacturing plant in japan is out of commission due to a tsunami; a disruption in demand and supply as seen with the increased need and lower supply of power during the winter storm in texas; or a disruption in transportation due to the suez canal being blocked by one of the largest container ships in the world the ever given vessel he explained that these global supply chains are very brittle and highly susceptible to disruptions particularly surrounding uncertain or unplanned events for example the covid-19 pandemic demonstrated a lack of preparedness by nations and companies alike for black swan (low probability-high impact) events it's one thing to prepare an organization based on chronically occurring disruptions and it's another thing to think ‘how can i create a supply chain that is flexible enough agile enough so when something really bad happens it has the posture to bounce back as quickly as possible iakovou said the future of resilience developing a resilient supply chain starts with understanding that one size does not fit all each has its own set of complications and strengths in the modern global economy cost reduction has almost become synonymous with outsourcing and offshoring the manufacturing of components for products however it is important for companies to still have home-based manufacturing plants that operate even at a lower production rate in case there is an issue with the offshored supply iakovou said covid-19 demonstrated the sole supplier model is out of business companies are pushing for low cost low cost itself is not sustainable he said the federal government on the other side needs resilience and security for supply chains critical to the nation (eg pharmaceuticals semiconductor chips large capacity batteries rare earth minerals) but resilience costs money as its based on redundancies (diversified sourcing additional inventories) iakovou suggests the government has a key role to play by transitioning companies away from a shareholder model and into a stakeholder model as suggested in 2019 by the business roundtable private and government sectors would have to collaborate and consider not only shareholder value but also workers and associated partners society national competitiveness and security and the environment that's a monumental shift that if it happens correctly would allow for new optimal trade-offs between cost efficiencies resilience and sustainability he said iakovou pointed out that in the past governmental agencies were critical in de-risking innovations related to the internet touch screens and vaccines he believes the government should work with the movers and shakers in society and the private sector to continue to advance similar innovations in supply chains critical to the nation and to further support the nations well-being competitiveness security and global leadership there is a talk in my humble opinion deservedly so about the elevated role of the government as a further catalytic entity to spur more innovation in the way we design these global supply chains so that they display cost-competitive resilience in order to address the new realities he said and that's where the stakeholder model would be very handy so i absolutely believe that this is the way to move forward
1849,researchers at texas a&m university are developing novel tests to diagnose preeclampsia earlier in a pregnancy even before symptoms occur allowing hospitals to better treat pregnant patients preeclampsia a pregnancy complication that can lead to organ damage especially in the liver and kidneys is one of the leading causes of maternal and baby deaths during pregnancy current diagnosis typically occurs very late in the pregnancy (around the 20th week) by documenting common symptoms such as high blood pressure protein in the urine and swelling in the legs however an added complication is that these symptoms resemble many common side effects associated with a healthy pregnancy and sometimes there may also be no symptoms even if preeclampsia exists what were looking for is more specific biomarkers that could be monitored and addressed said dr samuel mabbott assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering the research is being developed in collaboration with dr gerard coté professor in the department of biomedical engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station center for remote health technologies and systems and dr mahua choudhury associate professor in the texas a&m college of pharmacy to better diagnose the condition we are developing an assay on paper that using a drop of blood and a small hand-held meter can measure a biomarker in the blood much earlier in the pregnancy further by using paper-based systems the technology is better suited for low resource settings where preeclampsia is even more prevalent coté said coté and mabbott have a keen interest in developing diagnostic tests that can be utilized in underserved under-resourced and often remote environments both are also developing cardiac and diabetes diagnostic and monitoring tests for these populations as part of an engineering research center funded by the national science foundation called precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations the current testing relies on microrna noncoding rna sequences in the body that are involved in protein creation mabbott said compared to antibody-based testing microrna may help clinicians detect diseases earlier antibodies or antigen-based diagnostics are understandably well utilized their levels can be used to quantify disease states mabbott said the problem is it takes a long time for those biomolecules to achieve detectable levels levels of disease-related microrna levels are perturbed much earlier in the disease cycle along with microrna the team also aims to find histones a specific family of proteins changes in expression of both of these biomarkers can be monitored and measured to better detect patients who are more susceptible to preeclampsia one challenge mabbott said is identifying emerging disease biomarkers and most significantly clinically validating them by combining the detection of micrornas and histones in one multiplexed paper fluidic device it is hoped that the robustness and accessibility of the test will increase the long-term goal is to have a test that can be easily administered to pregnant patients in any circumstance and provide test results within 30 minutes since the test itself is novel and the targeted biomarkers are revolutionary it is incredibly exciting to be working on the project mabbott said were trying to think ahead by using both emerging biomarkers and accessible test formats
1850,imagine that the process of distributing electricity to homes from the power grid is like travelers boarding a train there are multiple steps to take before they can reach their final destination first they have to buy a ticket at the ticketing booth – this is where the power is generated second they board a train that departs from the station – the power is transmitted over distances using transmission lines finally the train takes the travelers (electricity) to their final destination this final step of sending power to homes and businesses is called the distribution system – and it is critical that it remains reliable dr chanan singh and doctoral student arun karngala from the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university are working to develop a reliability framework for the distribution system so that utility companies can be better prepared for uncertainties that may arise singh is a regents professor the irma runyon chair professor and university distinguished professor by developing these models and methods to perform the analysis of the distribution level of the power grid adverse effects of localized weather events or equipment failure can potentially be prevented
1851,the researchers framework can be used to test the systemwide impact of installing rooftop solar and energy storage by the customers in the distribution system we found that with 40% of customers installing solar capacity that amounts to 15 times the peak demand of the respective households karngala explained with sufficient energy storage systems the reliability indices measured significant improvements for example the system average interruption frequency index was improved by 50% the system average interruption duration index was improved by 70% and the customer average interruption duration index was improved by 45% karngala said that this framework can also be used to decide the capacity of solar rooftop installation if the installed solar capacity is increased from one time the peak demand to two times the peak demand the reliability indices show steady improvement the improvement in indices tapers off after the installed solar capacity is increased more than 25 times the peak demand performing reliability studies can help create business cases for purchasing such storage and ongoing research on storage technologies is helping to provide more affordable and reliable alternatives the research team is focused on the analysis and reliability at the distribution level as it is the most vulnerable of all stages of power allocation and therefore can cause the most trouble for customers further unlike high-level sectors of the power grid – such as power generation and transmission – that have existing methods of analysis and procedures to ensure that the reliability will be maintained in the presence of uncertainties at specified levels the distribution level generally does not have such standards most independent system operators (isos) ensure they have enough power generation reserve so that if an unexpected issue arises (eg transmission line failure generator failure the load being higher than forecasted etc) resulting in the total load not being supplied the load can be adjusted so that it is not lost completely for all customers many isos use criteria that ensure that on average this load curtailment would not occur more than one day in 10 years such standards are not typically used at the distribution level this work was published in ieee transactions on sustainable energy in january the winter storm event that happened recently in texas was of a different nature that spanned the entire state singh said but extreme weather can be in a variety of forms for example you can have tornadoes or hurricanes where the effect is not statewide but instead more limited areas are affected we believe that in those situations these models and the tools that they will provide to us to manage the system will enhance the reliability of the distribution system because you dont have to rely only on the power that is coming from the grid but also from other local sources such as solar and perhaps wind one challenge that the team is facing is that there are many different kinds of generating systems being integrated into distribution systems that must be accounted for in this framework analysis as karngala explained distribution systems previously were considered the only consumers of energy but today there are newer technologies and many more distributed energy resources coming into the distribution system such as solar panels wind generation and storage the exciting part about working on distribution systems is that these are in a phase of change now karngala said these are changing from traditional systems to much more advanced systems and we are in that transition phase where we need to develop models and methodologies ultimately the team is looking to build a comprehensive framework of reliability analysis where approaches such as demand response price strategies and operational strategies can be included and be expanded upon as the power grid evolves there is no shortage of projects that can be developed around this framework as many models methods and operational strategies can be included in the reliability evaluation karngala said this work is funded by the department of energy as part of the us-india collaborative for smart distribution system with storage project
1852,kelsey kitzmiller graduate student in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the engineering graduate merit doctoral fellowship a highly competitive fellowship given to a current student nominated by the students respective graduate department offered by the texas a&m college of engineering this prestigious fellowship is open to domestic doctoral applicants only one student can be awarded in a participating department i greatly appreciate the recognition i have received by being selected for this fellowship and i am thankful for the additional time and resources to dedicate to my studies kitzmiller said this fellowship motivates me to continue working hard in my academic pursuits and it provides me the freedom to be as successful as i can be i am very honored to be a recipient of such a prestigious fellowship kitzmiller received her bachelors degree in mathematics from the university of pittsburgh at johnstown in 2020 her past research projects have focused on applications of nonlinear optimization and graph theory she hopes to stay in academia to continue researching and teaching after graduation her application and experience make kelsey an excellent recipient for the merit scholarship said dr erick moreno-centeno associate professor in industrial and systems engineering she has vast knowledge in research and thus understands the associated high expectations moreover kelsey also has ample mentoring experience which primes her to excel in teaching thus i am really grateful that kelsey is joining my research team and i look forward to working with her
1853,the department of multidisciplinary engineerings subsea engineering program at texas a&m university is crossing oceans to connect with students like adenike ogunbode a graduate student in the master of science in subsea engineering program she is currently taking classes virtually in her hometown of lagos nigeria after earning her bachelors degree in civil engineering she began working in the subsea engineering industry where she discovered her desire to plunge further into the subject at first it was quite scary because i knew i didn't have a background in subsea said ogunbode however i think with engineers a lot of our skillsets are transferable i still felt that a formal education was necessary for me and this was why i decided to pursue a degree in subsea engineering as a student in this program she enjoys the opportunities it provides even from thousands of miles away she has been exposed to various new experiences i can't emphasize enough the exposure to the industry you receive from day one said ogunbode there is a collaboration between your professors and an emphasis on theoretical expertise and connections with world-class experts as well to provide you with a diverse experience subsea engineers battle harsh offshore environments to build structures that are thousands of meters below the sea surface they are leaders in the oil gas and renewable energy fields as leaders they stretch the limits of science and engineering the subsea industry is phenomenal in that they have pushed boundaries in so many aspects of engineering said ogunbode from the subsea development we have gone in recent years where no man or machine has been before ogunbode specializes in subsea risers risers are vertical conduits that transport production fluid and injection fluids between the seabed and surface facility the program has inspired her to leverage her experience in subsea engineering into supporting offshore wind and the energy sector at large i want to uncover a broader skillset not just focusing on one specialization she said i say this because there are many opportunities to succeed in this industry as she continues striving toward her masters degree she will take with her one key lesson which she hopes to pass onto others what this has taught me is that there is nothing called impossibility when you are in this industry because you see impossibility being broken almost daily ogunbode said i want to encourage people that creativity and innovation can break any boundaries that you believed were there
1854,dr shaheen dewji assistant professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university and faculty fellow of the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives has been appointed to the nuclear and radiation studies board (nrsb) within the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine (nasem) the nrsb serves to organize and oversee studies on safety security technical efficacy and other policy and societal issues arising from the application of nuclear and radiation-based technologies dewjis research focuses primarily on radiation protection and dosimetry and nuclear material assay for nuclear safeguards and security making her an expert addition to the board dewji is moderating the fourth gilbert w beebe webinar: health effects from chernobyl and fukushima on april 7 hosted by the nrsb of the nasem which will feature presentations and discussions on radiation and nonradiation induced health effects to populations impacted by the accidents as well as potential transgenerational effects working with the nrsb is an invaluable opportunity to apply my diverse background and technical experience towards providing scientific leadership in technical and policy guidance applied to the safe and secure use of nuclear materials and technologies said dewji dewji is also the departments only advance scholar the advance scholars program is texas a&ms unique faculty mentoring program designed to advance the success of tenure-track faculty who have been historically underrepresented in higher education scholars are able to engage in professional networking opportunities develop a career plan share with research experts in their field and heighten their professional visibility i see great value in dr dewjis participation in this program by providing her the opportunity to access the academic and professional development experiences which will clearly promote and support her personal and professional growth said dr michael nastasi head of the nuclear engineering department dewji leads a research laboratory as well the radiological engineering detection and dosimetry laboratory her team focuses on harnessing both computational capabilities in radiation transport modeling and experimental measurements using radiation detection for applications in radiation protection dosimetry health physics and nuclear materials accounting
1855,hydrogels are commonly used inside the body to help in tissue regeneration and drug delivery however once inside they can be challenging to control for optimal use a team of researchers in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is developing a new way to manipulate the gel by using light graduate student patrick lee and dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor are developing a new class of hydrogels that can leverage light in a multitude of ways light is a particularly attractive source of energy as it can be confined to a predefined area as well as be fine-tuned by the time or intensity of light exposure their work was recently published in the journal advanced materials light‐responsive hydrogels are an emerging class of materials used for developing noninvasive noncontact precise and controllable medical devices in a wide range of biomedical applications including photothermal therapy photodynamic therapy drug delivery and regenerative medicine lee said light-responsive biomaterials are often used in biomedical applications; however current light sources such as ultraviolet light and visible light cannot sufficiently penetrate the tissue to interact with the hydrogel instead the team is researching near-infrared (nir) light which has a higher penetration depth the team is using a new class of two-dimensional nanomaterials known as molybdenum disulfide (mos2) which has shown negligible toxicity to cells and superior nir absorption these nanosheets with high photothermal conversion efficiency can absorb and convert nir light to heat which can be developed to control thermoresponsive materials in the groups previous study published in advanced materials certain polymers react with mos2 nanosheets to form hydrogels building on this discovery the team further utilizes mos2 nanosheets and thermoresponsive polymers to control the hydrogel under nir light by photothermal effect this work leverages light to activate the dynamic polymer–nanomaterials interactions gaharwar said upon nir exposure mos2 acts as a crosslink epicenter by connecting with multiple polymeric chains via defect‐driven click chemistry which is unique nir light allows internal formation of therapeutic hydrogels in the body for precise drug delivery for cancer therapy most of the drugs can be retained within the tumor which will ease the side effects of chemotherapy moreover nir light can generate heat inside the tumors to ablate cancer cells known as photothermal therapy therefore a synergetic combination of photothermal therapy and chemotherapy has shown a higher efficacy in destroying cancer cells this study is funded by the new innovator award from the national institutes of health as well as the texas a&m president's excellence fund through x‐grant and t3
1856,"construction workers have an abundance of responsibilities from paving roads to building lasting structures having the right tools on hand is essential for completing work promptly but is a more challenging task than one might think studies show that construction workers spend a significant amount of their day chasing down tools which increases labor costs and construction time a team of students from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university decided to use their senior capstone design experience to address this issue for their project the team developed the autotool an automated tool storage robot designed to navigate construction sites and identify tools the team consists of mason kleinecke yan yao harrison vickers sophie tullos kyler christian and hannah wang ""the autotool is meant to increase labor productivity on construction sites "" said yao ""on a busy site it can be easy to misplace tools and many construction workers must go back and forth to a central location to retrieve the essentials for a project wasting valuable time"" the team realized the need for their product in the industry and submitted their creation to the 2021 tim$10k lidar challenge hosted by sick sensor intelligence and came out victorious taking home the grand prize of $10 000 the autotool is a mobile robot toolbox equipped with a camera capable of scanning qr codes a qr code is placed on a construction worker's vest once the camera detects and scans the qr code the autotool is designed to follow the worker the robot is also equipped with a 2d lidar sensor that helps the robot navigate environments and steer around obstacles ""the goal of these functions is reducing the idle time that's spent per worker per day searching for tools they need "" said wang ""this is the critical objective of the project"" the tools themselves will be marked with radio-frequency identification tags (rfid) the rfid sensor on the autotool constantly emits a signal to interact with the tags when a tag (or tool) is not on board the autotool registers the tool is missing and emits a blinking red light to notify the worker ""the rfid is similar to the security tags a cashier takes off at the counter while shopping "" said yao ""the radio-frequency sensor plays a key role in this because if the tagged tool is not in the toolbox it can reduce downtime when locating the tool"" although the product remains a proof-of-concept prototype the team has learned valuable lessons about working with industry professionals and creating products for market ""through this seven-month project we have learned how to develop products to hopefully change the construction industry or build technology that will improve society "" said kleinecke ""we hope to use what we've learned in real-life applications for future projects and ideas"" dr joanna tsenn assistant professor of instruction and coordinator for the senior capstone design projects is happy about the team's accomplishments and would like to see more teams take their projects outside the classroom im thrilled for the team and what they achieved said tsenn it was wonderful to see them go from identifying an initial problem to developing a solution that will have a real-world impact outside the classroom their success is well-deserved"
1857,if you have witnessed the rainbow pattern that dances on the surface of a cd or dvd then you have seen diffraction at work the disk acts as a diffraction grating an optical element that disperses light into various colors or wavelengths this division of light can occur on any periodic or rippled surface the direction of these divided light beams and subsequent scattering of light can be estimated through a commonly used set of equations called the nonparaxial scalar diffraction theory dr christi madsen professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is testing the limits of this fundamental theory so that a more accurate understanding of scattering losses can be achieved madsen is working to improve the systems that generate solar power through the use of concentrating mirrors or lenses by getting the light more efficiently to the converter whether photovoltaic which converts sunlight into electricity or thermal which converts heat to electricity and reducing the overall system loss her research on the topic was published in the march issue of the journal applied optics with this paper madsen addressed how far off a basic diffraction efficiency calculation could be (easily over 10%) on estimating scattering efficiency and then showed how to get within 1-2% accuracy on the calculation an optical fiber is a flexible transparent fiber that transmits light between the two ends picture a light-up toy with clear transparent fibers that might be purchased for a child to wave around at a concert or event madsen explained that standard optical fibers are useful for many real-world applications like computer networking and telecommunications but they simply are not practical to relocate sunlight to another location due to their small size because of the limited brightness of solar light compared to lasers larger waveguides or light pipes must be used to transport the concentrated sunlight from point a to point b light pipes are large versions of optical fibers which carry light extremely long distances with very low loss (eg greater than 90% transmission efficiency over a mile distance) but have a very tiny area that guides the light (eg 10-micron diameter compared to 1 millimeter or larger for light pipes) madsen said though light pipes are promising particularly when made from glass they currently suffer higher losses during the transmission of light due to scattering at the surface which is a significant technological issue – one madsen is determined to change one of the dominant losses occurs at the surface of the waveguide madsen said so if we can get those scattering losses low as low as in an optical fiber we could go a long distance with the concentrated sunlight instead of converting solar light into electrical power for immediate use madsen envisions remoting light energy to another location optically by concentrating solar light and using waveguides with 1 kilowatt per square meter from the sun concentration factors on the order of 1 000 enable significant amounts of solar power to be transmitted over light pipes to a separate location and then converted to thermal or electrical energy an example is industrial process heating where manufacturing processes are remotely located from the solar collection area light pipes have the potential to transport optical power with higher efficiency than the heat transfer fluid systems used currently madsen's next steps will be to determine how closely measurements on fabricated light pipes and simulations are which will provide her an accurate idea of the surface quality required for a given light pipe transmission versus length
1858,"dr satish bukkapatnam has been awarded the george l smith international award for excellence in the promotion of industrial engineering this award given by the institute of industrial and systems engineers (iise) is presented to an individual who has made significant contributions to the discipline and exemplifies being a goodwill ambassador for the profession bukkapatnam has traveled to various educational institutions and developed many programs and formal partnerships particularly in france and india after assuming the role of the director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) institute for manufacturing systems in 2014 he also worked with contacts from the technocentre henri-fabre on the am2 transatlantic partnership led by texas a&m university and tees and the arts et métiers institute of technology to develop a vigorous research portfolio in smart manufacturing with the main focus on smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence for the fourth industrial revolution or industry 40 it is an honor to be chosen for this award i see this as a recognition of the bonds of friendship and partnership our colleagues from france and india had forged with us bukkapatnam said in particular i wish to thank arts et metiers and professor el mansori for the untiring efforts to build the am2 partnership i also wish to thank professors tiwari ramesh babu and satyanarayana for enabling vigorous interactions with our colleagues from indias premier institutions especially the indian institutes of technology and national institute of industrial engineering over the span of 14 years bukkapatnam offered internships to 14 undergraduate students hosted two bose scholars recruited five graduate students (one of whom is a current faculty member at arizona state university mentored both students and early-career faculty and co-organized three major workshops to promote emerging topics in smart manufacturing ""dr bukkapatnam is the most deserving of this recognition by the iise it is a testimony to his great efforts in promoting research and education in smart manufacturing globally said dr eyad masad executive director of global initiatives for tees his impact encompasses the full spectrum: joint research programs exchange of students workforce development and development of unique infrastructure for manufacturing in collaboration with other institutions"""
1859,to help patients manage their mental wellness between appointments researchers at texas a&m university have developed a smart device-based electronic platform that can continuously monitor the state of hyperarousal one of the key signs of psychiatric distress they said this advanced technology could read facial cues analyze voice patterns and integrate readings from built-in vital signs sensors on smartwatches to determine if a patient is under stress furthermore the researchers noted that the technology could provide feedback and alert care teams if there is an abrupt deterioration in the patients mental health mental health can change very rapidly and a lot of these changes remain hidden from providers or counselors said dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering our technology will give providers and counselors continuous access to patient variables and patient status and i think it's going to have a lifesaving implication because they can reach out to patients when they need it plus it will empower patients to manage their mental health better the researchers integrated electronic monitoring and feedback platform is described in the journal of psychiatric practice unlike some physical illnesses that can usually be treated with a few doctor visits people with mental health needs can require an extended period of care between visits to a health care provider information on a patients mental health status has been lacking hence unforeseen deterioration in mental health has a limited chance of being addressed for example a patient with anxiety disorder may experience a stressful life event triggering extreme irritability and restlessness which may need immediate medical attention but this patient may be between appointments on the other hand health care professionals have no way to know about their patients ongoing struggle with mental health which can prevent them from providing the appropriate care hence patient-reported outcomes between visits are critical for designing effective health care interventions for mental health so that there is continued improvement in the patients wellbeing to fill in this gap sasangohar and his team worked with clinicians and researchers in the department of psychiatry at houston methodist hospital to develop a smart electronic platform to help assess a patients mental wellbeing the hospital has the largest inpatient psychiatry clinic in the houston area said sasangohar with this collaboration we could include thousands of patients that had given consent for psychiatric monitoring sasangohars collaborators at houston methodist hospital were already using an off-the-shelf patient navigation tool called caresense this software can be used to send reminders and monitoring questions to patients to better assess their wellbeing for instance individuals at risk for self-harm can be prompted to take questionnaires for major depressive disorder periodically rather than solely relying on the patients subjective assessment of their mental health sasangohar and his team also developed a whole suite of software for automatized hyperarousal analysis that can be easily installed on smartphones and smartwatches these programs gather input from face and voice recognition applications and sensors already built in smartwatches such as heart rate sensors and pedometers the data from all of these sources then train machine-learning algorithms to recognize patterns that are aligned with the normal state of arousal once trained the algorithms can continuously look at readings coming from the sensors and recognition applications to determine if an individual is in an elevated arousal state the key here is triangulation said sasangohar each of these methods on their own say facial sentiment analysis show promise to detect the mental state albeit with limitations but when you combine that information with the voice sentiment analysis as well as physiological indicators of distress the diagnosis and inference become much more powerful and clearer sasangohar noted that both the subjective evaluation of mental state and the objective evaluation from the machine-learning algorithms are integrated to make a final assessment of the state of arousal for a given individual while their technologys prototype is ready the researchers said they still need to improve the battery life of smartphones carrying their software since the algorithms guzzle a lot of power further they noted that they have to address usability issues that is any issues that prohibit patients from using their technology such as difficulty in navigating their application because of the stigmatization that surrounds mental illness we wanted to build a mental health monitoring device that was very discreet said sasangohar so we chose off-the-shelf products like smartphones and then build sophisticated applications that operate within these devices to make monitoring mental health discreet other contributors to the study include dr christopher fowler and dr alok madan from the university of texas mcgovern school of medicine and baylor college of medicine; courtenay bruce and dr stephen jones from the houston methodist institute for academic medicine; dr christopher frueh from the university of texas mcgovern school of medicine and the university of hawaii; and dr bita kash from the methodist institute for academic medicine and texas a&m this research is funded by the texas a&m university presidents excellence grant (x-grant)
1860,"dr berna hascakir is one of five texas a&m university faculty members chosen as fellows for the 2021-22 advance administrative fellows leadership development program advance is under the dean of faculties office and endeavors to create a psychologically healthy workplace at texas a&m where all faculty can thrive and succeed hascakir associate professor and flotek industries inc career development professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering will serve as the college of engineering administrative fellow the college of engineering will fund her fellowship in advance each of the five new fellows will lead an individual project hascakir will direct a new partnership program between the college of engineering and texas a&m university at qatar the program will promote and mentor female doctoral students in engineering on the college station campus and encourage them to complete part of their academic requirements on the qatar campus to gain international experience the goal is to support and promote diversity equity and inclusion efforts at texas a&m ""engineering is all about innovation and innovation happens best when people from diverse backgrounds are able to interact in meaningful ways "" said hascakir ""solutions to difficult engineering problems often come from a combination of different perspectives and this exciting program provides opportunities for students to learn how multicultural approaches can help them advance"" hascakir is a firm believer in student engagement and success she regularly uses her leadership skills to direct and mentor the graduate students involved in her independent research projects and her heavy oil oil shales oil sands and carbonate analysis and recovery methods (hocam) research group she also participates in the research experiences for undergraduates program funded by the national science foundation serving as a summer mentor and research professor to students from universities with no research facilities in addition to their individual endeavors the five fellows will also participate in two joint projects: a national leadership development program and an internal leadership development program organized by the dean of faculties office ""this announcement comes at a time when the university is taking important steps to address racism and systemic bias "" said dr cynthia werner director of advance ""i am confident that each of these advance administrative fellows will help lead these important changes as they take on these new leadership roles at texas a&m"""
1861,dr james caverlee and dr dezhen song professors in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university were each chosen by the amazon research awards program to receive financial support for their research project proposals the program provides unrestricted funds and amazon web services promotional credits to academic researchers investigating research topics across several disciplines caverlees project is titled fairness in recommendation without demographics recommendation algorithms are the building blocks for many of the platforms/applications we encounter every day that recommend jobs news articles and social connections in addition there is a growing awareness about the importance of fairness in those recommendations current fairness-enhancing methods depend on user demographics like race and/or gender to ensure that fairness properties are included in the training process of recommendation models however in many scenarios it can be difficult to determine what demographic attributes and combinations to include because they are not always available and some are even prohibited from being collected by laws and regulations our goal is to investigate techniques and develop effective tools for enhancing fairness in recommender systems even in the absence of any user demographics said caverlee that way we can expand the scope of fairness-related efforts in recommendation to cover these important scenarios songs project titled optoacoustic material and structure pretouch sensing at robot fingertip is a collaborative effort with dr jun zou professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m one of the grand challenges of robotics is the reliable grasping of unknown objects as the use of robots expands from the factory floors to a wider service market it is imperative that they have the ability to grasp an object with no prior knowledge of it but while contactless detection of objects provides vital information about friction coefficient and applicable grasping force to plan for successful grasps to the robot there are no existing sensors that can achieve this in order to solve this problem we propose to develop systems and algorithms to create a new type of miniature fingertip-mounted sensor that can detect and map object material type shape and close-to-surface interior structure at close proximity without contact said song caverlee and song were among 101 recipients representing 59 universities in 13 countries considered by amazon during their fall 2020 call for research project proposals each award is intended to support the work of one or two graduate students or postdoctoral students for one year under the supervision of a faculty member
1862,"growing up tessa miller always enjoyed math so when it was time to attend texas a&m university she knew whatever major she pursued would include math and her second interest of building design she was torn between architecture and civil engineering but civil engineering won outnow miller is a junior in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m and was recently named the 2021 gathright phi kappa phi outstanding junior for the college of engineering the gathright phi kappa phi outstanding junior award is a collaboration between the association of former students launch: academic excellence and the texas a&m chapter of phi kappa phi that recognizes the top junior in each of the academic colleges at texas a&mselection for the phi kappa phi gathright outstanding junior award is based on evaluating research and creative production community engagement accomplishments/awards and academic record the dean of each respective college determines the final selection criteriaa native of college station miller had no doubt where she wanted to go to college at an early age""both my dad and older brother attended (texas a&m) so it was pretty much set in stone from the beginning "" she said ""i was excited to have the opportunity to continue this tradition in my family and receive my own aggie ring""and miller is continuing that tradition well she has a 40 gpa she's active in the texas a&m chapter of the american society of civil engineers (asce) and is currently serving as vice president of the organization she participated on asce's concrete canoe team and was recently inducted into the civil engineering honor society chi epsilon where she will serve as editor of the transit her senior yearduring her sophomore year miller traveled to honduras for a week with global engineering brigades to design a water system for a rural community it was a humbling experience for her""from day one we were welcomed by the community with open arms as they sang and performed dances for us it was clear that they were extremely grateful to have us there "" miller said ""just seeing the impact that a group of engineering students can have on a rural community reaffirms that the knowledge we gain in our classes at texas a&m can be used to benefit those less fortunate it made me appreciate many things in life that we take for granted and makes me excited to continue studying engineering to benefit those around me""this experience helped her realize that she would one day like to use her knowledge of structures and years of experience in the industry to assist in recovery efforts in communities affected by natural disastersmiller has also worked as a student research assistant at the texas a&m transportation institute completed two professional internships and served as a peer teacher for an introductory engineering course she offers this advice for freshmen engineering majors""something i cannot stress enough especially in engineering is to learn time management engineering classes are intended to be difficult and demand a lot of time but learning to manage your time between life and classwork can help alleviate some of the stress from the start "" she said ""whether that be using a planner or creating weekly to-do lists providing yourself with smaller goals can help you tackle more demanding classes""during her first semester she would hear about the dreaded physics classes from upperclassmen but one professor stands out as an inspiration to miller""one of my most inspiring professors was dr tatiana erukhmova who i had for both physics 206 and 207 her enthusiasm for the material and passion for teaching really engaged me as a student "" miller said ""having a professor like her guide me through these classes made them achievable and prepared me for the harder classes that lie ahead""after finishing her bachelors degree miller plans to pursue a master's degree in structural engineering and eventually work for a structural engineering consulting firm as a professional engineer"
1863,with a global impetus toward utilizing more renewable energy sources wind presents a promising increasingly tapped resource despite the many technological advancements made in upgrading wind-powered systems a systematic and reliable way to assess competing technologies has been a challenge in a new case study researchers at texas a&m university in collaboration with international energy industry partners have used advanced data science methods and ideas from the social sciences to compare the performance of different wind turbine designs currently there is no method to validate if a newly created technology will increase wind energy production and efficiency by a certain amount said dr yu ding mike and sugar barnes professor in the wm michael barnes '64 department of industrial and systems engineering in this study we provided a practical solution to a problem that has existed in the wind industry for quite some time the results of their study are published in the journal renewable energy wind turbines convert the energy transferred from air hitting their blades to electrical energy as of 2020 about 84% of the total electricity produced in the united states comes from wind energy further over the next decade the department of energy plans to increase the footprint of wind energy in the electricity sector to 20% to meet the nations ambitious climate goals in keeping with this target there has been a surge of novel technologies particularly to the blades that rotate in the wind these upgrades promise an improvement in the performance of wind turbines and consequently power production however testing whether or how much these quantities will go up is arduous one of the many reasons that make performance evaluation difficult is simply because of the sheer size of wind turbines that are often several hundred feet tall testing the efficiency of these gigantic machines in a controlled environment like a laboratory is not practical on the other hand using scaled-down versions of wind turbines that fit into laboratory-housed wind tunnels yield inaccurate values that do not capture the performance of the actual-size wind turbines also the researchers noted that replicating the multitude of air and weather conditions that occur in the open field is hard in the laboratory hence ding and his team chose to collect data from inland wind farms for their study by collaborating with an industry that owned wind farms for their analysis they included 66 wind turbines on a single farm these machines were fitted with sensors to continuously track different items like the power produced by the turbines wind speeds wind directions and temperature in totality the researchers collected data over four-and-a-half years during which time the turbines received three technological upgrades to measure the change in power production and performance before and after the upgrade ding and his team could not use standard pre-post intervention analyses such as those used in clinical trials briefly in clinical trials the efficacy of a certain medicine is tested using randomized experiments with test groups that get the medication and controls that did not the test and the control groups are carefully chosen to be otherwise comparable so that the effect of the medicine is the only distinguishing factor between the groups however in their study the wind turbines could not be neatly divided into the test and control-like groups as needed for randomized experiments the challenge we have here is that even if we choose ‘test and ‘control turbines similar to what is done in clinical trials we still cannot guarantee that the input conditions like the winds that hit the blades during the recording period were the same for all the turbines said ding in other words we have a set of factors other than the intended upgrades that are also different pre- and post-upgrade hence ding and his team turned to an analytical procedure used by social scientists for natural experiments called causal inference here despite the confounding factors the analysis still allows one to infer how much of the observed outcome is caused by the intended action which in the case of the turbines was the upgrade for their causal inference-inspired analysis the researchers included turbines only after their input conditions were matched that is these machines were subject to similar wind velocities air densities or turbulence conditions during the recording period next using an advanced data comparison methodology that ding jointly developed with dr rui tuo assistant professor in the industrial and systems engineering department the research team reduced the uncertainty in quantifying if there was an improvement in wind turbine performance although the method used in the study requires many months of data collection ding said that it provides a robust and accurate way of determining the merit of competing technologies he said this information will be beneficial to wind operators who need to decide if a particular turbine technology is worthy of investment wind energy is still subsidized by the federal government but this will not last forever and we need to improve turbine efficiency and boost their cost-effectiveness said ding so our tool is important because it will help wind operators identify best practices for choosing technologies that do work and weed out those that don't ding received a texas a&m engineering experiment station impact award in 2018 for innovations in data and quality science impacting the wind energy industry other contributors to the research include nitesh kumar abhinav prakash and adaiyibo kio from the industrial and systems engineering department and technical staff of the collaborating wind company this research is funded by the national science foundation and industry
1864,"toothpaste and jell-o may not be the first things that come to mind when it comes to engineering but they and materials like them are the beneficiary of ongoing research to better measure normal stress differences in soft materials drs chandler benjamin and alan freed from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university recently published their research in the journal physics of fluid detailing a new approach to measuring soft materials that were previously unable to be characterized ""this approach opens the door to the measurement of normal stress differences on soft solid materials something along the lines of rubber that would not have been possible previously "" said benjamin assistant professor in the mechanical engineering department ""this paper shows that there is a way to measure normal stress differences on soft solid materials within a single experiment this would not be possible with the current theoretical underpinnings of existing experimental methods"" normal stress difference in soft materials is a naturally occurring phenomenon benjamin said is often taken for granted while not very common a few well-known examples are die swell which occurs in polymer processing when the material is passed through a die and the weissenberg effect a phenomenon in which a solution of elastic liquid will rise up when a spinning rod is inserted into it to measure these soft materials researchers currently need to conduct two separate experiments each with two interpretations in order to measure the normal stress difference of a material ""this new approach requires one experiment and one interpretation "" said freed professor in the mechanical engineering department ""it opens up the possibility of measuring normal stress differences for a wide range of materials that previously would not have been possible to do"" the researchers said the measurement of these normal stress differences is key to the characterization of all viscoelastic fluids and solids utilizing the new interpretation outlined in their paper researchers will have the ability to characterize soft viscoelastic solid materials more efficiently allowing for the enhanced design of common materials like toothpaste used in daily life as the research advances the next steps will be to apply this new approach to various soft materials to measure their normal stress differences although this research does not currently have direct practical applications for the average person benjamin said he hopes this scientific advancement will open the door to further research and uses in the future im hoping this will spur further research into soft solid materials characterization benjamin said right now people just study viscoelastic fluids so hopefully this generates interest a better understanding and better method of characterizing of soft materials"
1865,nuclear engineering former student dr james peery 90 was named a 2020-21 outstanding alumni by the college of engineering at texas a&m university for his significant contributions and leadership in technological development policies and strategies essential to national security peery graduated from the department of nuclear engineering with a doctoral degree in 1990 and went on to join sandia national laboratories where he worked on massively parallel computations for radiation hydrodynamics and managed a computational physics group peery left sandia in 2002 to work for los alamos national laboratory (lanl) where he led the advanced simulation and computing (asc) program under the national nuclear security administrations stockpile stewardship program and later the hydrodynamics experiments division nuclear engineering professor of practice warren pete miller worked with peery during his time at lanl dr peerys expertise in advanced modeling and computer systems cybersecurity and nuclear weapons is well known throughout the national laboratory complex said miller he did an admirable job advancing los alamos national laboratorys computational program and it was clear he had a bright future ahead of him peery returned to sandia in 2007 but left in 2017 for oak ridge national laboratory to work on national security programs in january 2020 he returned to sandia as the laboratories director where he provides leadership and management direction for all sandia missions previously he had directed sandias information systems analysis center as well as the computation computers information and mathematics center he has been responsible for the development of state-of-the-art massively parallel computational tools spanning the fields of high-energy density physics to structural dynamics he is widely considered to be an expert in his discipline and this award acknowledges his outstanding service to the nation beyond his research field without the outstanding education and mentorship by the texas a&m nuclear engineering faculty and staff there is little chance that i would have had the diversity set of opportunities to support our national security i want to thank the nuclear engineering department and the university for providing a remarkable foundation in science engineering and continuous learning peery has previously served on the department of nuclear engineerings advisory council and he continues to contribute to the departments development james peery has been a strong voice when it comes to advocating for the excellence of our program said dr michael nastasi nuclear engineering department head his insightful comments on curriculum changes and senior project designs have helped us meet the needs of national laboratories he is clearly an outstanding leader in the nuclear research and development community
1866,when the covid-19 pandemic began to inundate the united states in early 2020 many researchers looked at how they could adapt their current work to help fight the pandemic dr limei tian assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university and her team are developing a novel way to diagnose covid-19 through a mask we are developing a reliable noninvasive point-of-care biosensor that can directly capture and detect sars-cov-2 for rapid detection and surveillance of covid-19 tian said one of tians research focuses is in organic and inorganic hybrid materials for physical chemical and biological sensors and multifunctional surfaces and interfaces as opportunities to research ways to detect and fight covid-19 started tian began to adapt biosensors designed for other disease diagnoses to instead detect covid-19 tian said the goal is to develop a biosensor patch that can be placed into a mask/scarf as a person exhales their breath can be captured the sensor then be easily removed and placed in a hand-held reader for analysis in addition to covid-19 the platform technology being developed in our lab can be readily adapted for rapidly detecting and monitoring other infectious respiratory diseases tian said the team is in the sensor development process tian said one challenge has been improving the sensitivity of the biosensors to capture low concentration of biomarkers in the breath tian was recently recognized for her work in biosensors by receiving the trailblazer r21 award from the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering part of the national institutes of health the award is an opportunity for new and early-stage investigators to pursue research programs that integrate engineering and the physical sciences with the life and behavioral sciences
1867,the texas a&m foundation board of trustees chose nathaniel lies 21 and three additional students as recipients of its trustees outstanding student award for 2021 since its establishment in 2012 by former trustee melbern glasscock 59 and his wife susanne the trustees outstanding student award has rewarded aggie seniors who hold campus leadership positions and continue to succeed academically while facing financial familial or personal challenges eagle scout and national merit finalist nathaniel lies visited colleges across the midwest until he found a place where he could develop himself and pursue his curiosity and love of science stepping foot on texas a&m universitys campus for the first time lies said something in the atmosphere and culture just clicked my dad passed away when i was in high school leaving my mother financially responsible for me and my siblings she has always been there to support and encourage me so now that im able to give back i do anything and everything to lessen the financial burden on her lies said trying to strike a balance between cost and quality of education was difficult but if i had known the kind of support i would receive at texas a&m i wouldnt have visited other schools that ‘were all in it together aggie spirit has been so transformative to helping me learn and make connections in the college of engineering lies led the first cohort of undergraduates in a brand-new major: materials science and engineering blazing the trail for the program lies took on leadership roles in the materials science and engineering ambassadors and materials advantage while working as a research assistant presenting at conferences and competing in national materials competitions its been such an honor to help create the first impression of texas a&ms msen (materials science and engineering undergraduates lies explained its also been a rewarding experience to work with faculty on strengthening a curriculum that will continue for decades lies research directed his dreams toward academia moving to atlanta this summer lies will use his award money to pursue his phd in materials science and engineering at georgia tech its nice to be recognized for the work that ive put in and i feel such gratitude for the foundation helping make my career and dreams possible lies said texas a&m really excels at helping other aggies and i look forward to the day i can turn around and help other people as ive been helped this is an excerpt from the original article which appeared on the texas a&m foundations website
1868,dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university has been named the editor-in-chief of the human factors and ergonomics societys (hfes) new journal human factors in healthcare the journal will be published by elsevier and will bridge the gap between academic research and practice of human factors and ergonomics in health care as editor-in-chief sasangohar will have the opportunity to set the vision for the publication sasangohar will be representing the research and academic side of the publication and the journal will begin publishing in june it is my great honor to gain the trust of my research community to lead one of our flagship professional society journals i intend to do my utmost to ensure the journal remains relevant high-impact high-quality inclusive and respected sasangohar said sasangohars research interests focus on understanding and improving human decision-making and performance in safety-critical work environments using a plethora of innovations including remote continuous monitoring and connected integrated systems
1869,"cells sense and respond to the mechanical properties of the cellular microenvironment in the body changes in these properties which occur in a number of human pathologies including cancer can elicit abnormal responses from cells how the cells adapt to such changes in the mechanical microenvironment is not well understood a team of researchers at texas a&m university are working to understand cellular mechanosensing the ability to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of the microenvironment in a unique way dr tanmay lele unocal professor in the department of biomedical engineering department of chemical engineering and the department of translational medical sciences partnered with dr charles baer an evolutionary biologist at the university of florida together they used methods of experimental cellular evolution as a means to understand cellular adaptation to biomaterials of controlled mechanical properties the experiments were led by doctoral student purboja purkayastha from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and technical laboratory coordinator kavya pendyala from the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m before our work it was basically unknown if cells would evolve in controlled mechanical environments lele said we set out to test this possibility cells are products from hundreds of millions of years of evolution and their response to environments whether chemical or mechanical has likely evolved through a process of natural selection chemical constraints are well known to exert selection pressure on cell populations but whether the mechanical properties of a cells environment constitutes a significant agent of natural selection has never been investigated before many types of animal cells exhibit ""phenotypic plasticity"" they look and function differently in different mechanical environments there are two possible explanations for the plasticity of cells in different mechanical environments first the phenotypes may be optimal such that there is no better way for a cell to function in each environment alternatively the plasticity may be a compromise such that the phenotypic trait is optimal for a given mechanical context but suboptimal in other mechanical contexts the teams research demonstrated that cellular mechanosensing is in fact not optimal but a tradeoff using a combination of experimental cellular evolution on biomaterials of controlled stiffness genome sequencing simulations and gene expression analysis the team showed that cells evolve under selection pressure from biomaterials of controlled mechanical stiffness the teams research was recently published in the journal molecular biology and evolution lele said that experimental cell evolution is a good approach to better understand the mechanisms underlying cellular mechanosensing we are currently using experimental cellular evolution to understand how cancer cells which have a great genomic variation respond to the altered mechanical stiffness and other mechanical properties of tumor microenvironments lele said further the fact that cells can be evolved on biomaterials of controlled properties in vitro opens up new ways to generate engineered cells with properties optimal for those properties"
1870,assistant professors dr shikha prasad and dr craig marianno in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university were both recently awarded a triads for transformation (t3) research grant launched in 2017 as part of the 10-year $100 million excellence fund the t3 program supports collaborative research projects across various disciplines with a seed-grant fund of $30 000 the research teams must consist of three faculty members two of which must come from different colleges or campuses working alongside dr mohammad tabaar from the bush school of government and public service and dr grigory rogachev from the college of science prasad is leading the investigation on tristructural-isotropic (triso) based fuel technologies using fast picosecond radiation detectors and electronics this will allow the team to observe and measure nuclear fuel characteristics with little to no detector delay as its being used in a nuclear facility triso-based fuel technologies are most commonly used in next generation reactors the high burnup time means that the fuel can last longer in the reactor increasing its efficiency and longevity however it can also result in a dangerous byproduct: a significant amount of plutonium-239 (pu-239) something that can be used to create nuclear weapons we hypothesize that the use of this technology will allow fuel elements such as triso pebbles to be used in the reactor for a longer time thus increasing the amounts of pu-239 and fission products said prasad one of our goals is to determine if the gain in fission products is greater than the gain of pu-239 this project will also help shape policy ramifications for countries looking to develop next-generation deep burn reactors if more efficient reactors mean higher amounts of pu-239 it will be paramount that policy safeguards and initiatives are introduced to ensure the proper handling and disposal of the special nuclear material byproduct marianno received a t3 research grant for his work alongside dr hans schuessler in the college of science and dr gunnar schade in the college of geosciences together they proposed an experiment that would monitor the amount of uranium hexafluoride (uf6) in the air from nuclear enrichment activities natural uranium is often enriched to increase the percentage of uranium-235 for use as fuel in nuclear reactors trace amounts of uf6 are released as a byproduct when uranium enrichment occurs and this is to be expected its likely not even enough to impact human health the issue arises when we start to detect uf6 in areas where uranium enrichment has not been reported when you see uranium hexafluoride in a place that shouldnt have enriching activities thats a good indication that something suspicious is going on said marianno that means that there may be nuclear activity occurring that has not yet been disclosed research such as this is invaluable to the international atomic energy agency which monitors safeguards around the world to ensure that people and countries are not misusing radioactive or nuclear technology for weapons marianno and his team will use an infrared spectroscopy technique which is much more sensitive and accurate compared to mass spectrometry to monitor the presence of uf6 gas in humid air they hope to develop a portable platform that can be readily employed for field operation for nuclear safeguards and security purposes
1871,when one of the largest modern earthquakes struck japan on march 11 2011 the nuclear reactors at fukushima-daiichi automatically shut down as designed the emergency systems which would have helped maintain the necessary cooling of the core were destroyed by the subsequent tsunami because the reactor could no longer cool itself the core overheated resulting in a severe nuclear meltdown the likes of which havent been seen since the chernobyl disaster in 1986 since then reactors have improved exponentially in terms of safety sustainability and efficiency unlike the light-water reactors at fukushima which had liquid coolant and uranium fuel the current generation of reactors has a variety of coolant options including molten-salt mixtures supercritical water and even gases like helium dr jean ragusa and dr mauricio eduardo tano retamales from the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university have been studying a new fourth-generation reactor pebble bed reactors pebble-bed reactors use spherical fuel elements (known as pebbles) and a fluid coolant (usually a gas) there are about 40 000 fuel pebbles in such a reactor said ragusa think of the reactor as a really big bucket with 40 000 tennis balls inside during an accident as the gas in the reactor core begins to heat up the cold air from below begins to rise a process known as natural convection cooling additionally the fuel pebbles are made from pyrolytic carbon and tristructural-isotropic particles making them resistant to temperatures as high as 3 000 degrees fahrenheit as a very-high-temperature reactor (vhtr) pebble-bed reactors can be cooled down by passive natural circulation making it theoretically impossible for an accident like fukushima to occur however during normal operation a high-speed flow cools the pebbles this flow creates movement around and between the fuel pebbles similar to the way a gust of wind changes the trajectory of a tennis ball how do you account for the friction between the pebbles and the influence of that friction in the cooling process this is the question that ragusa and tano aimed to answer in their most recent publication in the journal nuclear technology titled coupled computational fluid dynamics–discrete element method study of bypass flows in a pebble-bed reactor we solved for the location of these ‘tennis balls using the discrete element method where we account for the flow-induced motion and friction between all the tennis balls said tano the coupled model is then tested against thermal measurements in the sana experiment the sana experiment was conducted in the early 1990s and measured how the mechanisms in a reactor interchange when transmitting heat from the center of the cylinder to the outer part this experiment allowed tano and ragusa to have a standard to which they could validate their models as a result their teams developed a coupled computational fluid dynamics-discrete element methods model for studying the flow over a pebble bed this model can now be applied to all high-temperature pebble-bed reactors and is the first computational model of its kind to do so its very-high-accuracy tools such as this that allow vendors to develop better reactors the computational models we create help us more accurately assess different physical phenomena in the reactor said tano as a result reactors can operate at a higher margin theoretically producing more power while increasing the safety of the reactor we do the same thing with our models for molten-salt reactors for the department of energy as artificial intelligence continues to advance its applications to computational modeling and simulation grow were in a very exciting time for the field said ragusa and we encourage any prospective students who are interested in computational modeling to reach out because this field will hopefully be around for a long time
1872,the texas a&m university system board of regents has named dr john hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering at texas a&m university and interim agency director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) he will assume the duties of the position june 1 hurtado will oversee administration of the college and agency while a national search is conducted to fill the positions hurtado joined the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m in 2001 and serves as deputy director and chief technology officer for the bush combat development complex and professor of aerospace engineering his research areas include aerospace systems and robotics and his work is being used at nasa and sandia national laboratories his patented algorithms were developed for unique miniature robots that the smithsonian institution recently obtained for its permanent collection in the national museum of american history he earned his bachelors degree in aerospace engineering from san diego state university and his masters and doctorate in aerospace engineering from texas a&m hurtado replaces outgoing vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories dean of the texas a&m college of engineering and agency director for tees dr m katherine banks who was named to these positions in 2011 and was appointed the 26th president of texas a&m in march
1873,dr r stanley williams hewlett packard enterprise company chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is ranked in the top tier of scientists in the world in the field of computer science and electronics from the guide2research 2021 top scientists ranking out of 1 000 scientists and researchers williams who ranked 115th in the world and 80th in the united states is the director of the center for computer architecture research at texas a&m williams has performed research in nano-electronics -ionics and -photonics and how to utilize the nonlinear dynamical properties of matter to perform computation efficiently before joining texas a&m in 2018 he was a senior fellow and senior vice president at hewlett-packard labs where he led the group that developed the first intentional solid-state version of leon chua's memristor prior to this he was a member of the technical staff at bell labs before joining the faculty at the university of california los angeles where he served as a chemistry professor for 15 years he was named one of the top 10 visionaries in the field of electronics by ee times and has received awards in chemistry applied physics and nanotechnology williams has been issued more than 230 us patents published more than 450 peer-reviewed papers and presented hundreds of invited plenary keynote and named lectures at international scientific technical and business events the guide2research 2021 top scientists ranking is based on the h-index metric provided by google scholar and dblp and includes only leading scientists with an h-index of at least 40 williams has over 67 000 citations an h-index of 116 i am gratified that so many researchers have found my work to be sufficiently interesting and useful to be cited in their publications williams said
1874,as a fifth-generation aggie julia reed a junior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university applied to wear burnt orange to tease her father before she packed her bags for aggieland the first engineer in her family reed grew up in texas city – just a short 15-minute drive from galveston and the coast she originally planned to take to the sky and study aerospace engineering however after taking a physics class at texas a&ms waterfront galveston campus where she learned more about how ocean engineering could merge disciplines in a way that suited her interests her gaze shifted to the waves and the sea i've been exposed to the water my entire life reed said and i liked how you could apply engineering principles to the ocean but also learn more about ocean processes than the land since joining the department reed has found a home in the local branches of the marine technology society the society of naval architects and marine engineers the society of women engineers and women in engineering while covid-19 has made participation in these organizations difficult they have opened doors to engineering and industry advice insight and mentorship for reed – even during a global pandemic as she finds mentors of her own she has become that for others as she serves as a peer mentor for first-generation students on campus in the first-generation engineering students mentoring program first-generation students those who are the first in their family to ever attend a college or university often have no direct network to tap into when starting their academic journey this makes the transition to university life and unraveling the intricacies of such things as financial aid and registration more difficult for them and coming from a multigenerational history of love for texas a&m reed is happy to share her passion knowledge and experience with her extended aggie family and make them feel welcome it's nice to meet with first-generation students and talk about engineering and learn about what got them started reed said i've lived in a bunch of different places in my life and know what its like to be completely new to a place my family's just always moved around so it's nice to talk about that too and to relate with them on a deeper level having been originally contacted by dr bimal nepal director of the first-generation engineering students mentoring program and professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution reed completed her peer-mentor training and joined the program at a campus club expo in 2019 there she helped spread the word about the organization hand out brochures and even met a few new students who would become her first mentees as a mentor reed acts as a lighthouse for students – guiding and ever-present even if she is just in the background of the natural ebb and flow of their semester she makes it a point to meet with her mentees however often they would like – usually once every two weeks – but also sends them messages to check in and see how they are faring throughout the semester and if there is anything she can do to help them navigate their time in the college of engineering she offers advice when needed tutoring when possible and a listening ear always and while she doesnt expect anything in return reed explained that the mentorship experience has helped her develop too before being in this organization i feel like i wasn't much of a leader she said i was more of a follower so i feel like it's helped me step up my leadership skills for sure and i'm able to take initiative more often now
1875,a two-person team from texas a&m university won the prestigious mohrs circle award for their geotechnical engineering expertise at the 2021 geochallenge geoprediction competition doctoral student md ashrafuzzaman khan and civil engineering senior ethan harris from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering accurately predicted the settlement of an existing structure due to dewatering activities
1876,in the challenge the students evaluated how the construction of a new building would affect the settlement of an existing six-story building nearby the finalists were chosen based on the ranking of their submitted geoprediction reports and then required to submit a video presentation on the resultsgeoprediction sponsored annually by the american society of civil engineers geo-institute as part of the geo-congress conference is a student contest in which participants predict the behavior of a real-world geotechnical system for given complex situations the winning team of the competition holds the mohrs circle award a tribute to christian otto mohr who developed the graphical method in 1882 to represent the stresses in soilkahn has long awaited the victory he placed second in the geoprediction competition in 2017 2018 and 2019 i was waiting for first place for a long time and finally the dream came true in 2021 he said
1877,harris said competitions like this bring out the problem-solving side of civil engineering im honored by the decision of the geo-institute to award us with the mohr circle award and look forward to applying what i learned to my professional life as a civil engineer he saidthe team was supervised by dr anand j puppala ap florence wiley chair in the department i am proud of the students who worked hard to bring the mohr circle award to aggieland for the first time puppala said we will continue this tradition and encourage more students to participate in national and international platforms dr robin autenrieth department head and ap florence wiley professor iii echoed puppalas sentimentscompetitions like geoprediction challenge students to apply what they have learned in class to solve open-ended problems that they could encounter in their careers for this team to have won is a good reflection on how well their studies have prepared them for their professional futures she saidview the students winning geoprediction results and presentation
1878,connor roddy is walking out of the lab and into the courtroom roddy is the first engineering law program student from the department of multidisciplinary engineering to be accepted into the texas a&m university school of law this combination degree program allows students to obtain a bachelor of science in interdisciplinary engineering and a juris doctor degree in six years instead of the standard seven as an aspiring patent attorney roddy appreciates the relationship between engineering and law i enjoy learning about the world around me and how technological advancements are made said roddy the aspect of law that interests me is protecting the ideas and advancements of engineers these subjects overlap in a unique way because there is a fine line between sharing ideas for technological advancements and protecting ideas for the creator as a participant in the program students spend three years learning about engineering and technology as a precursor to three years of study and law practice his degree is in interdisciplinary engineering specializing in mechanical and electrical engineering classes in the college of engineering taught me about engineering theory and how the world works while also putting these teachings into applications said roddy i have yet to take a law class but i am excited about the future experience after i graduate i hope to work in patent prosecution to gain experience in the legal field and eventually move into the field of patent litigation dr timothy jacobs interim department head for the department of multidisciplinary engineering is excited about this accomplishment and is looking forward to the future of the program engineering law promises to be the smoothest and most effective path for a student to follow their passions from engineering to law to law practice said jacobs im excited that the program offers connor the opportunity to pursue his dreams align himself with the best engineering and law programs in the state of texas and strengthen his desires to have the societal impact he endeavors to have roddy will begin taking classes through the school of law for the second portion of the program in the fall as the first person accepted into the school of law through the engineering law program i am thankful to those who have worked to make this program possible said roddy i am very excited about being a part of the program graduating a year earlier than expected will allow me to start my career faster than the traditional plan
1879,amy suhl has established the amy l suhl 86 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university suhl decided to give back to texas a&m because of the fond memories of her college experience from being a freshman all the way through graduation i knew i wanted to study engineering she said so when i came to a&m for the tour and saw how friendly and helpful everyone was i knew this was the place for me i had many great professors and to this day i still want students to gain a quality education she said i am also part of the electrical engineering advisory council and even today i am able to mentor some of the students and see the impact of this program she said that texas a&m is well-regarded across many industries that respect was very clear when i began the interview process after graduation and was fortunate to have offers from all over the country she said i ended up choosing shell which has a long-standing relationship with a&m that i continued to foster while i worked there and i believe i was well prepared for the corporate world intended for students interested in computer and/or electrical engineering suhl was inspired to give back to this department because it was what she studied while at texas a&m when i was in school the cost of tuition was so much less than it is today and i wanted to help she said so i thought that since i have been fortunate both in my career and in my investments i was in a position to give back suhl also added a request for this gift to be given to a first-generation college student it must be both a celebration and a challenge to be the first in a family to ever go to college she said i wanted to help push students who have the dream but maybe not the means to get there ultimately suhl hopes her gift will inspire students who want to study engineering and may just need that extra bit of help i also hope to provide a model to other aggies to give back as well she said suhl was the first aggie in her family and graduated from texas a&m in 1986 with her degree in electrical engineering she later attended houston baptist university and earned her masters degree suhl worked at shell for more than 32 years and now serves as the president of al suhl llc her private consulting firm
1880,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
1881,ding a notification goes off on a cell phone a driver looks down and their eyes briefly leave the road ahead and crash!! phone use while driving is a significant source of distracted driving that leads to traffic accidents which are considered preventableresearchers at texas a&m university investigated the relationship between phone use behavior and road geometrics determining that using a phone while driving is more than just a self-choice the combination and presence of a shoulder median higher speed limit and extra lanes could encourage more phone use while driving the results also confirmed the correlation between the frequency of phone use and distracted crashes on urban roadsthis study could help transportation agencies identify countermeasures on roadways to reducing distracted-related crashes and provide researchers with a new perspective to study phone-relation behavior rather than focus on the drivers personalitiesthis study finds patterns for where the locations are where phone use while driving behavior most occurs these findings are unique and informative and have not been documented elsewhere yet said xiaoqiang jack kong a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and graduate research assistant at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) while i am driving i always notice many drivers who are on their phones talking texting or scrolling there are many times the cars in front of my car didnt move after traffic lights turn green it seems to happen to me every day as a transportation phd student i started to wonder how exactly this behavior could impact traffic safety the findings of this study were published in accident analysis & prevention the papers authors also include dr subasish das assistant research scientist in ttis roadway safety division; dr hongmin tracy zhou associate transportation researcher in ttis research and implementation division; and dr yunglong zhang professor associate department head of graduate programs in civil and environmental engineeringphone use while driving is a complex psychological behavior driven by many factors including the drivers personality environmental factors and roadway operational factors
1882,from the roadway geometrical perspective factors contributing to rural distracted driving cases are dominated by the shoulder width median width and the number of lanes the existence of a shoulder and median or a wide shoulder and median could encourage phone use behavior since these geometric features provide a safety buffer for drivers which grants drivers a sense of securitythe same factors were true on urban roadways such as interstates and freeways but other contributing factors are traffic volume and access controls on an interstate access control means drivers are entering and exiting without traffic lights which could lead to a feeling of safety and drivers become less cautious or alertone challenge facing kong was obtaining real-world data to reflect actual phone-use behavior evidence showing this kind of case is often under-reported and drivers involved in distraction-affected crashes were reluctant to admit using a phonekong said this study utilized an extensive phone use while driving data set (pseudonymized) which originated from a private data service provider the data collection process is based on a smartphone application that promotes defensive driving without being distracted by the phone the researchers integrated all phone use while driving events with the texas road inventory and the distracted crash count on each road segment in the road inventory from the crash database of texas the data does have limitations and might not represent an older population of drivers who may not download an application to track their driving while the most recent road inventory data was used some data was not included such as fixed time or adaptive signalized intersections with more data researchers may associate this phone use behavior with drivers social demographics in this way we may understand this behavior more at individual levels kong said future research could focus on incorporating the phone use data into safety performance function models for distraction-affected crashes as more data becomes available building these safety models is possiblemore visible signs and law enforcement should be placed at these urban roads with full access control and wide shoulder and medians if these urban roadways already have higher distracted crash occurrences comparing with other urban roadways kong said additionally the roadways with high-speed variations also being identified as high distracted crash locations could be the roads that need more attention from transportation agencies the countermeasures could improve traffic conditions or more strict law enforcement
1883,in new research texas a&m university scientists have for the first time revealed a single microscopic defect called a twin in a soft-block copolymer using an advanced electron microscopy technique this defect may be exploited in the future to create materials with novel acoustic and photonic properties this defect is like a black swan something special going on that isn't typical said dr edwin thomas professor in the department of materials science and engineering although we chose a certain polymer for our study i think the twin defect will be fairly universal across a bunch of similar soft matter systems like oils surfactants biological materials and natural polymers therefore our findings will be valuable to diverse research across the soft matter field the results of the study are detailed in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences (pnas) materials can be broadly classified as hard or soft matter hard materials like metal alloys and ceramics generally have a very regular and symmetric arrangement of atoms further in hard matter ordered groups of atoms arrange themselves into nanoscopic building blocks called unit cells typically these unit cells are comprised of only a few atoms and stack together to form the periodic crystal soft matter can also form crystals consisting of unit cells but now the periodic pattern is not at the atomic level; it occurs at a much larger scale from assemblies of large molecules in particular for an a-b diblock copolymer a type of soft matter the periodic molecular motif comprises of two linked chains: one chain of a units and one chain of b units each chain called a block has thousands of units linked together and a soft crystal forms by selective aggregation of the a units into domains and b units into domains that form huge unit cells compared to hard matter another notable difference between soft and hard crystals is that structural defects have been much more extensively studied in hard matter these imperfections can occur at a single atomic location within material called a point defect for example point defects in the periodic arrangement of carbon atoms in a diamond due to nitrogen impurities create the exquisite canary yellow diamond in addition imperfections in crystals can be elongated as a line defect or spread across an area as a surface defect by and large defects within hard materials have been extensively investigated using advanced electron imaging techniques but in order to be able to locate and identify defects in their block copolymer soft crystals thomas and his colleagues used a new technique called slice-and-view scanning electron microscopy this method allowed the researchers to use a fine ion beam to trim off a very thin slice of the soft material then they used an electron beam to image the surface below the slice then slice again image again over and over these slices were then digitally stacked together to get a 3d view for their analysis they investigated a diblock copolymer made of a polystyrene block and a polydimethylsiloxane block at the microscopic level a unit cell of this material exhibits a spatial pattern of the so-called double gyroid shape a complex periodic structure consisting of two intertwined molecular networks of which one has a left-handed rotation and the other a right-handed rotation
1884,while the researchers were not actively looking for any particular defect in the material the advanced imaging technique uncovered a surface defect called a twin boundary at either side of the twin juncture the molecular networks abruptly transformed their handedness i like to call this defect a topological mirror and it's a really neat effect said thomas when you have a twin boundary its like looking at a reflection into a mirror as each network crosses the boundary the networks switch handedness right becomes left and vice versa the researcher added that the consequences of having a twin boundary in a periodic structure that does not by itself have any inherent mirror symmetry could induce novel optical and acoustic properties that open new doors in materials engineering and technology in biology we know that even a single defect in dna a mutation can cause a disease or some other observable change in an organism in our study we show a single twin defect in a double gyroid material said thomas future research will explore to see whether there's something special about the presence of an isolated mirror plane in a structure which otherwise has no mirror symmetry other contributors to this research include xueyan feng from the materials sciences and engineering department and mujin zhuo and hua guo from rice university this research was support by a grant from the national science foundation
1885,scott salys class of 96 is the divisional vice president of heart failure operations at abbott a medical device company heart failure operations is a franchise within abbotts medical device segment focused on implantable and nonimplantable heart pumps as well heart failure monitoring systems salys has more than 20 years of industry experience and has expertise in research and development (r&d) operations supply chain program management process development marketing and customer engagement however that was not the original plan in high school salys was set to pursue geophysics although he wasnt set in which direction his career would go however in his senior year of high school he was hospitalized on and off for about a year during that time i was doing my own research online trying to understand my illness and the physiology salys said it was during this time i started to learn how the body works that is where my passion around the biomedical side of things started having to personally go through extended time in the hospital that changed my course salys transferred from the colorado school of mines to study bioengineering at texas a&m university during his sophomore year and said he has loved the field since the human body is the most amazing machine and system you can work on salys said thats how i got into this field and im glad i did its been tremendously rewarding one major accomplishment toward his career path was a co-op he did with a pacemaker company out of houston in addition to firmly establishing his passion with r&d he said it was instrumental in providing career options upon graduation having a resume with directly relevant work experience and tangible r&d achievements caught the interest of recruiting companies and provided topics to discuss in interviews the work experience allows you to pick a company that you believe has the most potential and thats going to cascade your career salys said i think getting the right entry point is important and the best way to get that right entry point is having work experience thats relevant… where you can demonstrate your capabilities in an interview one of the most rewarding courses he took in the biomedical engineering program was physiology and anatomy understanding how the human body is an electrical mechanical and chemical machine cemented the passion toward biomedical engineering he also said he appreciated the general camaraderie in the department camaraderie goes a long way in the business world too he said being in a culture that really emphasizes this is something that students will benefit from and you may not get at other universities
1886,after graduation salys went to work in r&d at cyberonics a company focused on neuromodulation for the treatment of epilepsy three years later he was approached with the opportunity to move to california and join a larger company st jude medical that focused on cardiac rhythm management and the design of pacemakers and defibrillators while there he made his way through different r&d positions starting as an individual contributor in leads development to expanding his role to managing increasingly larger organizations at this point salys knew he wanted to expand his experience outside of r&d and have a broader overall business understanding so he transferred within the company to st judes neuromodulation division in dallas there he rotated through vice president of program management vice president of operations and vice president of supply chain roles he later moved backed to california where he managed the supply chain for neuromodulation and cardiac rhythm management branches businesses let them know what your interests are and then see if there is a business need that matches up with your aspirations or where you want to go salys said some of its random timing and what the business needs at a given point in time your skill sets need to match the company needs salys moved to silicon valley in 2015 after st jude medical acquired thoratec a heart pump company st jude medical was acquired by abbott in 2017 throughout his career salys said he has faced many challenges but was successful through persistence and staying focused on adding value there were challenging times that i was working 18-hour days working on weekends but at the end when its all successful it develops you and you feel good about it its rewarding at the end of it all the challenging times are the most rewarding in my experience salys said along with developing technical skills and know-how salys said improving communication and collaboration skills is vital how well you communicate and build relationships is critical he said in order to move projects through it takes a lot of collaboration with others in different areas people who are collaborative and have strong at interpersonal skills are more successful salys also encouraged students to explore many different career path options when they graduate saying there are many entry points for engineers including areas such as r&d operations regulatory and field roles with direct physician interaction youre not going to be able to mastermind your career trajectory some of it just happens so i never tried to over plan it salys said as you go through your career you should have a general trajectory in mind and take on opportunities that lead in that direction put your name in the hat for those next opportunities
1887,it only takes a short time visiting with professor of practice oscar lopez to realize he is extremely dedicated to educating future engineers lopez has the opportunity to inspire students every day in the classroom at the higher education center at mcallen located in the rio grande valley the texas a&m university campus offers three engineering degrees each with a specific focus area designed for careers in the valley or beyond as a professor of practice lopez brings years of experience to the classroom hes one of 93 professors of practice employed by the college of engineering in the early 90s lopez was president of an engineering firm in san diego california when he decided to take a leap of faith and relocate to the rio grande valley to open a satellite engineering design office in mcallen texas lopez said he saw opportunity in the valley on the horizon and he was right since then the valley has continued to grow exponentially providing numerous industry opportunities in the last two decades these experiences prepared and motivated lopez to educate challenge inspire and empower his students to continue in his footstepswhen asked how he found his passion in structural engineering lopez said he loves innovation
1888,i love creating things that don't exist many times from scratch you know he said i like to doodle i'm always wondering how things work i like to be innovative and that's really what drew me to engineering at firstlopez understands the difficulty and importance of finding what engineering major most excites students because he navigated this as a college student himself as a professor he embodies the helpful and nurturing culture of the mcallen campus guiding students through the many steps of their college career i have observed that many students from south texas including the rio grande valley experience additional financial and socio-economic challenges which are tied to a strong and tight-knit family structure culture lopez said the regional culture found in the rio grande valley is beautiful unique vibrant and rich in history and resources and i am delighted and privileged to be of service and a mentor to all of our aspiring studentsat mcallen students have many opportunities to gain mentors in their professors with small classes sometimes fewer than 10 students opportunities to learn and interact with faculty and industry professionals at an individual level abound what gives me great joy is watching them get it lopez said as a professor when i see it in your eyes that ‘aha moment that gives me chills thats totally awesomelopez feels its important to prepare future engineers and he said he is inspired by the aggie core values which initially drew him to teach at the higher education center since 2017 lopez has had the opportunity to instill these values in future aggie engineers giving back to the community he so admireslopez adds that the specialized engineering degrees offered at the higher education center actively prepare students for careers in the valley and beyond the newly formed department of multidisciplinary engineering is so exciting i wish i had been a student when this was around lopez said the original pure mechanical engineer pure structural engineer they dont exist by themselves anymore the engineer of the future whom we are educating now at texas a&m university and specifically at the higher education center at mcallen have to be able to communicate with a new and ever-developing engineering vernacular and skill set in a programmatic way to interact with other engineerslopez believes that interdisciplinary engineering is the futureour students have fantastic opportunities that are new where they can develop their own program essentially based on their interests he said this flexibility wraps around mechanical electrical computer science computer engineering structural architecture construction sciences among others with these contributing to the creative fields of the world all these fields of study are creative and innovative in their nature and can be mixed and matched in a formal customized program of studyfor many of the students living locally in the rio grande valley lopez sees the higher education center as an avenue to receive a texas a&m degree without having to leave home after graduating students have the opportunity to stay connected to their tight-knit community by pursuing a career in one of the many industries rooted in the prosperous and growing rio grande valley or they can tap into the aggie network and take their skills anywhere in the world to learn more about engineering at mcallen visit our website
1889,as the global energy demand continues to grow along with atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (co2) there has been a major push to adopt more sustainable and more carbon-neutral energy sources solar/wind power and co2 capture – the process of capturing waste co2 so it is not introduced into the atmosphere – are two promising pathways for decarbonization but both have significant drawbacks solar and wind power are intermittent and cannot be deployed everywhere; co2 capture processes are incredibly energy-intensive both of these pathways have benefits but each on their own does not present a viable strategy at the moment however a research team led by dr faruque hasan kim tompkins mcdivitt 88 and phillip mcdivitt 87 faculty fellow and associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has uncovered a way to combine both of these processes together to increase the efficiency of both much of hasans research deals with synergy and synergistic effects in complex systems synergy is the combined effect of cooperative interactions between two or more organizations substances or other agents that is greater than the sum of their separate effects to this end hasan examined the synergistic integration of renewables and flexible carbon capture with individual fossil power plants we are addressing three things that each have pros and cons: fossil fuels are cheap but they release a lot of co2; co2 capture is very beneficial for the environment but it is prohibitively expensive; renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power are good for the environment but the energy output is intermittent and variable hasan said while each area presents significant challenges individually hasan and his research team have found a significant benefit when all the components are used in tandem in a research paper published in energy & environmental science hasan and his doctoral students manali zantye and akhil arora examined the use of synergistic integration of renewables and flexible carbon capture and found a significant benefit to efficiency and cost reduction despite the growing interest in sustainable renewable energy sources their intermittent availability would make it difficult to completely replace the dispatchable fossil-based energy generators in the near future said zantye who is the first author of the paper co2 capture is an energy-intensive process normally this process runs alongside standard energy generation at power plants as energy is generally priced on a demand basis the use of co2 capture processes during peak energy demand can quickly drive up operational costs to an unsustainable level in this research hasan also found that utilizing a flexible co2 capture system can greatly offset operational costs normally co2 is captured into a large solvent tank and then removed in an energy-intensive process in a flexible system rather than removing the co2 as it is introduced to the solvent it can be stored for short periods of time and removed at non-peak times when the cost of power is lower further by incorporating a renewable energy source the cost of co2 capture is offset even more according to hasan the synergistic framework presented in the research can dramatically improve the system beyond the component parts we have developed a computational framework to utilize dynamic operational schedules to manage all these very complex decisions he said developing carbon capture technology is very important but equally important is how you integrate them the operational aspect of integration is very important our study shows that this can be done in such a way that renewables fossil fuels and carbon capture are all working together according to zantye the proposed framework provides an effective decarbonization mechanism for the current fossil-dominated energy landscape as we transition to a more fully sustainable future this research is partly supported by the department of energy
1890,dr david senor 88 89 ‘92 distinguished former student and member of the advisory council of the nuclear engineering department at texas a&m university has been appointed an adjunct professor for the department senor received all three degrees in nuclear engineering following his graduation senor joined the pacific northwest national laboratory (pnnl) and in 2020 he was recognized as a pnnl laboratory fellow a noteworthy accomplishment at pnnl senor is the national technical lead for science and technology for the national nuclear security administrations tritium modernization program and guides a variety of activities including irradiation experiments at the advanced test reactor and lead use assemblies of tritium-producing burnable absorber rods in the watts bar nuclear plant his involvement with these initiatives helps to assure the viability of the tritium stockpile something that closely relates to national security senor has drawn on his expertise and experience at pnnl to mentor students in the nuclear engineering departments senior capstone design course each year graduating students are given a year-long challenge to tackle a real-world tritium-related issues through dr senors technical guidance students are being exposed to out-of-the-box thinking and projects that are meaningful to the nuclear industry and the nation as a whole said dr michael nastasi nuclear engineering department head it was his involvement with the design course that encouraged senor to give back to the department senors wife denise 85 also received her degrees from texas a&m and together they have established the david 88 and denise 85 senor scholarship to provide one or more scholarships to full-time undergraduate students in the nuclear engineering department dr karen kirkland and dr yassin hassan allowed me to mentor design teams in nuen 406 and nuen 410 over the past eight years senor said that involvement with undergraduate students provided motivation that ultimately led my wife and i to endow the scholarship as an adjunct professor senor will continue to collaborate with the senior design course as well as participating in lectures and serving programs that continue to support the department aggieland is home said senor thats really the bottom line we like to give back and help out wherever possible being offered the appointment of adjunct professor is a great honor i appreciate the department for thinking of me and supporting me in the way they do
1891,james w bud porter jr 51 has established the j walter deak porter 22 and james w bud porter 51 chair in civil engineering distributions from this endowment will be used to support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the holder in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering bud graduated from texas a&m in 1951 with his degree in civil engineering his father deak was also a graduate of texas a&m class of 1922 bud said it was his father along with four of his uncles who also attended texas a&m who indoctrinated bud into the aggie way of life i was able to attend football games with my dad see the aggie band and know that i wanted to attend texas a&m he said
1892,deak was a co-founder of the gifford-hill pipe company and bud always knew that he wanted to go into the concrete pipe business with his father civil engineering made the most sense for what i wanted to do and i knew how much it had benefited my father he said after graduation bud followed in his father's footsteps and joined gifford-hill texas a&m prepared both myself and my father for this business and it turned out to be a financially and personally rewarding activity that i credit to a&m he said this endowment was initially established as a planned gift however seeing the current need bud and his wife patsy decided to fully fund the endowment now the texas a&m civil engineering department is outstanding and we hope to increase the current prestige and contribute to the future prestidge of the department and very qualified professors he said during his time at texas a&m bud was a member of the corps of cadets- ross volunteers and tau beta pi he is an emeritus member of the civil engineering advisory council a past member of the agricultural development council served as an association class agent from 2006-2011 and was honored as a distinguished graduate of the department of civil engineering in 2008
1893,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
1894,the us department of defense has announced that dr cynthia mendoza 83 former student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university will assume the position of deputy chief information officer (cio) for special access program information technology a career defense intelligence senior executive service officer at the national geospatial-intelligence agency mendoza served most recently on a rotation with the us state department as the chief technology officer (cto) for the bureau of intelligence and research before that she was the acting deputy intelligence community cio and prior to that the chief architect at the office of the director of national intelligence in that role she led major advancements in interoperability among intelligence community agencies as cto mendoza led the departments efforts to develop baseline and integrate new technologies to improve the bureau of intelligence and researchs (inr) ability to collect and collaborate information from a global network of embassies and consulates her efforts provide inr and state analysts opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of intelligence products that support the nations most challenging problems mendoza has a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from texas a&m and a masters degree and doctoral degree in systems engineering and engineering management from the george washington university this story originally appeared on the washingtonexec website
1895,david kellam has established the david f kellam '70 civil engineering endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university after graduating high school kellam knew he wanted to attend a university with a renowned engineering program i believed texas a&m had the best program and opportunities for me he said the knowledge and skills covered in the curriculum and taught by great professors along with the leadership training as a member of the corps established a strong foundation for my professional career the curriculum was comprehensive and the professors were thorough demanding and fair he said i enjoyed the corps environment it strengthened my character and helped me to develop my leadership skills i am a firm believer in texas a&m's core values respect excellence loyalty leadership integrity and selfless service these core values are the foundation for students as they graduate and fulfill their stewardship responsibilities to society and the environment kellam said civil engineering touches all elements of our society and our environment my belief is that this endowment will provide opportunities to students that desire to become civil engineers and they in turn will significantly benefit society and the environment through their accomplishments and leadership he said kellam targeted this endowment toward students from low-income families due to his familys own financial challenges during his early life i was afforded some opportunities to attend college that could have easily not been available he said we have been blessed in our careers and want to give in ways that will contribute positively to the future of our society and the environment kellam graduated from texas a&m in 1971 with his degree in civil engineering he joined temple inland forest products corp in 1977 and worked his way up to serving as the vice president and general manager before his recent retirement kellams son and grandson both attended texas a&m the latter graduated in 2017 with a degree in construction science kellam credits his education at texas a&m for his success at life i would like to express my appreciation to all of the administrators staff and professors involved in maintaining our core values and growing texas a&m's positive impact on society and the environment kellam said
1896,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
1897,"former texas a&m university graduate student courtney kunselman 20 has been named a conference of southern graduate schools (csgs) 2021 outstanding masters thesis award winner nominations for this award were reviewed by faculty members in the field from csgs member institutions and evaluated on the basis of clarity of style and presentation scholarship research methodology and contributions to the field or discipline kunselman attended the united states air force academy for her undergraduate degree and later graduated from texas a&m with her masters degree in materials science and engineering and a graduate certificate in materials informatics and design in 2020 she is currently an intelligence officer in the air force and supports the b-52 strategic bomber at barksdale air force base her thesis semi-supervised learning approaches to class assignment in ambiguous microstructures builds a framework for classifying microstructure images in the semi-supervised context and proposes a new method for quantifying error when a large portion of the training data has no label she earned this award in the category of mathematics physical sciences and engineering kunselman said she is extremely humbled for her thesis to be recognized with this award good research is a product of good teamwork at all levels she said throughout my time at texas a&m i was supported by an amazing group of researchers who held me to a rigorous standard pushed me outside of my narrow comfort zone and helped get our work out to be seen and used by the greater scientific community their dedication to my success was boundless and i cannot thank them enough for it"" my experience at texas a&m made me a better collaborator initiative-taker communicator student teacher mentor and critical-thinker she said all of these traits are extremely important for the job that i am doing now and i am very thankful for the opportunity to sharpen these skills through my time researching at a&m additionally kunselman said she was greatly influenced and inspired by one of her colleagues dr vahid attari he was an extremely patient kind and generous mentor she said i knew that if i had any questions or needed any assistance he would do all that he could to help me without hesitation kunselmans advice to graduating engineering students is to not be afraid to pursue what interests you even if it doesnt quite fit your degree or other peoples views of what your education should be used for as an intelligence analyst i am constantly having to make assessments and predictions with partial data and communicate how available evidence led me to those conclusions she said your education taught you how to be a problem-solver – now go solve whatever problems you want to likewise her advice to undergraduate engineering students is to pay attention in mandatory math classes and look beyond the calculations to see the beautiful logic underlying the process my bachelors degree is in mathematics rather than engineering and i was pretty nervous at first that i would be behind the curve in an engineering graduate program she said but i quickly learned that math is a superpower – if you have a strong enough math skill set you can learn almost anything stem related"
1898,four faculty and one staff member from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university were recognized during the virtual college of engineerings faculty and staff awards ceremony which celebrated 2020 and 2021 award recipients the recipients are as follows: 2020christina escamilla staff excellence awardjohn e hurtado dean of engineering excellence award-professor leveldiego donzis tees faculty fellow awarddarren hartl association of former students college-level teaching award 2021manoranjan majji dean of engineering excellence award-assistant professor leveldiego donzis dean of engineering excellence award-associate professor leveljohn e hurtado college of engineering excellence award for service
1899,"dr ian mccue a former post-doctoral researcher in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has accepted a tenure-track faculty position at northwestern university in evanston illinois he will be an assistant professor of materials science and engineering in the robert r mccormick school of engineering and applied science mccue joined the department upon receiving a doctoral degree from johns hopkins university to study flow localization in nanostructured metals with dr michael demkowicz associate professor and director of graduate programs in the department under demkowiczs guidance he investigated ways to tailor the structure of materials at the nanoscale ian is an exceptionally creative and capable scientist he is poised to become a leader in advanced metal processing "" said demkowicz over the course of his research at texas a&m mccue was able to demonstrate certain nanoscale morphologies were ideal for achieving uniform plastic flow with this training under his belt mccue is eager to chart new horizons in nanostructure materials research as faculty there are a number of materials and manufacturing-related research institutes at northwestern im excited to be a part of and contribute to said mccue i am also very excited to mentor future generation of materials science researchers"
1900,"during the mad hacks: fury code hackathon teams were given a task by the national security innovation network of developing technologies for the department of defense (dod) this task involved ensuring that human-controlled and autonomous vehicles can fight against cyber-attacks without human intervention a team composed of six students including arturo sanchez from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and anna bowers from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was recognized as one of the top hackathon teams for their innovative solution called the phc (picryption hive clutch) defense as an awarded team they are receiving funding to further their ideas ""all of us have experience and connections with the dod "" said bowers ""i wanted to make a difference and i wanted to help keep military equipment secure this issue is becoming more pressing every day"" autonomous vehicles are by nature prone to hacking when used for the military they must be equipped with complex technologies to ensure safety from hackers the mission of the competition was to present new solutions to this ongoing problem their phc defense is a multilayered blend of software and mechanical measures that can autonomously fight against breaches in cybersecurity the name is an acronym representing each layer of defense the first layer is picryption a twist on regular encryption software that responds through encrypted pictures sent from the user to the system if a file is received from an unknown user the software can alert someone inside the vehicle bowers played a significant role in developing this code picryption is a form of advanced encryption standard an encryption that's been around as the industry standard for 20 years or so said bowers the key difference is that picryption is taken from photo file data the real point of using picryption is to answer the question ‘is there any way that we can encrypt data using a form of traditional cryptography but still have it be secure and reliable"" if the picryption is compromised the h which stands for hive takes over the hive includes several layers of protection but there is one that stands out the hive uses an unexpected but obvious tool for communication the radio a mechanism already located in every car; this function allows users to speak through different radio frequencies the team understood that most autonomous vehicles run solely on software and programming if these are hacked how can the user operate the vehicle for this reason the team decided to take a mechanical approach to their final layer of protection representing the c this level is called the clutch"" if the software fails the driver can activate manual control sanchez a mechatronics major was influential in developing this part of the solution ""if all systems fail the vehicle can at least rely on itself "" said sanchez ""ideally it's supposed to lock the vehicle or prevent intruders from accessing it the only way to reactivate the vehicle is by using a mechanical feature such as pressing the clutch or moving the steering wheel left and right"" other team members included heather cowherd from the university of kentucky rachel devine from lawrence technological university cashaad lawrence from the university of texas at dallas and abelardo garcia from san diego state university the team is continuing to develop this solution for the dod to help prevent these issues ""we don't want to make it too complex "" said sanchez ""soldiers are always facing high-stress situations and our goal is to make a system that anyone can activate both quickly and efficiently to make sure they are safe from these kinds of attacks"""
1901,dana a '21 and kevin b friar '88 have established the dr f barry lawrence professor of practice endowment in industrial distribution at texas a&m university a professor of practice is an individual of exceptional merit who has had an illustrious career at the local state national or international level the holder will serve on the faculty of the college of engineering and will provide students with a practitioners perspective insight and first-hand experiences distributions from this endowment will be used by the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution to support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the holder in accordance with university guidelines kevin is a first-generation aggie and fell in love with texas a&m because of its values culture and traditions what texas a&m stands for fit me better than any other school he said it became evident that i was an aggie already and just didn't know it so i made the decision that this was where i belonged as for dana she also believes she was always an aggie and just had to make it official one of my goals in attending a&m was to get the aggie ring like my husband and son and formally become an aggie she said having an aggie ring stands for honor tradition and values after graduation kevin went to work for a large company that served the oil and gas market and he feels that what he learned from texas a&m set him up for a career of achievement i started at the bottom in sales and worked my way up from there he said the values of a&m helped to set me up in my career and the tangibles that i learned hard work perseverance and integrity make a world of difference additionally kevin was able to travel the world during this career and said that being an aggie benefited him enormously the reputation of being an aggie helps to build trust and relationships with everyone you meet he said it isn't just the academics that are well respected but the type of people that go to texas a&m the culture and values are even more respected dana is about to graduate from texas a&m and she said her education has helped to shape her views moving forward it goes back to the aggie code of honor the culture and the way people act she said there is a sense of pride in knowing that what you're doing is right and you're going to stand by it and stand by the university when the time came for kevin and dana to begin planning for their estate they knew they wanted to give back to areas within texas a&m that are important to them thus the dr f barry lawrence professor of practice endowment in industrial distribution was created kevin was inspired to create this endowment by its namesake dr f barry lawrence kevin met lawrence while he was lecturing at texas a&m and given his industry expertise kevin was later hired to co-teach alongside lawrence i was so impressed by dr lawrence and the way the industrial distribution program is engaged with industry partners and how they built that into the classroom he said because kevins undergraduate degree was in biology he had to learn on the job when he joined the industrial distribution industry as opposed to learning in a classroom the things they are teaching in this program are preparing the students so well he said because i didn't have that education i want to give back to these students that are getting it kevin also said that the staff and faculty in the industrial distribution program especially lawrence treated him like a member of the team and taught him so much i see the heart dr lawrence has put into the program he said if it werent for him this program would not be what it is today kevin and dana feel that education is the most valuable thing for a young adult and want to give students the best experience in this program and honor lawrence at the same time when we were looking at what to give to the university i wanted to make sure that in years to come when dr lawrence isn't around that his name is not forgotten inside the program because of all he has done kevin said in addition to the professor of practice endowment kevin and dana also established the dana '21 and kevin friar '88 endowed dvm scholarship small animal hospital endowment stevenson companion animal life care center endowment compassionate care endowment fund and contributed to the 1922 fund athletic scholarship endowment kevin graduated from texas a&m in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in biology after his retirement in 2016 he was given the opportunity to teach at texas a&m part time in the industrial distribution program now as the current ceo of hoover circular solutions kevin commutes to houston while he and dana live full time in college station dana will graduate from texas a&m in may with her masters degree in educational human resource development
1902,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah walker assistant director of development
1903,camille camarata '19 has established the class of '19 pete ladies' scholarship honoring women in petroleum engineering distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering at texas a&m university classmates taylor butler '19 tracy ike '19 carrie sistrunk '19 and phoebe ho-stone '19 have also contributed to this endowment camarata said she was born bleeding maroon my father joseph camarata jr '78 exposed my brothers and me at an early age to the spirit of aggieland she said my brother joseph camarata iii '15 started at texas a&m when i was a freshman in high school so i got four exciting years of being a sister to a member of the pride of aggieland and the fightin texas aggie band before i even attended school in college station in high school camarata decided that she wanted to be a petroleum engineer and said that narrowed down her choices of universities after looking at multiple universities i knew texas a&m was the school for me she said not only was the petroleum engineering department world class the people in aggieland were welcoming proud and a whole lot of fun! camarata noted that a large percentage of the energy industry was built on and still operates today because of aggie engineers the education that i received at texas a&m has given me a huge leg up on my colleagues from other universities she said i noticed it especially in early-career training sessions where i was able to hit the ground running due the practical coursework that was offer at a&m camarata said that she felt very fortunate to have scholarships while at texas a&m i would not have been able to afford paying for my own education without the help of scholarships she said i want to pay it forward i hope that this gift will serve as both financial support and as a mentorship opportunity for a young female engineer she continued i want to share the advice and guidance that was given to me while i was a student to help another person succeed butler hopes this gift will help the next generation of women petroleum engineers create lifelong relationships and connect the class of 2019 to the future of women in engineering contributing to the class of '19 pete ladies scholarship is something that i hope will inspire and build confidence in women looking to enter the energy industry butler said i have seen first-hand what a scholarship can mean to someone and i believe this scholarship in particular has the ability to be truly impactful to young women studying petroleum engineering likewise ho-stones hope is that this gift lightens the financial burden enabling its recipients to focus wholeheartedly on their education and experience at texas a&m i want the recipients to know that despite the tumultuous year we had in 2020 there is great potential in our field she said we are excited for the future of our industry and hope that they choose to be part of it with us during ho-stones time as a student in the department from 2016-19 she said that she along with other female students found themselves consistently outnumbered on teams and in classrooms however we had each other to lean on she said even now i find that there is an indescribable immediate bond with the women around me in the industry we share an understanding of what it is like to work in a male-dominated field she continued it is important now for me to contribute to the scholarship because i have the capacity to do so but also because i'd like to support more women in their pursuit of a career in our industry this endowment is founded and funded by female petroleum engineers their ultimate goal is to inspire young women to pursue a degree in petroleum engineering and to have more female engineers work in the oil and gas industry our class had such a small percentage of women but they were the most driven intelligent and confident people in the group camarata said our industry and the world will benefit from having these women and more women in general as our future leaders
1904,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
1905,"texas a&m university hosted the association for computing machinerys (acm) 2021 conference on intelligent user interfaces (iui) virtually from april 13-17 this annual conference serves as a premier international forum for reporting outstanding research and development on iuis acm iui is where the human-computer interaction (hci) community meets the artificial intelligence (ai) community the sponsors for this years conference were texas a&m the texas a&m college of engineering the institute for engineering education and innovation (ieei) sketch recognition lab google microsoft multimodal technologies and interaction and science robotics intelligent user interfaces for ai technologies are becoming increasingly important with the greater adoption of machine learning and other ai applications assimilating ai into user interfaces and merging refined user-centered design with the representation perception and recognition that ai has to offer makes the future of ai seem brighter as well the iui 2021 general chair was dr tracy hammond director of the ieei and professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m dr katrien verbert ku leuven and dr dennis parra from the pontifical catholic university of chile served as the co-chairs all of our planning committee members did a stellar job in making sure the conference was both scientifically productive and an enjoyable time for everyone said hammond this years conference was attended by about 545 students researchers industry professionals and academics from at least 32 countries there were guided yoga lessons every morning before the conferences main sessions and online games in the evening this years poster and demonstration session was hosted on the gather virtual platform a video-calling space that uses a virtual space reminiscent of eight-bit arcade games to allow participants to explore interactive environments this was just one of the ways the organizers tried to make the virtual conference feel more welcoming despite the big numbers it was easy enough for participants to meet and talk to each other through the several zoom breakout rooms and social/fun sessions there were four keynote speakers including: meredith morris director of the people + ai research google research team whose talk was titled accessibility as an opportunity and challenge for intelligent user interfaces juan gilbert computer and information science and engineering department chair at the university of florida whose talk was titled equitable ai: using ai to achieve diversity in admissions andrea g parker associate professor at georgia tech whose talk was titled achieving health equity: the power & pitfalls of intelligent interfaces kwan-liu ma distinguished professor at the university of california davis whose talk was titled intelligent visualization interfaces each year the iui organizing committee acknowledges one past iui paper that had the most impact and highest visibility since being published this year the committee selected ""principles of explanatory debugging to personalize interactive machine learning by todd kulesza margaret burnett wengkeen wong and simone stumpf for the best impact paper award this year there were 241 paper submissions and 64 papers were accepted with a 266% acceptance rate the best paper award went to protoai: model-informed prototyping for ai-powered interfaces by eytan adar colleen m seifert and hariharan subramonyam from the university of michigan the nine posters 12 demonstrations and nine student consortium posters were presented on the space station themed gather interactive meeting space a diversity and inclusion panel spoke about what the iui community could do to improve inclusivity and diversity and the iui town hall consisted of detailed suggestions and ideas on how to move forward the first day of the conference consisted of tutorials and workshops including a three-hour tutorial on ‘human-centered ai: reliable safe and trustworthy by ben schneiderman that was live streamed with over 1 000 attendees the tutorial proposed a new synthesis method in which ai algorithms are combined with human-centered thinking to make human-centered ai the other tutorials were modelgenguis – high-level interaction design with discourse models for automated gui generation conversational recommendation systems and visrec: a hands-on tutorial on deep learning for visual recommender systems seven workshops were available for free to all attendees including: theoretical and methodological challenges in intelligent conversational user interface interactions fourth workshop on exploratory search and interactive data analytics second workshop on human-ai co-creation with generative models healthy interfaces transparency and explainability in adaptive systems through user modeling grounded in psychological theory social and cultural integration with personalized interfaces (socialize) and transparency and explanations in smart systems iui 2022 is scheduled to take place in helsinki finland from march 23-26 2022"
1906,the texas a&m university college of engineering honored eight former students during the 2021 outstanding alumni awards banquet due to the covid-19 pandemic the college of engineering was unable to host the 2020 outstanding alumni awards banquet last year and instead recognized the honorees with a banquet april 29 2021 receiving the outstanding alumni award were captain eric c doyle 95 mike a hernandez iii 83 phillip mcdivitt 87 james peery 84 kirk a shireman 85 dr cedric j sims 94 starlee sykes 97 and joe wright 82 outstanding alumni honor awards captain eric c doyle 95civil engineeringdirector of the blue angels super hornet transition team captain eric c doyle attended officer candidate school in pensacola florida where he earned his commission as an ensign in the us navy in december 1996 he was designated a naval aviator in april 1999 and received orders to the rough raiders of strike fighter squadron (vfa) 125 at naval air station in lemoore california for f/a-18c hornet training in july 2003 he was selected to attend navy fighter weapons school (topgun) where he remained as a staff instructor upon completing his tour at topgun he served as a training officer and deployed aboard the uss harry s truman in support of operation iraqi freedom following this tour he was a department head and deployed aboard the uss theodore roosevelt in support of operation enduring freedom during his tour he was named the 2009 lcdr michael hoff g attack aviator of the year doyle flew the f-22a raptor from february 2011 to january 2014 as an operational test pilot and was executive officer of the stingers of vfa-113 in august 2014 he assumed command of the stingers in december 2015 and led vfa-113 through the transition to the f/a-18e super hornet doyle joined the blue angels in september 2017 his decorations include two meritorious service medals seven strike/flight air medals five navy commendation medals navy achievement medals and various personal unit and service awards doyle received his bachelor of science degree in civil engineering in 1996 from texas a&m mike a hernandez iii 83industrial distributionowner and chief executive officer d&m leasingowner and dealer principal of four stars ford four stars chevrolet buick four stars dodge chrysler jeep ram and four stars toyota mike a hernandez is owner and chief executive officer of d&m leasing and owner and dealer principal of four stars ford four stars chevrolet buick four stars dodge chrysler jeep ram and four stars toyota he is a member of the national automobile dealers association and the texas automobile dealers association hernandez is a member of the advisory committee to texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp for the mcallen campus of texas a&m and the advisory committee to lt governor dan patrick on workforce training he was appointed a member of the texas a&m system board of regents by gov greg abbott in 2019 his term expires feb 1 2025 hernandez is founder and president of the hernandez foundation and a member of the fort worth stock show syndicate he has served on the boards of the juvenile diabetes foundation of fort worth the family shelter of arlington and the river legacy foundation of arlington he also founded the brownsville scholars program he received a bachelor of science in industrial distribution from texas a&m phillip mcdivitt 87chemical engineeringpresident and ceo ascend performance materialsphillip mcdivitt is president and chief executive officer of ascend performance materials the worlds largest fully integrated producer of polyamide 66 the primary material used in items such as car air bags high-performance plastics for the lightweighting on vehicles cable tie fastening systems and athletic wear in response to the covid-19 crisis ascend developed acteev protect fibers fabrics and plastics acteev has proven effective at destroying bacteria and viruses on contact and can be utilized in a broad range of applications such as face masks medical clothing and equipment and air filtration mcdivitt joined ascend in 2015 and became chief executive officer in 2017 under his leadership ascend has achieved record financial performance environmental health and safety performance and expanded its reach into local communities through the ascend cares foundation prior to joining ascend mcdivitt spent over 27 years with the celanese corporation he serves on the advisory council for the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and he and his wife kim provide support to the faculty students and facilities by giving back to the department they have also established endowed scholarships in three other departments at texas a&m mcdivitt earned his bachelors degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m in 1987 and his masters in business administration from the university of texas at dallas in 1996 dr james s peery 84nuclear engineeringlaboratories director sandia national laboratories as the director for sandia national laboratories dr james s peery provides leadership and management direction for the safe secure execution of all sandia missions before his appointment as sandia director on jan 1 2020 peery served as associate laboratory director for national security sciences at oak ridge national laboratory overseeing research and development programs that support the national security missions of the us department of energy and other government agencies peery began his career at sandia in 1990 he worked in the computational solid mechanics and structural dynamics department and the computational physics department peery has been responsible for the development of state-of-the-art massively parallel computational tools spanning the fields of high energy density physics to structural dynamics his major research areas are in arbitrary lagrangian-eulerian algorithms and parallel algorithms where he has published more than 50 papers as part of the salinas team he was awarded the 2002 gordon bell award peery holds a doctoral degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m kirk a shireman 85aerospace engineeringvice president lockheed martin space kirk shireman currently serves as vice president for the lockheed martin lunar exploration campaign (lec) a position he has held since july 2020 lec is responsible for the development of the ascent element of the human lunar systems national team the lec is also responsible for the development of future systems and vehicles to support human space exploration on the lunar surface in lunar orbit and beyond prior to joining lockheed martin he served as the international space station (iss) program manager he was responsible for the overall management development integration and operation of the iss in march 2019 shireman received the national space club astronautics engineer award he has also been recognized with nasas outstanding leadership medal nasas exceptional achievement medal for successful integration of the isss russian elements the silver snoopy award in 1990 and the presidential rank award twice in 2010 and 2017 in 2013 shireman received the eagle manned mission award for his outstanding leadership of the iss from the national space club at its 56th annual robert h goddard memorial dinner in washington dc shireman holds a bachelors degree in aerospace engineering that he received in 1985 dr cedric j sims 94computer science and engineeringsenior vice president – booz allens justice homeland security and transportation dr cedric sims is a senior leader within booz allens justice homeland security and transportation business sims develops strategies to foster integration across the department of homeland security (dhs) and delivers expertise primarily cyber and analytics to support complex missions he has more than 25 years of experience in acquisitions and risk management cybersecurity capital planning portfolio and program governance and systems engineering applied to homeland security missions from 2010-12 he established and led the dhs office of program accountability and risk management he also chaired the centers of excellence council and provided strategic leadership to component acquisition executives sims served as executive director of the enterprise business management office within the dhs office of the chief information officer before joining dhs headquarters sims served in leadership roles within the us secret service while with the secret service he also served as branch chief of network management dhs senior infrastructure officer and interagency communication coordination at the salt lake city winter olympics g8 summit in sea island and various united nations general assemblies sims holds a bachelors degree in computer science and in journalism and a doctoral degree in engineering all from texas a&m starlee sykesmechanical engineeringbp regional president gulf of mexico and canada starlee sykes serves as regional president for the gulf of mexico and canada region the highest revenue generating business in the bp upstream portfolio with more than 20 years of international oil and gas experience in project management performance operations and finance sykes has been a strong proponent of standardized hardware for bps projects worldwide and improving the companys collaborations with industry partners she was named an outstanding leader in energy by the houston business journals women who mean business and is also a recipient of the 2018 step ahead award from the national association of manufacturers manufacturing institute sykes is an advocate for women and girls in stem careers and is active in her community sykes received her mechanical engineering degree from texas a&m joe wright 82petroleum engineeringconcho resources joe wright began his career working on rigs in the texas panhandle for mewbourne oil company as a field engineer he moved to midland texas in 1984 to oversee the companys midland basin assets until he was transferred to their headquarters in tyler texas in 1988 there wright was responsible for developing a waterflood in lea county new mexico he helped create a public partnership offering that mewbourne still uses today after 16 years of working for mewbourne wright relocated to midland in 1998 to start an oil and gas company with his long-time friend and college roommate tim leach ceo chairman of the board and founder of concho resources wright participated in the founding of all three versions of concho in 2013 he became the executive vice president and chief operating officer a role he served in until his retirement in 2019 currently he serves as a member of conchos board of directors wright is a member of first christian church and strong supporter of com aquatic and texas a&m where he currently serves as trustee of the 12th man foundation he is a member of oil states international board of directors in 2014 he was named recipient of the texas a&m petroleum engineering academy of distinguished graduates wright earned his bachelors degree in petroleum engineering from texas a&m in 1982
1907,four students from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have been awarded 2021 vertical flight foundation (vff) scholarships this is the third year in a row that students working in the departments advanced vertical flight laboratory have won in all categories in the doctoral degree category farid saemi received the dr john zuk scholarship which honors the nasa engineer who was a champion of civil tiltrotor technology and applications hunter denton winner in the masters degree category received the barry j baskett scholarship that honors the memory of a career us army engineer who led aviation engineering and later managed the aviation technology base program melanie peavy and joseph heimerl each won in the bachelors degree category peavy received the tom wood honorary scholarship which recognizes more than 50 years of technical contributions to bell by wood heimerl received the michael j rutkowski scholarship that honors the nasa/us army aeromechanics engineer and leader the vff scholarships were awarded to 27 of the worlds most talented engineering students who are interested in vertical flight winners will be recognized in may at the vertical flight society grand awards ceremony
1908,today on the roads you will find all kinds of vehicles some feature automated driving technology to steer accelerate or brake and connected technology that provides turn-by-turn directions and even wi-fi hotspots yet some still require you to roll up the windows manuallywith this mix of vehicles on the road xiaoyu sky guo a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and a graduate assistant researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) applied a basic traffic diagram to detect shifts between traffic states and to estimate the flow-density relationship at a signalized intersectionfor her work guo was named the recipient of the 2020 daniel b fambro student paper award an international award sponsored by the institute of transportation engineers (ite) which recognizes students who have conducted independent and original research on traffic or transportation subjects the award is named for the legacy of daniel b fambro a former professor with the department and associate researcher with ttiguo became interested in this study when taking a traffic engineering class with dr yunlong zhang professor and associate department head of graduate programs later that semester she started working with dr kevin balke a senior research engineer from tti on traffic optimization for signalized corridors
1909,in her paper guo says with the development of emerging connected vehicle technologies the potential for the connected vehicle trajectory method will benefit traffic flow modeling and the development of traffic management strategieswe will experience a mixed traffic environment for a long time until we achieve a fully connected autonomous vehicle (cav) traffic flow she said it is important to explore data from cavs that benefit transportation research even under such low market penetration ratesthe connected vehicle trajectory method demonstrates its feasibility and effectiveness to detect shifts between traffic states reveals transition traffic interactions and provides the potential to model large-scale traffic patternsguo explains there are still some challenges in the public acceptancy of cavs and the frequency of getting a new vehicle that results in the lower market penetration rate of cavs on the roads for the next 10-20 years but its essential to use the data from the current cavs on the road to benefit future of transportation modeling and managementher favorite part of this work is the new technology that cavs bring to transportation although the concept of cav technology is familiar to researchers and the general public the data collected by cav deployments is relatively newit is important to note that detecting the shifts between traffic states and estimating the flow-density relationship are very fundamental transportation challenges that have existed since we have had cars on the streets she said it is very exciting to use data from innovative cav technology to solve thosemany research gaps still need to be addressed a future direction for guo is to replace the fixed timing traffic control with artificial intelligent traffic control
1910,"scientists from texas a&m university have developed an extension to an ordinary cellphone that turns it into an instrument capable of detecting chemicals drugs biological molecules and pathogens the advance is reported in reviews of scientific instruments by aip publishing modern cellphones include high-quality cameras capable of detecting low levels of light and eliminating digital noise through software processing of the captured images recent work has taken advantage of this sensitivity to produce cellphone cameras that can be used as portable microscopes and heart rate detectors the current advance is based on two types of spectroscopy one type known as fluorescence spectroscopy measures the fluorescent light emitted by a sample another known as raman spectroscopy is useful for detecting molecules such as dna and rna that do not fluoresce or emit light at very low intensities both types were used to develop this cellphone detector the system includes an inexpensive diode laser as a light source oriented at right angles to the line connecting the sample and the cellphone camera the right-angle arrangement prevents back-reflected light from entering the camera ""in addition this right-angle excitation geometry has the advantage of being easier to use for the analysis of samples where a bulk property is to be measured "" said author dr peter rentzepis the investigators studied a variety of samples using their constructed cellphone detector including common solvents such as ethanol acetone isopropyl alcohol and methanol they recorded the raman spectra of solid objects including a carrot and a pellet of bacteria carrots were chosen for this study because they contain the pigment carotene the laser light used in their system has a wavelength that is easily absorbed by this orange pigment and by pigments in the bacteria the investigators compared the sensitivity of their system to the most sensitive industrial raman spectrometers available the ratio of signal to noise for the commercial instrument was about 10 times higher than the cellphone system the sensitivity of the cellphone detector could however be doubled by using a single rgb channel for analysis the system has a rather limited dynamic range but the investigators note that this problem can be easily overcome through several hdr or high dynamic range applications that combine images from multiple exposures the additional components including the laser add a cost of only about $50 to the price of a typical cellphone making this system an inexpensive but accurate tool for detecting chemicals and pathogens in the field"
1911,the introduction of lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries has revolutionized technology as a whole leading to major advances in consumer goods across nearly all sectors battery-powered devices have become ubiquitous across the world while the availability of technology is generally a good thing the rapid growth has led directly to several key ethical and environmental issues surrounding the use of li-ion batteries current li-ion batteries utilize significant amounts of cobalt which in several well-documented international cases is mined using child labor in dangerous working environments additionally only a very small percentage of li-ion batteries are recycled increasing the demand for cobalt and other strategic elements a multidisciplinary team of researchers from texas a&m university has made a breakthrough that could lead to battery production moving away from cobalt in an article published in the may issue of nature dr jodie lutkenhaus axalta coating systems chair and professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and dr karen wooley distinguished professor in the department of chemistry and holder of the wt doherty-welch chair in chemistry in the college of science outline their research into a new battery technology platform that is completely metal free this new battery technology platform utilizes a polypeptide organic radical construction by moving away from lithium and working with these polypeptides which are components of proteins it really takes us into this realm of not only avoiding the need for mining precious metals but opening opportunities to power wearable or implantable electronic devices and also to easily recycle the new batteries said wooley recently honored as the 2021 sec professor of the year they [polypeptide batteries] are degradable they are recyclable they are non-toxic and they are safer across the board the all-polypeptide organic radical battery composed of redox-active amino-acid macromolecules also solves the problem of recyclability the components of the new battery platform can be degraded on demand in acidic conditions to generate amino acids other building blocks and degradation products one of the major breakthroughs in this research according to lutkenhaus the big problem with lithium-ion batteries right now is that they're not recycled to the degree that we are going to need for the future electrified transportation economy lutkenhaus added the rate of recycling lithium-ion batteries right now is in the single digits there is valuable material in the lithium-ion battery but it's very difficult and energy intensive to recover the development of a metal-free all-polypeptide organic radical battery composed of redox-active amino-acid macromolecules that degrade on demand marks significant progress toward sustainable recyclable batteries that minimize dependence on strategic metals as a next step wooley and lutkenhaus have begun working in collaboration with dr daniel tabor assistant professor in the department of chemistry through a 2020 texas a&m triads for transformation (t3) grant that aims to utilize machine learning to optimize the materials and structure of the battery platform
1912,the lead authors on the paper are tan nguyen a current postdoctoral associate at the university of michigan and former doctoral student from the texas a&m department of chemistry and alexandra easley a doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m this work was financially supported by the national science foundation the welch foundation and the us department of energy office of science
1913,stephen johnson '73 has established several planned gift endowments benefitting the wm michael barnes '64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university distributions from these endowments will go toward the stephen m johnson '73 endowed chair in industrial and systems engineering two endowed professorships four endowed faculty fellowships and the stephen m johnson '73 industrial and systems excellence endowment a longtime supporter of texas a&m and heritage member of the a&m legacy society johnson has given back to texas a&m through financial contributions as well as through his time and commitment johnson who was born in west virginia grew up in bellaire texas and became an eagle scout in 1967 being an eagle scout sparked my interest in practical solutions to problems he said other universities i visited didn't seem to have professors who used a practical approach to teaching engineering like texas a&m the ability to learn and employ practical concepts allowed me to eventually lead one of the largest companies in my sector like many students johnson said he didn't have the money to attend college i had to go to banks in houston seeking financial assistance and was denied several times he said eventually i was given a tuition loan by texas commerce bank after the chief loan officer found out i was going to be attending texas a&m johnson said his education at texas a&m prepared him for a lifetime of learning during my time at a&m i learned how to focus how to absorb financial management and international business practices and how to synthesize that knowledge with my technical education he said i used that approach throughout my career johnson said the inspiration behind his gifts fall into three main categories: providing students with opportunities supporting the instructors and advancing the stature of texas a&m as a whole johnson aims to give both undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to attend texas a&m and succeed in the global marketplace i can't pay back the kindnesses of all the people who helped me along the way so i want to pay it forward he said as for the instructors he wants to make sure that the industrial and system engineering department has an opportunity to continue moving up in national rankings and continue to attract and retain the best talent available my wish is for this department at a&m to become the best in the country he said to be the best requires professors that have unique teaching and research talent broad technical skills and characteristics and understandings that will excite educate and empower students johnson believes that by supporting both the students and instructors the benefits to texas a&m as a whole will follow i love this university and what it has done for me and i want to see the students faculty and the entire university flourish he said one of the most important things in my life was the education i received at texas a&m and i want to give back in a tangible way he hopes his gifts will promote continued growth of the university and that graduates of this department will contribute to society in meaningful ways now more than ever the world needs the skills that engineering offers we need engineering graduates who can adapt to working through cultural differences and across geopolitical lines to bring critical solutions to global issues he said i hope these graduates will serve societies globally johnson graduated from texas a&m with his degree in industrial engineering in 1973 and received his professional engineering license in 1978 prior to his retirement in 2014 johnson served as chairman president and ceo of mcdermott international inc he has also served on the board of directors of two new york stock exchange-listed companies and a member of the business roundtable in 2005 johnson was awarded the texas a&m distinguished alumni award in industrial and systems engineering and in 2015 he was awarded the texas a&m lifetime achievement award in industrial and systems engineering looking back on his career johnson said i am most gratified by the projects that we designed and constructed worldwide for the people who needed them he said projects in energy development power generation transportation systems consumer product manufacturing and several others improved the lives of many for this reason i believe engineering is a noble profession
1914,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting our students and faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact john bernheim senior director of development
1915,"every day billions of photos and videos are posted to various social media applications the problem with standard images taken by a smartphone or digital camera is that they only capture a scene from a specific point of view but looking at it in reality we can move around and observe it from different viewpoints computer scientists are working to provide an immersive experience for the users that would allow them to observe a scene from different viewpoints but it requires specialized camera equipment that is not readily accessible to the average person to make the process easier dr nima kalantari professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university and graduate student qinbo li have developed a machine-learning-based approach that would allow users to take a single photo and use it to generate novel views of the scene the benefit of our approach is that now we are not limited to capturing a scene in a particular way said kalantari we can download and use any image on the internet even ones that are 100 years old and essentially bring it back to life and look at it from different angles further details about their work were published in the journal association for computing machinery transactions on graphics view synthesis is the process of generating novel views of an object or scene using images taken from given points of view to create novel view images information related to the distance between the objects in the scene is used to create a synthetic photo taken from a virtual camera placed at different points within the scene over the past few decades several approaches have been developed to synthesize these novel view images but many of them require the user to manually capture multiple photos of the same scene from different viewpoints simultaneously with specific configurations and hardware which is difficult and time-consuming however these approaches were not designed to generate novel view images from a single input image to simplify the process the researchers have proposed doing the same process but with just one image ""when you have multiple images you can estimate the location of objects in the scene through a process called triangulation said kalantari that means you can tell for example that there's a person in front of the camera with a house behind them and then mountains in the background this is extremely important for view synthesis but when you have a single image all of that information has to be inferred from that one image which is challenging"" with the recent rise of deep learning which is a subfield of machine learning where artificial neural networks learn from large amounts of data to solve complex problems the problem of single image view synthesis has garnered considerable attention despite this approach being more accessible for the user it is a challenging application for the system to handle because there is not enough information to estimate the location of the objects in the scene to train a deep-learning network to generate a novel view based on a single input image they showed it a large set of images and their corresponding novel view images although it is an arduous process the network learns how to handle it over time an essential aspect of this approach is to model the input scene to make the training process more straightforward for the network to run but in their initial experiments kalantari and li did not have a way to do this ""we realized that scene representation is critically important to effectively train the network "" said kalantari to make the training process more manageable the researchers converted the input image into a multiplane image which is a type of layered 3d representation first they broke down the image into planes at different depths according to the objects in the scene then to generate a photo of the scene from a new viewpoint they moved the planes in front of each other in a specific way and combined them using this representation the network learns to infer the location of the objects in the scene to effectively train the network kalantari and li introduced it to a dataset of over 2 000 unique scenes that contained various objects they demonstrated that their approach could produce high-quality novel view images of a variety of scenes that are better than previous state-of-the-art methods the researchers are currently working on extending their approach to synthesize videos as videos are essentially a bunch of individual images played rapidly in sequence they can apply their approach to generate novel views of each of those images independently at different times but when the newly created video is played back the picture flickers and is not consistent we are working to improve this aspect of the approach to make it suitable to generate videos from different viewpoints said kalantari the single image view synthesis method can also be used to generate refocused images it could also potentially be used for virtual reality and augmented reality applications such as video games and various software types that allow you to explore a particular visual environment the project was funded in part by a grant awarded by the texas a&m triads for transformation seed-grant program"
1916,a team of texas a&m university researchers is analyzing how a network of localized nodes can implement machine-learning applications such as object recognition in a distributed fashion the research team includes dr alfredo garcia professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and dr jeff huang associate professor in the department of computer science and engineering this proposed methodology stands as an alternative to the widely acknowledged federated learning approach federated learning is a machine-learning technique used for training models across multiple decentralized edge devices or servers that hold local data samples without exchanging them since its inception the federated learning approach is a more effective method to traditional centralized machine-learning techniques where all of the local data sets are uploaded to one server whats really exciting in this research is that it shows a robust learning approach for learning models from heterogeneous data streams which are becoming ubiquitous in the real world huang said this research focuses on a more robust alternative to federated learning by considering the approach in which each node periodically updates its own model based upon local data and a network regularization penalty so each node checks in with neighboring nodes every so often to make sure its own model is not too offbeat from that of its neighbors a node is a piece of the network in charge of training a model to put this into perspective there can be millions of nodes processing information at the same time within a matter of seconds nodes will share data with the server but either cant or wont share data with other nodes in a federated learning implementation participating devices need to only periodically communicate parameter updates to a central node where the model parameters are stored however when data streams are heterogeneous both in data rate and quality the model identified by federated learning may not be of the highest quality when the data streams with higher data rates also have lower precision there is a good chance node-producing parameter updates at the fastest pace do not necessarily have the highest quality updates you also run the risk of being exposed to bad data or noise that comes from bad nodes for example photos coming from the latest iphone model with a high-quality camera will have different data quality than photos coming from an iphone 5 federated learning is useful when streaming data across devices is housed in differing geographic locations however there is a downside when there is significant communication overhead and data cannot be transferred to a single location in a timely fashion this is namely the case for high-resolution video in this particular scenario assembling a diverse batch of data points in a central processing location to update a model involves significant latency and may ultimately not be practical in follow-up work with his team garcia is examining the application of the network approach to multitask learning where different nodes do not share the same learning objective or task local model exchange shows similarities between different tasks to provide better learning outcomes
1917,for jaskirat batra the desire to pursue teaching was firmly cemented during childhood being a child of career educators he was often immersed in the world of classrooms chalkboards and textbooks while deeply inspired by his parents batras desire was always to go beyond conventional pedagogy as a graduate student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university he has established a unique style of teaching that might revolutionize how engineering courses are taught in classrooms batra moved to the united states for his bachelors degree in engineering and then went on to obtain a masters degree in electrical engineering from texas a&m during this time he was attracted to the materials science program at texas a&m since it offered an opportunity to expand his academic training into the field of soft polymer material development although the transition would mean focusing on the basic science behind materials design he was excited about adding skills to his academic tool kit i thought that it was the perfect place for me to combine my academic training in engineering science and electrical engineering with my research interests in micro and nanofabrication and soft polymers said batra i couldnt wait to jump in and begin my own research project batra began working on his research project attending classes and taking exams however the turning point of his doctoral years came when he was recruited to teach an introductory engineering course to undergraduate students during this time he grew increasingly dissatisfied with the standard slides-based method particularly because slides which are 2d surfaces were used to display complex 3d concepts i knew there has to be a better way to help students visualize in 3d said batra i found myself digging deep to develop an instructional strategy that would really help my students to learn and enjoy the process while at it batra had an out-of-the-box idea of incorporating virtual reality as a visualization tool for lecture materials he started to use 3d cardboard goggles to monitor student motivation when materials science concepts were being taught the results of his study recently published as a part of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers frontiers in education conference uncovered that when a slides-based lecture was supplemented with virtual reality the motivation increased in 77% of the students we think that virtual reality can play a more important role in classrooms and how we approach teaching stem courses said batra moreover low-cost virtual reality cardboard viewers are a feasible and a scalable way to capture students' attention while juggling teaching and research can be extremely daunting to most students in graduate school batra said he might have found himself an ideal solution that integrates these two worlds and he is deeply committed to this project as an academic i always remember what my parents taught me about the power of a pen in shaping the society and the influence of a teacher on the future generations of teachers scientists engineers thinkers and policy-makers said batra in addition to being an educator in the future i would love to have my own research laboratory where i can engage future generations of scientists in making discoveries and solving problems batra has several recognitions to his credit he has been awarded the teaching-as-research fellowship of the center for the integration of research teaching and learning to conduct his research on the use of virtual reality in materials science education further he has received the 2020 ieee new faculty fellow award for this research he has also been awarded a $4000 diversity matters research seed grant to investigate the social learning experiences of underrepresented and first-generation engineering students in online stem courses as a graduate student he initiated the aggies in science technology and engineering policy organization which offers students a taste of science policy science communication and leadership
1918,"alexander maslowski '08 is providing an essential service to hospitals around the world in an unconventional way as a senior manager at varian medical systems he is committed to researching algorithms and developing tools that aid in the fight against cancer maslowski graduated from the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university and began working for varian medical systems upon graduation at this time the company focused on radiation physics and applying their research to accelerators accelerators can kill cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue intact ""the accelerators have become elegant and complex compared to what they used to be in the 60s 70s and 80s"" said maslowski ""what we've seen is that the more precise our technology is the easier it is to put radiation into infected organs and tumors as opposed to the patient's healthy tissue designing and creating accelerators is a high-risk high-reward assignment due to the wide use of this equipment in hospitals the accelerator's hardware and software must be precise to ensure product reliability and safety ""there's a tremendous amount of time spent at the lab making sure everything is working properly "" he said ""we support thousands of hospitals that use accelerators with hundreds of new patients treated every year per hospital these devices are used immensely so if we make a mistake people can get hurt since then the company has expanded into crafting various technologies from machinery that uses artificial intelligence for their newest development a contouring tool that can mask an organ's location and use this knowledge to optimize the treatment and avoid healthy tissue the company researches algorithms collects data and develops new software tools for applications that range from radiosurgery and radiotherapy to veterinary oncology ""it requires precise work because we're working with people directly and indirectly "" maslowski said ""we are doing a lot of automation collecting a ton of data and deploying new technologies and i like the challenge of experimental work there's a substantial overlap between algorithms computing and experimental science"" maslowski continues his success with varian medical systems he is incredibly thankful for the opportunities and lessons he learned as a nuclear engineering student at texas a&m that laid the groundwork for him to excel in his career ""the nuclear degree itself has a big impact "" he said ""the mathematical and programming training combined is helpful the engineering mind that comes with the degree is going to serve you no matter where you go there is a professionalism that texas a&m culture develops in its students i appreciate this part of the education and the critical thinking skills i learned from the nuclear engineering department"""
1919,a team of students from the texas a&m university college of engineering recently placed second in the 2021 embedded capture the flag competition (ectf) which has held virtually by the mitre corporation the members of the texas a&m team included addison crump (computer science) cormac cupples (computer engineering) garrett weston (computer science) andrew chai (computer science) jonathan labrum (computer science) and jacob morgan (electrical engineering) dr martin carlisle professor of practice in the department of computer science and engineering served as the team's faculty advisor beginning in january the ectf is a semester-long two-phase competition that takes students through the experience of creating a secure system and then learning from their mistakes because it is focused on securing special purpose computers like smartwatches and gps systems the ectf brings forth an entirely different set of challenges and security issues that are not covered by traditional capture the flag competitions it also includes a design and build phase in addition to the attack and defend phase for this year's challenge the participants were tasked with designing a secure communications system for an unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) package delivery system to be successful the uavs have to communicate with devices on the ground so their design had to prevent attackers from accessing the network to spy on and disrupt the system
1920,"in their overall design the team distributed two secret keys to each uav while registering them one key was used to verify that the messages had not been tampered with and the other was used to encrypt the contents of the messages they also added a counter to the messages to fend off simple replay attacks a form of network attack where a hacker fraudulently delays or repeats a valid data transmission to make securing their design easier they used rust a popular programming language designed for performance and safety during the design phase the team became the first in the competition's history to get their design through testing on their first try the students will receive a cash prize of $1 300 from mitre ""we found the competition challenging but fascinating at the same time "" said weston ""our team was comprised of aggies from many different backgrounds some of which had little to no practical experience in cybersecurity or embedded systems so this was a great opportunity to dive right in learn a lot and have some fun the competition ended in april with a virtual awards ceremony"
1921,texas a&m university former student and current florida international university (fiu) associate professor dr anuradha godavarty 03 has been named a national academy of inventors senior member for her research and innovations in optical imaging technologies national academy of inventors senior members are current faculty scientists and administrators who have had success in patents licensing and commercialization and have produced technologies that have impacted the welfare of society these individuals also possess the spirit of innovation in their communities and highlight educating and mentoring the next generation of inventors godavartys research focuses on developing hand-held and smartphone-based near-infrared optical imaging technologies with applications in wound care management and radiation-induced dermatitis in breast cancer subjects funded by various federal and state agencies including the national institutes of health the department of defense the american cancer society the canary foundation the wh coulter foundation and the florida department of health godavarty oversees the development and enhancement of low-cost hand-held optical imaging technologies and computational analysis although she graduated as a chemical engineer godavarty said she has always enjoyed the health care translation of innovations made in research since earning her doctoral degree at texas a&m it definitely feels good to be have an enthusiastic research team and also be supported by various funding agencies that allow us to move our innovations forward into real-world applications in the health care domain she said godavarty believes that being named to this program is a true recognition of years of her continuous and steady effort on the path of innovation of technologies she urges current engineering students to always work hard toward their goals and remember that they need patience for results big dreams need small steady but forward-looking steps in life she said undergraduates should be involved in research beyond classroom education early on to understand the real essence of engineering in the real world graduate students or any graduating engineer must find passion in their work if you love your work it becomes more of a hobby than a chore that needs to be completed both godavarty and her husband work at fiu together they have a teenage daughter in high school who aspires to be an engineer apart from her research godavarty is a trained classical dancer in an indian dance form called bharathnatyam after years of training she made her solo debut on stage in january 2020 right before the pandemic although she hasnt had the chance to return to aggieland since graduating she aims to make a trip back eventually i do wish to visit sometime to walk down the memory lane of my wonderful years spent at texas a&m she said godavarty graduated from texas a&m with her doctoral degree in chemical engineering in 2003 after graduation she worked at the university of vermont as a postdoctoral fellow until 2004 when she joined fiu as an assistant professor in biomedical engineering and once tenured was promoted to associate professor
1922,"trent white a doctoral student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the science mathematics and research for transformation (smart) scholarship the smart scholarship-for-service program is funded by the department of defense (dod) and provides students full tuition to pursue degrees in science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) fields after graduation smart scholars apply their education and research experience as civilian employees with the dod white has been recruited to join the us army research laboratory (arl) – weapons and materials research directorate after graduation to work on developing algorithmic advances and computational tools for evaluating aeroelasticity problems aeroelasticity is a branch of applied mechanics that studies the interaction between fluid and flexible solid structures according to white aeroelastic problems are notoriously difficult and expensive to evaluate when highly accurate solutions are desired so such tools cannot practically be used during system design ""the hope is that my research will lead to significant reductions in the cost and complexity associated with analyzing these problems thereby enabling engineers to incorporate high-fidelity aeroelasticity into more system design frameworks "" he said white already has experience with this research and working with the arl after receiving his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering at texas a&m he participated in arl's summer internship program working with a team in the vehicle technology directorate later he was awarded a journeyman fellowship from the arl which funded the first two years of his doctoral program since then he's contributed to a texas a&m collaboration with arl to develop morphing drones using a novel fluid-structure interaction algorithm this opportunity came from his involvement as a student research assistant in the multifunctional materials and aerospace structures optimization (m2aestro) lab trent is the perfect student to challenge with these difficult problems said his advisor dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering and director of the m2aestro lab he is curious and careful but optimistic and easy to work with he is just the kind of high-performance scholar that deserves a fellowship like the smart white recently joined another collaborative project between texas a&m the boeing company and the army to design and develop morphing rotorcraft technologies ""the current motivation behind our research is to develop those aeroelastic analysis algorithms and computational tools so that we can use them to design morphing aerial vehicles "" said white"
1923,"on june 19 texas a&m university students rushed down from the stands and onto the las vegas motor speedway track texas a&m's formula society of automotive engineers (fsae) team took first place overall at fsae nevada breaking the national record for the most points accrued by an internal combustion car during an fsae competition and it was time to celebrate when the official of the race said 'go see your team ' everyone sprinted onto the track said carson wilke a student in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering i don't think we could have asked for a better week"" fsae is an automotive collegiate design competition where student teams worldwide design build and race a formula-style (single-person and open-wheeled) racecar the teams compete in various events including static events which involve specific design aspects of the car and dynamic events that measure how the car performs on the track"
1924,"the team consists of 22 students from the mechanical engineering department and four student drivers and one student business representative from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution they were selected prior to the fall semester and have worked tirelessly on the project for nearly 10 months at texas a&m the students experience is unique due to how the fsae program is operated ""the fsae team starts from scratch on the car every single year unlike most teams in this competition which makes this victory even better "" said samantha mersman the team's project manager and a mechanical engineering student ""this unique opportunity allows senior mechanical engineering students to see a project from conceptualization to completion helping us become technically competent and capable of forming and sharing our own engineering opinions this has been the best experience in our entire college career "" each event has a winner and how well you perform determines the number of points awarded the static event is a detailed report documenting the cost of design and the four dynamic events test different capabilities of the car including acceleration skid pad autocross and endurance they are also awarded points for the fuel efficiency of the vehicle which is calculated after completing the endurance portion ""endurance is the most important event and what we modeled our design to handle "" said mersman ""the car must last through 22 kilometers so a little bit over 13 miles you're trying to finish before everybody else but really you're just trying to make sure that this car that college students created doesn't break"" the team took first in skid pad first in autocross first in endurance sixth in acceleration and third in efficiency leading the team to be the overall point winners and crowned sole champions the team scored 9277 out of 1 000 points setting a new national record for an fsae internal combustion car competition"
1925,"the team experienced a special moment when their car overtook another close competitor during the endurance competition meaning the other vehicle was forced to enter the slow lane while texas a&m was able to safely pass and pull ahead ""we not only wanted to not break down but we wanted to finish the race first "" said wilke ""we watched our car creep up on our competitor's car finally the volunteer waved the slower car into the right lane so that ours could pass it was one of the best moments and highlights of the race"" along the way faculty members from across the college of engineering provided support to the team their advisor dr srikanth saripalli a professor in the mechanical engineering department played a quintessential role in the teams success ""i think there are two qualities this team has; the first being that they are very disciplined "" said saripalli ""i think they were also resilient they had many setbacks like covid-19 and labs being closed but they continued to do what they could i knew they would do really well but seeing the team take first place overall was even more impressive"" texas a&m has now taken home this win eight times including previous victories in 2000 2006 2007 2009 2011 2017 and 2018 the mechanical engineering department and the team would like to thank the numerous donors who helped make this possible including general motors matt '81 and lisa lawrence '81 and many local businesses in the bryan-college station area they are also thankful for the rellis campus where they were allowed to conduct rigorous testing for more information regarding fsae please contact stephanie lampe"
1926,even the mundane act of swallowing requires a well-coordinated dance of more than 30 muscles of the mouth the loss of function of even one of these due to disease or injury can be extremely debilitating for these people nerve stimulation offers a ray of hope to regain some of their lost oral function in a new study researchers at texas a&m university have delineated the minimum size of electrical currents needed to provide sensation in different parts of the mouth the researchers said their study is a first but vital step toward building electrical stimulation implants that can restore essential intraoral functions that are lost due to nerve or brain damage the results of the study are published in the journal institute of electric and electronics engineers (ieee) transactions on biomedical engineering many essential bodily functions are coordinated by the nervous system via sensorimotor feedback loops as the name suggests these neural circuits involve the brain interpreting incoming signals from sensory nerves and then commanding the motor nerves to execute a certain movement so for example sensorimotor loops play a vital role in voluntary functions like walking or holding an object and involuntary movements like sneezing or blinking within the mouth also referred to as the intraoral cavity there is a rich supply of both sensory and motor nerves in particular sensorimotor nerves in the soft palate and tongue coordinate several intraoral movements related to swallowing speech and respiration and so damage to either the sensory or motor nerve fibers due to neurotrauma or disease can compromise these essential functions reducing the quality of life of those afflicted electrical nerve stimulation might help jumpstart the nerves into action much like how a pacemaker can electrically stimulate nerves in the heart causing the heart muscle to contract but unlike a pacemaker the details on the frequency and amplitude of the electrical currents needed for proper stimulation of different parts of the mouth have not been investigated electrical stimulation can modulate nerve currents or action potentials which are the mode of communication to and from the brain said dr hangue park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and so electrical stimulation should be carefully applied because if not then it might cause undesirable effects or it might not stimulate anything at all
1927,to investigate the minimum stimulation currents needed park and his team inserted tiny metal electrodes into a standard dental retainer these electrodes were positioned in subjects to stimulate either their soft palate or the side and tip of the tongue which receive a rich supply of sensory nerves for each of these locations the researchers slowly changed the amplitude of the stimulation current keeping the frequency fixed then subjects were asked to report when they just began feeling a sensation and when the sensation was uncomfortable next they repeated the same experiment for a higher frequency of current after compiling their data the team determined the average perception and discomfort thresholds for the tongue and soft palate in addition they produced an equivalent circuit of the intraoral cavity to duplicate the electrical properties of that area this circuit the researchers said can help to further study the effects of electrical stimulation offline without requiring human subjects the researchers noted that their next steps would be to electrically stimulate the intraoral region and investigate how these simulations change chewing swallowing and other behaviors sensorimotor systems can be extremely vulnerable to damage due to neural defects aging and neurodegenerative diseases said park in this study we have begun to lay the groundwork for electrically stimulating parts of the mouth that control involuntary and voluntary movements our work is a seminal study and it is important so that we can in the near future help people that face enormous challenges doing everyday tasks that we take for granted other contributors to this study include beomhee park from the electrical and computer engineering department and dr saurabh biswas associate professor of practice from the department of biomedical engineering this research was funded by the institute for rehabilitation and research foundation
1928,dr liette ocker and colin ocker 96 have established the endurance endowed engineering scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university liette and colin began dating at texas a&m in 1996 while colin was completing his bachelors degree in ocean engineering and liette was interning at texas a&m when i graduated high school my brother class of 94 and cousins class of 90 and 92 were all at texas a&m colin said after seeing their experiences it was the only school i applied to colin said the ocean engineering department was instrumental in getting him an internship opportunity that helped kick-start his career and beyond the aggie network has always been there during the twists and turns of my career over the last 25 years he said liette arrived at texas a&m later when she interned there while completing her masters degree from wichita state i fell in love with the university and the aggie culture she said the ockers said they wanted to encourage and promote students who have had to work through challenges in their lives and havent given in to these challenges or allowed them to hold them back there are a lot of kids out there that have challenges in their lives; physical disabilities learning disabilities social and environmental challenges colin said so many kids will give in and allow these challenges to define their place in life but some will persevere and work incredibly hard to overcome them the ockers feel that a lot of scholarships focus on the students final outcome grades or class rank and they wanted to focus on the journey we understand that many times passing a class can be a bigger accomplishment for some than getting an a+ for others liette said colin and liette said they have both been blessed in their careers and know that a quality education is at the foundation of that we hope that it will continue to encourage these kids to persevere and hopefully help in the journey they said colin graduated from texas a&m in 1996 with his degree in ocean engineering and received his professional engineering license in 1999 he later went on to earn his executive mba from rice university in 2018 colin currently serves as the director of predevelopment and planning for hess corporation liette graduated from wichita state with her bachelors degree in communicative disorders and sciences and her masters degree in sport and fitness administration/management she later earned her doctoral degree in educational testing and measurement from the university of houston and is now the owner and principal consultant at ocker consulting llc she and colin have two sons in high school that have grown up as aggies and the family resides in the houston area
1929,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
1930,carolyn wolfman-estrada has established the carolyn wolfman-estrada 12 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students with financial need in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university wolfman-estrada said she chose to attend texas a&m because of the many opportunities that it provided being at a big school meant that i could choose from a wide range of courses and experiences she said my time at texas a&m provided the groundwork for the things i have been able to accomplish in my career i learned engineering fundamentals i worked in many research labs and i developed a love for travel after studying abroad in spain and visiting texas a&m university at qatar wolfman-estrada added preferences for her endowment to be awarded to students in the college of engineering who are members of the society of hispanic professional engineers or the national society of black engineers i was inspired to establish this gift because of the scholarships i received during my time at texas a&m she said because i was not preoccupied with work and financial struggles i was able to participate in extracurricular activities like research and travel my participation in those activities influenced my decision to go to graduate school and work in my current industry wolfman-estrada believes it is important for her to pay forward the generosity she received at texas a&m because of others generosity and the types of scholarships i received at texas a&m i have been able to make all of my dreams come true she said i hope i can give that gift to someone else ultimately wolfman-estrada hopes that the students who receive this gift are able to have the freedom to pursue all of their interests and dreams wolfman-estrada graduated from texas a&m in 2012 with her degree in mechanical engineering she earned her masters degree in mechanical engineering from stanford university in 2014 the same year wolfman-estrada started at apple as an engineering program manager and continues in that position today she focuses on iphone and airtag technologies and resides in the san francisco area
1931,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president of development
1932,bryce s alexander 19 has established the lori 92 and col blake alexander 91 endowed chemical engineering scholarship in honor of his parents distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university alexander was drawn to texas a&m by his family's long-standing spirit and reverence for the university growing up in an aggie family with my parents and grandpa being fervent aggie supporters i often spent lots of time watching aggie football he said the older i got the more i realized my interest in chemical engineering and my desire to pursue a career in the field knowing the strong engineering education that i could get at texas a&m i found an easy home alexanders time at texas a&m impacted him greatly i am extremely grateful for the experiences and memories the deep friendships that i made and the legacy that i was a part of he said in establishing this endowment alexander wanted to ensure that chemical engineering students who are working hard are recognized for their efforts and supported in the best way possible it is with our efforts that we can develop and challenge our aggie students to be their very best as they enter a complex world with challenges that are greater than ever he said i hope that one student who may be burdened financially or constrained by the hours of the day to support their education will be able to devote their time to being an aggie leader in every sense my hope is that this gift will not only free their time or budget but inspire an aggie chemical engineer to be a future leader of magnitude alexander named the endowment after his parents because they supported him and his education relentlessly as aggies they never doubted that i could achieve my goals at a&m and without their support and guidance i would not be the aggie i am today he said i can only hope to pass on the tradition of leadership and guidance to future aggies who have not had the shining beacons of aggies that i have had in my life along the way alexander believes that it is key to always strive to better yourself by seeking out the wisdom and advice of others whether the topic is leadership skills education or personal advice in doing so he believes you develop yourself into a more well-rounded individual with perspectives that lend themselves well to building personal character and humility he was also inspired to make this gift after talking with several of his aggie friends family and his girlfriend about leaving a legacy of influence in life i can only strive to be like those leaders and mentors i have had who have shown me that money is not the most important thing in life he said therefore i wanted to give back what i have been blessed with and impact others lives in a way that will continue in perpetuity through the university's endowments
1933,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings senior director of development
1934,over the last month some parts of texas have been inundated with rain but more than 36% of the state is still experiencing moderate severe and extreme drought conditions as the state moves into the hot summer months and drought season water management will be at the forefront for water stakeholdersthe water rights analysis package (wrap) modeling system has contributed significantly to improving water management in texas over the past two decades dr ralph wurbs senior professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university developed wrap with his graduate students under the sponsorship of the texas water resources institute (twri) the texas commission on environmental quality (tceq) and other state and federal agencieswrap provides comprehensive capabilities for simulating river system hydrology and water resources development allocation management and use and performing reliability and frequency analyses with simulation results the modeling system is applied to assess hydrologic and institutional water availability and reliability in satisfying needs for reservoir storage water supply environmental instream flows hydroelectric energy and flood control wrap is generalized for application any place globallythe water availability modeling (wam) system maintained by the tceq consists of wrap datasets for all river basins in texas twenty wrap input datasets covering texas simulate the operation of 3 400 reservoirs and other constructed facilities 6 200 water-right permits the effects on water availability in texas of five interstate river basin compacts and two us/mexico treaties and other institutional arrangementssenate bill 1 (sb1) article vii of the 75th texas legislature in 1997 authorized the creation of the wam system under the leadership of the tceq and a regional planning process administered by the texas water development board (twdb) sixteen regional water plans and a consolidated statewide plan are updated in five-year planning cycles under the 1997 sb1 the 2017 water plans accessible on the twdb website are being updated with 2021-22 plans tceq approval of water-rights permits requires consistency with relevant regional planstceq staff employ the wrap/wam system in evaluating water-rights permit applications to assess water availability and reliability from the perspectives of both the permit applicants and impacts on other water users permit applicants or their consultants apply the modeling system in preparation for water rights applications twdb staff and 16 regional water planning groups with the support of consulting engineering firms utilize the wrap/wam system in statewide and regional water planning
1935,wrap is applied by river authorities and other water management entities in operational planning studies the modeling system has been used in university and agency research studies to explore various water management issueswater management in texas is driven by dramatic spatial and temporal hydrologic variability continual rapid population growth declining groundwater supplies and intensifying demands on surface water resources wurbs saidhydrology varies from the extremes of devastatingly intense floods to costly multiple-year droughts along with seasonal and less severe random between-year and within-year fluctuations in precipitation and streamflow limited water resources are allocated among many interacting water users and types of use in an environment of extreme hydrologic variability and future uncertaintythe continually evolving wrap modeling system has been implemented in texas by a water management community that includes the state legislature planning and regulatory agencies river authorities water districts cities industries engineering consulting firms and university researchers the shared modeling system has significantly contributed to the effective integration of the planning regulatory and system operations responsibilities of the texas water management community wurbs saidresearch and development at texas a&m to create expand improve and employ the wrap modeling system has been underway continuously since before the 1997 sb1 which significantly accelerated improvements in water management practices including increased reliance on computer-based modeling and analysis an expanded version of wrap released in may 2019 includes improved capabilities for integrating legislatively mandated environmental flow standards periodically updating hydrology datasets simulating reservoir flood control operations and better supporting drought management a january 2021 release further refines capabilities for simulating environmental flow standardsthe may 2019 and january 2021 wrap software and manuals expand the monthly modeling system also to include daily modeling capabilities with monthly-to-daily naturalized flow disaggregation flow routing forecasting flood control reservoir operations and instream flow standards with subsistence base and pulse flow components wurbs saidwrap software six manuals published as twri technical reports other relevant publications and datasets are available at the wrap website a set of online courses was added to the website in june 2021 to further assist model users in achieving proficiency in applying wrapwurbs was the recipient in 2019 of the inaugural research and innovation award of the american academy of water resources engineers (aawre) for his contributions in developing and implementing the wrap modeling system the aawre is a specialty area advanced accreditation institute affiliated with the american society of civil engineersaccording to wurbs the generalized wrap modeling system reflecting flexibility and practicality necessitated by its evolution within the progressive texas water management community can significantly improve water management throughout the world former students who worked with wrap during their graduate studies at texas a&m have played leadership roles in implementing the modeling system in texas likewise professionals introduced to the modeling system during their graduate studies at texas a&m are instrumental in expanding the use of the modeling system worldwide
1936,motor vehicle crashes are one of the leading causes of death for law enforcement officers in the line of duty accounting for almost 40% of fatal work injuries a principal reason this statistic is higher than the national average is that these crashes often include the use of in-vehicle technologies while driving motor vehicle crashes are a major cause of law enforcement officers injuries and deaths in the line of duty zahabi said the main contributors to these crashes include officers use of in-vehicle technologies while driving fatigue and lack of sufficient training in handling high-demand situations researchers at texas a&m university are monitoring law enforcement officers driving workload to develop in-vehicle technologies and training solutions that will adapt to an officers workload to reduce the risk of crashes in law enforcement operations dr maryam zahabi assistant professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering received a 2021 national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award for her research adaptive driver assistance systems and personalized training for law enforcement officers this project employs a combination of human performance modeling approaches machine-learning algorithms and behavioral and physiological measures in a hybrid algorithm to provide adaptations in real time the career award is the nsfs most prestigious award that supports early-career faculty who have the potential to become role models in both research and education at their respective institutions the goal of zahabis research is to provide law enforcement officers with real-time in-vehicle technology and driver-training adaptations to improve the driving training process and establish a strong education program model to train incoming law enforcement officers this research also paves the way for the next generation of students and scholars in human-computer interaction research the project will be conducted in three phases during the first phase the team will be administering ride-along observations with law enforcement officers to build human-performance models based on the data collected phase 2 will use these models and algorithms to provide a real-time adaptation of in-vehicle technologies based on a drivers cognitive state which the team will evaluate using a driving simulation experiment in phase 3 the team will create a flexible driving simulation-based training for law enforcement officers to improve the speed at which driving and interaction with in-vehicle technologies can be mastered the team will then compare the effectiveness of this training with conventional non-adaptive training approaches that are currently used in law enforcement agencies we are in the first phase of this project and are developing the human-performance models for novice law enforcement officers using r software which is a free open-source and platform-independent software package zahabi said we are planning to evaluate the performance of these models with the data that we will collect from the ride-alongs this research aims to fill three gaps in particular: creating a holistic human-performance model of an individuals cognitive state expanding on the devices used to monitor a drivers cognitive state and developing an adaptive driving simulation-based training system human performance models have not provided a comprehensive evaluation of the human cognitive state and applications for these models are still limited to normal driving conditions and are unable to model time-sensitive situations that many law enforcement officers face in their everyday jobs the research team will use a combination of cognitive models machine-learning algorithms and real-time physiological and behavioral data to provide a more comprehensive adaptive system previous examinations on adaptive training are generally a proof of concept without implementation in actual training settings which might have been due to the limitations of off-the-shelf training media we will fill this gap by developing an adaptive driving simulation-based training system zahabi said this career research seeks to fill this knowledge gap by establishing novice law enforcement officers performance models that can accurately represent their cognitive perceptual and motor demands while driving
1937,"dr robert ambrose has joined the faculty of the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university along with his appointment ambrose is also the recipient of the governors university research initiative (guri) grant program and the texas a&m university system chancellors research initiative (cri) a member of the national academy of engineering ambrose will serve as a professor in the department as well as a staff member of the texas a&m engineering experiment station he will also work in collaboration with the george hw bush combat development complex ambrose comes to texas a&m from nasa where he served as chief of the software robotics and simulation division at the johnson space center he received his mechanical engineering bachelor's degree and master's degree from washington university in st louis and his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the university of texas at austin investments in our faculty particularly the recruitment of national academy members is vital to a universitys pursuit of excellence said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp i am proud that we have more than tripled our national academy members in recent years and the university has benefitted so much from their contributions to teaching and research ambrose's research focuses on robotic manipulation and mobility specifically in relation to space robotics a field that he said is growing rapidly ambrose said he is excited to bring his decades of experience to texas a&m to explore and address new and emerging challenges in this field ""the energy we see in space today is exciting with new companies new approaches and new challenges "" ambrose said ""we intend for texas a&m to become the premier university for space robotics at a time when the field is breaking out but much of what we need first in space will then create new markets on earth for example the texas a&m focus on off-road autonomous vehicles is a perfect fit for a guy building lunar rovers at nasa for the last 20 years"" while space is the frontier for which engineers are innovating the core areas of robotic manipulation and mobility will also serve to provide technological advancements to daily life here on earth as well ambrose noted robotic applications including construction food production and logistics for small crews as just a few areas where the needs of astronauts overlap with advances in industry as well including robots building homes assisting in food production and delivering packages imagine a team of humans and robots building a home in a week or a family farmer in texas with robotic equipment able to out compete massive industrial farms overseas ambrose said the implementation will be like a person with a sewing machine able to do more than with a single needle and thread or a person with a power drill versus a manual screwdriver robots are a force multiplier and the ultimate power tools he said a decade of leading robotics at nasa has provided him an appreciation for the rapid speed at which technology is advancing and the critical need to provide a strong education to the engineers of the future it is a competitive world and i intend to help texas a&m produce the top talent and new ideas for the field ambrose said for over a decade at nasa i have run a division of more than 500 engineers helping projects get formulated helping engineers work through design challenges and urgently fixing problems for astronauts in space i am excited to teach that problem-solving approach to our next generation an internationally recognized leader in robotics and autonomous systems ambrose has recently managed robots on the international space station software and simulations for spacex boeing and orion spacecraft and the development of exercise equipment wearable robotics and jetpacks used by astronauts during his service at nasa he is a founding member of the national robotics initiative a member of the united states government's senior executive service and vice president of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers robotics and automation society the guri and cri programs have enabled texas a&m to recruit some of the countrys top experts in a variety of high-impact engineering disciplines said dr john hurtado interim dean of the college of engineering we are all excited to welcome dr ambrose to texas a&m and look forward to him sharing his expertise with our students and collaborating with his fellow faculty members guri was established in 2015 as a tool to aid public institutions of higher education in texas to recruit distinguished researchers to the state the guri grant really sealed the deal for me coming to texas a&m accelerating my plans for developing new robotic systems and showing the state of texas' appetite for winning this new space race in robotics ambrose said"
1938,"texas a&m university researchers are working on a new method of measuring temperature during phase-change processes with the potential to outshine current state-of-the-art techniques by developing a non-contact method of measuring temperature in the vapor phase during a phase-change process through optical diagnostic techniques the research can avoid the negative impacts of current practices the phase-change heat transfer process is the transition from one phase of matter solid liquid or vapor (also referred to as gas) to another it is associated with the absorption or emission of heat which can then be used for a number of applications the process is used in a broad range of areas including power generation buildings communications systems food processing systems and the chemical processing industry ""there is a level of uncertainty about the physics of transport near a liquid-vapor interface during phase-change processes such as evaporation and condensation dr dion antao said the current state-of-the-art uses physical probes like thermocouples to measure the temperature in the vapor phase but such a probe affects disturbs or biases near-interface transport processes a non-contact temperature measurement in the vapor phase will enable us to probe some of these fundamental near-interface transport phenomena in a spatially resolved manner"" antao an assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering is a 2021 recipient of the national science foundation faculty early career development (career) award which will support his research into phase-change heat transfer processes the career award honors promising junior faculty as they pursue cutting-edge research while simultaneously advancing excellence in education antao said he is honored by the recognition associated with the award and looks forward to implementing his research plan exploring the intersection of phase-change heat transfer and plasma physics and engineering ""i plan to leverage this funding to understand fundamental material-phase transitions during plasma discharge events in dense fluids (specifically in liquids) develop novel optical diagnostic techniques for the phase-change heat transfer community and use plasma discharges in liquids to manipulate and enhance heat and mass transfer processes in energy conversion and water treatment applications "" antao said working at the intersection of a diverse set of fields including phase-change heat transfer plasma physics and engineering surface chemistry and liquid-solid-vapor interfacial phenomena antao hopes his groups work can have a wide-reaching impact on numerous facets of daily life ""phase-change heat transfer processes are at the center of most aspects of our lives "" antao said ""we propose to develop theory and tools to understand the fundamentals of these phase-change phenomena better and then manipulate tune and enhance such processes to optimize thermal and mass transport in various energy conversion and water treatment technology"" the biggest challenge facing the research antao said will be to combine the fields of plasma physics/engineering and phase-change heat transfer in doing so antao plans to develop new methods of guiding and controlling the energy conversion process ""i have great students in my research group as does our department and i know that together we will overcome the challenging nature of the proposed work "" he said antao said he hopes his research will challenge everyone on his team to learn new concepts by developing and validating new hypotheses with the hope of ultimately impacting society through the development of technology that utilizes energy and water resources more efficiently ""to our knowledge this approach has never been attempted before and hence i expect it to challenge us "" antao said ""there is nothing more exciting in our job than innovating to solve challenging problems and learning new fields and techniques"" antao said that while he is excited about his research's potential he also hopes to have a lasting impact on the next generation of engineers through his work ""beyond the project-specific research outcomes i hope that we can leverage our novel research to excite the next generation of students through our educational outreach activities get them thinking about energy conversion and sustainability and possibly show them that mechanical engineering is more than cars and gears "" antao said the educational component of his career award includes working with students at the elementary and middle school levels through outreach programs incorporating the team's findings into the department's curriculum and providing research opportunities to students from high school through the graduate program ""we would like to leverage this unique combination of plasmas and heat transfer to excite the next generation of students and get them interested in stem careers from an early age "" antao said ""as researchers in the area of energy and energy conversion the education components are a unique opportunity to get the next generation of our society thinking about energy conversion and the various process efficiencies so that we can be good stewards of the energy and water resources we have"""
1939,"carolyn and edwin ""ed"" h moerbe jr '61 have established the carolyn and edwin moerbe endowed mechanical engineering scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university as previous contributors to the college of engineering carolyn and ed have a passion for giving back and supporting students education has always been so important to me ed said i couldnt have completed my education at texas a&m without the scholarships i received so i promised myself that i would return the favor ed knew he wanted to study chemical engineering after high school and ultimately felt that texas a&m was the best choice aggie chemical engineers seemed to be the best among the engineers in my hometown he said however at one point during his time at texas a&m ed was on the verge of having to drop out due to lack of financial funds after talking to his advisor ed was able to receive a scholarship that allowed him to complete his degree after receiving that scholarship i wanted someday to give back to texas a&m in a meaningful way he said for me there is no greater joy than giving back ed highlighted that earning his degree from texas a&m allowed him to gain self-confidence problem-solving skills and the ability to work with people having these skills meant that i was able to pursue serving people in the corporate world and in my own business he said the moerbes were inspired to create this additional endowment by their experiences with their church pastor and local high school prince of peace christian school where ed served as chairman of the board of education he was later appointed and served on the board of regents of concordia university texas and developed a strong interest in helping students get a quality education ed and carolyn became aware of many students including their pastors son who intended to study engineering at texas a&m from prince of peace and realized they had not established a scholarship geared toward mechanical engineering students carolyn and i decided that giving back now through scholarships at texas a&m was the best way to help these students and see them succeed ed said ed graduated from texas a&m with his degree in chemical engineering in 1961 during his time as a student ed was a member of numerous student organizations he later received his mba while working in californias silicon valley now retired ed and carolyn reside in the dallas area"
1940,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings senior director of development
1941,dr faruque hasan associate professor and the kim tompkins mcdivitt 88 and phillip mcdivitt 87 faculty fellow in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2021 computing and systems technology division (cast) outstanding young researcher award by the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) this prestigious award is given to individuals under the age of 40 for outstanding contributions to the chemical engineering computing and systems technology literature hasan received this award for his original contributions in the areas of computer-aided process intensification and process synthesis with applications to energy and the environment the award will be officially presented to him at the aiche annual meeting in boston in november this award is just the latest of a long line of awards for hasan in 2020 he was awarded the national science foundation (nsf) faculty early career development award to detect and analyze the existence emergence and role of hidden synergistic effects in complex systems this research is already bearing fruit as hasan and his research team have developed a synergistic decision framework for incorporating renewables and flexible carbon capture for decarbonizing the energy sector hasan was named to the 2019 class of influential researchers by the journal industrial & engineering chemistry research in 2018 he was a finalist in the 2018 world technology awards also in 2018 a team led by members of hasans research group won the annual u-challenge contest at texas a&m in 2017 he was awarded the prestigious american chemical society petroleum research fund new doctoral investigator grant aimed at tapping underutilized gas resources in 2015 hasan was awarded the ralph e powe junior faculty enhancement award by the department of energy (doe) oak ridge associated universities hasan leads a research group that is now being recognized for developing multiscale process systems engineering methods for intensified process design systems integration optimization and technoeconomic and lifecycle analysis of sustainable processes and pathways for decarbonizing energy and industrial sectors resilient energy-water nexus design and sustainable future hydrogen economy he has also co-developed several patented technologies for co2 capture and utilization his research has been externally funded by the nsf doe american chemical society petroleum research fund and oak ridge associated universities
1942,melissa and kenn hall have established the melissa 91 and kenn hall 90 endowed aerospace engineering scholarship and the melissa 91 and kenn hall 90 aerospace engineering excellence endowment distributions from this scholarship will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an aerospace engineering degree distributions from the excellence endowment will be used to provide funds for recognized student organizations/clubs within the department of aerospace engineering in the college of engineering at texas a&m university in high school kenn originally wanted to join the air force and be a fighter pilot but when his eyesight started declining he decided to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering instead i knew that texas a&m had a strong aerospace program but didnt know much about the university he said i was able to visit the campus a couple of times and met some really incredible people from professors to students and just fell in love with the place as for melissa her brother attended texas a&m so she was familiar with the university and knew it was a place she would like to attend i looked at other places too but ultimately came back and chose texas a&m she said both kenn and melissa said that the aggie network has been prevalent throughout their lives and kenn credits his aerospace degree from texas a&m for launching his career at the johnson space center now i am the president of a small business that is still doing work at nasa but also expanded into other government agencies he said the curriculum of my engineering degree and the values of texas a&m helped me to become a leader and eventually run my own company similarly melissa said her accounting degree from texas a&m launched her career at ernst and young my degree allowed me to have success working with a number of companies throughout the years she said when given the opportunity to meet with students as a part of the aerospace engineering external advisory board kenn noticed many student organizations continual need for resources like funds for travel or materials for their projects etc we were inspired to establish this excellence endowment by the dedication and hard work that students put in to further their college experience beyond just the classroom kenn said we wanted to establish an endowment that would continue to help support the student organizations in years to come as for the aerospace scholarship kenn and melissa wanted to provide opportunities for other students to come to texas a&m and become aggies we were fortunate to attend texas a&m and have our son attend as well but we want to provide some support for those in the future instead of focusing on just one area to give back kenn and melissas goal was to provide support in a number of areas they are passionate about education is one of those areas of passion and texas a&m played a big part in our education and still does today as our son hunter will be a senior next year kenn said kenn is the president and ceo of anadarko industries which provides engineering and it support and services to the government and major government contractors melissa serves as the controller at blinn college their son hunter 22 is participating in the mays ppa program pursuing degrees in accounting and finance
1943,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown assistant director of development
1944,"jon bishop a graduate student in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named the 2020-21 southeastern conference (sec) h boyd mcwhorter scholar-athlete of the year first presented by the sec in 1986 the prestigious award recognizes the conferences top male and female student-athletes annually bishop is the third aggie and second track and field athlete to earn the award ""it's the highest honor that a student-athlete can receive in the sec and we're proud that texas a&m continues a legacy of receiving this award "" said ross bjork director of texas a&m athletics in a related press release ""our goal here is to have our student-athletes achieve their full potential in whatever avenue they decide to pursue jon we are so proud that you have achieved your full potential and then some"" chosen by a committee of faculty athletics representatives from universities within the sec bishop will receive a $20 000 post-graduate scholarship in addition to the mcwhorter award he is also the recipient of several academic and athletic honors which include the bill erwin scholar-athlete award (2020 and 2021) sec cross country scholar-athlete of the year award (2018) and sec indoor track and field scholar-athlete of the year award (2020) after graduating bishop looks to pursue a career in data science data analytics or cryptography its such a huge blessing said bishop the scholarship and what the award stands for is amazing im just so happy i can bring the award back to texas a&m it doesnt feel real yet but im sure it will sink in as time goes on"
1945,the strain that weather conditions such as extreme heat put on the electrical grid is substantial the current heat wave in texas for example brings concerns for grid operators and in turn energy conservation requests to consumers the power grid is a symbiotic relationship between energy output and energy consumed the question is whether more can be done to enhance the relationship between utility companies and household consumers milad soleimani doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is developing decision-making tools to enable and incentivize consumers to provide energy resource support back to the power grid when needed this would ultimately minimize the impact on the grid and decrease costs for utility companies when the system is operating in an extreme condition eg an asset fails or load exceeds available generation specifically soleimani has taken a deeper look into the risk prediction and management for coordinating consumer and grid resources to mitigate the risk of electricity supply interruptions according to a study of 933 major events causing outages in the us between 1984 and 2006 44% of the events are weather related and 30% are because of asset failure the information technology industry council reports that 98% of organizations state that one hour of post-outage downtime costs utility companies over $100 000 one aspect of his project focuses on examining the risks posed to the grid which are mainly weather conditions vegetation and loading on the transformers that bring electricity to residential homes the other aspect was how to manage distributed resources owned by consumers such as battery energy storage systems which enable energy from renewable sources like solar and wind to be stored and deployed when customers need power most in order to automate the interactions between residential electricity consumers and grid operators soleimani designed an in-site controller that receives control inputs from the consumer as well as the electric grid operator to manage the resources in the dwelling such as battery energy storage electric vehicles (evs) and solar generation he also developed a decision support tool for the electric grid operator that predicts the risk of grid operation in the near future and optimizes the distributed resources deployment to manage the risk and ensure continuous delivery of electricity to consumers soleimani explained that the main functionality of this tool is to predict the energy consumption and resources within residential homes in the future when solar panels and other renewable generation are at a higher penetration rate then assess how the energy resources within these homes should be managed to benefit the grid and consumers alike the implementation of our controller by only considering evs showed that 40% penetration of evs in a residential area may cause more than 80% increase in electricity demand during peak hours soleimani said the managed charging of evs using the controller we developed reduced this increase in peak demand to less than 10% increase in addition the required increase in the electricity price to cover the expenses of infrastructure upgrade is decreased by 80% soleimani is working with faculty advisor dr mladen kezunovic on this project which is part of the us-india collaborative for smart distribution system with storage (ui-assist) and funded by the us department of energy the fundamental approach for ui-assist is to bridge the gap between smart grid storage and renewable energy research and facilitate its subsequent adoption by utilities around the world in their distribution system operation and planning
1946,"suzanne peterson a graduate research assistant in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university received the asm international houston chapter general funds scholarship for the 2020-21 school year petersons research focuses on investigating the deconvolution of the interphase large deformation mechanical response and the prediction of interphase properties based on microstructural patterns through a combination of atomic force microscopy finite element analysis and machine learning she is pursuing her doctorate under the guidance of dr pavan kolluru assistant professor in the department ""i was very encouraged to hear that i was a recipient of this award said peterson coming from a background that is not strictly materials science-based it is very encouraging to be recognized for my work in the field by such a prestigious group"" graduate students receiving the general funds scholarship must be enrolled full time in a materials science and engineering program maintain at least a c grade average and be a citizen of the united states or an asm member asm international is a materials information society that connects materials professionals and their organizations to the resources necessary to solve problems improve outcomes and advance society peterson is also a recipient of the national science foundations graduate research fellowship program"
1947,three members of dr stratos pistikopoulos research group yuhe tian burcu beykal and styliani avraamidou have recently accepted faculty positions at major universities according to pistikopoulos director of the texas a&m energy institute and dow chemical chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering the fact that three members of his group have taken faculty positions at nearly the same time is quite significant of the 60 phd students i have graduated 14 have entered academia said pistikopoulos three students entering academia at once just does not happen i have been very fortunate and privileged to have such a group of talented researchers pistikopoulos attributes the success of his research group and these three members in particular to a number of different factors
1948,how did working in dr pistikopoulos's research group prepare you for this next step in your career we have a very collaborative and supportive environment in the group with a wide range of research topics i always find it very inspiring to stimulate new ideas from the research discussions with my lab mates the groups project collaborations with other academic and industrial partners have also trained me how to identify and contribute to emerging scientific and technological needs while it is also important to stay open-minded with multidisciplinary thinking what will be your research focus at west virginia university my research will focus on the development and application of systems engineering tools toward process innovation efficient energy solutions sustainable process and systems integration particularly my research aims to develop mechanistic/hybrid modeling and analytics tools optimization algorithms and multi-scale systems approaches for design and operation of modular and process intensification systems i just want to take this chance to express my gratitude to my supervisor professor pistikopoulos and all my awesome lab mates it has been indeed a great privilege for me to work with them through my phd program
1949,how did working in dr pistikopoulos' research group prepare you for this next step in your career i worked on many collaborative projects with professor pistikopoulos and this enabled me to widen my horizon and tackle big-impact collaborative problems in my doctoral and postdoctoral research from fundamental chemical engineering including optimal reactor design and operation to oil production optimization food-energy-water nexus energy systems design supply-chain optimization environmental and biomedical modeling i was very privileged to interact and work with researchers of diverse backgrounds having developed a second nature in working on collaborative projects over the years has prepared me well in my next career step also professor pistikopoulos support and guidance were essential to this process beyond his guidance in research his dedication to my entire development as a researcher including my communication teamwork and leadership skills was also instrumental for my future in academia being a part of such an extensive research program also enabled me to be recognized at the local and national levels as well i was featured in the national institute of environmental health sciences superfund research program e-posted notes for my role in the data science core of the texas a&m superfund research center i received the computing and systems technology division directors award at the 2020 american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) annual meeting for my work on data-driven supply chain optimization prior to my doctoral graduation i also received the outstanding graduate student award from the department of chemical engineering and i was selected as a rising star in chemical engineering by the massachusetts institute of technology in 2019 all these valuable recognitions have helped me to reflect on my skills and my career progression and increased my visibility within the academic community for my next career step what will be your research focus at the university of connecticut my research will focus on data science-enabled hybrid modeling and optimization specifically developing computational tools for answering challenging problems faced in energy environmental and health applications machine learning will be at the heart of my future research program and i will be focusing on incorporating first-principles modeling within data-driven frameworks for designing sustainable clean energy systems addressing challenges in process intensification and developing smart manufacturing frameworks for facilitated material design and discovery
1950,how did working in dr pistikopoulos's research group prepare you for this next step in your career working in professor pistikopoulos group has given me a lot of opportunities for growth through exploring different research fields (modeling optimization control etc) and developing my teamwork leadership and management skills professor pistikopoulos has also supported me both personally and professionally over the years preparing me for my academic journey what will be your research focus at the university of wisconsin-madison my research will focus on expanding the limits of chemical and process systems engineering by developing tools for the understanding analysis and optimization of circular economy supply chains supply chains that are restorative and regenerative by design as a means of achieving environmental social and economic sustainability i will be focusing on the supply chains of chemicals plastics and food while focus groups will consider the transition to renewable energy circular economy supply chain modeling resiliency and the development of multi-agent modeling and optimization approaches
1951,researchers at texas a&m university and george mason university are investigating the utilization of population-level data in an effort to codify quarantine policies for policymakers this will ultimately alleviate the spread of diseases during epidemics and pandemics from multiple angles including mass screening quarantining and vaccine distribution dr hrayer aprahamian assistant professor and jiayi lin doctoral student in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m and dr hadi el-amine assistant professor of systems engineering and operations research at george mason university have identified quarantine policies using subject-risk information to mitigate the spread of disease while also recognizing the potential for the negative economic impact in order to identify the best possible policy we formulate this decision problem within an optimization framework and use a range of tools to be able to solve the resulting problem accurately and efficiently aprahamian said doing so enables us to solve the problem for realistic problem instances their research aims to not only provide practitioners administrators and policymakers with evidence-based insights and recommendations on mitigating the spread of disease in pandemics but to also demonstrate that operations research and mathematical tools can be used to successfully divulge more optimized mitigation policies to effectively combat the spread of diseases this paper provides an efficient solution scheme to a class of challenging optimization problems that arise in numerous real-world applications like crew scheduling vehicle routing inventory management group testing and bin packing lin said from a practical standpoint this paper addresses an important question that many practitioners have continued to struggle with how can one use the vast amount of covid-19 data to shape informed data-driven policies the researchers attempt to answer this question by providing a mathematical framework to identify quarantine policies that are effective in mitigating the spread of disease while considering both subject-specific risk information and overall economic impact this distinction arises from the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all policy the team conducted a covid-19 case study using real-world risk data for the state of minnesota which was achieved by simulating a realistic community based on census data and then ran an optimization model on this particular community the resulting models were solved using texas a&ms high performance research computing facilities to achieve comprehensive results the experiment was repeated for a range of realistic parameter values to measure the benefits of the proposed policies the team compared their solution to more conventional one-dimensional policies targeted policies tailored to the specific needs of the local population are recommended such specific solutions however are often complex and require us to work closely with local leaders in order to successfully implement them aprahamian said this research demonstrates that the identified data-driven policies outperform conventional measures by both reducing the spread of the disease and having less economic impact one observation that is worth highlighting is that the results reveal that taking no action at all is never the best solution for a wide range of realistic parameter values even in the most extreme of cases lin said these results when scaled translate to hundreds of thousands of fewer infections and millions of dollars of savings aprahamian said such high-level insights are of great value as they can be used by larger national or worldwide agencies to urge local administrators to take action especially at the early stages of the pandemic
1952,"disinfecting classrooms took on a whole new level during the covid-19 pandemic with teachers and staff expected to wipe down desks and shared spaces constantly one capstone team in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university designed a more efficient way to clean classrooms to battle the pandemic and other illnesses the team built a low-cost small-footprint ultraviolet (uv) robot the robot autonomously travels through a room and emits uv light onto surfaces uv light is a type of radiation and has been proven to kill germs like bacteria and viruses successfully the team aimed to find a solution that was more efficient and safer than chemicals or other disinfectants it will also give a lot of parents better peace of mind sending their kids to school emily clark said there are already so many measures being taken to disinfect schools so this would be one that people could put faith into and trust larger-scale versions of this type of robot exist in large hospitals and institutions but they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars which the team said is not affordable for publicly funded institutions like schools so many times so many facilities or countries cant afford these million-dollar machines and its so important especially now considering were in the middle of pandemic that we have sanitation and the means to sterilize things johanna webb said the device can combat not only the covid-19 virus but also other germs and bacteria such as strains of the flu along with schools the device could also have applications in retirement homes and other public areas where individuals may be more susceptible to illness i doubt that the enthusiasm and interest in something like this will disappear entirely once we get a handle on covid and other things william mcfadden said its applicable throughout regardless of what our current pandemic situation is"" the teams sponsor is dr saurabh biswas associate professor of practice in the department and executive director for commercialization and entrepreneurship at the texas a&m engineering experiment station the team said while dr biswas did give them requirements for the project he gave them creative freedom on how the final prototype was designed donald bowen said the team also reached outside of the university for feedback my sister-in-law used to be first-grade teacher and she did some time during covid bowen said she told me about cleaning off the desks and how her coworkers have to do all this sterilization so we got a feel for how this device would be used getting this kind of information during the design input phase helped us learn how users would want to use the device the design involves a flat base with a tower about three feet tall made out of an aluminum shell to help dissipate heat from the leds which will be seated on top of the tower by having the device be tall the lights will reach above desks and hit different areas the team faced a variety of challenges throughout the project from figuring out costs so the device can still be affordable to schools to ensuring the leds were the correct quality to provide cleansing chris weber said on top of the design challenges the team had to overcome being unable to meet in person often due to covid-19 restrictions we overcame this partially due to a very detailed timeline that split up work and kept us accountable for meeting different deadlines weber said reflecting on the last two semesters yue qiu said the teamwork and problem-solving experiences would impact her the most since i'm going to do research it is unavoidable to work with other people also the problem-solving experience will be useful since it is similar to the research process qiu said it is because both the problem solving and research process requires us to think and try repetitively and we might keep failing until we successfully find a way mashal mithani said she believes the greatest impact people can have is on human life the most selfless thing we can do is help others live their life to the fullest and improve their quality of life the best that we can mithani said and i know i would find fulfillment in my career and in my life if i had a hand in doing that"
1953,"as you drive down the highway you may notice an increasing number of hybrid and electric vehicles alternative energy automobiles are on the rise contributing to the global effort to reduce carbon emissions as we move together down this road researchers are determining new solutions to this ongoing problem dr muzammil arshad instructional assistant professor for the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university and a team of multidisciplinary student researchers conducted a study to analyze the performance of hydrogen-enriched fuel on spark engine performance and efficiency this solution could make significant contributions to helping automobiles become more environmentally friendly ""due to climate change as well as a focus on reduced emissions and deprivation of fossil fuel reserves there has been immense research to reduce emissions "" said arshad ""this has led to investigating effects of dual fuels on the emissions as well as engine performance parameters because we don't want to lose the combustion characteristics by injecting a secondary fuel"" two multidisciplinary students jonathan rodriguez and miriam alanis contributed significantly and are co-authors of the research as undergraduate students at the higher education center at mcallen (hecm) this accomplishment is an impactful stepping stone their research was accepted into the 12th us annual combustion meeting hosted in college station where they presented their findings ""i think presenting at the conference was wonderful "" said alanis ""from the study we were able to produce tangible results that could potentially be meaningful and useful"" this study was also recently published in the petroleum and chemical industry international journal"
1954,"""these accolades establish our research and give it credibility "" said rodriguez ""we are making progress at the hecm i believe we are part of the first student research project conducted on campus as an undergraduate i didn't believe it was an experience i would achieve until dr arshad developed the project"" spark ignition engines are commonly used in various small suvs and sedans in these engines gasoline merges with air and is ignited by a spark formed by the spark plug creating combustion the car can convert thermal energy into kinetic by burning the fuel allowing the car to move ""we have performed numerical simulations to understand and predict the performance of spark ignition engines by introducing hydrogen in various quantities and predicting the effect on various efficiencies in-cylinder pressure and emissions "" said arshad the goal is that by adding hydrogen the car will be more fuel-efficient and produce less harmful emissions the researchers also analyzed whether significant changes would be required to current spark ignition engines to account for the addition of hydrogen ""originally we thought the difference in the in-cylinder pressure due to the enrichment could create issues that would require major modifications to the engine "" said rodriguez ""our findings show a reduction in the in-cylinder peak pressure consequently insinuating that we do not need major modifications to the engine to use this dual fuel this research has potential value in the fuel market while leaving the vehicle market untouched"" as the first research initiative at the hecm arshad is thrilled with the results and plans to conduct similar projects with students in the future ""research experience and publications are a major skill they can now showcase on their resumes "" said arshad ""they also learned skills such as time management working under pressure meeting deadlines and presenting in front of large audiences all of these skills are valuable and will help them in the future"""
1955,researchers in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university were one of the top winners of the 2021 knowledge discovery in databases (kdd) cup the principal investigator dr shuiwang ji associate professor in the computer science and engineering department shares the award with his students meng liu cong fu xuan zhang limei wang yaochen xie hao yuan youzhi luo and zhao xu and collaborator dr shenglong xu research assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy we are very excited to receive this award said ji it is definitely another validation that our groups work on graph deep learning is among the top tier research in the world in order to win the prestigious award they were challenged with solving a well-known problem in quantum physics and chemistry on calculating the difference between the energy of the highest available orbit for an electron and the lowest available orbit the researchers said their calculations play an important role in predicting the property of molecules particularly its reactivity excitation by light and electrical conductivity however these types of computations require hours of computational time if physics-based calculations are used to overcome this obstacle the texas a&m team designed a machine-learning algorithm based on a deep graph neural network this algorithm could within 30 milliseconds and with very minimal error predict the energy gap by learning from 2d and 3d graphs of the molecular structure earning them the prize ji said that historically this award is mainly conferred to major information technology companies like microsoft because their access to large computing resources made them better poised to answer problems that are resource heavy we are extremely excited to be the only team with all members from a university research lab to be on the awardee list said ji companies have orders of magnitudes more computing resources than us but we showed that even with limited computing resources smarter algorithms can solve problem just as efficiently the kdd cup is a premier annual data mining competition that was started in 1997 this competition focuses on problems that are different from conventional machine-learning challenges and has an emphasis on solving real-world problems and impact ji and his team received fourth place among 49 teams and were first among three runners-up other awardees include teams from microsoft baidu deepmind and microsoft research asia
1956,dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and assistant director-energy digitization at the texas a&m energy institute has been named the recipient of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) technical committee on cyber-physical systems (tccps) mid-career awardthe award recognizes one mid-career researcher each year from either academia or industry who has demonstrated outstanding contributions to the field of cyber-physical systems in their career development particularly emphasizing the significance and impacts of the research work they leaddr xie is an internationally visible scholar for his research leadership and vision of cyber-physical energy systems said dr jiang hu professor in the electrical and computer engineering department in his nomination letter he combines a very unique quality of academic vision intellectual innovativeness and organizational leadership which made him among the strongest candidates for this very prestigious awardxies research activities center on energy grids he has made pioneering contributions to the modeling and analysis of cyber-physical systems in the energy area he was among the first power engineers to deeply integrate data sciences with the power gridamong his many honors xie has received eight best paper awards at major conferences and was the recipient of the national science foundations faculty early career development (career) award the ieee power and energy society outstanding young engineer award the oak ridge ralph e powe jr faculty award he was also named a texas a&m chancellor edges fellow and texas a&m presidential impact fellowxie received his bachelors degree from tsinghua university his masters from harvard university and his doctoral degree from carnegie mellon university he worked with iso-new england inc and edison mission energy while working on his doctoral degree his current research interests include modeling and control of large-scale complex systems smart grid applications in support of renewable energy integration and electricity marketsi am deeply humbled by this recognition said xie i owe a great deal to the supportive environment at texas a&m and collaborative spirit of many colleagues this recognition is not just for me but also for the students and postdocs in the group over the years
1957,humans and robots may be sharing some of the same goals and manufacturing spaces soon as autonomy and robot technology continue to advance researchers at texas a&m university are analyzing how this dynamic duo can work in unison to allow for one party to step up where the other may temporarily lack sarah hopko lead researcher and doctoral student and dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and former graduate student riya khurana and dr prabhakar pagilla professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering are researching the correlation between humans and autonomous assistance in manufacturing settings with large amounts of repetitive work to determine how a robot can be programmed to step in during human fatigue in a trustworthy manner humans bring flexibility and a high-level of understanding of a production line at a relatively low cost but because humans have finite physical and cognitive capacities they become tired and make errors with demanding work tasks where humans may lack the capacity to continue robots can aid in overseeing the more repetitive portions of a task lifting heavier objects or exerting force depending on the application more and more people are realizing that human-robot collaboration is a viable solution to automate productions or bring a solution to problems that pose difficult or costly roadblocks hopko said the goal of this research is to understand how specific human factors such as fatigue and trust interact with each other to make sure that the design of a collaborative robot considers the operators behavior and needs so that all bases are covered we dont want the operator to instill a false sense of safety because of their fatigued state and over-rely on the increased assistance of the robot we also dont want the operator to under-use robotic assistance when otherwise appropriate hopko said collaborative robots are to some extent the operators teammate
1958,when collaborating with a teammate at work identifying engagement or levels of fatigue can all be done either through perception or a simple conversation you can then figure out how best to help your teammate based on the information you have gathered hopko says the goal is for human-robot interaction to be the same way the research team conducted a multi-session experiment where men and women performed metal polishing tasks in combination with a universal robot (ur10) collaborative robot using varying levels of robotic assistance under different states of cognitive fatigue participants were fatigued using a challenging visuospatial working memory task for an hour prior to performing the manufacturing tasks each participant was evaluated for fatigue situation awareness and workload through wearable physiological monitoring to determine three task performance metrics: task efficiency accuracy and precision overall the research team found that the operators performance can be improved with increased assistance levels and that increased assistance allows for cognitive fatigue recovery cognitive fatigue and automation levels influence different performance outcomes fatigue impeded the efficiency of the participants although the levels of accuracy and precision were not affected it took them longer to complete the task we also found that the female participants reported greater performance benefits from utilizing high automation while the male participants did not perceive a benefit from the assistance despite demonstrating comparable task performance hopko said this finding is unique and important for robotic technology acceptance with industry 40 advances as more industries are adopting collaborative robots in their work processes while increased performance and fatigue recovery are highlighted benefits of robotic assistance it also showed that higher support reduced the situation awareness of participants by reducing their task engagement and mental stimulation lower situation awareness can result in safety concerns thus higher levels of automation warrant improved adaptivity to operator fatigue states while ensuring human-in-the-loop interactions there was also a strong correlation between situation awareness and automation observed in both heart rate variability signals and subjective measures these findings highlight the potential of wearables to help communicate critical information from the operators to the robots hopko said ultimately greater robotic assistance was able to improve accuracy and efficiency levels but not precision the consideration of the interplay between human factors such as operator sex and their cognitive states and robot factors on collaborative performance can lead to improved human-robot collaborative system designs we hope to have collaboration between the operator and robot to be as robust to perturbing factors by providing this knowledge unobtrusively to robots to aid in the fluent human-robot adaptation process hopko said this work was supported by the national science foundation
1959,"dr guillermo aguilar has been named the new department head of the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he steps into the role effective july 1 replacing current department head dr andreas polycarpou aguilar comes to texas a&m from the university of california riverside where he has served as department chair since 2013 he had been a member of their faculty since 2003 ""i am honored to be joining such a prestigious department comprised of incredible faculty students and staff "" aguilar said ""i look forward to working with all the department's stakeholders to continue guiding it along its trajectory of increasing prominence and national reputation for excellence"" aguilar earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical and electrical engineering from the national autonomous university of mexico and both his master's degree and doctoral degree from the university of california santa barbara he is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers and a member of the mexican academy of engineering his research interests include cryogen spray cooling laser-tissue interactions biomedical optics and medical lasers aguilar's work has been funded by the national science foundation sandia national labs the american society for laser medicine and surgery the united states air force office of scientific research the us defense advanced research projects agency and the us national institutes of health polycarpou the james j cain chair professor served as department head for mechanical engineering for over eight years and will be returning to his teaching and research as aguilar transitions into the leadership position ""the department is in an excellent state with superb faculty students and staff and it is my honor to hand leadership of it over to dr aguilar "" polycarpou said ""i wish him success and i am looking forward to seeing what is to come"""
1960,many drivers use tollways to get from point a to point b because they are a faster and more convenient option the fees associated with these roadways are higher during peak traffic hours of the day such as during the commute to and from work with this structure drivers who are not adding to the heavy flow of traffic do not have to pay higher toll prices however those who utilize the toll road during more congested hours pay a premium to use the faster more convenient highways similarly not everyone uses the same amount of electricity throughout the day there are peak load hours that put more strain on the grid and there are users within those times who use more electricity while there are those who conserve dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and assistant director-energy digitization of the energy institute at texas a&m university together with co-authors athindra venkatraman and anupam thatte is proposing a user-impact tailored rate plan for utility companies to employ that is similar to toll roads his rate plan will benefit individuals who use less power or utilize solar power to offset some of the strain on the distribution power grid while those who use an excess of power from the electrical grid during peak times will cover more of the delivery cost in a typical monthly utility bill users can see how much energy is used over that month and the kilowatt-hour rate which is then multiplied together to determine the payment due through this project xie aims to provide new options for modernizing the power delivery rate structure for the utility industry through a data-driven approach this research was published in the june issue of the journal utilities policy
1961,xie explained that the costs associated with delivering power are not necessarily the same for every customer and further not every customer is the same in terms of their impact and contribution to the grid he proposes the use of electric smart meters which can record with a granularity of 15 minutes how much energy a consumer has used during a given period this would provide the utility company a more refined closer to real-time understanding of a customer who contributes to the peak consumption of the grid and a customer who relieves the stress of the grid through the use of solar panels or lower consumption if a particular customer is actually sending some of their solar panel energy back to the grid during the peak hours they should be viewed as a positive asset to the grid and that individual should be somehow compensated xie said and if someone is using their air conditioner an excessive amount when the grid is extremely stressed then that individual is contributing to the strain on the grid and might need to pay a higher portion of the delivery cost power distribution grids across the world are undergoing profound changes due to advances in grid edge technologies such as solar panels and electric vehicles (evs) the rate model xie envisions would include a shift from charging end users based on their kilowatt-hour volumetric consumption and instead charging them a grid access fee that approximates the impact of end-users time-varying demand on their local distribution network the dataset used in the case study is a system of 200 residential demand profiles with 50 ev homes 50 solar photovoltaic (pv) homes and 100 non-der homes those without distributed energy resources (ders) such as an electric vehicle solar panel or battery storage device typically customers charge their evs during the night (off-peak hours low grid impact) so it follows that over 90% of ev customers see reduced bills under the proposed rate model for solar pv customers the results are more varied for pv customers to minimize grid impact combining solar pv with battery storage under a smart scheduling algorithm for charging and discharging would achieve the highest cost savings on bills as for non-der customers over 80% experienced a small reduction in their bills under the proposed rate the most exciting part is how we can translate technology innovations into a real-world impact xie said that impact is going to pave the way for a more sustainable operation of the grid leading to a more sustainable future this work is supported in part by the power systems engineering research center and in part by national science foundation
1962,salt marshes are a fundamental habitat for fishes and birds can capture and bury large quantities of organic carbon and play an important role in protecting coastal communities from storm surges comprised of a delicate balance of organic and inorganic deposit just enough to keep them above water coastal marshes are home to a rich variety of plants and animals but with sea levels rising at an accelerated rate these vital ecosystems are drowning dr orencio duran vinent assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university and his team have discovered that rising water levels do not need to outpace the average growth of salt marshes for them to be swallowed by the sea instead it is enough for water levels to increase at a rate slightly higher than the slower-growing areas within the marsh to lead to widespread drowning the team found through computational and analytical modeling that the traditional approach to combating marsh drowning may not be the most effective for the ongoing preservation of these coastal ecosystems their full findings were published in one earth a sister journal to cell in an article titled onset of runaway fragmentation of salt marshes utilizing data collected by the virginia institute of marine sciences the team constructed computational and analytical models to investigate how rising sea levels and the transportation of sediment affected the resilience of marshes what they discovered was a new form of marsh destabilization called runaway fragmentation and ultimately that the ecosystems could drown at a far lower rate of sea-level rise than previously believed in fact their model predicts that the current rates at which sea levels are rising are close to a tipping point for widespread marsh drowning runaway fragmentation and the consequential drowning of salt marshes occur when the rising sea level slowly drowns interior regions within the marsh creating small ponds over time in a process known as ponding each pond grows larger in size eventually stabilizing as new inorganic sediment is deposited at the margins that prevent further drowning however more and more ponds appear over time creating an environment that looks like swiss cheese our research suggests that ponding is not just an isolated event but an early sign of extensive future marsh loss even at current rates of sea level rise duran vinent said with this in mind is there a way to save coastal marshes from runaway fragmentation and drowning as duran vinent explained its a multidisciplinary problem that needs a multidisciplinary solution and as expected it is complicated for example providing aid to salt marshes was theorized to come in the form of reintroducing sediment into the environment similar to filling in holes in ones garden to help with drainage contrarily the teams data suggests the health of salt marshes and therefore the likelihood of runaway fragmentation depends less on sediment supply than on its vegetation and its organic material this is because as duran vinent explained in low-tide environments like the gulf of mexico sediment is never deposited far from a marshs edge creating a ring of inorganic material around the exterior of marshlands this leaves the interior of a marsh dependent on organic material to survive sea-level rise when looking at engineering interventions in coastal areas it's a lot easier to build something from scratch following traditional engineering approaches he said you have a clear problem you have a clear procedure you have your materials and then you build it but whenever you move your focus to natural landscapes or ecosystems and how to sustain them things get a lot more difficult the way a natural landscape keeps the balance is sometimes very complicated you cannot do blind interventions thus fundamental and accurate understanding of natural processes is critical to the advancement and innovation of new coastal preservation methods especially when tackling issues as complex as mother nature we eventually want to contribute to the development of new approaches to coastal engineering and ecosystem restoration that uses the capacity of coastal ecosystems to support and rebuild themselves there lies the potential of a sustainable development and future resilience of our coasts duran vinent said the research team also includes dr matthew l kirwan associate professor at the virginia institute of marine science; ellen r herbert an ecosystems services scientist at ducks unlimited; daniel j coleman a doctoral student at the virginia institute of marine science; and joshua d himmelstein a doctoral student at the university of north carolina at chapel hill
1963,four departments within the texas a&m university college of engineering will have new department heads: aerospace civil and environmental mechanical and the newest department multidisciplinary engineering the new department leaders bring with them a wealth of research and teaching experience to the college of engineering and their respective departments i am pleased to welcome these outstanding individuals to their leadership positions in our college said dr john hurtado interim dean of the college of engineering two of our new department heads have been with texas a&m for many years whereas two are new to the university they all have one thing in common they are absolutely the right people to lead their respective departments to new heights and i look forward to working with them aerospace engineering dr ivett a leyva is currently program element monitor for hypersonics and munitions s&t for the office of the deputy assistant secretary of the air force science and technology and engineering she will serve as the head of the department of aerospace engineering effective sept 1 leyva has a bachelors masters and doctoral degree from caltech she holds six patents and has authored numerous papers and two book chapters she is a fellow of the american institute for aeronautics and astronautics and the air force research laboratory a national associate of the national research council of the national academies and a recipient of a civilian achievement medal and two meritorious civilian service awards and medals from the air force civil and environmental engineering dr zachary grasley currently director of the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) will serve as the head of the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering effective sept 1 while directing the cir he helped facilitate the initiation and continued development of the research labs and established significant collaborations with key external partners grasleys research ranges from fundamental studies on mechanisms and modeling to applied solutions that lead to intellectual property and commercialization his research in the area of cement and concrete materials has been honored with many awards grasley holds the zachry chair for construction integration and is an inaugural presidential impact fellow he is also a professor in the materials science and engineering department mechanical engineering dr guillermo aguilar will serve as the next department head of the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering effective july 1 he is currently the chair of the department of mechanical engineering at the university of california riverside aguilars research focuses on biomedical optics and laser diagnostic/therapies with emphasis on bio-fluid mechanics and bio-heat transfer phenomena and the development of new biomaterials his work has contributed to the areas of laser-assisted cryosurgery transdermal drug delivery laser-speckle imaging focused ultrasound optophoresis and laser-induced cavitation he is a fellow of the american society for laser medicine and surgery a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) and a member of the mexican academy of engineering multidisciplinary engineering dr timothy jacobs will lead the department of multidisciplinary engineering after serving as interim department head since september 2020 he is also a professor and the steve brauer jr 02 faculty fellow of the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering jacobs has held numerous positions in the college including co-director of the institute of engineering education innovation and director of undergraduate programs for the mechanical engineering department he conducts multidisciplinary research centered on the internal combustion engine including fuels emissions aftertreatment performance and efficiency considerations he is a fellow of asme and received the asme special recognition service award for services to the internal combustion engine division in 2015 and 2016
1964,dr dinakar sagapuram assistant professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university was chosen as one of the 2021 geoffrey boothroyd outstanding young manufacturing engineers fourteen recipients aged 35 and under have been recognized across the globe for their efforts and accomplishments in manufacturing engineering during the past five years dinakar has made notable contributions to enhance the manufacturing initiative at the texas a&m university college of engineering said dr satish bukkapatnam professor of industrial and systems engineering he has developed an innovative experimental platform and an in-situ high-resolution imaging setup to directly observe the physical mechanisms at the crux of various manufacturing processes sagapuram received his bachelors degree in metallurgical and materials engineering from the indian institute of technology and his doctoral degree in materials engineering from purdue university his teaching and research interests focus on advanced structural materials materials processing and manufacturing and tribology his work has offered a fresh perspective into how materials are displaced during machining and such material removal processes and how this deformation affects the material structure and properties bukkapatnam said he is highly deserving of the outstanding young manufacturing engineer award from the society of manufacturing engineers
1965,automated vehicle (av) technology is widely acknowledged as a promising means to prevent crashes increase mobility among drivers and even lower emissions but there is a hesitancy toward autonomy among drivers which texas a&m university researchers are attempting to understand dr anthony mcdonald assistant professor and dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering utilize neuroergonomics to measure and model human driver trust in automated vehicles the team has been awarded a grant for this research by the national science foundation one of the unique things about this project is that its focused on dynamic trust between humans and a machine or humans and an automated vehicle in this case mcdonald said some people are more predisposed to trust automation and systems than others our hypothesis is that trust among these people differs over time after interactions with the automation and our goal is to measure those changes objectively neuroergonomics is the study of the brain and behavior at work and is the pillar for driver trust measurements with autonomous vehicles more specifically the research team will use brain imaging and model trust and driver behavior to examine how trust calibration models influence dynamic trust and driving behavior the team will conduct two experiments using the driving simulator in industrial and systems engineering to gather driver behavior data and subjective neural and physiological trust measures to understand how particular regions of the brain communicate with each other or dont when a driver wagers trust the first year of this three-year project will begin with data collection on 60-100 participants we will then be able to see how trust builds over time and capture it using brain signals mehta said in the simulator we can also breach driver trust in the automated vehicle by having the simulators automation fail to overtake another vehicle in the manner expected we are interested to see how similar or different human-automation trust and its neural correlates are in the automated vehicle application space the research team will be able to map communication or lack thereof between different regions of the brain as trust in the av is built broken and repaired over the course of the experiment among drivers who vary in their levels of trust in automation these neural markers can be employed to develop trust detection models that can trigger trust calibration methods to ultimately increase the transparency of the vehicles reliability so that the driver can see and calibrate how much control they want to retain while driving our goal is to make substantial progress in our understanding of dynamic trust laying the groundwork for measuring and modeling it mcdonald said we want to produce fundamental contributions that ultimately lead to safer vehicle technology
1966,r andrew udden 80 has established the udden endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university udden graduated from texas a&m with his bachelors in 1981 and masters in 1982 in computer science he went on to earn his master of business administration from rice university in 2002 during his time at texas a&m udden was a member of sigma chi fraternity and the vice president of alpha phi omega he was the owner of growing furniture from 1994-2010 and now serves as the operations manager at portagas inc which supplies a variety of calibration gases used in industrial hygiene and safety applications in pasadena texas
1967,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
1968,dr zachary grasley has been named the new head of the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university effective sept 1grasley has been the director of the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) at texas a&m since january 2018i am really excited for the opportunity to lead this dynamic department with such talented and hard-working staff students and faculty he saidwhile directing the cir he helped facilitate the initiation and continued development of the research labs and established significant collaborations with key external partners grasleys research spans from fundamental studies on mechanisms and modeling to applied solutions that lead to intellectual property and commercializationhe is a fellow of the american society of civil engineers the american concrete institute and the american ceramic society grasley also has held leadership and service roles in the american concrete institute and the american ceramic societyhe originally joined texas a&m in 2006 after completing his bachelors degree in civil engineering at michigan technological university and his masters and doctoral degrees in civil engineering at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign grasley accepted a faculty position at virginia tech in 2012 and returned to texas a&m in 2014grasley holds the zachry chair for construction integration and is an inaugural presidential impact fellow he is also a professor in the materials science and engineering departmentgrasley replaces dr robin autenrieth who served in an interim capacity for one year before becoming department head in 2014 and will return to full-time faculty in the fall during her eight-plus-year tenure autenrieth has overseen the growth of the department and academic programs increased endowments and recruited highly talented faculty the environmental engineering degree program was developed under her directiondr autenrieth has done a great job and set us on the path to success grasley said the department is on an upward trajectory and is poised for major growth in research impact reputation and innovative education i am looking forward to helping shepherd this growth
1969,dr rodolfo vaghetto fondly reflects on the feeling of being in the classroom he thrives when a student answers a difficult question correctly or excitement flashes across their face while he introduces a new topic moments like this have defined his career a professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university vaghetto is a 2021 instructional faculty teacher award recipient every hour i spend in class with the students is special for me said vaghetto my favorite teaching moments are the ones when i see full involvement in class in particular i am happy to see how students from other engineering disciplines appreciate learning about nuclear engineering concepts nuclear engineering has intrigued him for many years and his dedication to the subject began long before his time at texas a&m a few of his research interests include experimental and computational aspects involving high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and computational thermal hydraulics applied to existing light water reactors and generation iv reactors vaghetto is especially captivated by nuclear engineerings dynamic relationship to alternative energy solutions i am a proud sustainer of all clean energy resources said vaghetto nuclear power plays one of the most important roles in reducing carbon emissions but i am devoted to learning about how other technologies are advancing to support this common goal after the struggles of 2020 vaghetto is looking forward to the fall where he hopes to rejoin his students on campus thinking about the ability to interact personally with the students during the lectures or outside the classroom energizes me and helps me forget the difficult moments of last year he said
1970,dr timothy jacobs has been appointed head of the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university the appointment is effective july 1 2021 since september 2020 jacobs has served as the interim department head for multidisciplinary engineering he is also a professor and the steve brauer jr 02 faculty fellow of the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering jacobs began his career at texas a&m in 2006 after completing his bachelors masters and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering at the university of michigan he has held numerous positions in the college including co-director of the institute of engineering education innovation as well as director of undergraduate programs for the mechanical engineering department before he was appointed interim department head jacobs led the college of engineerings initiative to grow the interdisciplinary engineering program for graduate and undergraduate studies playing an instrumental role in the programs journey to becoming a department his research interests take an interdisciplinary approach and focus on internal combustion engines including fuels emissions after treatment performance and efficiency considerations he is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) and received the asme special recognition service award for services to the internal combustion engine division in 2015 and 2016 jacobs has received other awards including the montague center for teaching excellence scholars award and the eppright university professorship of undergraduate teaching excellence
1971,while crop yield has achieved a substantial boost from nanotechnology in recent years the alarms over the health risks posed by nanoparticles within fresh produce and grains have also increased in particular nanoparticles entering the soil through irrigation fertilizers and other sources have raised concerns about whether plants absorb these minute particles enough to cause toxicity in a new study published online in the journal environmental science and technology researchers at texas a&m university have used machine learning to evaluate the salient properties of metallic nanoparticles that make them more susceptible for plant uptake furthermore the researchers said their algorithm could indicate how much plants accumulate nanoparticles in their roots and shoots nanoparticles are a burgeoning trend in several fields including medicine consumer products and agriculture depending on the type of nanoparticle some have favorable surface properties charge and magnetism among other features these qualities make them ideal for a number of applications for example in agriculture nanoparticles may be used as antimicrobials to protect plants from pathogens alternatively they can be used to bind to fertilizers or insecticides and then programmed for slow release to increase plant absorption these agricultural practices and others like irrigation can cause nanoparticles to accumulate in the soil however with the different types of nanoparticles that could exist in the ground and a staggeringly large number of terrestrial plant species including food crops it is not clearly known if certain properties of nanoparticles make them more likely to be absorbed by some plant species than others as you can imagine if we have to test the presence of each nanoparticle for every plant species it is a huge number of experiments which is very time-consuming and expensive said dr xingmao samuel ma associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering to give you an idea silver nanoparticles alone can have hundreds of different sizes shapes and surface coatings and so experimentally testing each one even for a single plant species is impractical instead for their study the researchers chose two different machine-learning algorithms an artificial neural network and gene-expression programming they first trained these algorithms on a database created from past research on different metallic nanoparticles and the specific plants in which they accumulated in particular their database contained the size shape and other characteristics of different nanoparticles along with information on how much of these particles were absorbed from soil or nutrient-enriched water into the plant body once trained their machine-learning algorithms could correctly predict the likelihood of a given metallic nanoparticle to accumulate in a plant species also their algorithms revealed that when plants are in a nutrient-enriched or hydroponic solution the chemical makeup of the metallic nanoparticle determines the propensity of accumulation in the roots and shoots but if plants are grown in soil the contents of organic matter and the clay in soil are key to nanoparticle uptake ma said that while the machine-learning algorithms could make predictions for most food crops and terrestrial plants they might not yet be ready for aquatic plants he also noted that the next step in his research would be to investigate if the machine-learning algorithms could predict nanoparticle uptake from leaves rather than through the roots it is quite understandable that people are concerned about the presence of nanoparticles in their fruits vegetables and grains said ma but instead of not using nanotechnology altogether we would like farmers to reap the many benefits provided by this technology but avoid the potential food safety concerns other contributors include xiaoxuan wang liwei liu and weilan zhang from the civil and environmental engineering department this research is partly funded by the national science foundation and the ministry of science and technology taiwan under the graduate students study abroad program
1972,"amazon recently announced that a team of students from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as one of 10 university teams to participate in the 2021 alexa prize taskbot challenge the competition is the first conversational artificial intelligence (ai) challenge to incorporate multimodal (voice and vision) customer experiences each participating team will receive a $250 000 research grant to develop a new taskbot which is a conversational agent that assists customers complete cooking and do-it-yourself tasks that require multiple steps and decisions the yearlong competition will begin in september and conclude in may 2022 with the winners being announced in june the winning team will receive a $500 000 prize the texas a&m team led by dr james caverlee professor in the department of computer science and engineering is composed of six students three undergraduate and three doctoral this is an amazing opportunity for texas a&m computer science and engineering students to compete on a global stage said caverlee we have an exciting plan that brings together research advances in artificial intelligence natural language understanding and machine learning in order to be successful the teams will have to address several difficult ai challenges from knowledge representation and inference and common sense and causal reasoning to language understanding and generation which requires the fusion of several ai techniques the vision for our taskbot called howdy yall is an expert task-oriented platform that is both wide (providing high coverage of tasks) and deep (providing high confidence in the tasks that it does cover) said caverlee inspired by the official greeting of texas a&m (""howdy"") our taskbot is designed to embody this fundamental friendliness so users feel satisfaction trust and a core value of respect the other universities that will be competing in the challenge are carnegie mellon university national taiwan university nova school of science and technology the ohio state university the university college london university of glasgow university of massachusetts and university of pennsylvania for more information about the challenge visit the frequently-asked-questions page on the alexa prize website"
1973,dr alaa elwany associate professor of the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university will be serving as a 2021-22 american society of mechanical engineers (asme) foundation swanson fellow one of the asme federal government fellowships elwany will be working in the advanced manufacturing national program office at the national institute of standards and technology part of the us department of commerce starting sept 1 2021 established in 1973 the asme federal government fellowship program allows selected asme members to devote a year to providing engineering and technical expertise to policymakers the united states congress the white house or another federal agency while also providing engineers with the unique opportunity to directly participate in the policymaking process it is such an honor to be selected as an asme federal government fellow the opportunity to serve in the executive branch and contribute to maintaining the united states position as a global leader in advanced manufacturing technologies is incredibly exciting elwany said i would like to thank asme for selecting me to this prestigious fellowship and the advanced manufacturing national program office where i will be serving for the opportunity elwany received his doctoral degree in industrial and systems engineering from the georgia institute of technology and his masters and bachelors degrees in production engineering from alexandria university his research interests include modeling analysis optimization and control of advanced manufacturing processes with emphasis on metal additive manufacturing he was named asmes outstanding manufacturing engineer in 2020 and the society of manufacturing engineers outstanding young manufacturing engineer in 2016 he has led and co-led numerous research projects on advanced manufacturing from leading federal agencies and industrial organizations more information on this years asme federal government fellows can be found at asmeorg
1974,there wasnt much to the town of dobrowolski texas in the 1930s it was home to a cotton gin saloon blacksmith shop and a grocery store but on a farm in that small town is where retired lt col frank d fraziers love for airplanes took flight from as early as i can remember i wanted to fly said frazier 51 i was about six years old when this airplane came over and started flying around me it was an open-cockpit airplane and the pilot waved at me and i waved at him and that set the stage right there frazier enjoyed building wooden model airplanes growing up which were pleasantly scattered around the house for his parents to find by high school he was taking his first flying lessons duty calls wanting to follow in the footsteps of his uncle and role model frazier enrolled at what was then the agricultural and mechanical college of texas he studied aeronautical engineering (now aerospace engineering) and paid for school by waiting tables in the only dining hall on campus and spending his summers in the oil fields by graduation frazier had a job opportunity lined up but with texas a&m being an all-male military college that meant being prepared to enlist if duty called
1975,when i graduated the korean war was still on so it was required that i go into the military he said so i chose the air force of course and i went through flight school then went through gunnery school and then went right over to korea he flew more than 60 missions as a sabre jet pilot and later served as a flight commander during which he received the distinguished flying cross an air medal and an air force commendation medal frazier shrugs off the idea of having much to tell about his time in korea but it was there that he had his one and only experience bailing out of an airplane the water was so cold that he had trouble bending his fingers to inflate his emergency raft i had to put my palms together to pull the cord said frazier i was only in the water about seven minutes so you can imagine how cold it was just above freezing fortunately i was right near a friendly island and a rescue team picked me up with a helicopter flying high when he returned home frazier was sent to edwards air force base in california to apply his aeronautical engineering degree as a flight test engineer conducting performance and maneuvering tests a notepad and a pencil is how i took data at the beginning he said as we went along things got a little better and we could record data on sophisticated computers where you could actually trace maps of the maneuvering after three years as a flight test engineer he entered test pilot school at the base
1976,one interesting thing while i was at the test pilot school: they let us go out and be on a navy carrier for one week he said i got to make a takeoff and landing which convinced me i never wanted to do it again! shortly before leaving the base he was asked to help with acceptance tests for the b-52 they were just entering the air force at the time but have since become a staple in us military operations for six decades in 1958 frazier moved on to wright-patterson air force base in ohio where at the age of 30 he set a new airborne flight-time record he and two others went up in a b-47 prepared for a 35-hour continuous flight instead they set a record for 80 hours and 36 minutes looking to the stars before long fraziers ambitious achievements awarded him an invitation to a briefing at the pentagon the soviet union had recently launched sputnik 1 into space so he had a good idea of what he was walking into of the 110 test pilots invited frazier was one of 32 volunteers for the united states first man-in-space program project mercury as a candidate he underwent extensive physical and mental evaluations over the course of a week frazier recalls being tumbled around in a tumble chair doing extreme heat tests treadmill work and gravity tests in a centrifuge and being subjected to loud noises
1977,we had to work out problems while they were blowing this big horn in the background and it was vibrating your whole body when you were trying to figure out these math problems said frazier then they put us in an isolation chamber which was about 30 feet below ground so that you didnt feel any vibration or any sound it was total darkness and we stayed in there overnight that was an interesting time frazier was one of the 18 remaining candidates before the final seven astronauts were selected he was later offered the opportunity to be considered for the apollo program but having spent so much time overseas and away from family he declined however he continued to contribute to space preparation when he returned to edwards air force base where he became the deputy commandant of the aerospace research pilot school that was just at the beginning of the space programs so really no one knew anything about how people were going to operate under zero gravity said frazier his job was to pilot a kc-135 and hold a zero-gravity position for as long as he could to give men the opportunity to experience the weightlessness and document some of the effects back in the cockpit at the same time the space race was taking off the us was also entering another war in 1967 frazier arrived at another pivotal moment in history serving in the vietnam war
1978,the squadron that i was in was a night-flying squadron so when we went in wed be about 150 feet above the ground and the reason we stayed at that low level is so that they couldnt pick us up on radar he explained night vision was critical for these missions frazier remembers keeping most of the lights on his pilot instrument panel turned off and relying mostly on the light from the moon one of the missions i was on when i pulled up they did pick me up on radar frazier said they shone the spotlight right on the airplane so there went my night vision unable to see his next move was a gamble no matter what he had to decide to risk dropping too low and hitting the ground or not going low enough and being detected he made it through 115 of those missions frazier dedicated a total of 21 years to the air force and lived through multiple once-in-a-lifetime moments all before the age of 50 in 1972 he retired and returned home to his wife and eight children aggie love story he and his wife barbara met his sophomore year of college thanks to the help of an old classmate of fraziers
1979,i was going home one weekend and i asked this guy that i knew (who) lived near me ‘hey you know any gals out there i could get a date with and he said ‘well i noticed one girl he said she wont go out with me but maybe shell go out with you so i called up and after about 20 minutes talking to her mother she let me talk to barbara and so we went out on a date and that was it they married three years later just before he graduated from texas a&m and they had eight children after his retirement frazier and his family moved around enjoying new places and experiences they lived in hawaii for a while where frazier learned to play the ukulele and eventually the slide key guitar today at 91 years old he continues to make the most of life i live in a retirement community now and were just having fun here said frazier we have a lot of things to do we have a gym to go workout in we do a lot of meditation here my roommate plays the guitar so we play music together and gosh just have fun!
1980,frank d frazier 51 has graciously shared photos of his life and career with texas a&m engineering view more photos of him and his aerospace journey
1981,samantha jones a junior at los fresnos high school (lfhs) in texas knew she wanted to pursue a stem career but questioned which direction to go now her vision for her future is clearer thanks to the texas high school aerospace scholars (has) program offered through an innovative partnership between the national aeronautics and space administration (nasa) and the texas a&m engineering spark! pk-12 engineering education outreach programthe has program which has existed for more than 20 years gives selected texas high school juniors the chance to explore different facets of science technology engineering and math careers through learning about space travelwe engage students in nasas mission through a unique stem opportunity said jessica cordero the manager of nasas has program statistics tell us that once students get into high school they start looking at other career paths and opportunities has was developed specifically for juniors because we want them to continue to pursue stem in college and then become part of the texas workforcethe has program serves approximately 1 000 high school juniors annually and most live near texas major urban areas during the 2020-21 school year more than 900 texas students began the 16-week online program; of those 68% completed the has program nasas vision is to immerse students in nasas work enhance stem literacy and inspire the next generation to explore the partnership with the spark! program is extending the has program to serve underrepresented students who attend high school in low-socioeconomic areas of the state los fresnos the partnerships pilot school is located near spacexs south texas launch sitea path to discoveryhass four online modules challenge students to use stem concepts to plan and create a virtual manned space mission during a span of 16 weeks students are learning how to get to mars and once they get there how to live and work on the planet and what they would be discovering said corderoparticipants also attend monthly webinars featuring nasa experts from a variety of stem fields during these meetings these experts describe their nasa role share details about their projects and answer questionsthe has program also offers additional benefits to participants who successfully complete the modules in addition to earning a science elective credit students can attend a nasa summer experience where they interact with nasa scientists and engineers many of whom are aggies before covid-19 this experience was invitational and limited to 270 participants however the pandemic provided a unique opportunity for nasa to develop and implement a five-day gamified virtual experience called moonshot which is open to all participants who successfully complete the has modules this experience allows students to work in teams to develop a mission to mars they are guided by a nasa mentor and monitored by game moderators who are texas certified teachersbeyond the horizonthe texas a&m college of engineerings participation in the has program provides an extra level of support to the pilot projects teachers and students although has has been a successful program for more than 20 years we wanted to create another level of engagement that would help scaffold student success and get them ready for college applications before their senior year said shelly tornquist director of the spark! programthe first step in creating lfhss pilot program involved tapping three teachers javier martinez hector penafor and dr david rivera and then selecting the schools initial cohort of 24 has participants we make it a point of pride to have strong relationships with students said rivera who teaches lfhss advanced physics classes this program seemed like a natural fit for us and the students went above and beyond to balance their schoolwork with the has modulesthat sense of community which also included a student-created online forum helped 79% of the initial lfhs participants complete all modules topping the program average of 68% i think having that level of community allowed the students to thrive knowing that there are other people going through that same curriculum and working hard cordero said and these kids have the opportunity to have texas a&m in their corner talk about a cheerleader! spark! holds periodic webinars for the lfhs students provides enrichment support to the teachers and will host has participants and teachers on campus in college station during the fall 2021 semestermission accomplishedthe pilot program has been so successful that it is quickly catching the attention of other los fresnos school districts faculty staff and students now its become something in the district that teachers and counselors are asking about said penafor who teaches advanced math classes its also starting to catch wind with other studentslfhs will expand to a second cohort of students during the 2021-22 school year which will give the initial cohort the opportunity to learn how to mentor their classmates the teachers are enjoying watching these students bloom typically students who are interested in engineering are introverts you dont hear us talking but you can hear the gears working inside said martinez who teaches engineering when students find a passion that they really like then they really start talking about these things its a great reward when you see the students excitement because of what theyre experiencinglike many of her classmates jones has risen to the has challenge and is now coming into her own the most challenging assignment i participated in was definitely one of the math activities it required me to learn and solve equations with multiple variables and amounts after this assignment i learned to just have faith in my work and to not focus so harshly on what i might have done wrong but rather what i know i did right she said before joining has i was battling between choosing architecture or aeronautics as a career however after completing the program i am more than sure that i want to become either an aerospace engineer or an astrophysicist
1982,similar to how sculptors use chisels to create esthetic shapes on a piece of marble designers of electronic chips can use powerful narrow beams of light to create electronic circuitry at the microscale this process is known as lithography and texas a&m university researchers are working to improve this technique photolithography is used in the microfabrication of electronics to create intricate patterns or structures layer by layer a photoresist sits on a photomask similar to the negative of a photo film the photomask is the complementary design of the circuit that you want to achieve when light falls on the photoresist the light dissolves the exposed surfaces (the areas not covered by the mask) leaving behind the desired circuit a similar approach is applied to construct micromechanical and microbiomedical devices however to increase the complexity and functionality of these microscale devices extending the capability of lithography from 2d to 3d structures becomes a need in this decade addressing this technological need dr sy-bor wen associate professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering is fine-tuning the technology needed to use a light pulse that flickers at a frequency of one-billionth of a second for 3d lithography funded by the national science foundation this study was recently accepted for the american society of mechanical engineers conference the main advantage of the developing method is the ability to use millions of light beams simultaneously to generate 3d patterns said wen this shows great potential in different 3d photonics 3d electronic and 3d biomedical uses but suffers from very low throughput the process is critical when developing 3d electronics mechanics and biomedical structures because of the associated high spatial resolution and high speed with millions of mini light beams state-of-the-art 3d fabrication is mainly based on layer-by-layer stacked 2d fabrications which has low throughput and limited geometric configurations can be fabricated using wens method through a combination of spatial light modulators and microlens arrays a single femtosecond laser pulse can be split into more than one million mini rays that can be turned on or off with phase control under appropriate manipulation of these rays thousands of focal spots at different locations and depths within 3d blocks called voxels can be generated for patterning different photopolymers by using these thousands of focal spots 3d fabrication can be achieved with orders of higher speed than traditional 3d fabrication with deep micron level resolution and allows construction of complicated microscale 3d structures said wen moreover light absorption induced with the femtosecond laser pulse allows fabrication to be conducted at exact depths allowing other layers to remain intact on 3d objects through multiphoton absorptions currently these preliminary results are solely for inorganic structures extensively in rapid prototyping and manufacturing wens next goal is to transfer this technology into creating organic scaffolds that can be used in human tissue regeneration so that they can be implanted in the body at sites needing repair wen and his fellow contributor dr vladislav yakovlev professor in the department of biomedical engineering are still testing this hypothesis and hope to bring in other researchers to develop this technology
1983,researchers dr sam noynaert and fred dupriest have been working on a project funded by a $186 million grant from the department of energy (doe) to change geothermal drilling practices their goals are to refine drilling methods and create a cost-saving business model for future geothermal energy companies one of the does goals is to make geothermal energy more economical said noynaert a professor of practice in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university its a very low-margin business so reducing costs has a tangible impact using the earths subsurface heat to change water to steam and power generators to produce electricity is not a new idea but its a proven one for instance the first large-scale geothermal electricity-generating plant opened in the us in 1960 and has grown to become the most significant energy complex of its kind in the world unfortunately while advances in technology have improved energy production efficiency one aspect of tapping this renewable resource is still highly cost-prohibitive to those wanting to invest in it: drilling into the earth every day a rig is in operation requires a great deal of money costs stem from the drilling rigs themselves to the many onsite service companies providing personnel and equipment therefore drilling teams that are efficient with both time and money while delivering high-quality properly placed wellbores are highly valued geothermal wells aren't drilled frequently for example only 15 or 20 wells might be completed in the us per year with individual companies only drilling one or two these low numbers mean geothermal drillers can fall behind on best drilling practices increasing their time and costs because they arent constantly on a rig oil and gas drilling generally done on a nearly continuous basis has an advantage by improving drilling skills and speed through practice yet this does not mean the best improvements happen in the late 1990s only a few companies applied physics-based drilling practices they collected data on the limiting factors of specific techniques and investigated ways to improve methods and technology but the industry as a whole didnt apply these practices dupriest began teaching a physics-based drilling course at texas a&m the first of its kind around 2013 now taught by noynaert the course remains the only one where students are taught the physics behind drilling and how to identify and reduce performance limiters noynaert and dupriest have also spearheaded an extremely successful advanced drilling research program helping large integrated operators and smaller independent companies improve drilling performance through physics-based practices and workflows in october 2020 noynaert and dupriest began working with and teaching the drilling team while preparing a well for the doe frontier observatory for research in geothermal energy (forge) forge a project in milford utah is a dedicated site for testing developing and advancing geothermal systems from crew to management all team members received instruction on the actual physics or physical processes involved in drilling we taught them to understand how everything worked so when we said ‘now heres how you can be doing that and you will get this much different result it made sense to them explained noynaert the whole point of teaching drilling physics is so that it makes sense you cant improve what you dont understand noynaert and dupriests course included drill bit specifics optimum drill speeds and how much force to use most importantly they showed how drilling limiters worked and what the appropriate identification and response should be once drilling started this critical training helped the drilling team understand how to identify and reduce performance limiters improvements relied only on what the team did and how they did it not on any special equipment most geothermal wells are vertical but this one was rotated to 65 degrees of inclination as a test case for geothermal practices since noynaert and dupriest are both experts in horizontal drilling they were also able to advise in that area every success or obstacle encountered during the operation drove home what the team had learned during the instruction phase and they gained confidence as the drilling progressed if i tell you how to drive a car and you just go get in it and drive off youre going to have troubles said dupriest if i tell you how to drive a car and i sit there with you every day its going to work a lot better youre going to be more comfortable
1984,because the well was part of a scientific project the team collected data during drilling and while processes were temporarily halted information gathered helped noynaert dupriest and the team review equipment performance daily assess in-hole conditions and monitor the subsurface environment even with these frequent stops and reviews the well was completed in about half the time the doe had budgeted according to noynaert the doe was extremely happy with the huge cost savings the next phase of the project occurs when the drilling team returns to the forge site and drills their next well in june 2021 the time gap usually the biggest problem in geothermal drilling practices will benefit noynaert and dupriest the break allows them to review the data and results from the first drilling session and write up their business model theyve already identified a few more physics limitations to overcome the information could speed up the drilling completion rate even more but field trial results are needed to verify their theories in the meantime noynaert and dupriest look forward to working with the forge team again both researchers mentioned that improvements happened because the crew was willing to learn and embrace new information and methods if you want to create change understand that youre trying to change how a person works and work backward from there said dupriest you dont start with the science you think everyone should do; you start with whats limiting the person from doing better its so much a human dynamic and so little science
1985,"kartik kumar rajagopalan and xiuzhu zhu graduate students in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university were named winners of the division of polymeric materials: science and engineerings (pmse) best poster award for spring 2021 pmse is a division of the american chemical society winners were chosen by judges appointed by the pmse executive committee from a pool of student candidates who presented their posters at the spring 2021 american chemical society national meeting rajagopalan a doctoral student joined the department from industry where he worked for seven years developing coatings for the oil gas and heavy machinery markets his research focuses on developing temperature-responsive polymer systems for shape stabilization of inorganic phase change materials and studying dynamic covalent polymer networks ""this was the first time doing a poster presentation on an online platform and we were looking for guidance "" said rajagopalan ""and so we would really like to thank our advisor dr sukhishvili who gave us valuable tips for preparing the poster and presenting it zhu a second-year masters student joined the department upon receiving her bachelors degree in applied chemistry from the south china university of technology her research focuses on using polymers to shape-stabilize inorganic phase change materials they presented a poster titled temperature-responsive tunable poly (vinyl alcohol) -borax salogels for shape stabilization of an inorganic phase change material rajagopalan and zhu are under the supervision of dr svetlana sukhishvili materials science and engineering professor and director of the soft matter facility ""i would like to thank our advisor dr sukhishvili who encouraged us to participate in the poster presentation and my coworker kartik said zhu without them i could not have achieved this"""
1986,there are about 65 million people in the united states who have peripheral artery disease which causes a narrowing or blockage of the arteries that carry blood to the legs in extreme cases this disease can progress to critical limb ischemia (cli) where the restriction in the arteries is so severe that restricted blood flow to tissue causes leg ulcers cli is considered deadly unless procedures are done to correct the blood flow restriction when treatment fails many of these patients will require amputation if blood flow is not restored to the limbs to combat this a capstone team in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university designed a more effective way to treat this disease theres such a large amount of people who are affected in the us this was a really unique project for us to be on because were able to create practical solutions and to really get hands-on experience not only with the machining aspect of creating but going through the whole design process and making a solution said team member madelynn gomez the team developed a safer and more effective valvulotome a medical device used for a bypass procedure the device defunctionalizes the valves in the veins valves help assist the flow of blood back to the heart and by defunctionalizing them clinicians can increase the flow of blood to the lower limbs and allow the vein to act as a bypass vessel for the clogged artery the problem faced by the marketed valvulotomes is that they are irritating the vein walls and sometimes they dont catch onto the valves and actually defunctionalize them said team member maraki samuel our team is trying to solve this problem by designing a valvulotome that is more effective and safer to use by surgeons over the last two semesters the team designed and prototyped a valvulotome somewhat modeled off claw machines seen at arcades the device is run through a catheter delivery system so that it enters the body inside the blood vessel which makes it a less invasive procedure the claw can fit into the cusp shape of the valves and its shape will provide a better guarantee that the device will defunctionalize the vein reducing the chances of blood clotting in the bypass segment by making the device safer and more accessible the team said it could open up applications of it to a wider variety of patients throughout the process the team faced a series of challenges from fully grasping the scope of their assignment to experimenting with different design options as for this second semester the greatest challenge is manufacturing our prototype said team member frida leon olmedo initially we considered using a 3d printer to create a larger scale prototype that would allow for additional testing but because the 3d printer is a very low fidelity printer it didnt really output the prototype as we needed it so we now have to consider a different type of manufacturing while all team members are biomedical engineering students their strengths and backgrounds vary for michael rhiew he originally came to texas a&m to study chemical engineering but soon realized he wanted to switch to something involving the medical field my mom is part of biomedical field its a lot of work and a lot of responsibility but she gets the opportunity to help a lot of people rhiew said that really drew me to biomedical engineering and here i am the teams sponsor was becton dickinson and company (bd) a medical device company olivia palmer staff engineer at bd was the teams contact for their project she said she really enjoyed working with the team over the last year i love seeing what theyve come up with and seeing the creative ideas that they have connected that we just hadnt even thought of when thinking about this problem palmer said the team met virtually with palmer weekly and they said they appreciated working with a sponsor willing to have that level of interaction with the team team member christopher hung said a statement from palmer early on in the capstone process was key to how they approached the project: theres a fine line to walk between theory versus functionality at the beginning of the semester when we were brainstorming ideas we had this whirlpool of agency we could do this that worrying about so many different concepts hung said having that industry perspective and mentorship really helped us highlight the most important aspects of our medical device and helped us progress forward with our prototype
1987,"commonplace pharmaceuticals such as ibuprofen can carry with them an inherent flaw in their atomic structure which pairs the active beneficial ingredient with a potentially ineffective or even toxic counterpart new research could hold the key to more easily isolating the good while removing the unwanted dr shoufeng lan assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is leading a team investigating the use of electromagnetic control over the synthesis of chiral compounds at an atomic level a process that could lead to a plethora of practical applications including in the pharmaceutical industry the team's research was recently published in the journal nature communications ""mysteriously all living organisms on the earth consist of only left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars but not their mirrored counterparts "" lan said ""the phenomenon is the so-called homochirality of life and it is the ultimate form of asymmetric synthesis"" lan used the example of a human hand to demonstrate the concept of chirality noting that if you were to create a mirror image of your hand it could not be perfectly superimposed over the original by identifying a successful method of using asymmetrical synthesis to create new versions of structures for items like ibuprofen lan said better versions of generic pharmaceuticals with reduced toxicity could be created at a lower cost than currently available due to the current purification process however to achieve success the researchers will first need to overcome the practical need to implement this magnetic effect on asymmetric synthesis at room temperature currently this effect is relatively weak even with a strong magnetic field or at a low temperature or 450 degrees lan said the topic of addressing chirality was the basis of the 2001 nobel prize in chemistry which uses an existing chiral object a catalyst molecule to transfer chirality to the desired mirror image form as the final product ""this nature communications paper demonstrated a giant atomic-scale magneto-chiral effect that is orders of magnitude stronger "" lan said ""by applying this effect it is arguably possible to master an asymmetric synthesis or asymmetric self-assembling"" lan said his team's research could prove revolutionary to the field by creating a new iteration of biomedical chemical and pharmaceutical applications for example by asymmetrically synthesizing only the active component of racemic lexapro the most common medication in the united states with more than 25 million prescriptions the research might reduce the drugs side effects 'we anticipate that our demonstration could lead to the creation of chiral seeds at the atomic scale "" lan said ""upon them we hope to transfer the chirality using cutting-edge technologies such as a metal-organic framework to create chiral materials from nanoscales to macroscales"""
1988,every year the texas a&m foundation board of trustees selects exemplary students to honor with a recognition of their achievements and award $2 500 to give them a head start after they leave texas a&m university this year two of the three honorees are college of engineering graduates nathaniel lies 21 was among the first cohort of materials science and engineering students he served in many leadership roles during his time in the college including involvement in materials science and engineering ambassadors and materials advantage as well as working as a research assistant and competing in national materials competitions lies will be using his award to follow his dreams of entering academia hes headed to georgia tech to pursue his doctorate in materials science marco solarte 21 was born in ecuador he always dreamed of studying engineering at texas a&m but after moving to the united states he enlisted in the navy and served seven years before applying to the engineering program once in aggieland solarte helped other veterans transition to civilian life through his work at the veterans services office now with his chemical engineering degree in hand solarte will begin working at conocophillips this summer and is using his award to earn his mba at rice university the students discuss their time at a&m q: what inspired the two of you to choose engineering as your path a: lies: i chose engineering because i saw it as a strong path i could follow to apply my love of the natural sciences to real-world problems i also was very intrigued by the idea of contributing to the global scientific community and collaborating with people across the world a: solarte: what inspired me to pursue chemical engineering was a deep interest i have in the development of cleaner energy sources the worldwide population has increased significantly and the demand for energy follows the same increasing rate that was the strongest influence i had when i decided to pursue engineering i wanted to help the world have access to better and cleaner energy sources my active-duty years in the military were very challenging and at the same time very rewarding i met extraordinary leaders and people that in time became like brothers and sisters to me when i talked to some of them about my dreams of becoming an engineer they all encouraged me to keep my motivation and gave me strength to keep the dream alive they all helped me stay strong and believe that one day i was going to finish what i started a long time ago when i came to america q: marco what was it like working at the veterans center while studying engineering a: solarte: studying engineering as many know is not an easy task it demands dedication discipline courage and willingness to concentrate your full attention on what you are doing unfortunately i had no option but to work part-time to help overcome some financial challenges i was facing when i started working for the veterans services office i received much support and encouragement from all the people who worked with me they truly understood the challenges veterans face when they transition from active-duty service to civilian life i received a lot of training and they helped me to understand how my experiences could benefit others beginning their path through higher education in time i was able to help guide and mentor hundreds of veterans that reached the office looking for help and many times only for an open heart and someone willing to hear their stories q: nathaniel youll be pursuing your phd at georgia tech what kind of research do you hope to do a: lies: i'm in georgia and will be starting my research this month im very excited i will be working on a project developing feedstocks for 3d-printed metal matrix composites the project has many possible benefactors but the most notable are the defense industry and aerospace applications i can't wait to get started working on it q: what were your favorite experiences during your time in aggieland a: lies: i think that my favorite memory of the college of engineering is taking naps in the physics building … just kidding jokes aside i really enjoyed the common lab courses they worked into our new major in those labs we had a lot of really cool experiences from pouring alloys and laying composites to making a solar cell with crushed raspberries of course i also went to every aggie football game that i could whoop! a: solarte: the best thing i got from my time at texas a&m were all the unforgettable friendships i built in the past four years after that the subjects i enjoyed the most were mass heat transfer kinetics fluids mechanics and the labs my favorite professors were dr ugaz dr seminario dr djire mr white mr blizzard dr wang and so many others i think the project i enjoyed the most was the plant design projects we developed during our last semester before graduating from the program during that exercise i was able to collaborate with brilliant students and instructors that have a significant amount of industrial experience i was able to put in practice many technical skills and abilities i learned during all the internships i had the privilege to have while i was going through the engineering program q: do you have any advice you would give to future engineering students a: lies: my advice to upcoming students is to ask for the opportunity to prove yourself and follow through i was given the honor of presenting my research at an international conference in florida but if i hadn't asked the professor i worked for to allow me to do so i don't think that the opportunity would have fallen in my lap a: solarte: the advice i would give this is this: do your best to have as many professional experiences as you can while you are pursuing your engineering degree the university will give you a significant amount of valuable theoretical knowledge but you will learn what engineering truly is if you get out there in the field and start to experience what engineers do every day once you leave the program you will be more valuable to employers and you will be able to make early significant contributions in any industry you decide to work for follow your dreams it's not easy but i promise to you its worth it don't be afraid to make mistakes either mistakes will teach you even more than your victories for more information visit the texas a&m foundation story
1989,dr ivett a leyva has been appointed head of the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university the appointment is effective sept 1 leyva is currently ­­a program element monitor for hypersonics and munitions s&t for the office of the deputy assistant secretary of the air force for science technology and engi­neering prior to her current role leyva served as program officer for high-speed aerodynamics at the air force research laboratory (afrl) air force office of scientific research she is a fellow of the american institute for aeronautics and astronautics and afrl leyva is also a national associate of the national research council of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine and a recipient of an air force civilian achievement medal and two air force meritorious civilian service medals and awards leyva earned her bachelors degree in engineering and applied science and masters and doctoral degrees in aeronautics all from the california institute of technology
1990,"dr igor ivanishin a postdoctoral researcher in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university has firsthand experience with the frustrations of oil production he spent nine years as a hydraulic fracturing engineer with operating and service companies in russia a few years ago he came to texas a&m to get his doctoral degree while delving into a reoccurring recovery problem in carbonate reservoirs: why don't they produce oil as predicted ivanishin is investigating variations in the chemical composition of dolomite and calcite minerals to prove why a one-size-fits-all approach to well stimulation in carbonate reservoirs doesn't always work because these formations occur worldwide his research has attracted the attention of several major oil and gas companies that want to collaborate with him and improve well stimulation operations the chemical crystalline lattice of ideal dolomite has regularly alternating layers of calcium and magnesium when dolomites naturally form in sedimentary rock extra calcium ions can substitute for magnesium ions this modification expands the crystal lattice and makes it less stable a similar situation happens in calcite a mineral that doesn't contain magnesium or other ions in pure form but can in reservoirs such variations are typical in sedimentary rocks but are not yet considered in well stimulation software models current modeling methods assume both dolomite and calcite have an ideal chemical composition that does not vary spatially within the carbonate reservoir thus reservoir rock is thought to react at the same rate everywhere when acids are injected to dissolve the rock and form the channels or wormholes for oil and other hydrocarbons to travel through ""i found publications that reported the presence of impurities in carbonates but the authors did not think about variation in the chemical structure of these minerals "" said ivanishin ""these are angstrom-level tiny things so it's difficult to imagine that such a small-size variation in chemical composition may affect the stability of the mineral but it does"" as a doctoral student ivanishin consulted with geologists mineralogists and chemical geologists on the subject he received and personally collected dolomite samples from around the world initial chemical composition analysis of the different samples helped him to select dolomites with varying excess calcium contents the reaction of these samples with hydrochloric acid revealed that having extra calcium a calcium uptake increased the rate dolomite dissolved up to five times greater than usual he concluded that because the chemical composition of dolomite does vary spatially injected acids would unevenly dissolve the rock in the target zone and not travel further into the reservoir leaving some areas untouched for his postdoctoral research ivanishin is working with a large collection of calcites from japan he wants to determine if magnesium ions in calcite also change the dissolution rate of this mineral in acids if calcite behaves the same way as dolomite this should affect the design of stimulation treatments and other operations in carbonate formations such as co2 injection ivanishin is currently working on creating computer simulations of these molecular variances and associated dissolution reactions so they can be easily shared and studied his goal is to provide information to companies and consult with them on applications of this discovery in the field though the investigation requires hard work and long hours ivanishin is glad the problem led him to college station texas years ago he talked with visiting international speakers at his former job about the carbonate recovery issue including professors from texas a&m he decided to explore the university in person as a visiting student then came back when he discovered it was the right place to be ""i decided the next step in my career should be a phd from one of the best universities in the world "" said ivanishin ""the experience obtained here talking with people from different companies working with other engineers exchanging ideas with experts from different fields and gathering information is like a point of contact with the whole petroleum engineering world"" this research was first published online feb 13 2021 in the journal of petroleum science and engineering and published in print july 2021"
1991,scientists are continuously looking for alternatives to fossil fuel-based power plants to diminish the adverse effects of fossil energy sources on the environment and to also build reliability researchers at texas a&m university are studying the viability of solar photovoltaic (pv) grid-tied systems on rooftops to fill that need dr fadhil al-aboosi a researcher with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations gas and fuel research center is leading a team studying the adoption of solar pv systems on building rooftops in countries that have a good solar energy potential even if they are oil or gas producers pv systems are composed of one or more solar panels combined with an inverter and other electrical and mechanical hardware that use energy from the sun to generate electricity we want to mitigate the negative impact of fossil energy sources on the environment to avoid using lands that can add more cost and may be used for other purposes such as agricultural and urban activities al-aboosi said this will address the energy and environmental challenges of the rapid growth of the building sector al-aboosi said the prospects of the implementation of a pv system on building rooftops in texas was studied theoretically for the first time to overcome the lack of performance behavior data of this technology specifically for the selected location the importance and accuracy of results comparing other previous research that has been carried out in the same direction is obtained from the comprehensive analysis of the system performance al-aboosi said we considered technical economic and environmental criteria solar irradiance intensity two modes of single-axis tracking the shadow effect and the pv cell temperature impact on system efficiency the results of their study preliminary evaluation of a rooftop grid-connected photovoltaic system installation under the climatic conditions of texas are detailed in the journal energies the evaluated parameters of the proposed system include energy output array yield (the ratio of daily monthly or yearly direct current energy output from a pv array) final yield array and system losses capacity factor performance ratio return on investment payback period levelized cost of energy and carbon emissions according to the overall performance results of the pv system which researchers propose to be installed on the eastern buildings of the texas a&m campus al-aboosi said they found this to be a technically economically and environmentally feasible solution for electricity generation and could play a significant role in the future energy mix of texas the result of the comparison for the proposed pv system with other pv systems located in different sites around the world showed that their performance does not only depend on solar radiation intensity but the operational and climatic conditions should be considered for any site that is selected to install the pv system he said al-aboosi said it was important to look at all these aspects in order to make solar energy a more viable solution the lack of research in this field either published or implemented environmental concerns and supporting variety in energy sources have sparked our curiosity to perform this study he said furthermore this study has been presented to make texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station a pioneer in this field as in other scientific fields it is worth noting that this work is the first study that was done hypothetically in texas based on theoretical analysis whereas all previous studies which were used for comparison with this study have been done based on experimental results at different locations worldwide he said the results were truly impressive and will pave the way for substantial developments in using rooftop grid-tied pv systems it can be used as a future vision especially the economic analysis for estimating the potential of investment incentives subsidies and feed-in tariff (a policy mechanism designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy) to make implementing solar pv systems more attractive in texas and around the world al-aboosi said in any case the long-term performance of the rooftop grid-tied technologies in texas requires further research especially finding proper management strategies of flexible aggregating of distributed energy resources from fossil fuels and renewable energy sources into grid
1992,jack bahmers high school did not have a marching band but it did have a steel pan ensemble now a junior in the department of ocean engineering as well as a brown scholar bahmer is president and a percussionist in maroon steel the steel pan ensemble at texas a&m university with an interest in nautical archeology bahmer was drawn to texas a&m largely for the ocean engineering department which he got to visit firsthand prior to attending as part of his scholarship i knew i wanted to do something unique that would put me either outside or doing research he said id taken archeology courses in high school and figured that ocean engineering where i could learn about offshore structures or submersible systems would be the best avenue to get into ocean exploration or a super technical side of nautical archeology bahmers interests naturally led him to join the human powered submarine team within the department which tasks students with designing building testing and racing a one- or two-person wet submarine but it was his previous experience with music that inspired him to tap into his creativity and open new doors outside of the e-quad i actually played steel pan all through high school bahmer said and in my later years of high school a friend and i both bought our own sets of steel pans and we would play professionally at music festivals wedding receptions graduations stuff like that founded in 2013 maroon steel aspires to spread the appreciation of the music associated with the caribbean through performance they hold rehearsals each week with an ensemble consisting of about 20 sets of steel pans and other percussion instruments including a drum kit as bahmer explained the group learns a host of songs from traditional steel pan or island music all the way to adaptations of popular songs at the end of semesters they perform off-campus at events like first friday in bryan texas it's a lot of fun he said and it's definitely nice to branch off toward different areas rather than just focusing on the same thing the whole time youre in school but there is a lot of overlap like for both the human powered submarine team and maroon steel i have to do a lot of prep work and think about how to solve the problems we're facing especially with covid-19 for example with maroon steel i'm in charge of rehearsals and making sure everyone knows how to play their part bahmer said but not everyone knows how to read sheet music because thats not a requirement so i have to come up with things like getting an audio recording so they can listen to it and play along with that from finding new ways to problem solve and having an outlet for his creativity to being able to simply talk with people outside of his classes bahmer said his participation in student organizations has enhanced his time at texas a&m there's not really a lot of opportunities to talk in a lecture so it's nice being able to go to a team and just talk and hang out with my peers as well as work together to apply the stuff we're learning in class directly to a project that we can see results from he said
1993,"marie kasprzyk's favorite book ""turbomachinery rotordynamics with case studies "" was written by dr dara w childs childs '68 is an emeritus professor and the director of the turbomachinery laboratory from 1984 to 2018 inspired by his work kasprzyk is carving her path as a graduate research assistant in this lab ""some of the best rotordynamicist come from the turbomachinery laboratory "" said kasprzyk ""being able to work here is an honor you learn from the best of the best especially since dr childs really made turbomachinery what it is today"" rotordynamics is the study of mechanics relating to rotating machinery such as jet engines or centrifugal compressors kasprzyk became intrigued by this topic the first time she saw a steam turbine ""they were amazing at first sight "" said kasprzyk ""i took mechanical vibrations at the university of central florida (ucf) and i enjoyed the topic that's when i began heading towards turbomachinery"" kasprzyk graduated with her bachelor's in mechanical engineering from ucf in 2013 and began working as a reliability engineer at a chemical plant kasprzyk continued earning her master's degree in 2017 while working full-time during her senior year at ucf dr suhada jayasuriya recommended texas a&m university to kasprzyk due to her interest in turbomachinery and the lab's excellent opportunities having brought her passion to texas a&m kasprzyks expectations were exceeded by the turbomachinery program ""i feel like i have received the best education i could have asked for in rotordynamics "" said kasprzyk ""texas a&m offers all the resources possible the department supports you and they hire the best professors that provide wonderful research opportunities"" dr adolfo delgado an associate professor is kasprzyk's advisor according to delgado kasprzyk's attitude and experience have significantly impacted the lab and those around her ""she is a role model to many students at the turbomachinery laboratory "" said delgado ""she upholds the highest standards of safety and professionalism she is an outstanding mechanical engineer and the best designer in my research group marie is the go-to person for any questions regarding the design modeling installation and commissioning of rotordynamic test rigs and rotating equipment"""
1994,"the field of cybersecurity is exponentially growing as society moves through the digital age brian uzuegbunam is jumping ahead of the curve as a student working toward a minor in cybersecurity through the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university ""as we find more ways to progress technologically there needs to be safeguards and regulations put in place to ensure they're not being used maliciously "" said uzuegbunam ""this minor has equipped me to understand what technology around me is capable of doing and its effect on our everyday lives"" cybersecurity is loosely defined as protecting computer systems and networks from unauthorized usage and damage as well as securing user information this includes the protection of hardware software and electronic data from cyber ethics to the fundamentals of networking the program offers an array of knowledge to students interested in gaining a basic understanding of cybersecurity ""i learned about the real-world applications of cybersecurity and about the risks we take while existing in the digital age "" said uzuegbunam ""we are attached to the feeling of privacy but innovations like facial recognition fingerprint scanning and the tracking of ip addresses seem to go against that belief laws and regulations are often lagging behind the creation of this new technology"" uzuegbunam is an interdisciplinary engineering major with a concentration in computer science and management information systems he took a cybersecurity course out of curiosity and after his first experience in the classroom decided to minor in the subject ""i took my first course in the minor when i enrolled in computer science and engineering 402 taught by dr paula dewitte "" he said ""i learned about cybersecurity's application to the law and government i loved the structure of the lectures as it's a mostly open discussion on what's current in cybersecurity such as breaches presidential executive orders and court cases after this course i decided to continue the minor throughout the program he has learned the necessary skills for developing cybersecurity solutions ""some of the skills i learned in this minor include dissecting the national institute of standards and technology framework and an extensive set of cyber standards associated within scientific fields "" he said ""i can now create and review various forms of risk assessments used in organizations i also learned python and plan to learn cryptography and the foundation of forensics in my last courses within the minor"" the cybersecurity minor was designed to appeal to all undergraduate students across multiple departments and in numerous colleges the minor is available to all students pursuing a bachelors degree"
1995,gulf war illness (gwi) is a multi-symptom illness that impacts an estimated 25% to 35% of veterans of the gulf war since the war functional gastrointestinal disorders related to gwi have gone largely unexplained and there are no clear therapies that directly address gastrointestinal dysfunction in gwi dr shreya raghavan assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university and her lab aim to develop new ways to research gwi occurrence and treatment options using bioengineering we believe that by investigating the pathobiology of gwi-related gastrointestinal dysfunction we will be able to therapeutically target it and improve the quality of life of aging gulf war veterans raghavan said her lab works on engineering tissue microenvironments for both intestinal inflammation research and cancer by isolating all the individual cellular components and reengineering them in controlled ratios the lab is able to better understand the different variables that cause the biological problems these bioengineered constructs if made from patient-derived cells can then be used for personalized patient-specific treatments the readouts from bioengineered guts/intestines are phenomenally similar to comparable tissues from rodents rabbits and even humans raghavan said our previous work has shown that by creating these gut structures were able to compare physiological function and show remarkable equivalency raghavan collaborates with dr ashok shetty associate director of the institute for regenerative medicine at texas a&m raghavans research was recently funded by the congressionally directed medical research program through their gulf war illness research program
1996,one challenge her overall research faces is sourcing cell material from the patient to form the engineered portion many of the issues shes trying to address impact only parts of the gut for a regenerative medicine approach to work you have to show that other portions of the gut are still functioning normally raghavan said thats our first challenge to show that engineered pieces from the uninvolved gut still function physiologically as expected and sourcing enough amounts of autologous tissue to create this solution raghavan said personal connections have also led to her interest in studying the gut including family members afflicted with chronic gut disorders she said engineers are problem solvers and working as a biomedical engineer allows her to apply her training to diverse biology and medical questions even outside of gwi this work has implications in other inflammatory disorders of the gut like crohns and colitis even cancer initiation raghavan said these sorts of personalized medicine approaches are currently not very popular in the gut realm it will be exciting to generate bioengineered guts to ask so many different questions like ‘why are some patients susceptible to colorectal cancer or why do some individuals with inflammatory bowel disorders have disruptions in gut motility and how can we treat them
1997,dr isaac adjei is using his background in drug delivery to engineer new ways to treat late-stage cancer patients adjei assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university develops treatments for patients with late-stage cancers to improve their quality of life and help them live longer typically these patients have cancer that has spread to other parts of the body or tumors that do not respond to treatment one of the current treatments for most cancer patients is immunotherapy where antibodies are used against specific receptors on cancer cells to activate the immune system or immune cells are isolated activated and then re-injected into the body to attack the cancer however immunotherapy is less likely to work on patients with late-stage cancer in breast cancer patients only about 5% in the advanced stage will respond to treatment adjeis group takes a different approach to how the immune system interacts with tumors instead of only testing different immunotherapies his team looks to see if they can develop ways to change the environment inside a patients tumor to give the treatment a better chance of working were trying to change the environment within the tumor using nanoparticles that we developed in our lab so that when the new immune cells get there the cells are happy and they can find the cancer cells and kill them adjei said were giving them a fighting chance to be able to do the job you send them there to do one way adjeis team is hoping to accomplish this is by changing the oxygen levels within the tumor as cancer grows it uses a lot of nutrients lowering the amount of oxygen within the tumor once the environment is depleted of nutrients the tumor is prompted to leave which leads to the cancer spreading throughout the body through metastasis the cancer cells also develop ways that allow them to hide from the immune cells in this hypoxic environment making immunotherapy ineffective
1998,if nanoparticles tiny devices 1 000 times smaller than a strand of human hair can be injected into the tumor and produce oxygen the immune system will have a better chance at destroying the tumor adjeis team develops nanoparticles that take advantage of some of the properties of the tumor cells to produce oxygen in that environment to ensure a sustained effect adjei says one goal is to find ways to mimic nature one of my philosophies is if you take something that nature is already using it makes it easy to translate adjei said i did some of my phd coursework in a hospital so there its put into your head before you develop or design anything you have to think about how youre going to ultimately get it into a patient that leads to another challenge his team is working to solve ensuring nanoparticles end up in the right place in the body once again they are using the bodys own systems as a template the liver for instance produces many substances but the body knows where each should go usually using specific proteins what (my graduate student) sri is doing is shes developing these nanoparticles that if you inject them into the body they can recruit some of these proteins and then use that to tell the nanoparticles where to go adjei said once we have this platform we can apply it for different applications such as treatment of cancer stroke even traumatic brain injuries adjei said one of his goals is to train students with the right skills and mentality to help patients which can have a broader impact on the health of the community if i train two doctoral students who have the same mentality and they go out with the goal to improve outcomes for patients thats three people trying to do the same thing adjei said that is my ultimate goal: help patients and train excellent translation-minded students who when they go out even if they are in industry are going to make impacts
1999,dr kristi shryock from the department of aerospace engineering is one of 10 texas a&m university faculty to receive the 2021 provost academic professional track faculty teaching excellence award the award encourages recognizes and rewards faculty who provide students with meaningful learning experiences embrace effective teaching approaches and value student-centered learning shryock is the frank and jean raymond foundation inc endowed instructional associate professor aerospace engineering associate department head and director of the craig and galen brown engineering honors program she is known by students and faculty as having boundless energy and enthusiasm and a true passion for helping students learn and succeed her contributions to texas a&m and the engineering education field have earned her international recognition creating regular opportunities to speak at both national and international events shryock also received an association of former students distinguished achievement award in college-level teaching in 2019 and the instructional faculty teaching award in 2015 and 2018 from the college of engineering
2000,since the inception of the distinguished alumnus award in 1962 only 306 of texas a&m universitys 547 000 former students have been recognized with the award presented jointly by texas a&m and the association of former students this honor recognizes aggies who have achieved excellence in their chosen professions and made meaningful contributions to texas a&m and their local communities one of these honorees now includes ray b nesbitt 55 a texas a&m college of engineering former student now deceased nesbitt retired in 1998 as president of exxon chemical co after a 43-year career there previous positions included vice president of exxon chemical europe and president of exxon chemical americas a recipient of the texas a&m engineering outstanding alumni award he and wife sarah created various texas a&m chemical engineering scholarships a chair a faculty endowment a professorship currently held by dr arul jayaraman department head in chemical engineering and an engineering study classroom they also co-chaired capital campaigns for st francis episcopal church and the womens home in houston nesbitt served on industry councils and boards as director of the houston branch of the federal reserve bank of dallas and on boards for hibernia bank and marshall national bank he supported the association of former students the 12th man foundation and texas a&m foundation and was a member of the chemical engineering advisory council and a&m legacy society he also served on the executive committee for texas a&ms one spirit one vision capital campaign as we join with the association of former students in presenting the distinguished alumnus award we honor three whose lives embodied each of texas a&ms core values said texas a&m universitys interim president dr john junkins throughout their lifetimes each of them made a lasting impact on texas a&m their communities and our state they are all deserving of the highest honor bestowed upon a former student association president and ceo porter s garner iii 79 echoed the sentiments of junkins and offered his congratulations on behalf of the association of former students our 2021 honorees join an elite and noble group who inspire us all with their service and achievements garner said the association of former students will further honor all recipients of this award during its annual distinguished alumni gala on oct 1 in addition the 2020 and 2021 recipients will be recognized during the oct 2 texas a&m football game against mississippi state more information can be found on the texas a&m association of former students website
2001,three students from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university were recognized by the national science foundations (nsf) graduate research fellowships program (grfp) the prestigious and competitive grfp supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing a research-based masters and/or doctoral degree in nsf-supported stem (science technology engineering and mathematics) fields of study the fellowship provides financial support including an annual stipend and cost of education allowance to the institution suzanne peterson and jordan brito were both awarded fellowships and gregory wong received an honorable mention it is a great honor to be recognized by the nsf for this fellowship program; it reassures me in my decision to pursue my graduate studies in materials science and engineering said peterson who is studying experimental nanomechanics of polymer composites with dr pavan kolluru if there is one thing that i have learned throughout all of my research experiences it is to never rest on your laurels and keep pushing and innovating this fellowship is a great opportunity to keep pushing and innovating and is just the beginning of the exciting work that lies ahead of me peterson explained that her time at texas a&m has shaped her research by exposing her to new topics and ways of thinking about problems looking forward she would one day like to work as a faculty member and completing the circle of giving a program manager at a funding agency like nsf brito a second-year doctoral candidate was introduced to materials science as a chemical engineering undergraduate through a course taught by her now advisor dr svetlana sukhishvili with a focus in functional polymer thin films she hopes to continue pursuing her research and eventually become a faculty member at a research university im very honored to be recognized for my achievements and potential to become a high-caliber researcher in my field she said i feel empowered to join a group of elite graduate students who have received this award finishing his time at texas a&m this may wong has studied under two advisors while obtaining his undergraduate degree he began by working with dr ibrahim karaman researching additive manufacturing of nickel titanium shape-memory alloys then later taking part in an aggie_challenge project designing shape-memory alloy shims for boeing then he was advised by dr jeffrey bullard on two projects: the first involving computational research running kinetic monte carlo simulations and the second an experimental project about the sintering behavior of lunar regolith simulants with his sights on pursuing his doctorate and then a career in either a national lab or at a university he plans to continue conducting research wherever his path takes him academic research is so technical and specific that it can be hard to explain what im doing to people in my life who are outside of the academic sphere wong said so its really cool to be able to tell my parents of my recognition from the nsf because while they might not know the specifics of what im doing they recognize the prestige of the organization it is a really nice way to finish out my time here at texas a&m it shows me how i have developed in the past four years
2002,for many students turning in a thesis or final project is the cherry on top of a graduate-level education its a fleeting moment in time where you may feel the burden on your shoulders lighten as soon as you submit the last piece of your research while your mind shifts to thinking of your next endeavor when the bustle of post-college life ramped up submitting a final copy of an independent study report ended up on the bucket list of industrial engineering former student stephen powe ‘78 that is until late last year powe graduated from the industrial and systems engineering department at texas a&m university with a masters degree he submitted a final copy of his independent study report this past december 42 years after graduation addressed to his former professor the late dr james k jim hennigan 54 after i graduated in december of 1978 it was always on my to-do list to type it up and submit it i knew i would get to it someday because i kept my files with me through a lot of years and several moves powe said
2003,hennigan was a well-known and respected professor of industrial and systems engineering and academic advisor at texas a&m in 1967 he developed a laboratory for human factors study that led to a second-generation human factors laboratory located in the zachry engineering building where the zachry engineering education complex now stands hennigan retired in 1996 as associate professor emeritus in industrial engineering because powe took the non-thesis route for his masters he owed hennigan a clean copy of his final report on his ie 685 hours of independent study work powe had completed and presented his work to his committee of three faculty members including hennigan during the fall of 1978 once it was approved the final step left in the process was to prepare a clean copy and submit it to hennigan it is here that i failed being married with the first of our four children that last semester i was heavily invested in getting job interviews which resulted in many interview trips that fall then it was time to move my young family from college station to galveston powe said dr hennigan could be gruff but he was fair i wince at the thought that i betrayed his trust and what he must have thought of me i see none of steves ‘delay as a failure but as the truest gift to celebrate who dr hennigan was as a teacher a mentor and a true believer in the quality of people texas a&m produces for world impact especially on the 20th year anniversary of my dads passing said joni lora hennigans daughter his office door was always open to students he would always tell me that he knew each student was better at ‘something than he was and would get to know them until he found out
2004,powe served in the us army for a little over five years after he received his bachelors degree in history in 1971 he came back to texas a&m for graduate school to focus more intently on his future career path his decision was in part because of the influence from the late dr robert p beals former industrial engineering professor and powes father-in-law powe came back to aggieland as a married graduate student with a 1-year-old son in january of 1977 when he arrived back on campus many new dorms particularly womens dorms broadened the silhouette of the campus skyline as a graduate student he no longer needed to dress in uniform for classes in those days engineering students were learning to write computer programs in fortran using punch cards you lined up at a keypunch machine to punch out your card deck and then took the deck to a counter where someone would drop your punch cards in a card reader to run it on the mainframe for you you waited for the attendant to hand you a printout of all your error messages and finally you got your desired output powe said i also got to sit down in kyle field during a football game for the first time wow in january 1979 following graduation powe began his 38-year career in the chemical industry at a union carbide corporation chemical plant in texas city from texas city powe went to work on union carbide assignments in west virginia and chicago in facilities logistics and project management work most of the last years of his career were focused on optimizing supply chains safe handling storage and packaging of hazardous chemicals purchasing logistics services and project management
2005,powes last project was on the new construction of inbound flatbed trucks containing coils of different metals from mills in the midwest and the transfer of these coils to special-purpose skids for shipment on rail in intermodal containers in joliet illinois powe retired in may 2017 looking back on his time in graduate school and those final days powe remembers hennigan as a teacher a mentor and a friend and now he has fulfilled the promise to himself and his mentor to turn in that final report even though it was 42 years late industrial and systems engineering department head dr lewis ntaimo reviewed powes submission powe was sent a certification of completion jim was a man who cared deeply about his students if he granted time to turn in a retyped report it was because he believed in the integrity we have seen displayed by this submission and knew mr powe would have a successful career said dr g kemble bennett senior professor of industrial and systems engineering jim would be pleased the piece that continues to blow me away usually to the point of getting choked up is steves commitment to my dad believing in him said lora i think it reflects a truth that dads impact continues in the love and respect he had for his students and engineering i believe students could tell he valued their journey of what brought them to texas a&m as well as who they would be when they left
2006,cerebrospinal fluid is found within the tissue that surrounds the brain and spinal cord and works to replace fluids and maintain bodily functions however if this fluid begins to leak out of the spinal cavity it can cause excess fluid to build up in the brain creating dangerous amounts of pressure and leading to the disease hydrocephalus while there are strategies to help clear this liquid theyre not always effective thats the challenge a group of six biomedical engineering students have taken on for their senior design project one challenge is just understanding what the pathology of the disease is said team member chris chaftari it isnt really known why people suddenly have an increase in pressure we know that they have an excess in production of fluid and for some reason the fluid isnt able to drain from the head but we really dont know why this problem arises current solutions to drain the fluid involve implanting a shunt that connects the brain to the abdomen due to the lower pressure in the abdomen the fluid can passively drain from the brain however in some patients including children and people who are obese there is not enough of a pressure difference to easily let the fluid drain for their solution the team is prototyping a 3d-modeled piezoelectric pump that will include a microchip with pressure and flow sensors the sensors will allow the pump to play a more active role in controlling the movement of the liquid it also includes bluetooth capabilities so it will be able to communicate and provide real-time data to patients and doctors improving the devices usability logan piner said its exciting to apply the knowledge the team has been learning over the past four years to something physical it feels like this has been working toward something and now im able to finally show off what ive learned piner said weve learned a lot about lots of different subjects as biomedical engineers and i think thats helped a lot in our device because were not making something purely mechanical or purely electrical its got to be fit for the body but its also got to run this software and its also got to be designed so it can withstand biological forces
2007,"the teams sponsor is a surgeon from texas childrens hospital and daaniya syeda said theyve had a great experience working with him especially when trying to understand what current devices include she said its been eye-opening seeing what all is involved in developing a medical device theres a lot of different factors such as what risk is it for the patient biocompatibility efficiency usage syeda said i didnt realize there are so many different factors and so its quite difficult to find an optimum balance on top of the typical challenges associated with a senior capstone project the team faced new obstacles due to the covid-19 pandemic were werent able to all meet face-to-face for a while and that was hard in the designing part of the device said kevin garcia valdez its hard to talk to each other on how were going to make the device and how its going to look along with applying their knowledge to a project another mission of the capstone is to help students gain skills working and communicating as a group while all of them are biomedical engineers their backgrounds vary joshua fernandez de la vega originally came to texas a&m to study mechanical engineering but found he wasnt enjoying the major as much as he had hoped after his first year and made the switch to biomedical engineering its nice being able to take engineering classes but im also liking the way the engineering is applied fernandez de la vega said i dont necessarily like sitting in a class and learning about gears for weeks on end but being able to see an application that impacts someone has been really nice and helped me keep my focus throughout my studies overall gordon armstrong said having the chance to help solve a real-world problem had the greatest impact on him i have been extremely fortunate to have a great team where we were all motivated to actually accomplish our project armstrong said weve collectively learned a lot about cerebral shunts but most importantly i think weve learned a lot about functioning as a team"""
2008,dr alaa elwany associate professor of the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university was chosen to receive the 2021 john l imhoff global excellence award for industrial engineering education from the american society for engineering education (asee) this award is given to a recipient recognized for their accomplishments and contributions in industrial engineering education their demonstrated excellence in global cooperation and understanding through leadership as well as other avenues i am extremely grateful to asee and the selection committee for recognizing me with this award i would also like to thank my current and former students and my family for their support and for driving my motivation and passion about global excellence in industrial engineering elwany said being selected for a national award named after a true visionary like professor imhoff is an incredible honor elwany received his doctoral degree in industrial and systems engineering from the georgia institute of technology and his masters and bachelors degrees in production engineering from alexandria university his research interests include modeling analysis optimization and control of advanced manufacturing processes with emphasis on metal additive manufacturing more commonly known as metal 3d printing his contributions in engineering research and education have been recognized through multiple teaching awards such as the texas a&m center for teaching excellence and young investigator research awards these include being named an outstanding young manufacturing engineer from the american society of mechanical engineers and the society of manufacturing engineers and receiving the national science foundations faculty early career development program award
2009,with questions about the short- and long-term reliability and sustainability of the power grid set forth by the electric reliability council of texas more commonly referred to as ercot having alternate energy options is more vital than ever and while many forms of renewable energy such as solar and nuclear call land their home other methods such as offshore wind farms wave energy and current/tide energy are taking to the seas to generate electricity dr moo-hyun kim bauer professor ii in the department of ocean engineering and director of the ocean system simulation and control lab and his team of fellow researchers at texas a&m university believe the next generation of offshore energy lies in the development of a synergistic combination of several renewable energy production methods set atop a floating offshore platform offshore renewable energy can directly power remote islands numerous ocean platforms electric boats and underwater drones and vehicles as well as ‘blue economy systems such as marine aqua-culture fish or macro algae farms kim said it can also be combined with desalination plants and hydrogen factories the ocean renewable energy station will feature wind wave current and solar energy elements that could generate electricity for anything from a coastal or island community a research lab or a military unit tethered where the sea level is 60 meters or deeper the station will be ideal when water depth increases quickly such as along the united states pacific coast or hawaii and will be less obtrusive to the view of coastal residents than a fixed offshore wind farm and it has been proven to have a highly competitive levelized cost of energy (the measurement of lifetime costs divided by energy production) denmark is now building a huge multi-source multi-purpose ocean energy island; wind energy is already competitive against fossil fuels kim said the biggest disadvantage of ocean renewable energy is its variability so some sort of storage method is highly needed to be commercially more useful while offshore wind energy is commercially competitive current wave-energy converters (which sit close to the surface of the water and utilize the natural motion of waves to generate electricity) are less cost-effective and only useful for smaller-scale special purposes to help solve these problems the ocean renewable energy station combines several different methods of renewable energy additionally as kim described larger offshore wind turbines may create better synergy with the other forms of energy production the team also plans to incorporate innovative smart materials into the wave energy converter that will respond to changes in wave height and frequency and allow for more consistent power production now the united states department of energy is the largest funding source for ocean renewable energy and the wind energy industry is growing fast kim said major oil/gas companies are also gradually shifting their business emphasis toward ocean clean energy
2010,"a research project supported by the national institutes of health is seeking to create a cavopulmonary assist device (cpad) to support patients with single-ventricle heart defects and potentially lead to improved quality and longevity of life dr alan palazzolo james j cain i professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is working with principal investigator dr mark rodefeld a thoracic surgeon at indiana university alongside palazzolo texas a&m mechanical engineering doctoral candidates shreyas sarfare and md shujan ali are participating in the project those born with a single ventricle heart defect have just one of their two pumping chambers known as ventricles that is large or strong enough to properly function leading to an over-working of the heart the goal of the research is to specifically assist the patients who undergo fontan reconstruction surgery a procedure that seeks to aid with single ventricle defects of the heart the fontan procedure is most commonly performed on infants and children ""survivors of the single-ventricle fontan procedure have lifelong chronic circulatory inefficiency "" palazzolo said ""therapies to prevent or reverse this circulatory decline remain extremely limited the proposed ventricular assist device would shift the univentricular circulation toward more stable biventricular equivalency the research team's approach is to design the internal flow path for the heart in a manner that inhibits thrombosis and hemolysis and to mitigate cpad-induced vibration experienced by patients palazzolo said the greatest challenges facing their research include determining a way to minimize the risk of blood clots (thrombus) hemolysis (the rupture or destruction of red blood cells) and power consumption of the device's motor ""we are utilizing computational fluid dynamics to design a hydraulically efficient motor/pump matched with the hydraulics of the overall bodys circulatory system with low propensity for thrombus formation and hemolysis in the high-speed rotating motor/pump low vibrations and low hot spot temperature in the internal drive motor "" palazzolo said as the project continues palazzolo said a long-term objective of the project will be to use computational fluid dynamics to model the formation of thrombus more accurately"
2011,dr shuiwang ji associate professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is one of the principal investigators on a $6 million grant from the national institutes of health to develop artificial intelligence-driven methods to automate the process of finding subtle telltale signs of alzheimers disease in neuroimaging data jis team shares $12 million of the grant ji will lead the research team tasked with developing advanced deep-learning methods for finding relevant neural signatures lurking within neuroimages taken using different techniques such as pet scans and mris i feel very excited with this collaborative opportunity to make scientific discoveries in medical domains using deep learning and artificial intelligence said ji who has extensive expertise in machine learning deep learning and medical image analysis alzheimer's disease affects 56 million americans over the age of 65 and its symptoms are most noticeably the progressive impairment of cognitive and memory functions it is also currently the most common form of dementia in the elderly despite copious amounts of studies on alzheimers over the years researchers understanding of the biology and progression of the disease remains limited so there are limited advances in therapeutics and preventive strategies ji said the research team expects to discover new genetic biomarkers relevant to alzheimers which may lead to understanding the molecular basis of the disease and in turn uncover a potential new treatment researchers will leverage existing neuroimaging and genetic data resources from the uk biobank the alzheimer's disease sequencing project the alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative and the cohorts for heart and aging research in genomic epidemiology consortium other collaborators on this research are dr degui zhi associate professor with the uthealth school of biomedical informatics and dr myriam fornage professor at the center for human genetics at uthealth
2012,to develop novel protein carriers for cancer drugs texas a&m university researcher dr phanourios tamamis from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and his collaborator dr ehud gazit a leading biochemist biophysicist and nanotechnologist from tel aviv university israel have won a joint national science foundation and united states-israel binational science foundation (nsf-bsf) award the award conferred on june 15 will start funding their research on august 1 peptide-based materials are highly promising carrier agents for cancer drugs as they can combine ease of fabrication potential biocompatibility and tunable chemical properties the goal of this project is to develop novel classes of cancer drug delivery nanocarriers starting from promising initial studies of the researchers on peptide-based nanomaterials for the delivery of cancer drug epirubicin commonly used to treat breast cancer they will examine the possibility of using a short dipeptide cyclo-dihistidine as a universal cancer drug carrier they also plan on designing novel peptide nanocarriers combining enhanced fluorescence and high binding affinity to cancer drugs finally the team will aim to transform the most promising nanocarriers into smart drug nanocarriers capable of targeting cancer cells the resulting peptide materials are expected to be a viable alternative and promising route to delivering cancer drugs combining ease of fabrication with a range of capabilities including enhanced fluorescence to enable monitoring of drug release optimized drug encapsulation and improved targeting of cancer cells tamamis noted that this special nsf-bsf award will provide the exciting opportunity for him to merge his expertise in computational techniques with experimental techniques and studies that will be done in tel aviv by researchers from gazits lab the nsf-bsf grant will provide funding of around $400 000 to tamamis and additional funding to gazit in addition to providing funding for the research the grant will facilitate creating educational activities to train undergraduates graduate students and high school students from underrepresented communities
2013,dr ana diaz artiles assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university is chairing the human performance in space (hps) department at this years space studies program (ssp) hosted by the international space university (isu) ssp is an annual nine-week professional development course for postgraduate students and professionals interested in furthering their space-related education the program is highly visible in the international space community teaching is one of my passions and teaching about human performance in space motivates me even more said diaz artiles the space studies program provides a great opportunity to teach and learn from really smart people in their professions as well as interact with other lecturers that come to the program ssp gathers over 100 space professionals from more than 30 countries to learn from and network with more than 200 faculty and visiting lecturers comprised of lecture series workshops and projects ssp creates a diverse and collaborative learning environment for its participants to develop new perspectives on the worlds space activities diaz artiles has been consistently involved with the program throughout her career first participating in it 10 years ago she was then selected to serve as a teaching associate in 2013 in the hps department and has returned to the program every year since either as a visiting lecturer or as department chair she is also an adjunct faculty member at isu at ssp i discovered other fields related to the space sector for example bioastronautics and human performance which is what i am focusing most of my research on now in my lab at texas a&m said diaz artiles the ssp represents an incredible experience that definitely changed my professional career and its extremely rewarding to contribute now in the hps chair capacity this year diaz artiles has the opportunity to share her expertise in her home country as the program is being held at the university of granada in spain
2014,a presentation titled the high entropy alloy space is not as big as we think it is by dr raymundo arroyave professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has been selected by the minerals metals & materials society (tms) as an american institute of mining metallurgical and petroleum engineers (aime)-tms anniversary keynote arroyaves talk was initially presented at the tms 2021 virtual annual meeting & exhibition (tms2021 virtual) march 15-18 tms2021 virtual marked the kick off of a year-long celebration of the shared 150th anniversary of tms and its antecedent organization aime only two tms2021 virtual talks were selected from each of tmss five technical divisions for this special designation as an aime-tms anniversary keynote the aime-tms anniversary keynotes are a special highlight of the aime-tms anniversary year which will continue through the tms 2022 annual meeting & exhibition from february 27–march 3 2022 in anaheim california
2015,"eight faculty members in the texas a&m university college of engineering received faculty early career development (career) awards from the national science foundation (nsf) for their 2021 funding cycle the nsf career program offers support to early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization activities pursued by early career faculty are expected to build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research each year the nsf presents an estimated 500 career awards totaling around $250 million to early career faculty at us institutions of higher learning museums observatories research labs professional societies and similar organizations associated with research or educational activities this years college of engineering recipients include: dr sara abedi assistant professor and stephen a holditch faculty fellow harold vance department of petroleum engineering abedi's research project an integrated experimental-theoretical framework for understanding the multiscale mechanical response of rock-reactive brine interactions will study the impact of reactive brine interactions on the properties of rocks at multiple length scales using advanced experimental and modeling techniques her project will acknowledge the multiscale and nonhomogenous aspect of rock-fluid interactions and aims at gaining a fundamental insight of the coupling between the chemical microstructural and mechanical processes involved abedi an affiliated faculty member in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering tailored her research for a broad application that aligned with the civil mechanical and manufacturing innovation area within the national science foundation particularly for advancing infrastructure resilience and sustainability read more about dr abedi's research dr dion s antao assistant professor j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering the goal of antaos project ultrafast localized plasmas in dense fluids: from fundamental phase-change phenomena and diagnostics to efficient heat and mass transport is to integrate research and education around the use of ultrafast (20-100 nanoseconds) and fast (01-10 microseconds) pulsed plasma discharges in liquids and vapors to probe manipulate or tune and enhance heat and mass transfer processes during liquid-vapor phase change encountered in boiling and desalination processes ""phase-change heat transfer processes are at the center of most aspects of our lives "" he said ""we propose to develop theory and tools to understand the fundamentals of these phase-change phenomena better and then manipulate tune and enhance such processes to optimize thermal and mass transport in various energy conversion and water treatment technology"" read more about dr antao's research dr theodora chaspari assistant professor department of computer science and engineering chasparis goal for her project enabling trustworthy speech technologies for mental health care: from speech anonymization to fair human-centered machine intelligence is to design reliable machine learning notably for speech-based diagnosis and monitoring of mental health for addressing three pillars of trustworthiness: explainability privacy preservation and fair decision making trustworthiness is critical for both patients and clinicians: patients must be treated fairly and without the risk of reidentification while clinical decision making needs to rely on explainable and unbiased machine learning ""if we can specifically predict the degradations in their tone then we should be able to intervene and prevent a relapse of the symptoms from occurring "" said chaspari ""we are developing ai that is not only reliable in terms of precise monitoring but also more human-centered and friendly"" read more about dr chaspari's research dr dileep kalathil assistant professor department of electrical and computer engineering there are three critical issues that significantly impede the success of reinforcement learning (rl) in real-world engineering systems: lack of resiliency data efficiency and scalability kalathils career project towards a principled framework for resilient data efficient and scalable reinforcement learning for control develops a principled approach for the rl-based design of control algorithms for large-scale real-world engineering systems by overcoming the fundamental challenges of resiliency data efficiency and scalability the main application domain of interest is electricity systems which guides the problem formulation and solution approaches and lends credence to the algorithms using real-world examples this is an area of machine learning that is not very well addressed kalathil said and that is what reinforcement learning is about reinforcement learning is essentially machine learning for making active decisions read more about dr kalathil's research dr vinayak krishnamurthy assistant professor j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering krishnamurthys project partitive solid geometry for computer-aided design: principles algorithms workflows & applications will establish the foundations of a new geometric modeling framework – partitive solid geometry – for the design of complex two- and three-dimensional geometric patterns modeling complex patterns such as cellular structures is intrinsic to several areas of national interest including consumer products protective gear for sports and the military and curved miniaturized electronics this research will introduce space-filling shapes as the underlying novel shape representation for partitive solid geometry which will enable forward design workflows for the creation of complex shapes and structures for generative and procedural design ""the award will allow me to continue my efforts on building a solid foundation for my long-term goal to create the next generation of design tools that augment the designers' cognitive ability for creative problem-solving he said what this research hopes to accomplish in the long term is to give the control back to the designer by making complex geometric modeling available to all real time and intuitive to interact with useful for serious engineering design and usable for recreational learning"" read more about dr krishnamurthy's research dr chao ma assistant professor department of engineering technology and industrial distribution advanced ceramic materials play a vital role in numerous applications with strict requirements or under harsh conditions such as those in the biomedical aerospace chemical and energy industries traditional manufacturing methods for ceramic parts have severe geometric constraints long production time and high cost binder jet additive manufacturing can overcome these drawbacks however it is currently unable to produce dense ceramic parts significantly limiting its applications mas project powder preparation and compaction for ceramic binder jet additive manufacturing aims to increase understanding of how powder granule characteristics (density structure and strength) and powder compaction affect resulting part density in addition this career plan includes a series of educational activities to strengthen and diversify the advanced manufacturing workforce impacting k-12 teachers and students undergraduate and graduate students and professionals in the industry read more about dr ma's research dr xingyong song assistant professor department of engineering technology and industrial distribution through his project control of a long and curved string for deep underground exploration song will contribute new fundamental knowledge related to modeling and control of a large-scale system with a long curved string-like geometry this will lead to advances in deep underground directional drilling systems impacting national strategic areas including energy the environment and outer space exploration in energy it will enable automated directional drilling for enhanced geothermal energy systems and unconventional natural gas production in environmental research the project will address a critical technical barrier to accessing ancient ice cores in the south pole to evaluate large-scale climate patterns and predict future climate changes such as the evolution of global warming in outer space exploration it will build the fundamental foundation to control a drilling robot to reach potential signs of microbial life and water resources on mars to fulfill the ultimate mission of the mars exploration read more about dr song's research dr maryam zahabi assistant professor wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering zahabis project adaptive driver assistance systems and personalized training for law enforcement officers (adapt-leo) will model officers' driving workload and performance in high-demand situations then use those models to develop in-vehicle technology and training solutions that adapt to officers' workloads to reduce the risk of crash-related harm in police operations the models methods and tools developed may also benefit other driving and training domains previous examinations on adaptive training are generally a proof of concept without implementation in actual training settings which might have been due to the limitations of off-the-shelf training media we will fill this gap by developing an adaptive driving simulation-based training system zahabi said this career research seeks to fill this knowledge gap by establishing novice law enforcement officers performance models that can accurately represent their cognitive perceptual and motor demands while driving read more about dr zahabi's research"
2016,"the food-water-energy nexus dictates that there is a direct link between these three necessities and stressing one directly impacts the supply of the other two as the population grows human demand for energy and food has caused our freshwater reserves to slowly deplete power plants are one of the main culprits contributing to this issue as they use trillions of gallons of fresh water annually to prevent overheating a research group led by dr debjyoti banerjee professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university has shown that specific phase change materials (pcms) can cool steam turbines used in power plants averting fresh water usage simultaneously they used machine-learning techniques to enhance the reliability and energy storage capacity of various pcm-based cooling platforms to develop powerful cold batteries that dispatch on demand their publication leveraging machine learning (artificial neural networks) for enhancing performance and reliability of thermal energy storage platforms utilizing phase change materials was published in the american society of mechanical engineers journal of energy resources technology power plants and process industries use fresh water in cooling towers to reduce costs and improve reliability water runs through the cooling tower absorbing the heat and turning into vapor which is then used to condense the steam from the turbine exhaust with high demands on fresh water alternate methods like using pcms that can morph from a solid to a liquid state by absorbing heat energy are gaining more attention for cooling power plants and process industries the first material the team examined was bioderived waxy materials (similar to lard): natural products with low carbon footprints that are relatively cheap although effective the researchers showed that waxes (paraffins) could not store as much energy nor deliver the cooling power they originally hypothesized therefore not providing enough cooling for extreme climates or providing safety amid extreme weather events this led to testing another pcm called salt hydrates that are also inexpensive and safe for the environment salt hydrates pack more punch than waxes and lards approximately harboring two to three times the amount of energy while melting at faster rates however these materials have a known flaw – they take too long to solidify (as they need to be subcooled) without a reliable melting and freezing method the salt hydrates are ineffective think of the process as an electric car battery – you want it to take very little time to recharge but it needs to run for a long time said banerjee the same concept can be applied to pcms we need a pcm to recharge (freeze) quickly yet melt over long durations to ramp up the reliability and speed up freezing of these pcms the researchers turned to machine learning using the readings from just three miniature temperature sensors that act like thermometers they recorded the melting-time history they then implemented machine learning to predict when and how much of the pcm will melt and when the freezing will start maximizing both cooling power and capacity using this method we found that if you melt only 90% of the salt hydrate and leave 10% solidified then the moment you start the cooling cycle it immediately starts freezing said banerjee the beauty of this method is that with a bare-bones apparatus of three sensors and a simple computer program we have created a system that is cost-effective reliable and sustainable"" currently other machine-learning algorithms require years of data to achieve this type of accuracy for power plants whereas banerjees new method requires only a few days the algorithm can tell the operator within one hour (and as much as three hours) before the system will reach the peak percentage for melting with a 5-to-10-minute prediction accuracy the technique can be retrofitted on any existing cooling unit in any process industry or power plant this work is currently funded by the texas a&m triads for transformation grant (t3 program) under the aegis of the vice president for research at texas a&m (project title: exploratory microfluidics research aimed at broad-scale single-plant irrigation) the co-authors of this publication are aditya chuttar and ashok thyagarajan students in the mechanical engineering department the genesis of this study on leveraging pcms for mitigating food-energy-water nexus was a $35 million research grant from advanced research projects agency-energy program to banerjee at texas a&m engineering experiment station/texas a&m along with a collaborating engineering research team from boeing evapco inc maulbetsch consulting university of cincinnati university of california berkeley and the university of california los angeles (ucla) dr vijay dhir from ucla (currently a hagler fellow at texas a&m and a member of the national academy of engineering) was a contributing member of this advanced research in dry-cooling collaborating team the success of this study has led to multiple invention disclosures and patent applications by members of banerjees research group for use in other applications such as self-driving cars while working in banerjees lab texas a&m undergraduate student researchers used the knowledge they gained about salt-hydrate pcms to design an autonomous self-driving car equipped with cold batteries to cool the computing units of the electric car for extended durations in the arizona summer and won the society of automotive engineers autodrive challenge competitions in several categories in 2018"
2017,"finding new solutions to address the challenges posed by plastic waste can dramatically improve global sustainability practices and help achieve a greener future while many researchers are working to solve this problem on an international scale a new multi-institutional team is seeking to turn that waste into a high-performing contributor the research team is working on upcycling plastic waste into liquid lubricants including oil hydraulic fluids heat transfer fluids and greases led by iowa state university the project team includes argonne national laboratory chevron philips chemical company chemstations inc american packaging corp the city of ames resource recovery facility and hy-vee alongside texas a&m university dr ali erdemir halliburton chair in engineering professor and professor in the j mike walker' 66 department of mechanical engineering and the department of materials science and engineering leads the efforts for texas a&m the project is one of 12 funded by the us department of energys plastics innovation challenge an initiative designed to reduce plastic waste in oceans and landfills as well as help to position the us as a global leader in plastics recycling technologies and in the manufacture of new plastics that are recyclable by design their research was recently published in the journal chemsuschem erdemir said the team is working toward the common goal of demonstrating that plastic wastes can be responsibly and economically upcycled into high-performance lubricants and used to minimize friction and wear if successful the team hopes their research could help reduce both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions ""this project aims to reduce the adverse impacts made by hundreds of millions of tons of waste plastics through upcycling in order to support a circular economy with minimal environmental impact "" erdemir said ""these responsibly recycled materials will provide new economic incentives by developing through a novel upcycling process to produce innovative value-added products"" erdemir said the general public could see day-to-day benefits from this research through a less adverse impact from plastic waste and cheaper and potentially better functioning lubricants used in cars and other industrial activities ""reducing plastic wastes to lubricating oils is quite remarkable and may lead to a greener and more sustainable future "" erdemir said ""benefits could be huge as the end-products of this project will not only help reduce the adverse environmental impacts of plastic wastes but also put them in use in a very green and continuously recyclable manner"" by turning the waste into high-performing lubricants that perform as well or even better than their traditional counterparts erdemir said the mechanical components that utilize the lubricants for smooth and safe operation could benefit through mechanical durability energy efficiency and environmental compatibility moving forward the team will be researching both the cost and technology needed to upcycle the plastic waste into lubricants as well as how well the product ultimately performs ""by the end of our project we hope that we turn plastic trash into lubricating treasures in a sound and cost-effective way thus helping alleviate the dire consequences of plastic wastes which are already hurting our planet in so many ways erdemir said if proven commercially viable we expect our research findings to turn into a wide range of lubricating products including engine oils and a wide range of industrial lubricants that could help reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint of future transportation and other industrial systems"
2018,"texas a&m university's society of automotive engineers (sae) aero design team is world champion of the 2021 sae aero design competition this marks the second year in a row the department of aerospace engineering's student-led organization took first place at the international competition sae aero design exposes students to real-world engineering situations by challenging them to design build and fly a radio-controlled (rc) airplane optimized to meet a specific set of configurations and mission requirements the competition creates a hands-on opportunity for students to apply the tools of their trade while also developing project management and communication skills ""it really mimics industry in that there are problems to be solved and there's competition for that different companies working to solve the same problems "" said blake rogers '22 team member and student in the aerospace engineering department ""so in that way i've gained a learning experience that translates and it's great preparation for engineering in the real world"" this year teams shared another universal challenge along with industry: working together during a period of physical distancing ""i definitely think it was a challenge especially when connecting with people and explaining concepts but it was about realizing that it was going to be a different season and addressing the problems as we came to them "" said kyle curnutt '21 team director and recent graduate from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering"
2019,"to help navigate the unexpected challenges of working on a project remotely the team leaned into their core values for motivation and direction ""one of our core values is excellence and another is initiative so those two combined meant that we had a team committed to putting in the time it took to overcome virtual barriers and over time we learned to adapt "" said john blausen '21 team chief engineer and recent graduate from the mechanical engineering department texas a&m's team farmers flight worked together entirely over zoom for the first few months leveraging computer-aided design and simulations in the absence of a physical workspace and wind tunnels for testing despite the added learning curve they stayed on track with their project ""we ended up designing a whole prototype over the summer and we designed it all over zoom "" said rogers ""it was kind of a risk designing a plane that early but we saw it was beneficial as a learning process for new members on the team to go through a design from start to finish and it gave us time to focus on improving the design and build process in the fall"" with the support of their advisors farmers flight was able to safely begin building and testing their plane their advisors associate professor of practice brad worsham and scott mcharg both from the aerospace engineering department committed their weekends and hours after work to help the students test their design and learn from failed flights ""it's really unique and a benefit to our team that we have the support from our advisors for every single flight "" said curnutt ""scott mcharg has been flying rc planes for years so he gives advice from a very practical perspective and brad worsham can translate that using theory"" this year farmers flight veered from their previous year's winning monoplane design and instead explored a biplane design opting for a new approach pushed the team but it paid off they surpassed their flight performance score from last year and performed well enough on day one of the competition to seal their win"
2020,"farmers flight placed first overall and in mission performance second in technical presentation and third in technical design report in the regular class they also received a sportsmanship award after sharing a discrepancy they found in their scores which mistakenly gave them extra points they were awarded a $100 gift card for their sportsmanship and after discussing it as a team with their advisors they chose to donate the gift card to another team to help them purchase new parts for their aircraft ""it was an achievement to be there in itself and i think the camaraderie among everyone there was different than in previous years it was like we were just happy to see other people and have gone through the same struggles and been able to make it to the competition and fly "" said rogers for the students sae aero design extends well beyond the competition the experiences they have from the start of the project to the final flight impact their success both in and out of the classroom ""it's interesting to hear students talk about learning something in class and then applying it in designing the next week or vice versa "" said curnutt ""i really think getting experience on an engineering team broadens your perspective as an engineer; it allows you to start applying concepts as you learn them"" the personal and professional development that comes with participating in student organizations like sae aero design is what motivates worsham and mcharg to help create the opportunity for students ""they always support us and push us as a team and we're just so appreciative to have these great guys who are proud to be our advisors and really help us improve as engineers "" said rogers ""they have definitely contributed to the success we've had these past few years"" the student leaders were able to extend the aero design experience to more students this year after seeing a highly competitive applicant pool because of the growing interest a second team was created to compete in the micro class they placed second in technical presentation and fifth in design report learn more about texas a&m's sae design team and the annual sae aero design competition"
2021,the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering advisory council has established the rl autenrieth environmental engineering endowed scholarship in honor of dr robin l autenrieth who has served as department head since 2013 distributions from this endowment will provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in environmental engineering at texas a&m university autenrieth will return as a full-time faculty member in fall 2021 during her tenure she oversaw the growth of the department and academic programs increased endowments and recruited highly talented faculty the environmental engineering degree program was developed under her direction it is such an honor that this scholarship will benefit students pursuing environmental engineering degrees which is my area of specialization she said words fall short in expressing my appreciation to the advisory council chairs who initiated this scholarship and other council members and former students who also contributed i am so grateful initial contributors to this endowment include stephen h lucy 82 fiona mccracken allen 82 juan contreras iii 85 john doucet 81 and david zachry 85 lucy graduated from texas a&m with his bachelors degree in 1982 and masters degree in 1983 both in civil engineering he comes from a family of fellow aggies including three other aggie civil engineers and felt like he was predestined to attend texas a&m my a&m experience launched my career and has continued to support and expand my professional and personal opportunities he said i was also fortunate to be a president's endowed scholar with a donor who mentored and supported me personally in addition to financially that experience laid the groundwork for all the philanthropic giving my family and my firm have done with a&m in order to pay it forward lucy served as the civil engineering advisory council chair when autenrieth was first named interim department head by college of engineering dean dr m katherine banks she provided insightful and thoughtful leadership when the department needed it and oversaw numerous improvements in the operations of the department he said she was also always focused on the student experience and how the department could better serve the students given she is an environmental engineer dr autenrieth was instrumental in the development of that program within civil engineering and was focused on the student experience he said i and my fellow chairs felt that it was appropriate to establish an endowed scholarship to support that program at texas a&m similarly mccracken allen graduated from texas a&m with her bachelors degree in civil engineering in 1982 texas a&m gave me more than a great education it gave me the aggie network more specifically the aggie engineer network which connected me to my first job she said i have been fortunate to work for and with some outstanding former students as autenrieth transitions out of the department head role this year all of the advisory chairs who served during her tenure wanted to honor her for her service dr autenrieth helped grow and improve the zachry department of civil engineering during her tenure as department chair mccracken allen said she has always been a strong advocate for students and this is a way to thank her for her leadership contreras who was also captain of squadron 7 in the corps of cadets during his time at texas a&m also wanted to honor autenrieth with this scholarship serving on the advisory council afforded me the opportunity to work with dr autenrieth over the last five years and witness her dedication and commitment he said we believed an endowed scholarship bearing her name would be a proper way to memorialize the impact she has made at a&m i believe this scholarship will serve as an inspiration to other women and men who aspire to make a difference in the world through our civil engineering profession much like dr autenrieth has doucet graduated in 1982 with a civil engineering degree and soon after started doucet & associates with his wife amy also a texas a&m civil engineering graduate of 1982 in honor of robin autenrieth and her dedication to the education of civil and environmental engineering students doucet & associates is pleased to contribute to the rl autenrieth environmental engineering endowed scholarship doucet said we are confident that the rl autenrieth scholarship will help future engineers find their success accomplish great things and continue the cycle of giving back to their communities these individuals along with many others are the driving force behind the rl autenrieth environmental engineering endowed scholarship and the pursuit to honor her
2022,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
2023,janet and kyle cuellar have established the janet 84 and kyle cuellar 82 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university janet graduated from texas a&m in 1984 with her degree in educational curriculum and instruction she currently works as a teacher in the katy texas area similarly kyle graduated in 1982 with his degree in chemical engineering and serves as the senior consulting engineer for ortloff engineers ltd
2024,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact haley jennings director of development
2025,ashley and j scot vann have established the ashley and j scot vann '93 environmental engineering endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in environmental engineering in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university j scot and his family moved from denver colorado to katy texas as he was finishing sixth grade and although he didn't know much about texas a&m he started watching the annual texas a&m versus the university of texas football game and became an aggie fan i ended up applying to both a&m and ut but chose a&m because it felt like a better fit he said that was the best decision i could have made anyone who has graduated from texas a&m has probably experienced the power of the aggie network j scot said the biggest impact of attending texas a&m was being able to go most places and run into an aggie that certainly helped early in my career and has continued to help as i have advanced in my career he said i founded my company with a fellow aggie and have plenty of aggie team members there is no shortage of comradery and telling stories of our time in aggieland within the office after graduation from texas a&m j scot earned his masters degree in environmental engineering i have been working in the environmental field since graduating with my masters and believe it is a very challenging and rewarding career path he said j scot hopes that this scholarship will help attract bright well-rounded students to pursue a degree in environmental engineering at texas a&m i was excited to learn that texas a&m had established an environmental engineering degree plan and thought it would be a great opportunity to make an impact on the new program at this early stage he said i appreciated my experience at texas a&m and was grateful that i had the opportunity to get my degree from such a great university i would love for this scholarship to enhance the experience of future aggies and help give them the same opportunity ashley and j scot met while he was an undergraduate at texas a&m and have been married 27 years during their marriage it has been important to each of them to give back to their community as volunteers and leaders consequently ashley and j scot have additional preferences that the recipient must have demonstrated leadership skills and community involvement through their consistent participation in nonacademic extracurricular activities volunteer projects and/or organizations and is preferably a texas resident j scot graduated from texas a&m in 1993 with his bachelor's degree in civil engineering and received his masters degree in environmental engineering from the university of texas at austin in 1996 he and his wife ashley have three children together their oldest son graduated from the university of oklahoma their second son is currently attending the university of oklahoma and their daughter is going to be a senior in high school next year j scot said she likes texas a&m and will be applying in the fall
2026,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson assistant director of development
2027,by analyzing peoples visitation patterns to essential establishments like pharmacies religious centers and grocery stores during hurricane harvey researchers at texas a&m university have developed a framework to assess the recovery of communities after natural disasters in near real time they said the information gleaned from their analysis would help federal agencies allocate resources equitably among communities ailing from a disaster neighboring communities can be impacted very differently after a natural catastrophic event said dr ali mostafavi associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and director of the urban resilienceai lab and so we need to identify which areas can recover faster than others and which areas are impacted more than others so that we can allocate more resources to areas that need them more the researchers have reported their findings in interface a publication of the royal society the metric that is conventionally used to quantify how communities bounce back from nature-caused setbacks is called resilience and is defined as the ability of a community to return to its pre-disaster state and so to measure resilience factors like the accessibility and distribution of resources connection between residents within a community and the level of community preparedness for an unforeseen disaster are critical the standard way of obtaining data needed to estimate resilience is through surveys the questions considered among many others are how and to what extent businesses or households were affected by the natural disaster and the stage of recovery however mostafavi said these survey-based methods although extremely useful take a long time to conduct with the results of the survey becoming available many months after the disaster for federal agencies allocating funds recovery information is actually needed in a faster and more near real-time fashion for communities that are trailing in the recovery process said mostafavi the solution we thought was to look for emerging sources of data other than surveys that could provide more granular insights into community recovery at a scale not previously investigated mostafavi and his collaborators turned to community-level big data particularly the information collected by companies that keep track of visits to locations within a perimeter from anonymized cell phone data in particular the researchers partnered with a company called safegraph to obtain location data for the people in harris county texas around the time of hurricane harvey as a first step they determined points of interest corresponding to the locations of establishments like hospitals gas stations and stores that might experience a change in visitor traffic due to the hurricane next the researchers mined the big data and obtained the number of visits to each point of interest before and during the hurricane for different communities in harris county they calculated the time taken for the visits to return to the pre-disaster level and the general resilience that is the combined resilience of each point of interest based on the percent change in the number of visits due to the hurricane their analysis revealed that communities that had low resilience also experienced more flooding however their results also showed that the level of impact did not necessarily correlate with recovery its intuitive to assume for example that businesses impacted more will have slower recovery which actually wasn't the case said mostafavi there were places where visits dropped significantly but they recovered fast but then others that were impacted less but took longer to recover which indicated the importance of both time and general resilience in evaluating a communitys recovery the researchers also noted that another important finding was that the areas that are in close proximity to those that had flooding are also impacted suggesting that the spatial reach of flooding goes beyond flooded areas although we focused on hurricane harvey for this study our framework is applicable for any other natural disaster as well said mostafavi but as a next step wed like to create an intelligent dashboard that would display the rate of recovery and impacts in different areas in near real time and also predict the likelihood of future access disruption and recovery patterns after a heavy downpour other contributors to the research include cristian podesta natalie coleman amir esmalian and dr faxi yuan from the civil and environmental engineering department podesta an undergraduate student is the lead author in this study coleman is a national science foundation graduate fellow this research is funded by a national science foundations faculty early career development award
2028,"dr theodora chaspari assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is working to leverage speech-based technologies and make them more reliable trustworthy and accountable chaspari recently received the national science foundation's (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award for her research project titled ""enabling trustworthy speech technologies for mental health care: from speech anonymization to fair human-centered machine intelligence"" the nsf career award is the most prestigious recognition given by the nsf to support early-career faculty she will use the award to design reliable artificial intelligence (ai) algorithms for the speech-based diagnosis and monitoring of mental health conditions to address the three pillars of trust: explainability privacy and fair decision-making when combined with ai human speech can serve as a valuable biomarker a measurable indicator of some biological state or condition biomarkers can be used to both diagnose and track the outcomes of mental health conditions such as depression anxiety disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder by monitoring a person's speech doctors and researchers will understand their mental health better and precisely predict degradations in the tone of their voice for example for people that have been diagnosed with depression their speech is characterized as flat and monotone however the continuous tracking of a person's speech in real time comes with several societal and ethical challenges ""if we can specifically predict the degradations in their tone then we should be able to intervene and prevent a relapse of the symptoms from occurring "" said chaspari ""we are developing ai that is not only reliable in terms of precise monitoring but also more human-centered and friendly"" the project contains three objectives and the first challenge the team is addressing is privacy to ensure that someone's speech data doesn't end up in the wrong hands chaspari and her team propose new algorithms to de-identify and transform speech signals hence there is no information about a person's identity within the data another big part of the project aims to understand how clinicians understand and interact with the algorithms as part of their decision-making process when diagnosing or treating a patient chaspari is also interested in how much the clinician trusts or mistrusts the ai how this evolves and how their interest in it potentially depends on personality characteristics ""if you're more open to new experiences then you might show more of an interest in the ai and you would like to try it but this might not be the case for people who have a less open personality "" she said funds for this research program will go toward training underserved high school and college students and provide knowledge about ethically applying computing research in sensitive populations the applications developed due to this research will also serve as a vehicle to encourage students to pursue careers in the stem field"
2029,according to the united nations telecommunications agency 93% of the global population has access to a mobile-broadband network of some kind with data becoming more readily available to consumers there is also an appetite for more of it and at faster speeds ramy rady doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is working with dr kamran entesari his faculty advisor and professor and dr christi madsen professor to design a chip that can revolutionize the current data rate for processors and technologies such as smartphones laptops etc dr sam palermo professor is also involved with the project photons are very fast – moving at the speed of light by contrast electrons move much slower at about 2 200 kilometers per second which is less than 1% of the speed of light by integrating photonic structures onto a silicon substrate by way of optics rady is taking advantage of the speed that photons provide while utilizing the features of existing electronic cmos (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) technology to make silicon photonic integrated circuits silicon photonic integrated circuits consume less power and generate less heat than conventional electronic circuits which allows for an increase in data transmission previous work in this area was only conducted using optical processing rady and his team are moving toward the use of microwave photonics which is a branch of optics that focuses on improving the quality of microwave signals using photonic structures the advantage to radys project over all previous solutions is its small size and high-speed operation ie frequency and data rates my prototype chip operates from 25 to 40 gigahertz creating four channels each of a 5 gigahertz bandwidth rady said this chip operates at a higher speed with a higher data rate than the previous generation of chips which relied on optical processing the new chip is capable of reaching nearly five times the bandwidth compared to a contemporary cell phone
2030,rady explained that the motion of electrons is limited and subsequently the quality of energy that is sent and stored to your phone for example is also limited this is where the integration of photons comes into play this project which received funding from the national science foundation has been featured in two papers published by rady
2031,in the evolving field of cancer biology and treatment innovations in organ-on-a-chip microdevices allow researchers to discover more about the disease outside the human body these organs-on-chips serve as a model of the state an actual cancer patient is in thus allowing an opportunity to finding the correct treatment before administering it to the patient at texas a&m university researchers are pushing these devices to new levels that could change the way clinicians approach cancer treatment particularly ovarian cancer the team has recently submitted a patent disclosure with the texas a&m engineering experiment station we claim several novelties in technological design as well as biological capabilities that didnt exist in prior organs-on-chips said dr abhishek jain lead researcher and assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering jain also has a joint appointment in the college of medicine at texas a&m
2032,jains device the ovarian tumor microenvironment-chip (otme-chip) focuses on platelets tiny blood cells that help the body form clots to stop bleeding the microdevice about the size of a usb models the properties of a tumor in the lab researchers then can recreate events within platelets circulating in the blood as they approach the tumor and make it more potent and metastatic we are creating a platform technology using the organ-on-a-chip approach where tumor biology can be advanced and new drugs can be identified by recreating the platelet-tumor and platelet-tumor-drug interactions under the influence of flow supporting blood vessels and the extracellular matrix jain said ovarian cancer is a particularly challenging one to monitor tumors generally form deep inside a patients tissue and it can be difficult to obtain real-time information of the tumors properties and how it is interacting with blood cells also ovarian tumors can quickly spread inside the body making time another vital factor in mapping the diseases progression the otme-chip builds on the current clinically observed understanding of how blood platelets move inside tumor tissue and what triggers them to spread outside the tumor however the actual mechanism behind this process remains mostly unknown until now for the first time we identified a crucial interaction between platelets and the tumor via their surface proteins jain said by applying high-resolution imaging advanced cell and molecular readouts and rna sequencing methods leveraging the otme-chip we discovered the actual genetic signaling pathways behind the blood cell triggered metastasis of ovarian cancer and a new drug strategy to stop this process jains team in college station for this research includes postdoctoral researcher dr biswajit saha and doctoral students jim tronolone and tanmay mathur their research involving the otme-chip was recently published in the journal science advances jain said the otme-chip has several applications both in observing how cancer cells interact differently with vascular and blood cells and testing novel ways to treat the disease that may complement chemotherapy and radiotherapy of tumors this multimodal otme-chip is going to provide an ideal platform to the health care researchers to evaluate their anti-cancer vascular and hematological drugs individually or in combination in an artificially created human-level tumor microenvironment jain said jain collaborates with dr anil sood professor and vice chair for translational research in the departments of gynecologic oncology and cancer biology at md anderson cancer center the team also works with dr gang bao a gene editing expert from rice university sood is a leader in the ovarian cancer field jain said he has been a fantastic collaborator and has provided us access to patient tissue and blood samples needed to validate the findings from our chip which brings us very close to initiating new clinical trials this research is funded through grants from the national institutes of health the national science foundation and the texas a&m presidents excellence fund
2033,dara 75 and carlos coddy pena 74 have established the daniel pena 45 civil engineering endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university this endowment is named for coddys father daniel pena '45 who taught him about texas a&m and its values we grew up listening to aggie football games together on the radio and later television though there were many lean years my father never lost that fightin texas aggie spirit coddy said attending texas a&m was an honor and a privilege and i am proud that i could carry on that tradition by naming the scholarship after coddys father the penas are able to first and foremost honor him and it allows their family to give back to the university that has given them so much we also know that this is a gift that will continue to give by helping future generations of aggies coddy said coddy noted the class of 1945 was considered one of the greatest classes because of world war ii which took place during their college years our father was in the 1254th engineer combat battalion until 1946 and then returned to texas a&m to complete his civil engineering degree coddy said we lost our father in november of 2020 and after going through his files it was apparent that texas a&m was near and dear to his heart and thanks to the texas a&m foundation we found a way to honor him with an endowed scholarship in his name through this endowment the penas hope to show appreciation and confidence in what texas a&m is doing to support its core values programs students and civil engineering department while also inspiring others to give back coddy graduated from texas a&m with his degree in finance in 1974 dara graduated from texas a&m with her degree in sociology in 1975 she and coddy have two children together wes and andrea
2034,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson assistant director of development
2035,diana and mark dunn have established the diana ramirez dunn '82 and mark a dunn '82 excellence endowment distributions from this endowment will be used at the discretion of the department head to support the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university diana (diane) and mark are both first-generation aggies and were drawn to texas a&m by the campus atmosphere core values reputation and in-state convenience when we reflect on how we became the people we are today we both realize that a&m and the civil engineering department were a perfect match for us and formed an integral part of who we are as individuals as a couple and as professionals mark said both diana and mark are class of 1982 graduates of the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering they met in class during the fall semester of 1979 and married in 1984 as we moved around the country and world we were always proud to claim the aggie title diana said it means something and people know it we have remained close friends with several other civil engineering classmates from that time period and still get together regularly with them the dunns aim in establishing this endowment is to show appreciation and confidence in what texas a&m is doing and to support the universitys core values programs students the civil engineering department and to inspire others to give thus far in their giving history the dunns have established an endowed century club fund endowed undergraduate scholarship in civil engineering and an endowed civil engineering excellence fund we recognize how texas a&m has helped shape our lives in a positive way and believe what happens at a&m is good for texas the usa and the world they said supporting a&m is a way we can leverage our position to benefit the greater good the dunns said the civil engineering department is particularly special to them and they enjoy supporting its climb to the top of the rankings our gifting provides a purposeful and rewarding mechanism to stay connected and involved at a&m which is something we cherish they said after mark graduated from texas a&m he went on to earn his masters degree from the university of texas at austin before embarking on a 34-year career with chevron diana worked 7 years in environmental engineering before retiring to raise a family diana and mark have two children jeff texas a&m class of 2013 and michelle who graduated from the university of texas at austin in 2017
2036,contributions to excellence funds allow our department to have a direct and immediate impact on the program and student experience excellence fund earnings are directed at the discretion of the department head to projects such as equipment acquisition facility improvements awards for teaching and research student-driven professional development activities and more if you are interested in supporting the departments goal or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
2037,"a group of students in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was tasked with creating an application for siemens energy capable of helping customers select appropriate machinery a senior capstone design project that seemed unusual for mechanical engineering students turned into an opportunity to broaden their skill sets and create connections ""most projects that we receive in the mechanical engineering department require physically building something "" said andy alcantar team member and mechanical engineering student ""it was a memorable experience and the project felt meaningful because we were able to develop an app that people are using right now"" the company offers a multitude of products but customers were unable to see the inventory listed in one place and could not differentiate between similar items this problem led to the idea of digitizing their catalog into an app that provided an interactive experience for the customers the app's purpose is to determine what kind of motor or turbine is required based on the information input by the customer whether this is a gas turbine or a centrifugal compressor the app can decipher the exact product that meets the user's specific needs ""the objective for our team was creating the framework that will support the app "" said emmanuel valencia team member and a mechanical engineering student ""throughout the project we were using what we learned in our coursework by applying our knowledge of thermodynamics and heat transfer"" alcantar and valencia and two other mechanical engineering students travis mcquinn and zach sheard were responsible for developing the rotating equipment selector app they created the framework and algorithm and a team of four electrical engineering students from texas a&m integrated their work into the completed product the students were exposed to industry and business first-hand requiring them to communicate effectively with people who possess varying skills and expertise to make connections outside the classroom ""i had to learn how to collaborate with engineers from different disciplines and determine how my lingo and skills differentiated from theirs and vice versa "" said valencia ""we were able to maintain a close relationship with siemens energy and they did a great job of giving us industry insights"" valencia and alcantar are now both pursuing master's degrees in mechanical engineering their capstone project showcased the essential skills required to be successful in their education and the business sector ""we saw how important the app was to siemens energy and we wanted to provide something useful for them "" said alcantar ""we put in a lot of effort and work to achieve the goals they set for us we gained a deeper understanding of the business aspect of managing your time and presenting a product"" dr joanna tsenn assistant professor of instruction in the mechanical engineering department and the senior capstone design projects coordinator discussed the students experience and the opportunities available for students through the program this project was impactful because it allowed the student team to utilize what they learned in their previous classes while pushing them to learn additional skills that can benefit them in the future said tsenn the siemens energy project is another great example of how our mechanical engineering senior design students can collaborate with their sponsors to deliver real-world useful solutions"
2038,"dr yao li a postdoctoral researcher in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the association of former students' 2021 distinguished graduate student award for excellence for researchli's research focuses on using remote sensing technology to solve pressing water-related issues from local to global scales he uses satellite data to generate 3d maps to measure the depth of global water reservoirs and then monitors their storage variations from the 1980s to current time""when i was an undergraduate student i developed a passion for satellite remote sensing and learned a great deal about the theories and principles "" he said ""i became even more motivated about using remote sensing technology to solve pressing water-related issues""li received his doctoral degree from the department in august 2020 and has continued as a postdoctoral researcher under advisor dr huilin gao associate professor in the departmentimpressed by li's academic and research background gao recruited him into the graduate water resources engineering program""yao is an active learner and a devoted researcher with a high level of initiative "" she said ""he is among the very few people i have met who seize upon every opportunity to conduct impactful research""during his time at texas a&m li has authored or co-authored 16 peer-reviewed journal papers given 18 national and international presentations written a book chapter and created an algorithm report for nasa during the summer of 2019 li applied for nasa's ocean optics program and was selected as one of 29 trainees worldwide from 16 countries li is now involved in an x-grant project to develop a small satellite mission to track the global movement of water carbon and sediment across landscapes""yao developed a global reservoir 3d bathymetry database which serves as one of the most important parameter inputs for nasa's global water reservoir product "" gao said ""this database can also be used to parameterize various global hydrological models whose water management simulations have traditionally been hampered by the limited availability of reservoir information""li credits gao with giving him guidance and encouragement through his doctoral program and beyond""i wholeheartedly appreciate the freedom she gave me to do the research i am interested in "" he said ""i couldn't have achieved this without her""li also thanked his wife and parents for their support and love and said the award was a gift to his newborn daughter grace lifollowing his postdoc work at texas a&m li plans to find a faculty position and continue his research in water resources-related studies"
2039,dr stratos pistikopoulos director of the texas a&m energy institute and holder of the dow chemical chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2021 american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) sustainable engineering forum research award an annual award presented for basic or applied research results relative to the sustainability of products processes or the environment this award recognizes significant technical contributions to research and development activities engineers like stratos pistikopoulos are in the forefront of advancing and implementing a wide variety of clean renewable energy systems that will serve not only the present generation but generations of the future said texas a&m interim vice president for research jack baldauf we are fortunate to have a researcher with his experience expertise and accomplishments leading our energy institute at texas a&m pistikopoulos is also course director of the master of science in energy program director of the data sciences core of the texas a&m superfund research center and a principal investigator at the rapid institute on intensified process fundamentals co-leading the modeling and simulation focus area before joining texas a&m he was a professor of chemical engineering at imperial college in london and director of its centre for process systems engineering he earned his doctoral degree from carnegie mellon university in pittsburgh pistikopoulos has authored or co-authored over 550 major research publications in the areas of modeling control and optimization of process energy and systems engineering applications 16 books 33 book chapters and four patents he is a co-recipient of the prestigious macrobert award from the royal academy of engineering received the sargent medal from the institution of chemical engineers (icheme) united kingdom (uk) and a recipient of the computing in chemical engineering award of computing & systems technology division (cast)/aiche pistikopoulos is an elected fellow of the royal academy of engineering in the uk a fellow of aiche and icheme and a member of the academy of medicine engineering and science of texas he also holds the title of doctor honoris causa from the university politehnica of bucharest romania and the university of pannonia hungary founded in 1908 the aiche is a nonprofit organization providing leadership to the chemical engineering profession it is the worlds leading organization for chemical engineering professionals with more than 60 000 members in industry academia and government from more than 110 countries the sustainable engineering forum seeks collaborative work in programming and education objectives with other professional societies both domestic and international specific focus areas of the forum include: using appropriate metrics for sustainability; developing approaches for designing products and processes that can be optimized to desired metrics criteria and that incorporate environmental and societal benefit factors and assessing impacts of resource use (energy material and cost) on environmental and societal benefits of products processes and services
2040,dr prasad enjeti ti professor iii in analog engineering in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university received the 2021 institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) industry applications society (ias) outstanding achievement award enjeti is a renowned scholar and researcher in the field of power electronics along with his students he has made significant contributions to the advancement of grid-connected power electronic converters and their industrial applications his contributions have led to several patents with licensing arrangements and he has published over 250 papers in ieee journals and conferences his recent work to detect cyber intrusions of grid connected inverters with digital watermarking is innovative and his team is currently extending this work for renewable rich microgrids being selected to receive the 2021 ieee industry applications society outstanding achievement award is an incredible honor enjeti said this nomination has been a gratifying recognition of the work done by many able and highly talented graduate students with whom i had the privilege to work with im grateful for being seen and recognized the purpose of the ias outstanding achievement award is to honor an individual who has made an outstanding contribution in the application of electricity to industry in accordance to the scope of the ieee ias which includes the development and application of electrical systems apparatus devices and controls to the processes and equipment of industry and commerce; the promotion of safe reliable and economic installations; the encouragement of energy conservation; and the creation of voluntary standards and recommended practices
2041,"dr mengying liu 21 former graduate student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has started a tenure-track faculty position at washington and lee university in lexington virginia she is an assistant professor of engineering in the physics and engineering department liu grew up in baoji china where she was encouraged from an early age by her grade school teachers and family to pursue science her interest led her to study materials science and engineering at tianjin university in tianjin china where she received a bachelors degree moving across the world and away from her family liu joined texas a&m to begin her doctoral studies under the guidance of dr michael demkowicz associate professor and director of graduate programs in the department studying in a foreign country is hard but gladly i had my aggie family and a very supportive phd advisor said liu her research focuses on the environmental degradation of metals specifically hydrogen embrittlement in nickel alloys mengying's technical acumen zeal for teaching and outreach and cross-cultural experience will enrich her academic community and advance her home institution "" said demkowicz liu will be teaching a course on solid mechanics with a lab component i want to be a professor because i want to help more students find their potential and be confident in themselves said liu i think this is something truly meaningful"
2042,paula fitzpatrick 98 a former student of the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston is now vice president of growth and development for conventional energy americas at wood a global leader in consulting and engineering across energy and the built environment fitzpatrick originally planned to study business administration however her aptitude and interest for mathematics piqued the dean of engineerings interest and he persuaded her to join the close-knit community of aspiring ocean engineers by the sea there were many times i went to the beach with my textbooks to study she said during the summers i was able to work with some of my professors on beach erosion studies and really connect with my friends in the marine biology program and talk about how engineering and marine biology are complementary in a lot of ways i felt like it brought a lot of added value to be on the ocean while studying ocean engineering fitzpatrick enjoyed the intimate size of the program which allowed her to work closely with professors and dig into the material details while working through complex problems in addition industry experts presented to classes and consulted the students on their senior capstone projects providing students with real-world insight and helping establish professional contacts prior to graduation from studying at the waters edge to making waves fitzpatrick now helps wood clients run the full lifecycle of a project – from consultation to execution this includes asset optimization and vibration and noise studies wood also works with clients on hydrogen and carbon capture projects and operates assets like offshore platforms we work with many of the major oil and gas businesses that you're familiar with she said we do a lot of subsea work globally but especially in the gulf of mexico where my remit is she started for the company as a pipeline engineer then moved to work in capital offshore projects (offshore platforms floating systems etc) before transitioning to business development about 18 months ago what excites me most about my position is working with our clients especially in the market we are in now fitzpatrick said it's not just that conventional energy space many of our clients are adapting to this new green energy world and understanding where they fit and how they can fit we as contractors can come in and help them assess their portfolio and how they conduct business and make suggestions on energy transition opportunities that may work for them it ranges from reducing their carbon footprint all the way to investing in new greenfield hydrogen projects or even wind or solar energy with exciting changes on the horizon for her clients fitzpatrick took a moment to reflect on her time at texas a&ms galveston campus and offer advice to current ocean engineering students when you're working through your classwork it's just not a tick in the box she said it really is building a foundation for the skills you'll need when you enter the workforce ask your professors to bring in a real-world situation and how it can be applied to what youre learning because when you're entering the workforce they're looking for you to solve problems and bring your unique fresh perspective to an established industry
2043,"occurring faster than the speed of sound the mystery behind the breakdown of plasma discharges in water is one step closer to being understood as researchers pursue applying new diagnostic processes using state-of-the-art x-ray imaging to the challenging subject these diagnostic processes open the door to a better understanding of plasma physics which could lead to advances in green energy production through methods including fusion hydrocarbon reforming and hydrogen generation dr david staack and christopher campbell in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university are part of the team pioneering this approach to assessing plasma processes partners on the project include diagnostics experts from los alamos national laboratories and using the facilities at the argonne national laboratory advanced photon source (aps) the team is working with lteoil on patented research into the use of multiphase plasma in carbon-free fuel reforming the research is supported by the dynamic materials properties campaign (c2) and the advanced diagnostics campaign (c3) at los alamos national laboratories through the thermonuclear plasma physics group (p4) principal investigator zhehui (jeph) wang the research which was recently published in physical review research is producing the first-known ultrafast x-ray images of pulsed plasma initiation processes in water staack associate professor and sallie and don davis '61 career development professor said these new images provide valuable insight into how plasma behaves in liquid ""our lab is working with industry sponsors on patented research into the use of multiphase plasma in carbon-free fuel reforming "" staack said ""by understanding this plasma physics we are able to efficiently convert tar and recycled plastics into hydrogen and fuels for automobiles without any greenhouse gas emissions in the future these investigations may lead to improvements in inertial confinement fusion energy sources"" inertial confinement fusion in which high temperature high energy density plasmas are generated is a specific focus of the project to better understand the plasma physics involved in this type of fusion staack said the team is developing short timescale high-speed imaging and diagnostic techniques utilizing a simple low-cost plasma discharge system additionally they are seeking to better understand the phenomena that occur when plasma is discharged in liquid causing a rapid release of energy resulting in low-density microfractures in the water that move at over 20 times the speed of sound"
2044,"campbell a graduate research assistant and phd candidate said the team hopes their discoveries can prove to be a valuable contribution to the collective knowledge of their field as researchers seek to develop robust predictive models for how plasma will react in liquid ""our goal is to experimentally probe the regions and timescales of interest surrounding this plasma using ultrafast x-ray and visible imaging techniques thereby contributing new data to the ongoing literature discussion in this area "" said campbell ""with a complete conceptual model we could more efficiently learn how to apply these plasmas in new ways and also improve existing applications"" although they have made progress campbell said current methods are not yet sophisticated enough to collect multiple images of a single plasma event in such a short amount of time less than 100 nanoseconds ""even with the state-of-the-art techniques and fast framerates available at the advanced photon source we have only been able to image a single frame during the entire event of interest by the next video frame most of the fastest plasma processes have concluded "" campbell said ""this work highlights several resourceful techniques we have developed to make the most of what few images we are able to take of these fastest processes"" the team is currently working to measure the pressures induced by the rapid phenomena and preparing for a second round of measurements at aps to investigate interacting discharges discharges in different fluids and processes that may limit confinement of higher energy discharges they look forward to the opportunity of using even higher-framerate x-ray imaging methods ranging up to 67 million frames per second compared to 271 thousand frames per second in this study"
2045,"juan salazar is participating in the student-designed program of study offered by the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university in this individualized approach to education students can take courses across different departments in the college of engineering as well as other colleges at texas a&m salazars journey began when he realized that his interests spanned many different areas after coming to the conclusion that his goals could not be achieved through a traditional route salazar took the leap and customized his degree program ""my interests lie in both engineering and psychology combined in the field known as human factors engineering "" said salazar ""this field was not offered as a degree path but the ability to create it was so i did"" human factors engineering focuses on developing tools and machinery designed for optimal user experience by considering the capabilities and restrictions of humans ""my degree would deal with the development of more efficient systems by accounting for human constraints "" said salazar ""my long-term career goals are focused on safety prevention i would like to develop protocols and prevention methods that take into account human behavior tendencies to maximize safety and efficiency and minimize injuries in the workplace"" salazar is currently taking classes in industrial engineering through the college of engineering and psychology classes through the college of liberal arts upon graduation he will receive a bachelor of science in interdisciplinary engineering with specializations in his respective fields ""the program taught me how to take control of my education and showed me up front exactly what my degree entails "" said salazar i was able to choose which classes piqued my interests and figure out which ones worked toward what i was truly passionate about"""
2046,donna and steven leist have established the donna '92 and steven leist '93 first-generation college student scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university stevens uncle was class of 1977 so he was always partial to texas a&m coming out of high school a&m just seemed like the best fit for me from both a values and quality of education perspective he said my years at a&m were some of the best years of my life steven felt like the computer engineering coursework set him up for success in his career but more than just the coursework he said his entire experience at texas a&m was hugely impactful i met my wife donna at the baptist student union he said the bsu also provided a place where i was able to deepen my faith and i made lifelong friendships additionally the experiences working in the msc student programs helped me gain leadership skills i still use to this day as for donna she grew up in college station and was immersed in the aggie spirit from a young age so she knew she wanted to attend texas a&m steven serves on the advisory council for the department of computer science and engineering where he gets to work alongside the departmental leaders to help make texas a&m's computer science department one of the premier programs in the country through that engagement i learned just how far the computer science department lags behind other departments in scholarships for students he said so several years back my wife and i created our first endowed scholarship for computer science students steven noted how this last year had been trying on many fronts including the pandemic and the social justice issues as we began educating ourselves on the issues and discrimination faced by many different groups in america over the course of our history we talked about wanting to create another scholarship to help these students he said the leists decided to focus on first-generation college students as steven noticed that statistics show that these students end up leaving college with much more college debt than students who come from families where the parents are college educated this higher debt just creates more hurdles for these first-generation students as they try to build wealth and provide for their families steven said we hope that our scholarship can help lessen the financial burden for first-generation students and allow them to begin building generational wealth
2047,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
2048,having a home near a busy airport certainly has its perks it is close to many establishments and alleviates the problem of wading through endless traffic to catch flights but it does come at a cost tolerating the jarring sounds of commercial airplanes during landing and takeoff researchers at texas a&m university have conducted a computational study that validates using a shape-memory alloy to reduce the unpleasant plane noise produced during landing they noted that these materials could be inserted as passive seamless fillers within airplane wings that automatically deploy themselves into the perfect position during descent when landing aircraft engines are throttled way back and so they are very quiet any other source of noise like that from the wings becomes quite noticeable to the people on the ground said dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering we want to create structures that will not change anything about the flight characteristics of the plane and yet dramatically reduce the noise problem the researchers have described their findings in the journal of aircraft aircraft noise has been an ongoing public health issue airplanes can generate up to 75-80 decibels during landing which can be damaging to hearing over the long term for example studies have shown that people exposed to sustained aircraft noise can experience disturbed sleep and an increased risk of stroke and heart disease compared to those who do not live near airports the source of aircraft noise is different during ascent and descent during takeoff the engines are the primary source of noise on the other hand when airplanes slow down to land the engines do not need to generate power and are mostly idling at this time the wings begin to reconfigure themselves to slow down the airplane and prepare for touchdown similar to the opening of venetian blinds the front edge of the wing separates from the main body this change causes air to rush into the space created circle around quite violently and produce noise the idea is similar to how a sound is generated in a flute said hartl when a flute is played air blown over a hole begins to swirl around the hole and the size the length and how i cover the holes produces a resonant sound of a certain frequency similarly the circulating air in the cove created between the front edge of the wing and the main wing resonates and creates a sharp unpleasant noise earlier work from hartls collaborators at nasa showed that fillers used as a membrane in the shape of an elongated s within this cove could circumvent the noise-causing air circulation and thereby lessen the jarring sound however a systematic analysis of candidate materials that can assume the desired s-shaped geometry during descent and then recess back into the front edge of the wing after landing was lacking to address this gap the researchers performed comprehensive simulations to investigate if a membrane made of a shape-memory alloy could go back and forth changing shape for every landing their analysis considered the geometry the elastic properties of the shape-memory alloy and the aerodynamic flow of air around the material during descent as a comparison the researchers also modeled the motion of a membrane made of a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer composite under the same airflow conditions hartl said these types of simulations are computationally expensive since the flow of air around the conformal material has to be modeled while analyzing the air-induced motion of the material every time the air applies some pressure to the material the material moves and every time the material moves the air moves differently around it he said so the behavior of the airflow changes the structure and the motion of the structural changes the airflow consequently the team had to perform calculations hundreds to thousands of times before the motion of the materials was correctly simulated when they analyzed the outcomes of their simulations they found that both the shape-memory alloy and the composite could change their shape to reduce air circulation and thereby reduce noise however the researchers also found that the composite had a very narrow window of designs that would enable noise canceling as a next step hartl and his team plan to validate the results of their simulations with experiments in these tests the researchers will place scaled-down models of aircraft wings with the shape-memory alloy fillers into wind tunnels the goal is to check if the fillers can deploy into the correct shape and reduce noise in near real-world situations we would also like to do better said hartl we might be able to create smaller structures that can reduce noise and do not require the s-shape which are actually quite large and potentially heavy other contributors to this research include dr gaetano arena dr rainer groh and dr alberto pirrer from the university of bristol england; dr travis turner from the nasa langley research center virginia; and william scholten now at ata engineering inc this research is funded by the engineering and physical sciences research council the royal academy of engineering and the nasa langley research center
2049,changing climate patterns have left millions of people vulnerable to weather extremes as temperature fluctuations become more commonplace around the world conventional power-guzzling cooling and heating systems need a more innovative energy-efficient alternative and in turn lessen the burden on already struggling power grids in a new study researchers at texas a&m university have created novel 3d printable phase-change material (pcm) composites that can regulate ambient temperatures inside buildings using a simpler and cost-effective manufacturing process furthermore these composites can be added to building materials like paint or 3d printed as decorative home accents to seamlessly integrate into different indoor environments the ability to integrate phase-change materials into building materials using a scalable method opens opportunities to produce more passive temperature regulation in both new builds and already existing structures said dr emily pentzer associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering and the department of chemistry this study was published in the june issue of the journal matter heating ventilation and air conditioning (hvac) systems are the most commonly used methods to regulate temperatures in residential and commercial establishments however these systems guzzle a lot of energy furthermore they use greenhouse materials called refrigerants for generating cool dry air these ongoing issues with hvac systems have triggered research into alternative materials and technologies that require less energy to function and can regulate temperature commensurate to hvac systems one of the materials that has gained a lot of interest for temperature regulation is phase-change materials as the name suggests these compounds change their physical state depending on the temperature in the environment so when phase-change materials store heat they convert from solid to liquid upon absorbing heat and vice versa when they release heat thus unlike hvac systems that rely solely on external power to heat and cool these materials are passive components requiring no external electricity to regulate temperature the traditional approach to manufacturing pcm building materials requires forming a separate shell around each pcm particle like a cup to hold water then adding these newly encased pcms to building materials however finding building materials compatible with both the pcm and its shell has been a challenge in addition this conventional method also decreases the number of pcm particles that can be incorporated into building materials imagine filling a pot with eggs and water said ciera cipriani nasa space technology graduate research fellow in the department of materials science and engineering if each egg has to be placed in an individual container to be hard-boiled fewer eggs will fit in the pot by removing the plastic containers the veritable shell in our research more eggs or pcms can occupy a greater volume by packing closer together within the water/resin to overcome these challenges past studies have shown that when using phase-changing paraffin wax mixed with liquid resin the resin acts as both the shell and building material this method locks the pcm particles inside their individual pockets allowing them to safely undergo a phase change and manage thermal energy without leakage similarly pentzer and her team first combined light-sensitive liquid resins with a phase-changing paraffin wax powder to create a new 3d printable ink composite enhancing the production process for building materials containing pcms and eliminating several steps including encapsulation the resin/pcm mixture is soft paste-like and malleable making it ideal for 3d printing but not for building structures hence by using a light-sensitive resin they cured it with an ultraviolet light to solidify the 3d printable paste making it suitable for real-world applications additionally they found that the phase-changing wax embedded within the resin was not affected by the ultraviolet light and made up 70% of the printed structure this is a higher percentage when compared to most currently available materials being used in industry next they tested the thermoregulation of their phase-changing composites by 3d printing a small-scale house-shaped model and measuring the temperature inside the house when it was placed in an oven their analysis showed that the models temperature differed by 40% compared to outside temperatures for both heating and cooling thermal cycles when compared to models made from traditional materials in the future the researchers will experiment with different phase-change materials apart from paraffin wax so that these composites can operate at broader temperature ranges and manage more thermal energy during a given cycle were excited about the potential of our material to keep buildings comfortable while reducing energy consumption said dr peiran wei research scientist in the department of materials science and engineering and the soft matter facility we can combine multiple pcms with different melting temperatures and precisely distribute them into various areas of a single printed object to function throughout all four seasons and across the globe this study was funded by the national science foundations division of materials research career award
2050,it was a weekend filled with the aggie spirit that convinced sarah dearing 08 to come to texas a&m university to study ocean engineering – a final effort by her father to keep her closer to her dallas home and attend a top-tier engineering program though dearing was never a big sports fan she and her father decided to go to a football game together they drove to college station purchased tickets the day of and happened to get first-row seats at the 50-yard line in the former student section and thats when the magic happened just feeling the power of the student side and all the community and the want to fit in; it was just one of those moments dearing said the whole aggie spirit just hits you really hard especially when we're right there in the front i wanted to be part of it this had to be my school and though she originally planned to study civil engineering dearing found her home away from home in the department of ocean engineering ocean engineering is the best-kept secret in the college of engineering she said you get to develop a community of students and professors really quickly and while it sounds like a unique application its actually super broad you can do a lot of different things in industry that arent related to one another dearing continued explaining that she enjoyed the extreme environment of the ocean and the dynamic challenges it posed the broad applications of ocean engineering as well as the variety of industries she could go into with her degree greatly appealed to her looking back she believes it was the challenging curriculum combined with the mentorship she received from her professors that taught her to be more resilient and hardworking this she explained attributed to her career successes dearing is now the vice president of callan marine ltd a galveston-based dredging and marine construction company founded in 2009 providing critical dredging response along the gulf coast and beyond dearing has worked in the dredging industry for 12 years beginning her career as an intern and holding positions such as project engineer engineering manager and estimating manager in her current role she is responsible for callan marines pre-construction division which includes the marketing sales and estimating departments she oversees the coordination and management of several fleet projects and nearly 200 employees i set up the front end of the business and get the operations division ready to go to work dearing said that means instead of a contract my team does the negotiation with the clients we look for work bid work get them set up financially and make sure there is plan so operations can just go and execute the plan dearing says that it is an exciting time for callan marine as they continue to expand the company we have a lot of young people here at callan marine she said so i enjoy leading them building careers establishing what the culture is like in our work environment everything's new and because it's new it's challenging but it's also really fun along those same lines she encourages all students to work hard show up consistently and give one another respect other people have challenges that you may or may not know about or may not agree with but that are challenging for them she said there's no sacrifice in being a team player i've seen people with good character traits get hired or have opportunities or promoted over people just with impressive resumes i also believe its important to find a good mentor in your industry of choice and invest in them as a person nurture that relationship because that mentor is a person and they're investing in you and your time and your career building
2051,the pfizer and moderna covid-19 vaccines have proven to be incredibly effective at fighting the pandemic both of these vaccines are made using messenger rna (mrna) the genetic material that contains instructions for cells to build antigen proteins these mrna vaccines represent a fundamentally different approach to traditional vaccines essentially all vaccines are used to stimulate and train the bodys immune system to recognize and destroy pathogens traditional vaccines contain either killed or weakened forms of a virus or bacterium or proteins associated with the pathogen to provoke an immune response rather than introducing a pathogen or associated protein directly mrna vaccines introduce genetic information that instructs cells to make proteins that are associated with the pathogens triggering an immune system response while mrna vaccines have several major advantages over traditional vaccines – precise immune responses rapid development and production processes inherent safety – there are a few significant drawbacks the most critical of these is the overall thermal instability of rna which begins to break down above freezing temperatures as a result mrna vaccines require stringent cold chain conditions for manufacturing storage and worldwide distribution (-20°c for moderna -80°c for pfizer-biontech vaccines) which has hindered the widespread utilization of them particularly in rural areas and developing countries that lack ultracold freezers and cold-chain assurance to make mrna vaccines much more broadly accessible it is critical to improve mrna vaccine stability while maintaining efficacy and safety a team lead by dr qing sun assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering has been awarded a texas a&m university x-grant to examine and find solutions to the problems presented by mrna vaccines this team is composed of eight faculty members including sun dr arum han dr xiaoning qian and dr yang shen from the college of engineering; dr paul de figueiredo dr julian leibowitz and dr jim song from the texas a&m university school of medicine; and dr xiuren zhang from the texas a&m university college of agriculture and life sciences the overarching goal of the project titled a multidisciplinary platform to develop thermally stable and highly efficient mrna vaccines is to develop an integrated platform that includes high throughput deep learning and novel experimental systems that predict and produce thermally stable mrna vaccines the x-grant team will develop a machine-learning platform that utilizes deep learning to predict the thermal stabilities of various rna from sequence information the team will then develop a dna/rna synthesis platform that supports the prototyping of mrna vaccines and tests the immunogenicity/efficacy of each of the prototype vaccines the research will initially focus on covid-19 but the goal is to make the platform flexible enough to expand into other infectious agents cancers and other significant human diseases x-grants part of the presidents excellence fund at texas a&m university is an interdisciplinary program designed to bring faculty together across disciplines the programs goal is to unlock creative and imaginative ideas that will address important problems in areas that will significantly impact the most important challenges facing global society for round four of the x-grants program there were more than 200 proposals submitted to the program and eight were finally funded
2052,"can we develop models of the cognitive behavior of human-machine collaboration while this might seem like the stuff of science fiction researchers at texas a&m university are currently developing algorithms that interpret situations close to how humans navigate through their daily lives for example say you see something that resembles a rock in the road -- do you keep driving or swerve to avoid it the split-second choice may seem obvious but it is dependent on many factors that can range from whether it is rock or a stray turtle how big the rock is and if there are cars in the lane next to you although human decision-making relies on many variables these decisions are made in a split second among various other possible scenarios ""humans pay attention to context; that's part of our intuition "" said dr mark balas leland jordan professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university ""if you're on a high-speed highway and traffic is bunching ahead of you a machine can slow your car down or speed up but it's not doing anything intelligent however the human operator might make a different decision based on what they can see and their motives"" the researchers said this intuition might resemble how events in the atomic and subatomic realms occur a process mathematically described by quantum mechanics unlike other mathematical abstractions of decision-making that consider past events to decide the probability of a future outcome quantum mechanical probabilities are based on multiple possibilities that are ever-changing and present simultaneously at the moment of action when a decision is made all of these fluctuating probabilities converge to a single value called a quantum collapse this type of math is used to describe the behavior of electrons photons and other subatomic particles the researchers argued that this math can also be applied to human decision-making as well ""at any given moment humans experience many emotions simultaneously "" said dr james hubbard oscar wyatt professor in the department of mechanical engineering ""but if asked what they are feeling right now they will generally state one emotion out of multiple possibilities you could think of it as a quantum collapse into one emotional state based on this rationale the researchers are investigating if they can create an algorithm for semi-autonomous vehicles that would model how well-trained operators would make decisions in conjunction with these vehicles we want to use quantum probability-based algorithms to address bigger issues like the decisions needed when other drivers make unexpected moves said balas in other words wed like our algorithms to mimic what experienced operators would decide to do in these instances and we think that that might be a novel way to approach the future of human collaboration with autonomous vehicles hubbard and balas are the co-investigators on this project they host a weekly quantum cognition research seminar with their team that they refer to as the center for the hopelessly naïve to discuss their ideas on quantifying and understanding the human decision-making process"
2053,the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) recently received a proposed five-year up to $24-million contract from the army research laboratory (arl) to conduct basic research in establishing a collaborative distributed proving ground that will support autonomous vehicle research across various environments and domains at the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) on the texas a&m university system rellis campus the research will be focused on developing virtual proving grounds designed to enable researchers to develop test and demonstrate artificial intelligence (ai) and machine-learning (ml) algorithms for autonomous vehicles visual thermal lidar and radar datasets in relevant and diverse environments will also be collected annotated and curated in both real and virtual environments that can be used to evaluate ai/ml and autonomy algorithms in real and synthetic environments the distributed autonomous robotic experiments and simulations (dares) research project will be conducted in coordination and collaboration with arl researchers at the robotics research collaboration campus (r2c2) in graces quarters at the aberdeen proving ground in maryland the distributed autonomous robotic experiments and simulations cooperative agreement between arl and the texas a&m system will foster the acceleration of fundamental research in autonomy artificial intelligence and machine learning to transform the future of human-agent teaming said arl program manager andrew ladas we are excited to partner with the texas a&m system and utilize their state-of-the-art campus in addition to the labs facilities and assets to take this research to the next level and have them involved in the arl distributed virtual proving ground we look forward to the partnership and enhancing the capabilities of our soldiers in the future operational environment dr srikanth saripalli lead principal investigator for dares at texas a&m said the ability to connect r2c2 with starlab at the rellis campus through the dares program enables us to rapidly test and validate autonomous vehicle capabilities at multiple locations simultaneously which will accelerate the ability to incorporate research results into synthetic environments this will improve the quality of virtual simulations and ultimately increase resilience in autonomous vehicle capabilities saripalli is a professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and his dares research team consists of 20 faculty members from mechanical electrical aerospace and computer science dr james hubbard jr oscar s wyatt jr 45 chair i professor and founder of the starlab in the mechanical engineering department provided the vision for the dares project dares will enable the establishment of a virtual proving ground on the rellis campus and is bolstered by a world-class team of experienced researchers this is indeed an exciting and unique opportunity for texas a&m to deliver a high-value asset to the army and its stakeholders said hubbard hubbard was a fellow of the hagler institute for advanced study at texas a&m and was brought to the university in 2018 through the governors university research initiative and the texas a&m university system chancellors research initiative the combination of the governors university research initiative alongside the chancellors research initiative serves as tremendous tools that place the texas a&m university system at a distinct advantage in identifying recruiting selecting and hiring the best of the best faculty and researchers to solve critical problems for our state and nation said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp were honored to have guri/cri faculty members like dr hubbard on our team to help solve military modernization challenges research in the later years of this proposal will occur on the innovation proving ground (ipg) at the bcdc the ipg will provide full instrumentation and 5g capabilities along with the personnel and systems that will prove crucial in capturing and providing necessary data to support the dares project this is a clear case where the combined vision of our faculty the aggie values of service to our nation and the facilities and expertise provided by the bcdc and the state of texas combined to produce this valuable research partnership with the army research lab said ross t guieb bcdc director we appreciate the opportunity to continue serving our current and future soldiers he said as the texas a&m system is becoming nationally recognized in leading academia-military modernization efforts us senator john cornyn (r-tx) said our countrys military readiness depends on innovation and the army research lab is on the front line of that fight this partnership with the texas a&m system will ensure we have the best and the brightest working to address rapidly evolving threats and maintain our strategic advantage around the world
2054,family and friends have established the dr thomas l frey jr 85 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m universityfrey started his college career in electrical engineering at another university but left after his sophomore year to pursue music after deciding that making it in the music industry was not in the cards for him he applied to texas a&m as a transfer student initially he was denied admission based on his gpa however he was offered an opportunity to meet with the admission board and was conditionally accepted in 1983 making the most of this opportunity frey worked hard and graduated in 1985 he always believed that texas a&m taking a chance on him changed his life and he is proud of his aggie legacy
2055,if you asked kenneth cooper the most impactful part of his educational experience at texas a&m university the answer is simple: research a recent graduate of the department of nuclear engineering and a former member of the corps of cadets in company g-1 he is a national science foundation (nsf) graduate research fellowship recipient this honor is awarded to students striving to obtain research-based graduate degrees the five-year fellowship consists of three years of financial support including an annual stipend and a cost of education allowance the research topic i will be pursuing is ‘tuning nanopores on graphene for quantum tunneling assisted isotope gas separation which is the research proposal i submitted for my nsf fellowship application said cooper i will begin a phd in nuclear engineering with a nuclear materials specialization with dr lin shao as my research advisor in the fall shao is a professor in the nuclear engineering department and director of the accelerator laboratory cooper began working as an undergraduate student researcher in this lab in the summer of 2019 being a part of dr shaos research group has given me insight on research and graduate school so it prepared me well for my future said cooper i feel like the faculty and staff in the nuclear engineering department have greatly contributed to my undergraduate experience overall an instrumental part of his journey shao is excited to see the opportunities that remain for cooper our department offers various internships and hands-on training opportunities for undergraduate students to stimulate their research interests said shao this helps our students to make their decisions on career paths as early as possible kenneth is one such talented student who harvests from the training and is quickly growing as a rising star i am very proud of his achievements as cooper forges his path through the department he hopes other students take advantage of the research opportunities available at texas a&m the advice i have for undergraduates looking to further their education and career in graduate school is to get involved in research as soon as you can said cooper this will allow you to experience different areas of research and understand what graduate program youd like to pursue
2056,ceramics are resilient to heat and extreme environments but they are fragile and crack easily recently in a study published in science advances researchers at texas a&m university have discovered a self-healing mechanism within a type of ceramics called max phases they have shown that these engineered ceramics form natural faults or kink-bands during loading that can not only effectively stop cracks from growing but can also close and heal them thereby preventing catastrophic failure whats really exciting about max phases is that they readily form kink-bands under loading which can self-heal cracks even at room temperature making them suitable for a variety of advanced structural applications said dr ankit srivastava assistant professor in the department of materials science and engineering and a corresponding author on the study so far self-healing of cracks in ceramics have only been achieved at very high temperatures by oxidation and that is why self-healing of cracks at room temperature by kink-band formation is remarkable
2057,this remarkable behavior of max phases can be traced back to their atomically layered structures imagine a plain loaf of bread it is homogeneous so if i slice it up each slice will look the same – similar in idea to conventional ceramics said dr miladin radovic professor in the department of materials science and engineering and a corresponding author on the study but max phases are layered like a peanut butter sandwich with peanut butter between two slices of bread
2058,the researchers then investigated if this unique layered structure of max phases makes them any different from conventional ceramics for their experiments they used single-crystal samples of chromium aluminum carbide max phase synthesized by dr thierry ouisse of université grenoble alpes france and a senior author on the study and loaded them inside an electron microscope using an in-house designed test fixture when the researchers viewed the deforming sample in the electron microscope while applying loading they observed that there were kink-band-like defects that formed in the material resembling those formed in natural rocks more interestingly they discovered that the material within kink-bands rotates during loading which not only forms barriers against crack propagation but also eventually closes and heals the cracks as a consequence the sample was no longer vulnerable to catastrophic failure whats really exciting is that this kinking or self-healing mechanism can occur over and over closing the newly formed cracks thus delaying the failure of the material said hemant rathod a doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering and the lead author on the study the current discovery that materials resilient to heat and extreme environments such as max phases also self-heal cracks that may form during service and can advance a host of next-generation technologies for instance efficient jet engines hypersonic flights and safer nuclear reactors the researchers also noted in the current study that the kink-band induced self-healing of cracks is most likely not unique to max phases and can be extended to other materials with similar atomically layered structures this study demonstrates the serendipity of the scientific process says siddiq qidwai a program director in the national science foundations directorate for engineering we have had self-healing soft materials and polymer composites and now remarkably ceramics this work is funded by the national science foundation
2059,"incoming doctoral student latifah maasarani has taken a nontraditional path to the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university along the way she has proven her technical skills in optics and was recently named part of the national science foundation's (nsf) graduate research fellowship program maasarani also received the 2021 national excellence fellow position a department initiative to support students who intend to pursue translational research that impacts the biomedical engineering industry she met her principal investigator dr kristen maitland at an optics and photonics conference in 2017 maasarani said she was quickly drawn to maitland's research and thought her translational focus along with maitland's company could help maasarani learn more to accomplish her goals of becoming a biotechnology entrepreneur ""there's an opportunity to interact with doctors to make your product fit them versus saying 'we're scientists and we have the solution '"" maasarani said ""that's something i want to experience"" while a doctoral degree is not a requirement for an entrepreneurial career maasarani said she didn't pursue engineering until she was 20 ""i think that there's more for me to learn; there are more skills for me to develop and i just believe there's more that i want to do to prepare myself to be a leader in my field "" she said ever since she started her engineering training maasarani said she chose to study optics and photonics her research focuses on developing microscopy methods using light to help solve problems in biomedical spaces ""where i see that combining with entrepreneurship is the idea of having that translational focus "" she said ""we do research that we're hoping to take to the clinic we work to create devices that can help the patient and not necessarily stay in a lab forever"" many biomedical imaging methods to date are qualitative approaches that use intensity or color to visualize structure or physiology however recent efforts in the imaging space are pushing to extract meaningful information from the pixel values in an image to better monitor properties of the sample such as a cells dry mass or optical volume maasarani's previous research involved quantitative phase imaging (qpi) a label-free imaging method in which the pixel values in the image quantify how light slows down as it passes through a sample ""it's fast and precise which is important for looking at cell morphology you want to be much smaller and much faster than they are to understand how they are reacting to changes in their environment "" maasarani said what interests her is finding ways to combine different imaging techniques to learn more from a single sample and to further validate the use of qpi in optics research for example fluorescence resonance energy transfer (fret) a well-studied practice in imaging can be used to monitor cell signaling by incorporating qpi metrics into fret images researchers can demonstrate how phase can provide meaningful structural data ""the goal is to correlate what happens in fluorescence a method people know and trust to phase "" she said while no texas a&m projects are set in stone yet maasarani hopes to bring her experience with qpi into collaborations on stem cell research with support from the fellowships she will have flexibility in future research there are also funds available for professional development and maasarani said she is excited to attend and present at a range of conferences ""i can explore projects that maybe aren't yet funded and spend time thinking of new ideas i hope to work with dr maitland to come up with a new project idea write a grant for it and get it funded "" she said ""i believe that would be what i want from the nsf having the freedom to explore new ideas and get them funded i think that'd be an empowering journey"" after graduation she plans to take a job at a startup company to get firsthand experience working in the field her end goal is to one day create point-of-care diagnostic devices using light ""until 20 i wasn't involved in science and now i feel like i'm not just involved but accepted and i just hope that other young women who aren't into science yet know it's never too late "" she said ""i was very timid to go into this field but now i realize nontraditional paths are just as good it is okay to start late you can and will be successful"""
2060,as health workers around the world provide care to those infected with sars-cov-2 and its many variants the shortages in medical oxygen continue to deeply impact hospitals already stretched thin while portable oxygen concentrators have provided some relief to many with respiratory distress these machines sometimes do not generate enough medical oxygen to meet the fluctuating demands of a patient with worsening symptoms requiring them to be rehospitalized anticipating the increased need for better oxygen concentrators as the fight against covid-19 rages on researchers at texas a&m university have laid a computational framework to design the most optimal concentrator to filter ambient air and produce oxygen that can scale with patient demand the covid-19 pandemic has caused significant stress to our medical and emergency facilities and a surge of people requiring medical attention and hospitals have a limited number of ventilation equipment said dr faruque hasan associate professor and the ​kim mcdivitt 88 and phillip mcdivitt 87 endowed faculty fellow in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering but we could prevent some cases of hospitalization if we designed a more advanced compact and portable oxygen concentrator that has flexible operating conditions to deliver as much oxygen as the patient requires the researchers noted that oxygen concentrators based on their design would also help those suffering from other respiratory conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease pneumonia and asthma a description of the study appeared online in the journal nature scientific reports unlike oxygen tanks that provide patients with a continuous supply of pure oxygen portable oxygen concentrators remove nitrogen from ambient air the stripping away of nitrogen is due to a process called adsorption whereby certain species of air molecules get trapped on the surface of solids among the many options available for adsorbents naturally or synthetically made materials known as zeolites act like sieves holding on to the nitrogen while allowing oxygen to pass through but despite their overall advantages oxygen concentrators are often designed with fixed specifications thereby limiting their use in meeting oxygen demands caused by a change in a patients medical condition or activity for example a patients oxygen needs could vary both in terms of flow rate and purity and current oxygen concentrators cannot be used for several different patients within the same hospital setting who require very different ventilation in the ideal case we need a system that can rapidly switch between different operating regimes for on-demand oxygen production while fulfilling different product specifications said dr akhil arora former graduate student in hasans laboratory and lead author on the study to enhance the design of current medical oxygen concentrators arora first selected three types of zeolites lix lilsx and 5a for his analysis next he ran a physics-based simulation that modeled different properties of the zeolites along with characteristics of the oxygen concentrator including the size of the adsorption chamber and the different stages within the adsorption process then using a high-performance computing cluster at texas a&m university he varied all these inputs of the simulation simultaneously to arrive at the most optimal operating range that would yield a compact easy-to-transport and high-performance medical oxygen concentrator in particular he found that the lilsx performed better than lix and 5a zeolites producing 90% pure oxygen at a high rate in addition researchers found the lilsx-based system could be used to generate different levels of oxygen purity and flow rates the experts said their study is also a first step in creating portable cyber-physical systems for home use that can change oxygen supply depending on the patients needs so if a patient requires more oxygen as symptoms worsen built-in algorithms could analyze data from oxygen sensors to predict if more ventilation is needed relay that information to off-site physicians who can then use their judgement to remotely change settings on the medical oxygen concentrator right now medical professionals are needed to administer oxygen based on the condition of the patient so at-home monitoring is not possible said hasan we hope to design a more cost- effective flexible controllable medical oxygen concentrator that can provide a personalized oxygen supply at home
2061,from podcast student host to engineering student representative drew dehaven is focused on making an impact on other students – and letting their voices be heard dehaven a senior in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university joined the student engineers council (sec) in 2019 and is now a part of the legislation committee which bridges the gap between students and faculty in the college by relaying the perspective of the engineering student body to the college administration each year the committee drafts an engineering student survey for all engineering students and presents the results to the dean associate deans department heads and program directors of the college i think getting to present these results to faculty and leadership is a very important job and i'm really glad i've gotten a chance to be on the committee that gets to do that continuing his desire to hear from his peers dehaven is the first student host of the texas a&m engineering: soundbytes podcast segment just a sec which in partnership with the sec focuses on conversations about lessons in leadership best practices for growing a professional network and highlighting the transition between education and industry he and fellow student ritika bhattacharjee co-host the study break which explores the texas a&m engineering community through conversations about students lives and experiences in the college of engineering everyone really does have an interesting story to tell and a unique experience and our job is to get that story out of them dehaven said that's something we've had to grow in as our roles as hosts as well as getting authentic conversations and getting people to share those really interesting stories
2062,as a senior in electrical engineering dehaven gets to explore his interest in electricity and magnetism and his passion to build and design with electrical i can design anything from entire power grids that help support states or nations or i could work on the smallest of devices that get made trillions and trillions of times such as transistors he explained i like the scale that it offers this summer dehaven took his interest in design and completed a virtual internship with texas instruments where he served in an application engineering role he worked on the radar team that built and designed radars for use in industries such as health care automotive and industrial looking ahead dehaven is still deciding whether to pursue a masters degree with a focus on signal processing or to pursue employment within industry at the end of the day what i have enjoyed the most about my time at a&m is all of the many opportunities for friendship and personal development he said i hope that anyone who reads this remembers to seize the day and live boldly and purposefully life happens fast; dont forget to make it interesting
2063,the us department of energy initiated the generation iv international forum to develop the next generation of nuclear technology the forum which is composed of advanced nuclear nations has identified a list of generation iv nuclear reactors that represent advances in sustainability economics safety reliability and proliferation-resistance to ensure the future of nuclear energy globally dany mulyana a doctoral student working with center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) director dr sunil chirayath is evaluating the proliferation risk of one of the promising generation iv reactors the pebble bed reactor (pbr) in his work he considers the position of countries like his native indonesia looking to develop nuclear energy and he hopes to provide a tool that could help policy makers evaluate their nuclear options choosing a proper technology for a nuclear system is a crucial policy determination mulyana said safety security nonproliferation and economical aspects must be accounted to evaluate each associated risk contributing to the policy this could be a hassle for developing countries having less experience in nuclear technology development the choice between generation iii and generation iv reactors has been a debate on how they are going to generate nuclear energy for their needs generation iv reactors are expected to have better proliferation resistance which means that their technology guards against the possibility of its spent fuel being used to develop a nuclear weapon experts consider the pbr to be proliferation resistant due to its unique fuel pebble design which has a smaller amount of special nuclear material per item of fuel due to the small fuel size the conventional proliferation resistance evaluation and safeguards approach developed for previous generation of light water reactors (lwrs) cannot be simply implemented mulyana said through his research mulyana developed a new methodology to evaluate the proliferation resistance of a reactor system accommodating the characteristics of both pbrs and lwrs which could also be used to evaluate other reactor types he adapted the proliferation resistance analysis and evaluation tool for observed risk (praetor) code developed by nsspi to be more applicable to the unique fuel of the pbr mulyanas evaluation found that the lwr system has a higher proliferation resistance compared to the pbr this implies that the pbr introduces a higher proliferation risk a single pass refueling or moreover a multi-pass refueling on the pbr might decrease the material attractiveness by exposing the fuel to different locations in the core with respect to irradiation time however online refueling introduces complexities to the safeguards approach needed to deal with the semi-bulk nuclear material in the pbr system mulyana proved this through an exhaustive reactor physics modeling and simulation using monte carlo method on high-fidelity models of the reactors he also developed a safeguard approach for the online refueling of the pbr system by implementing a simple gamma spectrometry nondestructive assay on the fuel pebble the concept was validated using data generated computationally using monte carlo simulation prior to joining nsspi mulyana was a nuclear system and risk management engineer in the indonesian nuclear energy agency for 13 years working with a broad spectrum of nuclear technology development in indonesia from food to energy sectors his interest is in transforming science and engineering to policy decision making and vice versa he graduated with his bachelors degree in physics from padjadjaran university of indonesia in 2003 and with a masters degree in physics from the university of indonesia in 2007 he earned a nondegree graduate certificate in nuclear security from texas a&m in 2014 as part of a nsspi program sponsored by the us department of state mulyana has successfully defended his dissertation and is graduating with his doctoral degree in nuclear engineering in august of 2021 currently he is transitioning to a postdoctoral position where he will be working with both nsspi and the national center for electron beam research at texas a&m
2064,"over time military clothing has evolved adapting to the needs of soldiers and the technology available a soldier's attire must be more than articles of clothing it is crucial that their uniform shields them from unpredictable weather remains durable in varying terrains and most importantly protects them against numerous forms of lethal weaponry funded by the north atlantic treaty organization (nato) dr jaime grunlan the leland t jordan 29 chair professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is applying water-based nanocoatings to military clothing adding protective properties including fire and uv-light protection as well as chemical recognition capabilities military clothing is made from a variety of textiles such as cotton wool and synthetic blends when adding a protective property the initial benefits of the material are generally lost ""the reason we like cotton is its soft texture just like we use nylon because it's strong "" said grunlan ""if the cotton is given flame-resistance properties the fiber itself is modified and the cotton will stiffen similarly nylon exposed to a flame resistance treatment will weaken changing its structure essentially takes away its valuable intrinsic properties"" grunlan has developed a water-based nontoxic solution that can add properties without changing the inherent structure of the clothing a piece of clothing is dipped into a curated solution with a positive charge extracted then placed into a solution with a negative charge the attraction of the opposing charges bonds the chemicals creating a microscopic nanocoating that adheres to the clothings surface in an imperceptible layer this technique commonly referred to as pad-dry processing can be duplicated with various solutions creating multiple layers with each new deposition each solution is tailored specifically to add certain qualities to the fabric for uv protection we would add zinc oxide or titanium dioxide said grunlan its the same ingredients youd find in sunscreen by mixing the right formula we can optimize the clothings serviceability in this case he will be creating materials that are both flame retardant and provide protection against uv (ultraviolet) light an additional unique aspect of the design is chemical recognition if the nanocoating is exposed to a hazardous substance the material will change colors ""chemical warfare is increasingly becoming a threat "" said grunlan ""many chemicals or gases cannot be seen in the air for that reason we're focused on detection based upon a color change which will notify the user of the chemical agent allowing them time to react quickly"" the water-based composition of the solution contributes significantly to its multifunctionality by not altering the fibers the textile remains conformal and seemingly unaffected by the nanocoatings this also makes the solution environmentally benign and cost-effective historically chemical treatments to clothing have been frowned upon as they have been linked to sickness and ailments however the water-based nature of this solution negates this problem making it safe for widespread usage grunlan hopes to extend this technology outside of military clothing to other areas that could benefit from protective clothing such as children's sleepwear or oil field uniforms he and his collaborators from north macedonia and serbia dr igor jordanov from ss cyril and methodius university and dr maja radetic from the university of belgrade hope to eventually create technology that can reject chemicals or kill chemicals on contact the use and success of the layer-by-layer technique opens new avenues and applications for this emerging technology"
2065,"when the world shut down and travel abroad halted the texas a&m university chapter of engineers without borders (ewb) had to change coursethe borders were closed on the trips they had planned to rural matyazo rwanda to implement a new design of latrines and to the village of villa verde in the dominican republic to develop solutions to mitigate flood damage to roads and infrastructurebut that didn't stop this group of students despite the global pandemic they continued to meet deadlines build a sense of community within their organization and expand their reach and in a year where nothing went as planned ewb was named the 2021 registered student organization of the year by texas a&m""it is such an honor to be recognized as the organization of the year "" said ruby ross president of ewb and a biomedical engineering major from bryan texas ""this award is a testament to the growth perseverance and passion for service of each member of this organization i am so honored to be a part of this organization that truly is without borders""ewb planned assessment and implementation trips for the summer of 2020 but instead project leads chose to focus on what was possiblein matyazo the team is designing and implementing latrines to help eliminate sanitation-related diseases and increase agricultural income for food security ewb adopted the rwanda project in november 2018 and made an initial assessment trip to matyazo in january 2020""on the rwanda team members worked toward finalizing latrine and handwashing designs through sketches and prototyping workshops as well as an implementation plan to prepare for our first-ever virtual implementation in september "" ross said ""we quickly realized that our chapter's inability to travel to rwanda did not inhibit the community's fervor to begin latrine construction"""
2066,"ewb team members will guide the town through instructional materials and virtual communication by constructing one to two latrines ahead of a planned trip to rwanda in january 2022""with the long-term goal of constructing 500 latrines within the community the majority will be built remotely without us on site we can then assess the success of our instructions/design physically inspect the latrines and make design changes if needed when we visit them "" said eli norris rwanda co-project lead and a junior materials science and engineering major ""one major aspect dictating our design is materials the latrine will be built from 100% locally sourced materials and readily available tools many projects fail because they do not have the infrastructure/resources to order custom materials and tools we are maximizing their involvement with the design to ensure they are comfortable with the latrine and it will solve the problem this is crucial to the long-term success of the project we want them to be proud of the latrines they build""the ewb team began a project in 2020 for villa verde a diverse community with a significant drainage problem in the dominican republic they are developing a road and drainage system to divert water that pools causing structural damage and breeds malaria-carrying mosquitosthe team had planned to travel to villa verde in 2020 for an assessment trip but when those plans were grounded they pushed forward with the project from home according to vivi de anda a junior civil engineering major from plano texas and dominican co-project lead""we wanted them to know that we are dedicated to doing everything we can as we tackle this project during the pandemic "" she said ""with the community we were able to share ideas and questions from our team's work and research which allowed us to continue brainstorming solutions together these discussions have enabled us to learn more about them their situation and work with them for the most effective solution the ultimate goal is to help them become sustainable sufficient and maintained by its members which we can do by guiding and teaching them along the way""this year the dominican republic team continued data collection using google earth online research and frequent community meetings to develop high medium and low-cost options for roads and drainage on the dominican team""my favorite aspect of engineers without borders is our dedication to the long-term impact of each project we recognize that communities in these third-world countries will often be given 'solutions' to their problems without any real training for or buy-in from their members who will have to maintain the solution in the years to come "" ross said ""this makes it difficult for the project to succeed ewb takes a different approach working alongside the community in three phases to assess the problem implement the solution and monitor the project we believe in equipping them with sustainable solutions that truly meet their needs""while ewb's members focus most of their efforts abroad they also strive to make an impact at home by participating in a park clean-up event sponsored by keep brazos beautiful kyle field day and volunteering in the big event the largest one-day student-run service project in the nationross who joined ewb as a freshman is excited to see the growth in the organization and the membership of the group which has increased to more than 50""i think that the growth is attributed to ewb's unique focus on hands-on international projects in each of our projects we get to know the people we're serving around the world through conversations and community visits we learn more about the lives and culture of those we're serving "" she said ""we also equip our members with the hard and soft skills to manage a large-scale budget successfully build a composting latrine or lead a team of people miles apart the list goes on and on what makes ewb so unique is our dedication to equipping students with practical skills and using those skills to serve real people worldwide"""
2067,"ewb's influence extends from personal to global impact for ross de anda and norris the impact has been huge ""more than anything it's taught me about looking for the potential in everything recognizing the potential in a new project or new leader and being part of the growth that follows is one of my greatest joys "" ross said ""for our members ewb teaches the power of teamwork i've always been amazed by the unique gifts that each person possesses and how they can harness those talents alongside others to do something greater than they could do on their own""de anda said she hopes to continue working with ewb long after her four years in college""i'd love to stay engaged involved and in touch with the chapter and the community and see the incredible ways ewb can continue to make an impact through different projects i'm honored and humbled by the opportunity to be able to serve others while applying the knowledge and skills i am acquiring through my classes and experiences "" she said ""i am grateful to everyone in ewb for their passion persistence and hard work to truly make a positive difference everyone brings their authentic gifts that benefit the team and i've learned so much from each of them this is a gratifying experience that has also helped me grow as a student friend and individual""as a freshman norris walked into a rwanda project meeting not knowing what to expect but left knowing he had to be a part of it""since that meeting i have learned that ewb is truly without borders we incorporate people from almost every engineering discipline and are expanding that to every major from finance to graphic design; there is a place for anyone and everyone in ewb i have never been a part of a more inclusive organization "" he said ""personally ewb has pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and work hard for the benefit of others as a materials science and engineering major i don't take any classes related to the construction of buildings ewb has granted me the ability and responsibility to learn about things from creating autocad drawings to volcano-style concrete mixing one of my favorite aspects about ewb is that we get to directly use the fundamental engineering principles taught in the classroom on real projects that impact real people to me that is a priceless college experience""discover more about ewb their projects leadership team and how to become involved"
2068,"more than 982 million individuals were impacted by 10 of the biggest data breaches in the first half of 2021 according to the identity theft resource center and the us department of health and human services keeping sensitive data (social security numbers banking information etc) secure is paramount and one way to achieve this is through the use of the kirchhoff-law-johnson-noise (kljn) key exchange system which provides unconditional security for the key exchange similar to quantum encryption christiana chamon a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is working with faculty advisor dr laszlo kish to push the boundaries of what is accepted and known for the kljn key exchange and provide further support for how to maintain the systems highest security level possible their findings were published as a high-profile ""perspective"" article in applied physics letters by aip publishing in july 2021 the focus topic of their current work is on the thermodynamical state of the kljn system in kljn exchange communication is established and explained through two parties ‘alice and ‘bob at both ends of the communication line between these two parties there is an identical pair of resistors with lower and higher values the foundation of the perfect security in the kljn scheme is thermal equilibrium and the second law of thermodynamics kish said in other words it is impossible to crack the security of the ideal kljn protocol in all previous works the proposed kljn schemes required thermal equilibrium between ‘alice and ‘bob to achieve perfect security meaning both pairs of resistors remained at the same temperature however recent developments by researchers published in nature science reports showed a modified scheme which offered an arbitrary choice of the resistor values by ‘alice and ‘bob a serious implication of this situation is that the temperatures of the resistors are then typically different which indicates an out-of-equilibrium situation thermal equilibrium was thought as the foundation of the perfect security of the kljn protocol thus this foundation had been challenged however chamon and kish disproved this challenge by introducing a surprising attack against this non-equilibrium protocol by sampling the voltage data at the moments of zero crossings of the current data they showed a significant information leak toward the eavesdropper as soon as the thermal equilibrium is restored the system becomes perfectly secure again confirming that perfect unconditional security requires thermal equilibrium this work is of fundamental importance because it provides new information that disproves what was originally accepted chamon said dogmas have no place in science"
2069,jaclynn turnbaugh a graduate student in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston jokes that she always preferred to play with the sand more than swim in the ocean now she gets to play with sand every day in the name of science and its a dream come true coastal engineering and professionally playing with sand is a reoccurring theme for turnbaughs time in the department from her first internship with hdr in corpus christi to her two-week national science foundation partnerships for international research and education (nsf pire) coastal flood risk reduction program research trip to the netherlands the concept seemed to follow her the pire experience was amazing because that's what led me to the decision that coastal engineering is what i wanted to pursue she said i had the opportunity to look at hybrid coastal structures that implemented the hard engineering of concrete as well as soft engineering of the sand and the natural environment that combined with my first internship really validated what i wanted to do working with faculty advisor dr jens figlus and collaborators in the department of marine biology turnbaugh is investigating a multidisciplinary way to prevent coastal erosion their research focuses on using beach sand and naturally occurring bacteria to generate a biochemical reaction that binds sand grains together through calcite formation at particle-particle contacts this process is referred to as microbial induced calcium carbonate precipitation or micp and could be a more natural way to prevent beach erosion seawalls interrupt the natural flow of sediment turnbaugh said there is usually a larger amount of erosion that takes place on either end of seawalls research like this has been used previously in sand dunes but now we want to see if it can be applied in a hydrodynamic setting as well as she explained this project is still in the feasibility phase and there hasnt been much field application for this type of research in a lab setting everything is controlled and ideal while the actual environmental uncertainties of the coast (such as rain seawater levels etc) have made it challenging for the team turnbaugh finds the problem-solving nature of being on the forefront of pioneering technology exciting its been exciting to jump right in and gain hands-on knowledge so quickly she said
2070,karen and jack whiteside have named the texas a&m foundation as a beneficiary of their living trust to establish a planned gift which will create the karen and jack whiteside '68 chemical engineering professorship distributions from this endowment will be used to support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the holder in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university in accordance with university guidelines jack grew up with aggies in his family so his interest in texas a&m began before he even started high school as a child he was indoctrinated into the university by his three uncles who attended texas a&m in the 1950s i can still remember attending the 1953 graduation ceremony in kyle field and seeing all the caps flying in the air jack said i never seriously considered going anywhere else jack said his time at texas a&m was fundamental to the success he found in his career i remember wanting to be an engineer as early as junior high he said having the education and credentials from a&m opened the door for my career the engineering curriculum equipped me with analytical thinking skills as well as the practical knowledge i needed to succeed as an engineer establishing this professorship has been an ongoing process over the last few years for the whitesides while updating their estate plans jack and karen decided they wanted to give back to texas a&m and show their gratitude for the education jack had received we hope this professorship will help a&m attract top professors which in turn will enable students to get the best education and open doors to a great career jack said the whitesides decided on establishing a professorship because they understand how impactful professors can be on a students education my life was highly impacted by the professors i had during my time at texas a&m and i hope this professorship will help provide future students a strong base on which to build their lifes work jack said i am proud of my aggie heritage and wish the best for the college of engineering as it strives to become the best in the nation in every aspect the whitesides also support several christian organizations and although donating to education is a slight departure from their norm they wanted to give this token of gratitude to texas a&m jack graduated from texas a&m in 1968 with his degree in chemical engineering he and karen have two sons jason and jonathan 97
2071,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president for development
2072,dr sunil chirayath in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the institute of nuclear materials management (inmm) award for education and outreach he is a senior member of the organization this prestigious award recognizes an exceptional individual who has given outstanding service to educating the public and the new incoming and current practitioners in the field of nuclear materials management overseen by the education and training committee this award is the first of its kind for inmm as the initial recipient chirayath is setting a high precedent and paving the way for excellence within the organization education and outreach in the field of nuclear materials management is extremely important at this critical juncture given the nuclear security challenges posed by north korea and iran said chirayath in addition several new countries are planning to embark on using nuclear technology thus it is important to educate and train the next generation of professionals in nuclear materials management and in nuclear security to ensure the peaceful uses of nuclear technology chirayath has served the department of nuclear engineering for 14 years in various capacities and is currently an associate professor and the director of the texas a&m center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives with over 30 years of experience in the field of nuclear science and engineering he has worked in a multitude of academic and industry environments chirayath has over 200 technical publications in refereed journals and national/international conference proceedings his research is mostly in the field of nuclear security and nonproliferation his work interests include the development of safeguards approaches for advanced reactors proliferation resistance analysis of fuel cycle facilities nuclear forensics and insider threat analysis this inmm award is definitely a solid encouragement for me to continue my education and outreach activities said chirayath i am glad that inmm has instituted this award in the field of nuclear materials management to recognize professionals in academia and other institutions
2073,inspired by her own experience with a senior capstone design project dr joanna tsenn now seeks to help undergraduate students bridge the gap between the classroom and industry through projects of their own senior design was one of my favorite classes when i was a student in fact it is why i chose to do my phd in mechanical engineering design said tsenn instructional assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university tsenn serves as both the projects coordinator and an instructor for the mechanical engineering departments senior capstone design program a role in which she finds great pride and fulfillment using her passion for the course material helping students and problem-solving alongside her organizational strengths tsenn said the departments senior design program is a uniquely impactful experience i think our capstone program is one of the best tsenn said we have larger teams and they focus on the same project for two semesters so they are able to tackle bigger projects with the fischer engineering design center access to departmental equipment and tools and faculty support the teams are able to accomplish incredible work over the course of their projects the two-semester senior capstone design program provides students with open-ended design projects many times supported by industry sponsors that require students to apply their knowledge by completing a needs analysis identifying requirements generating concepts selecting a solution and validating their solution tsenn said in addition to learning to apply their engineering education to real-world applications through a hands-on design process another primary focus of the program is to help students develop their professional skills including communication teamwork project management critical thinking decision making creativity and adaptability she said seeing students take all of these lessons and use them to complete their projects is one of her favorite things about the program i want the teams to take the lead and take ownership of their projects tsenn said i can tell that we have been successful as instructors when the teams no longer need us to guide them it is a great feeling to receive a team update where they identified a problem developed solutions and figured out how to get back on track all on their own
2074,texas a&m university president m katherine banks has announced approval to establish the intercollegiate school of engineering medicine effective sept 1 2021 the new school will be the organizational home of the enmed initiative which launched in 2018 as a partnership between the college of engineering and college of medicine in collaboration with the states top-ranked houston methodist hospital established in the globally recognized texas medical center through the integration of engineering and medicine enmed aims to transform health care for all by training invention-minded problem-solving doctors known as physicianeers faculty and students will also conduct broad translational medicine interdisciplinary translational research and develop medical technologies in the school enmed will continue to be led by its executive dean world-renowned physician-scientist dr roderic i pettigrew we are excited to provide a home for our faculty staff and physicianeers-in-training through this new school that allows us to intensively focus and collaborate with others in developing the future of health care 22nd-century medicine pettigrew said our faculty and students will work to address some of the greatest challenges in medicine through convergence-born innovations that have the potential to extend the human healthspan globally with more than 100 students already enrolled enmed is the only school in the world to offer its students a curriculum resulting in a simultaneous doctorate of medicine and masters degree in engineering focused on the design and implementation of medical technologies in four years in addition as part of their training enmed students are uniquely required to invent a solution to an identified health care problem while just beginning its third year multiple invention disclosures have already been filed by students in enmed having a school dedicated to discipline blending to create effective scientific bilinguals is critical to our success in expeditiously stimulating health care breakthroughs and accelerating their practical translation to use pettigrew said while addressing the core concept that underpins the creation of the new school the enmed building a recently renovated 17-story facility at 1020 holcombe boulevard features a design and prototyping center that offers its students access to tools equipment and expertise needed to bring their ideas from concept to reality this includes machine and electronics shops a cell culture and bioprinting lab and a virtual reality robotics room that is currently in development enmed is the first actualization of texas a&ms broader enhealth concept that serves as the nations first comprehensive educational program to fully integrate engineering into all health-related disciplines
2075,"dr jeyavijayan ""jv"" rajendran was awarded the intel security academic leadership award at the 2021 usenix security conference for his collaborative work alongside dr ahmad reza sadeghi from the technische universität darmstadt to design and organize the world's largest hardware security competition hack@event hack@event was jointly created by members of rajendrans secure and trustworthy hardware lab and sadeghis research team it is an industry-first hardware security capture the flag competition with the mission to train hardware security experts design and develop advanced methodologies and automated tools for detecting hardware security vulnerabilities and aid community testing and open sourcing the competition mimics the real-life scenario where security engineers have to find vulnerabilities in a given design through hack@event we educate product engineers and raise their proficiency in designing secure hardware said jason fung director of academic research engagement and offensive security research at intel we encourage researchers to innovate on scalable methodologies that help to detect vulnerabilities in the increasingly complex system-on-a-chip (soc) designs we share with the community an open soc platform for research education and benchmarking of tools the intel security academic leadership award recognizes individuals who demonstrate excellence innovation and leadership in advancing the global security research community rajendran and sadeghi were acknowledged for their commitment to educating the next generation of security researchers for fostering a security-first mindset and for their continued partnership to advance the discipline of hardware design rajendrans research interests are in hardware security with a specific focus on supply chain vulnerabilities and bug detection his research has won many awards such as the national science foundation faculty early career development program award the association for computing machinery's special interest group on design automation outstanding young faculty award and the texas a&m engineering experiment stations genesis award for multidisciplinary research"
2076,the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university welcomes three new faculty members for the fall 2021 semester with research expertise in areas such as graph algorithms cybersecurity and privacy and digital forensics computer science and engineering is a growing program and were excited to have these promising faculty join our department this year said dr scott schaefer head of the department we look forward to their contributions and successes the three new faculty members include:
2077,drew hamilton professor and director of the texas a&m cybersecurity center who received his doctoral degree in computer science from texas a&m masters degrees in computer science from vanderbilt university and systems management from the university of southern california and his bachelors degree in journalism from texas tech university hamiltons research interests include security architecture digital forensics cybersecurity and industrial control system security nitesh saxena professor who received his doctoral degree in information and computer science from the university of california irvine masters degree in computer science from the university of california santa barbara and bachelors degree in mathematics and computing from the indian institute of technology kharagpur his research interests include various aspects of cybersecurity and privacy with an emphasis on computer systems and technology applied cryptography mobile and internet of things device security web privacy and user-centered security nate veldt assistant professor who received his doctoral degree in mathematics (with a concentration in computational science) and masters in mathematics from purdue university and his bachelors degree in mathematics from wheaton college his research interests include graph algorithms matrix computations network science computational optimization and data science
2078,improving the delivery of drugs involves finding new materials to ease the introduction and release of these drugs into the body ryan davis a masters student in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university aims to focus his research on advanced biomaterials for sustained and prolonged release of therapeutics for tissue regeneration davis and his team recently published a review paper in the journal current opinion in biomedical engineering davis review paper focused on the current state of a new class of 2d nanomaterials and how they are used for drug delivery the process helped davis lay the groundwork of current research efforts which will help guide his work with nanomaterials and hydrogels a 3d network of water-attracting polymers dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor and davis lab director applies these types of nanotechnology to tissue engineering and cancer therapeutics
2079,"we have started to lean toward delivery for cartilage and bone repair davis said that might not be where we continue but that's where i am right now because the hydrogels i'm working with can be applied to a lot of different diseases or types of treatment 2d nanomaterials have a flat structure with lateral dimensions on the nanoscale or microscale and a thickness of a single to a few atomic layers one way to think about these nanomaterials is like a sheet of paper you have two long dimensions but the thickness is super thin with nanomaterials that thickness would be in the nanolength scale ranging between 1 to 5 nanometers they're beneficial because they have the highest specific surface area of any type of material providing a large number of contact points and increasing the propensity for surface interactions these 2d nanomaterials allow for high drug loading"" another application could be cancer treatment current cancer and many other disease-treating drugs are hydrophobic (water repulsive) when they enter the body proteins often attack the drug making them unstable in the body 2d nanomaterials can act as carriers to improve the stability of those drugs by releasing at a very slow rate and shielding them from protein interactions the 2d nanomaterials can promote sustained deliveries to keep the drugs in the body for a prolonged duration and to keep a sufficient amount of the drug to be therapeutically active in the body davis said it's more beneficial to design carriers that release in sync with disease activity rather than too fast or too slow davis plans to apply for several fellowships to continue this research and help solve other problems in biomedical spaces some options include the national science foundation's graduate research fellowship program the national institutes of the health's f31 predoctoral fellowship and the department of defense's national defense science and engineering graduate fellowship program i see how many problems we still have like cancer diabetes or arthritis davis said as much as we have advanced there's still a long way to go if i can work on something why not work on something that can help people especially the people in my home"
2080,our bodies are home to several bacterial species that help us maintain our health and wellbeing thus engineering these good bacteria to alter the activity of genes gone awry either by turning them down or by activating them is a promising approach to improve health and combat diseases in a study published in the journal nature communications researchers at texas a&m university have developed a sophisticated programmable gene silencing system that might have future therapeutic implications using chemical triggers the researchers showed that lab-engineered bacteria escherichia coli (e coli) could be induced to make gene products to suppress certain traits in caenorhabditis elegans (c elegans) a roundworm that consumes this strain of bacteria as food similarly the researchers noted that in the future symbiotic bacteria within the human microbiome could be engineered to sense record and deliver therapeutics to improve health and wellbeing the continued success of microbiome-based therapies depends on developing reliable vehicles to deliver therapeutic products said dr qing sun assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering here we have used bacteria to tweak the gene expression in another organism which is a proof of concept that bacteria living in symbiosis with humans could be engineered to modulate human physiology and treat disease in addition to the genes that are tightly bundled up into chromosomes bacteria and certain other microbes have other shorter circular strands of dna called plasmids not only can plasmids replicate they also have much fewer genes than their chromosomal counterparts these properties make plasmids easier to manipulate with genetic tools in particular segments of dna from other organisms known as transgenes can be inserted into bacterial plasmids further as plasmids replicate multiple copies of the transgenes are produced for example if the human gene for making insulin is inserted into a plasmid then as the bacteria replicate more copies of the plasmids and consequently insulin genes are made and so when these genes are expressed more insulin is produced alternately plasmids can be extracted from the bacteria and used as vehicles to insert transgenes into the genome of other cells to alter traits in those cells the researchers noted that while these types of genetic manipulations have been routine in mammalian cells and other simple microbes they have often been difficult to orchestrate in more complex multicellular organisms to overcome these hurdles sun and her team selected a bacteria-host pair that have a symbiotic relationship in particular they chose the soil-dwelling worm c elegans that feeds on e coli first they inserted a transgene into e colis plasmid that can interfere with a genetically engineered strain of c elegans which has the ability to glow fluorescently green then using a chemical they induced the plasmid to express the green fluorescence-suppressing gene last they fed the bacteria to c elegans and found that only those c elegans that consumed the e coli with the transgene stopped glowing green in addition sun and her team programmed e coli to produce gene products with different and and or logic gates put simply gene products could be selectively produced only by the combined action of two or more genes like the mathematical and operation or if any one gene was expressed like the mathematical or operation once again using chemical triggers the researchers initiated an and or or combination of gene expression in the e coli needed to silence twitching behavior in c elegans after the worms fed on the bacteria sun said that their bacteria-based gene silencing system could be easily extended to other living systems for applications in pest control plant growth promotion and veterinary disease diagnosis bacteria have a symbiotic relationship with many species affecting their hosts metabolism immunity and behavior said sun here we have taken advantage of the symbiosis between bacteria and a relatively complex organism to engineer a programmable genetic tool that can influence host physiology in a positive way baizhen gao from the chemical engineering department is the lead author of this study this work is supported by texas a&m engineering experiment station and chemical engineering department start-up funds
2081,"wind turbines are a renewable energy resource of the future but installing these enormous turbines in offshore ocean environments is becoming increasingly costly and labor-intensive as society becomes more dependent on renewable energy resources the development of improved installation processes is required a team of texas a&m university researchers have theorized a way to transport and install a 15-megawatt wind turbine in offshore environments using vibratory hammers funded by the national offshore wind research and development consortium they will research the practicality and intricacies of taking this idea from theory to reality ""15-megawatt wind turbines are the future and as the wind turbine size increases it is more effective and energy-efficient "" said dr moo-hyun kim professor in the department of ocean engineering and co-principal investigator on the project ""in the united states we have never installed a gravity-based wind turbine of this size and this may be a pioneering attempt to make this feasible"" currently the most effective method for building and mounting turbines into the seabed uses a monopile foundation driven deeply into the seabed with large impact hammers the drastic increase in the size of wind turbines (from about 5 megawatts to 15 megawatts) has created an issue with pile driving requiring massive piles extending to depths of 70 meters or more for insertion of the turbine foundation the team has proposed a new way to insert wind turbines into the seabed through the use of vibratory hammers capable of quickly puncturing and temporarily loosening the seabed to install a so-called bucket foundation although these hammers have been used for installing bucket foundations in other near-shore contexts this will be the first time they will be used in an offshore application ""when the hammer vibrates it temporarily liquefies the soil and will allow the turbine to enter the soil very rapidly "" said dr charles aubeny professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and principal investigator on the project ""as opposed to impact installation which uses one large hammer multiple vibratory hammers may be used simultaneously this means no strict limit on the foundation size"" by using vibratory hammering the foundation can be more compact this feature allows for the capability to construct the wind turbine on land then float it out to the offshore location floating the wind turbine to the site would tremendously cut down cost and construction time by bypassing the need to use a crane ""cranes are expensive and in the offshore business they charge about a half million dollars per day for use "" said dr saadat mirza professor of practice in the department of multidisciplinary engineering and co-principal investigator ""we are proposing that we assemble the whole structure onshore and float the structure out this idea is completely new to the industry"" aubeny said the use of vibratory hammers for installation of bucket foundations is also less time-consuming another competing method is called suction installation water is pumped out of the seabed and the differential pressure pushes the bucket foundation into the seabed this process generally takes around 8-10 hours in contrast the vibratory installation would only take 10-15 minutes immensely decreasing installation time and financial cost vibratory hammers also decrease noise pollution associated with installation one large hammer piling into the seafloor is much louder than vibratory hammers simultaneously working which is another benefit of their proposal their research will continue throughout the year and is primarily in the conceptualization stage the team will be determining the feasibility of the design and the economics to support the project as the world increasingly turns toward renewable energy resources their goal is to simplify the installation process for environmental and economic purposes to inspire a greener generation of energy ""oil and gas companies are moving into alternative energies "" said mirza ""this is an opportunity for us if we are successful to bring people together and start teaching alternative energy concepts to the students"""
2082,"the following is a first-person account by dr dan hill regents professor at texas a&m university of a field trip he took his graduate students from the harold vance department of petroleum engineering on in may 2021 to share with them what a fracturing treatment is like on site an old saying states that a picture is worth a thousand words in these times we can extend that to say a video is worth a thousand pictures however no picture or video is as instructive as doing or seeing an engineering activity in person which is why i invited students from my pete 602 well stimulation class to witness part of a multi-stage hydraulic fracturing treatment performed by ironroc energy last may we were joined by mccain engineering chair dr ding zhu and some students from her course pete 636 horizontal and multilateral wells hydraulic fracturing is a process in which large volumes of water and sand are injected into oil- or gas-bearing rock at high enough pressure to break the rock the injected sand/water slurry creates an extensive network of fractures in shale-type rocks and the sand holds these fractures open so that oil and gas can flow to the well without hydraulic fracturing production from the vast resource of shale in the us and elsewhere is not possible hydraulic fracturing along with horizontal drilling is the enabling technology that has resulted in the us being the leading producer of oil and gas in the world in my 39 years of teaching petroleum engineering i have taken many students on many field trips like this one and the students invariably come back with a much better appreciation of the technology being implemented one of my students alex fojtasek said it allowed him to ""bridge the gap between what was learned in class and what is practiced in the field"" it's critical for students to make these kinds of connections as they gain knowledge our host for this field trip was mike mccoy petroleum engineering class of 83 (and department head dr jeff spaths former classmate) who is the chief operations officer of alpine energy the parent company of ironroc mike has been overseeing hydraulic fracturing operations all over the world his entire career when i reached out with blind phone calls to arrange a trip he answered within minutes we cannot have experiences like this for our students without this kind of generosity ironroc energy was fracturing its austin chalk wells swedish chef 2h and 3h the two wells were being zipper-fractured meaning a fracture stage would be pumped on one well while the wireline setting of plugs using perforating guns (a 'plug-and-perf') would be conducted on the other then the well processes would be swapped and the procedures continued the well site in washington county was less than an hours drive from the richardson building on the texas a&m university campus when we arrived our tour began with a safety meeting then chris mccoy 12 senior operations engineer for ironroc led us around the pad site chris is mike's son so two generations of generous aggie petroleum engineers were with us that day some of the major components we saw were the high pressure (15 000 psi rating) manifold connecting 23 fracturing pumps of at least 2000 horsepower each the large proppant storage bins with pump trucks in the foreground and the two wellheads (one maroon one white) the maroon wellhead was rigged for pumping a fracturing stage and the white wellhead rigged for wireline plug and perforating operations"
2083,after we toured the entire site we were shown some of the downhole equipment used in plug and perforating multi-stage fracturing completions chris described the features of a modern fracturing plug to the students these plugs are made out of composite materials that are easy to drill out after the fracturing operations one of my doctoral students tohoko tajima discovered these plugs are light enough for anyone to lift
2084,after our site tour we joined ironroc and service company engineers in the monitoring van as they began pumping a fracturing stage we observed pumping at 93 barrels per minute with a surface pressure around 10 000 psi for over an hour as most of a fracturing stage was pumped mike and a service company fracturing engineer monitored the progress of the fracturing stage on computers while it happened thirty-three stages of fracture treatments were pumped into each well with a total of 15 840 000 pounds of sand carried in slick water injected into each well
2085,our tour concluded in typical oilfield fashion – with a lunch cooked onsite by one of the service companies involved (innospec oilfield services a chemical supplier) hamburgers and grilled sausage with all the trimmings were enjoyed by all when faculty lecture about oil and gas technology we convey concepts and teach design methods but when my student has held a fracture plug in her hands she knows i am talking about a two-foot-long 20-pound composite device that has been highly engineered for a specific purpose when i lecture about plug-and-perf well completions this is why it's so important for petroleum engineers go out to the field we get to see the reality of our discipline
2086,andrew balog ‘21 a former student in the department of materials science and engineering has accomplished something extraordinary he belongs to the first cohort of undergraduate students that graduated from the department in spring 2021 as a first-generation aggie he will take with him sound academic training in materials engineering and the rich history and traditions of texas a&m university balog first visited texas a&m as a high school student with his older brother also an engineer and recalls being completely impressed by the campus and the engineering program naturally when it came time to apply for college engineering was on the top of his list though he had originally set his sights on chemical engineering when he arrived he suddenly had the option of applying to the undergraduate materials science and engineering program which was newly established in 2018 when i first expressed interest in texas a&m there wasnt a materials science and engineering program for undergraduates but when i applied for a major the program was just starting said balog i was thrilled since materials science and engineering was my first choice the timing was just perfect in addition to taking courses balog said he had the opportunity to get hands-on experience in research while working on a project in a lab he said this experience greatly helped him in understanding how to approach a scientific question analytically and then conducting a series of experiments getting to work in the lab was a transformative experience for me said balog i enjoyed being part of a team and interacting with my scientific mentor i learned a lot balog was chosen among several students for the abraham clearfield materials science and engineering scholarship the scholarship supports outstanding undergraduate and graduate students pursuing a doctoral degree in the department of materials science and engineering balog was also one of seven seniors in the college of engineering chosen to receive the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award this award is the most prestigious honor bestowed upon a graduating senior in the college and it was the first time a student from the materials science and engineering department had won it it is really nice to be recognized for the work youve put in but more importantly i think my award is a reflection of all the people i have worked within the materials science and engineering program said balog now as a result i know i have earned a quality education in a field that i am deeply passionate about balog is motivated to continue his academic pursuits and will begin his doctoral degree in materials science and engineering at the pennsylvania state university in fall 2021
2087,rebecca and abhi jadhav have established the rebecca 93 and abhi jadhav endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university rebecca is a first-generation aggie and was the first in her family to attend any college i actually grew up a longhorn fan she said after telling my favorite high school teacher that i wanted to be an electrical engineer he told me i should attend texas a&m having no family experience to draw from i blindly took his advice and it was the best decision of my life rebecca feels that texas a&m prepared her well for a career in engineering i was able to take the foundational knowledge i gained from my bachelors degree and use it as a stepping stone for a very successful career in (information technology) she said while attending texas a&m rebecca took on most of the financial burden my sister and brother-in-law helped with many things but i worked my first two years and borrowed for the last three she said i did receive a scholarship that helped buy my books and a few grants took some of the financial load off of me but i was very fortunate to have these resources available to me and without them i could have never afforded to go to college rebecca and abhi are establishing this gift as their way to pay it forward and to help lighten the financial burden for a fellow aggie they have made preferences that their scholarship be awarded to a student with financial need pursuing an undergraduate degree in electrical and computer engineering we would love to help someone go to college that otherwise would never be able to afford it rebecca said we hope to provide them an opportunity to attend a world-class institution and to experience everything that is special about texas a&m rebecca graduated from texas a&m in 1994 with her degrees in electrical and computer engineering she and abhi have two children; shreya who is 13 and ryan who just turned 11 rebecca said they were given texas a&m pacifiers the day they were born and although rebecca and abhi will undoubtedly support them regardless of where they attend college they hope it will be texas a&m
2088,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
2089,"seven years ago andrew schaper '07 started his own company schaper energy consulting to bridge contrasting engineering disciplines and enhance his depth of knowledge in the energy space schaper is participating in the doctor of engineering program offered by the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university ""when i entered the doctoral program the impetus was to expand my narrow focus in petroleum engineering to become more well-versed across the energy landscape "" said schaper ""my objective with the program is to build deep cross-functional energy domain expertise and be an advocate for solutions to societys most pressing energy problems"" his diverse background spans multiple engineering disciplines and reflects a varied career in energy and finance he graduated with an electrical engineering undergraduate degree and obtained a master's degree in petroleum engineering shortly after combining his knowledge of the oil and gas industry with finance knowledge obtained through receiving a master of business administration program at the university of texas at austin he worked as a vice president within the citigroup energy investment banking division and later as the head of acquisitions and divestitures origination at bank of america merrill lynch schapers consulting company founded in 2014 provides engineering and advisory services to energy projects with practice areas focused on oil and gas electric power sustainable energy (nuclear and renewables) and carbon strategies when i left the financial services industry i decided to approach the consulting business differently with a focus on long-term partnerships and building an incredible team said schaper after starting out i focused exclusively in oil and gas i had a desire to establish a permanent organization that could address all relevant facets of energy including those in the ‘sustainable space realizing the benefits in addressing sectors beyond the oil and gas industry schaper entered the multidisciplinary engineering departments doctor of engineering program with the expectation of building new knowledge bases in nuclear and renewable technology the degree is flexible and prepares students for industry leadership and advances their knowledge in emerging technologies the program has allowed schaper to take several nuclear engineering classes as well as numerous graduate interdisciplinary engineering courses offered through the texas a&m energy institutes graduate certificate in energy program ""the reason i wanted to study nuclear engineering as a core piece of this degree is that i believe it serves a vital role in our energy future "" he said ""it's going to require a long-term effort to reposition the way people think about nuclear energy but i want to play a role in advocating for this key technology and highlighting its advancements"" the curriculum of the doctor of engineering was developed to directly apply to a person's specific academic and occupational needs schaper noticed this overlap as course topics often align with client mandates ""i have projects in the consulting practice that were initiated through or bolstered directly by the courses that i'm taking "" said schaper ""the classes i am taking are directly applicable as i pursue these topics commercially and professionally"" furthermore he is participating in an internship with the international trade administration helping to enhance the export of united states civil nuclear technology a key piece of this work is providing support to the us civil nuclear industry in its quest to commercialize small modular reactor technology at home and abroad as he strives toward his doctoral degree he reflects on the opportunities and resources texas a&m makes available for its students ""i think texas a&m can be the leading energy university "" said schaper ""i am hopeful that the program i chose is the catalyst for a much more refined initiative addressing energy engineering there's no other institution positioned to do what texas a&m can which is to harness a desire to learn about energy and engineering"" in the future schaper would like to share his knowledge with students a long-term goal is to join the doctor of engineering program in a different capacity as a professor specializing in industry insights in various engineering and energy fields"
2090,its football gameday in aggieland but before kickoff and yells and war hymns theres the pre-game parade and the corps of cadets step-off cameras at the ready fans line the street next to kyle field to watch the 2 500+ cadets march in and hear the band play victoria arelle rodriguez a senior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university said that she knew this was the place for her from the first time she set foot on campus for her older sisters college tour now shes part of an atmosphere that draws over 100 000 former current and prospective students to campus each week throughout fall playing the mellophone in the fightin texas aggie band rodriguez describes her experience as one in a million i'm right behind the drum section she said and being able to feel the vibrations coming off of the drums mixed with all the noise and people watching you and taking photos it's such an amazing feeling that you don't experience anywhere else its just so cool to me i don't even know how to describe it though exhilarating being part of the band is also a large undertaking especially for a student studying engineering
2091,during football season rodriguez wakes up early six days of the week for practice with some saturdays being especially busy with the actual gameday events sunday the bands only off-day is reserved for catching up on homework and personal care rodriguez explained that she juggles her life as a cadet and an engineer by taking each day as it comes because they are often filled to the brim with responsibilities whether its band practice homework or horse hygiene add the possibility of traveling for away games and long-term scheduling can be even more complicated i really take things a day at a time and just make sure i know what needs to get done rodriguez said engineering can be difficult but it really depends on how you choose to handle it doing band and engineering is definitely not the easiest path its all about learning how to maintain and balance everything in addition to being in the aggie band rodriguez is also in the parsons mounted cavalry she said working with horses has taught her how to communicate with somebody who cannot understand her and develop a mutual language between them further it has helped her learn to make quick decisions as a horse no matter how well trained still has a mind of its own every horse has a different personality rodriguez said we ride different horses all the time so you have to figure your horse out you have to learn how to communicate and communicate well to talk to the horse and other people in order to know how to take care of them rodriguez went on to say that her time in the band and cavalry has helped her grow professionally and given her key takeaways that she has applied to her time in engineering lessons such as time management communication and how to interact on a team have all transferred over into her studies but perhaps the one thing that has stood out to her most is the understanding that university and career is not a one-person show you cannot go through everything alone she said you need people to help you in order to succeed and learn ive had my ups and downs but ive had my buddies there for me having relationships you can rely on makes your world so much easier
2092,a team in the department of biomedical engineering co-led by associate professor dr akhilesh gaharwar and assistant professor dr abhishek jain has designed a 3d-bioprinted model of a blood vessel that mimics its state of health and disease thus paving the way for possible cardiovascular drug advancements with better precision vascular diseases such as aneurysms peripheral artery disease and clots inside blood vessels account for 31% of global deaths despite this clinical burden cardiovascular drug advancements have slowed over the past 20 years the decrease in cardiovascular therapeutic development is attributed to the lack of efficiency in converting possible treatments into approved methods specifically due to the discrepancy between studies that take place outside the body compared to inside the team's research at texas a&m university aims to remodel current methodologies to minimize this gap and improve the translatability of these techniques by directing 3d bioprinting toward vascular medicine gaharwar is a biomaterials expert and has developed novel bioinks that offer unprecedented biocompatibility and control of mechanical properties needed to print blood vessels whereas jains expertise lies in creating biomimetic models of vascular and hematological diseases this interdisciplinary and collaborative project was recently published in the journal advanced healthcare materials bioprinting in 3d is an advanced manufacturing technique capable of producing unique tissue-shaped constructs in a layer-by-layer fashion with embedded cells making the arrangement more likely to mirror the native multicellular makeup of vascular structures a range of hydrogel bioinks was introduced to design these structures; however there is a limitation in available bioinks that can mimic the vascular composition of native tissues current bioinks lack high printability and are unable to deposit a high density of living cells into complex 3d architectures making them less effective
2093,to overcome these shortcomings gaharwar and jain developed a new nanoengineered bioink to print 3d anatomically accurate multicellular blood vessels their approach offers improved real-time resolution for both macro-structure and tissue-level micro-structure something that currently is not possible with available bioinks a remarkably unique characteristic of this nanoengineered bioink is that regardless of cell density it demonstrates a high printability and ability to protect encapsulated cells against high shear forces in the bioprinting process gaharwar said remarkably 3d-bioprinted cells maintain a healthy phenotype and remain viable for nearly one month postfabrication leveraging these unique properties the nanoengineered bioink is printed into 3d cylindrical blood vessels consisting of living co-cultures of endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells which provides researchers the opportunity to model vascular function and disease impact this 3d-bioprinted vessel provides a potential tool to understand vascular disease pathophysiology and assess therapeutics toxins or other chemicals in preclinical trials other project collaborators include dr john cooke from the houston methodist research institute and dr javier jo from the university of oklahoma this research is funded through grants from the national institutes of health the national science foundation and the texas a&m presidents excellence fund
2094,the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded over $4 million through the nuclear energy university program (neup) to support university-led nuclear energy research and development projects an additional estimated $250 000 was awarded as part of a corresponding neup infrastructure grant designed to improve research reactors as well as provide important safety performance and student education-related upgrades a total of six new grants have been distributed to nuclear engineering faculty members drs karim ahmed karen kirkland thien nguyen jean ragusa and lin shao; and mechanical engineering faculty member dr nk anand each proposal was subjected to a rigorous two-part independent peer review process to eliminate bias and ensure that those funded are based on technical merit our grants cover a wide range of topics including multiscale modeling experimental investigation and data science of fuel and system performance said dr michael nastasi nuclear engineering department head these projects truly reflect the breadth and comprehensive capability of the department funded projects: multiscale modeling and experiments for investigating high burnup light water reactor fuel rod behavior under normal and transient conditions principal investigator: ahmed experimental investigations of high-temperature gas-cooled reactor fission product transport in separate-effect test facilities under prototypical conditions for depressurization and water-ingress accidents principal investigator: anand risk-informed consequence-driven physical protection system optimization for microreactor sites principal investigator: kirkland high-resolution measurements and advanced modeling for design optimization of advanced small modular reactor steam generators principal investigator: nguyen high-fidelity data science-informed pebble-bed reactor simulation principal investigator: ragusa infrastructure upgrades to the texas a&m accelerator laboratory principal investigator: shao
2095,dr zheng oneill associate professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was recently named a fellow of two international societies the american society of heating refrigerating and air-conditioning engineers (ashrae) and the international building performance simulation association (ibpsa) oneills research interests include heating ventilation air conditioning and refrigeration (hvacr) systems building energy efficiency intelligent building controls and optimization grid-interactive efficient buildings heat pump technologies and uncertainty quantification in energy systems ashrae is focused on creating more resilient efficient and smart building systems through education and research ashrae prioritizes safety and sustainability in the built environment ashrae fellow is a membership grade that recognizes members who have attained distinction and made substantial contributions in hvacr and the built environment such as education research engineering design and consultation publications presentations and mentoring ibpsa centers around applying simulation technology to designing buildings in an effort to enhance performance and efficiency ibpsa uses building performance simulators to refine the design of new buildings and maintain existing structures the grade of ibpsa fellow is awarded to members who have attained distinction in the field of building performance simulation (or in the allied arts or sciences) by either the teaching of major courses in said arts and sciences or by way of research simulation code development original work or the application of building simulation on projects of a significant scope the individual must have been active in the field for at least 10 years i am honored at being an ashrae fellow and an ibpsa fellow for my contributions in the area of building energy simulations and intelligent building controls said oneill i am thrilled to continue my work to promote sustainability and resilience in the built environment
2096,slyck and wayne pecena have established the slyck '91 and wayne '75 pecena endowed engineering technology scholarship to support full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in engineering technology from texas a&m university they have also established the slyck '91 and wayne '75 pecena endowed engineering technology capstone fund to support the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution eset capstone project when deciding where to give back the pecenas decided that giving to texas a&m was the right fit for them texas a&m has been so good to both of us wayne said when planning our estate we were unsure about what would happen when were both gone and so we began our relationship with the texas a&m foundation wayne and slyck both graduated from texas a&m and ultimately wanted to give back to their alma mater i got my masters degree in industrial technology and wanted to support that program and its students wayne said the foundation reached out about a scholarship and i wanted to be able to fill those needs and help students with financial difficulties who might have a lower grade point average by creating both a scholarship and capstone fund the pecenas are able to support multiple parts of the college of engineering i have a good friend who is a major proponent of the capstone program and his enthusiasm got me interested in supporting the program myself wayne said this program is something so unique to texas a&m and worthy of some financial support also included in their planned gift is the slyck '91 and wayne '75 pecena scalc (stevenson center) endowment for the benefit of the stevenson center and college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences at texas a&m wayne graduated from texas a&m in 1976 with his bachelor's degree in management and again in 1982 with his masters in industrial technology likewise slyck graduated from texas a&m in 1991 with her bachelors degree in management wayne is the associate director information technology educational broadcast services at kamu tv/fm at texas a&m and currently serves as president of the society of broadcast engineers
2097,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah simonds assistant director of development
2098,dr david eckman has joined the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university as an assistant professor beginning aug 1 eckman comes from northwestern university where he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow under the supervision of drs matthew plumlee and barry nelson i am thrilled to join the department and am very grateful for the warm aggie welcome i've received from everyone i'm eager to connect more with the faculty staff and students and explore all that's happening in the department eckman said the large size and wide breadth of research activities present a lot of opportunities to make an immediate impact and im excited to discover my place in the department eckman received his bachelors degree in industrial engineering from the university of pittsburgh while doing three co-op rotations in supply chain logistics at heinz north america he received his masters and doctoral degrees in operations research from cornell university his research interests include how stochastic simulation models are used for decision making when encountered with uncertainty much of this research includes the design and analysis of algorithms for optimization via simulation he is currently investigating how information about the workings of a simulation model can be understood by an algorithm to improve the statistical inferences they provide eckman said he decided to pursue industrial engineering as an undergraduate because he was interested in using math to solve real-world problems and further investigate how computers and statistics can be used together to analyze and optimize complex systems throughout his time as a doctoral student and as a postdoctoral researcher eckman said he has found teaching conducting research and engaging with the simulation research community to be very rewarding we are very excited to have dr eckman join our team said dr lewis ntaimo industrial and systems engineering department head with the growing impact industrial and systems engineering has in our changing society we are very fortunate to have a faculty member with his expertise and accomplishments he will have a great impact on our new bachelor of science in data engineering
2099,"dr daniel a jiménez a professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been inducted into the international symposium on computer architecture (isca) hall of fame for publishing eight papers in the conference this year only nine members of the isca community were given the distinction isca is the premier forum for new ideas and research results in computer architecture ""isca is our top conference and very competitive he said many doctoral students graduate without publishing in isca like me when i was in grad school i'm happy to have had many graduate student co-authors on these isca papers including eight students from texas a&m jiménez has been a texas a&m faculty member since 2013 he received his doctorate in computer sciences from the university of texas at austin and his masters in computer science and bachelors degree in computer science and systems design from the university of texas at san antonio listed below are three papers that he has recently published with several other texas a&m researchers: exploring predictive replacement policies for instruction cache and branch target buffer isca 2018 co-authored with samira mirbagher-ajorpaz elba garza and sangam jindal this paper gives a novel policy that can manage replacement for both the instruction cache and branch target buffer using a predictor specially designed to track the behavior of these structures perceptron-based prefetch filtering isca 2019 co-authored with eshan bhatia gino chacon seth pugsley elvira teran and paul v gratz this paper shows how to use a machine-learning technique to improve the accuracy of data cache prefetchers improving processor performance bit-level perceptron prediction for indirect branches isca 2019 co-authored with elba garza samira mirbagher-ajorpaz and tahsin ahmad khan this paper shows how to use a machine-learning technique to develop a novel indirect branch predictor whose accuracy exceeds the previous state-of-the-art jiménezs research applies machine learning to microarchitecture he is an institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) fellow association for computing machinery (acm) distinguished scientist and national science foundation faculty early career development award winner he was inducted into the acm/ieee international symposium on microarchitecture hall of fame in 2017 and the ieee international symposium on high performance computer architecture (hpca) hall of fame in 2015 his paper on branch prediction with perceptron learning was awarded the hpca test of time award in 2019"
2100,with recent forays into space travel by business moguls like jeff bezos and richard branson visiting the edge of space has never been more within the grasp of commercial travel however at these altitudes passengers experience weightlessness or more generally altered gravity that can affect the bodys normal physiology in a study texas a&m university researchers have used a simulation-based approach to accurately predict the effects of altered gravity on an individual-by-individual basis their approach precludes the need for simultaneously testing hundreds of parameters for estimating the cardiovascular state of an individual; rather it focuses on a handful of significant factors increasing accuracy and saving time understanding human physiological responses in altered gravity environments becomes absolutely necessary if we want to push toward new frontiers in space travel said dr ana diaz-artiles assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering but no two people are alike and we need to develop tools to individualize physiological predictions quickly and precisely our study addresses that gap the researchers have reported the results of their study in the journal of applied physiology which was originally published online in april 2021 ahead of final publication in print in june 2021 over the millions of years of life on our planet gravity has been a silent but key influencer on the physiological processes of all living things thus in altered gravity there is a consequent toll on their physiology for example studies have shown that weightlessness makes watering plants difficult causing waterlogging and preventing growth in humans microgravity can also have adverse effects for example altered gravity causes bodily fluids to shift toward the head decreasing circulating blood volume and cardiac atrophy among other complications detailed investigations of cardiovascular behavior in microgravity have relied on ground-based experiments with human subjects by fastening them onto contraptions that mimic the experience of altered gravity however this approach is time-consuming and typically requires an incredibly large pool of subjects the researchers said an alternate approach is using computer simulations of the cardiovascular system to predict the physiological effects of altered-gravity environments however these simulations also have their achilles heel requiring hundreds of parameters for their prediction ranging from the elasticity of the arteries veins and chambers of the heart to the various resistances to blood flow in different parts of the body also there is a large variation in these parameters between different individuals making it harder to individualize the computer model to predict specific responses for each person to overcome these obstacles richard whittle doctoral student in diaz-artiles laboratory performed a mathematical technique called sensitivity analysis to sift out the parameters that the computational model was most responsive to so with the systematic and comprehensive sensitivity analysis the researchers found which parameters were most critical to predicting the short-term cardiovascular responses to various levels of altered gravity their analysis revealed that parameters related to the pressure of the large veins and the right heart that pumps blood to the lungs were the most dominant which came as a surprise since the left heart is the one that actually pumps blood to the aorta and the rest of the body and therefore was originally expected to have a greater influence on model outcomes turns out that the left heart is overdesigned it's pretty good at operating at a large range of physical exertions and it adapts well to greater demand for oxygenated blood if needed said whittle whereas the right heart is a systemic bottleneck so any kind of weakness in that bottleneck can propagate through the system the researchers noted that the analysis does not suggest that the other parameters are not important but an accurate estimation of significant parameters is critical to provide accurate predictions of individual responses in addition researchers found that the subset of parameters with the most influence in model outcomes remains similar across different gravity levels we have taken the next step in personalizing the prediction of cardiovascular responses in different altered gravity environments said diaz-artiles although our study has been focused on investigating the short-term adaptation of the cardiovascular system to altered-gravity environments we plan to extend our analysis to include long-term changes that occur in altered gravity conditions on an individual basis the research work was supported by the nasa human research program
2101,margaret black and kolby killion from the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university have been awarded the engineering graduate merit doctoral fellowship for 2021 a highly competitive fellowship given to a current student nominated by the students respective graduate department black is from peachtree city georgia and attended the georgia institute of technology for both her bachelors and masters degrees blacks research focus is in natural language processing i am so grateful for this honor to be chosen as a merit scholar black said i am excited to be part of the impressive research in the industrial and systems engineering department margarets accomplishments and work ethic make her a great recipient for the merit fellowship she has ample knowledge in her research and i am grateful she has joined my research team i am looking forward to continuing to work with her said dr mark lawley professor of industrial and systems engineering killion is from houston and attended the university of texas to study biomedical engineering his research interests include industrial engineering applications to the health care industry specifically human-factor considerations of medical devices usability and interpretability of machine-learning tools in health care contexts and optimal clinical team configurations in hospitals and medical practices i really appreciate being chosen for a merit fellowship and look forward to being a part of the amazing work done in texas a&m's industrial engineering department killion said i am so happy to welcome a talented and well-accomplished student like kolby to our research group said dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering i am confident that the impressive depth and breadth of health and human systems engineering in our department will foster his resolve motivation and commitment toward the achievement of excellence
2102,"""i don't want to say you're behind if you don't have an internship the summer after your sophomore year but it definitely puts you a level above "" said mitchell schroeder '21 schroeder now a senior certainly took it to another level to get his internship as an undergraduate student in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university when his offer fell through shortly after his last day of school his sophomore year he woke at 5 am the following morning to drive 8 1/2 hours to midland texas schroeder promptly knocked on every door in the petroleum industry he could find in the downtown area until one company said they'd take him but the internship would probably be unpaid ""i actually ended up being paid a little bit and it was an amazing experience but yeah getting that first internship and getting my feet wet was a pretty big challenge "" schroeder said ""you've just got to keep your head up and keep grinding it out"" schroeder hails from houston he paid a lot of attention to sports in high school until a head injury served as a wake-up call since he comes from a family of aggies he took his academics seriously after that saying he ""needed to kick it in gear if i wanted to go to texas a&m"""
2103,"his uncle's profession and enthusiasm for working in the petroleum industry led schroeder to focus on engineering going through the entry to a major process in the college of engineering allowed him to talk to students of all majors and hear their experiences on coursework internships and future job prospects schroeder soon realized he also had a passion for energy and put petroleum engineering as his number one choice ""the rest is history schroeder said i'm just as excited now as i was three years ago i'm oil and gas and i love it"" through the years schroeder learned the ropes from other students took the lead in managing student chapter events spoke in public and absorbed everything he could about his major as an upperclassman he's in the petroleum venture certificate program taking classes at the mays business school to satisfy his additional passion for finance and listening to guest speakers from industry share their wisdom he also gives back to other students through mentorship ""the cool thing about petroleum is how small it is and how tight-knit of a group "" schroeder said ""just to be around these people every day is truly amazing"" thinking back on that trip to midland now makes him laugh though schroeder has no regrets about his initiative he nearly ended up sleeping overnight in his car exhausted from the drive and the job hunting ""i always say i'm not the smartest person in the world but i'm stubborn "" schroeder said ""i'm not going give up and that's kind of what engineering is for the large part as long as you don't give up you'll do fine"""
2104,sheryl prestidge has established the sheryl and james h jim prestidge jr 80 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university jim graduated from texas a&m in 1980 with his degree in mechanical engineering during his time at texas a&m jim was a member of the corps of cadets squadron 7 and the fraternity phi gamma delta after graduation jim joined halliburton energy services as a field engineer in alice tx he later went on to earn his executive mba from the wharton school of the university of pennsylvania in 2004 jim passed away in march of last year and is survived by his wife sheryl and daughters kelsey and hailey jim loved texas a&m and through this scholarship sheryl is able to honor his legacy and help future generations of aggies sheryl made additional preferences that this scholarship be awarded to a student pursuing undergraduate degree in either mechanical engineering or petroleum engineering a student who is either junior or senior classification a texas resident or a student who demonstrates leadership skills participates in extracurricular activities and/or community service activities
2105,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly cocoran senior director of development
2106,mia mccallum has established the mark kawamura '79 memorial scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree from the college of engineering at texas a&m university mccallum created this endowment in honor of her late husband mark kawamura who graduated from texas a&m in 1979 with his degree in industrial engineering he wished to give back to the university that provided him with the education that helped shape his happy life and his successful career she said mccallum said kawamura's degree from texas a&m opened up the world for him he traveled both domestically and overseas for work and met wonderful people she said his life and career were enriched by his experiences friends and degree from texas a&m throughout his life he enjoyed helping others using his problem-solving and technical skills since kawamura grew up as a proud farmer in the rio grande valley mccallum established this gift as a means to encourage and nurture young talent from the valley to get their engineering degree and contribute their talents as practicing engineers marks hope was for others to experience the joy and diversity an engineering degree can provide mccallum is also an engineer and said she and kawamura were always so thankful for how much they enjoyed their careers the challenge of problem solving and the connections they built with their colleagues mark started his career at texas instruments made the transition to raytheon company then finished up his career at ibm she said he spent many years recruiting engineers from texas a&m and also mentored and coached many younger engineers through the years he took such pleasure in seeing others being fulfilled by their engineering careers it is mccallums wish to honor kawamura by helping others discover how great the texas a&m college of engineering is and to encourage more students to graduate with their degree in engineering mccallum has made additional preferences that this scholarship be awarded to students with a sophomore or higher classification and a student from the rio grande valley
2107,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact stephanie lampe director of development
2108,all over the world individuals have watched their lives completely change with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic amid the confines of stay-at-home orders and social distancing mental health has become a very prominent issue researchers in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university have discovered just how much of an effect the pandemic has had and continues to have on students across the university drawing from the results of the study they are hoping to identify and document the prevalence and severity of mental health challenges and to explore the effectiveness of a novel mobile health evaluation and lookout program (mhelp) the research team includes dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor in the industrial and systems engineering department and the director of applied cognitive ergonomics lab (ace-lab); alec smith doctoral student in industrial and systems engineering; dr sudeep hedge assistant research engineer in the ace-lab; and drs changwon son and xiaomei wang postdoctoral researchers in the ace-lab the team designed and developed mhelp to investigate the effectiveness of using a combination of wearable sensors mobile health and machine learning to monitor students' mental health as well as provide mental health support the mhelp program is built partly off of the teams research that focused on continual monitoring of veterans mental health i am passionate about and have been personally affected by college students mental health during the initial peaks of covid-19 we noticed a significant uptick of mental health issues among our students and were determined to investigate it further sasangohar said the team conducted interview surveys to understand the effect the pandemic has had on students mental health of the over 2 000 students surveyed the results show a noteworthy heightening of mental health issues the results show that 71% expressed heightened levels of stress and anxiety as a result of the covid-19 pandemic and 91% of respondents expressed fear and worry about their health and the health of their loved ones heightened levels of stress and anxiety can exacerbate many health and mental health problems including depression anxiety and personality disorders it can also lead to high blood pressure abnormal heart rhythms and stroke in addition the team has identified evidence to show the underutilization of mental health services as well as the prevalence of strategies that render ineffective against treating mental health these findings show the importance of supporting self-management of mental health our ongoing research addresses this need by developing self-management technologies that use non-invasive sensors mainly provided on smartphones or watches bundled with advanced machine-learning tools for detection of mental health anomalies and equipping users with a suite of therapeutic and self-assessment tools on mobile health platforms sasangohar said
2109,sarah courson is in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university striving toward her bachelors degree in architectural engineering her love of nature has inspired her to make an impact on the environment by creating eco-friendly structures the architectural engineering classes teach students to integrate passive elements into the design to reduce heating and electric costs while conserving natural resources said courson we spend a significant amount of time in buildings and they consume tons of resources as someone who enjoys hiking and the outdoors it is my goal to reduce the environmental footprint of buildings an up-and-coming field of study courson delves into the intricacies of architectural engineering and how she plans to apply this knowledge to her future career q: why did you choose texas a&m a: i was originally drawn to texas a&m because of the aggie traditions and the reputation of the engineering department as i learned more about the school i appreciated all the resources available on campus and the atmosphere of the student body when i was making my college decision i knew texas a&m was the place for me q: why architectural engineering and what have you learned about this field a: i originally chose architectural engineering because i like how the curriculum combines structural engineering with architecture i have learned to design and analyze structural systems that are integrated with the building as a whole the classes that i have taken focus on sustainable building design and resiliency specifically i have learned about hvac design and lighting systems q: the bachelor of science in architectural engineering focuses on creating lasting environmentally-friendly structures why is this important to you a: i care about protecting the natural environment our buildings incorporate environmentally sustainable design strategies into the spaces we occupy my goal is to make a lasting impact by designing buildings that are sustainable and can endure the test of time architectural engineering embodies these goals by teaching us to design efficient building systems q: are there any faculty members that have been influential throughout your time in architectural engineering a: dr morad atif and filza walters have been extremely influential in my education they have helped me as well as many other students in the search for internships and full-time employment after graduation these professors take the time to get to know their students on a personal level q: what are your career goals a: after finishing my bachelors degree i plan to pursue a master's in structural engineering after graduation i want to work for a structural engineering firm my goal is to work on large-scale projects that incorporate building safety sustainability and resiliency into the design q: how will you apply your degree to your occupation a: i have learned about sustainable design rating systems such as leadership in energy and environmental design that have inspired me to incorporate significant sustainability goals into my projects i hope to work with a team that will proactively incorporate new technologies into the buildings we design
2110,with the support of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) office of commercialization and entrepreneurship texas a&m university researcher dr choongho yu professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and entrepreneurial partner ranga vasudevan have successfully launched a lithium-based battery technology startup called flexodes high-energy density and low cost are the two most important aspects currently lacking in lithium battery-operated devices including present-day electric vehicle batteries we hope to fill that technological need said yu further recognizing the merit of commercializing the innovation in high-performance lithium batteries the startup has received a highly competitive small business innovation research grant from the air force in the short term our focus is on refining and improving the technology for use in mobile devices in the private and defense sectors while we continue down our path to being a premier technology for electric vehicles and other markets said vasudevan having said that flexodes is entirely focused on furthering battery technology beyond lithium-ion to the next generation the basis of the commercial venture is research from yus laboratory on lithium-sulfur batteries in particular yus team has patented the design of a 3d trench-wall carbon nanotube framework for the batterys electrodes these high-performing electrodes dramatically increase the batterys ability to store charge the electrodes also discharge very easily generating large quantities of current to power up devices rapidly the experts also added that batteries built with their technology are more resistant to the formation of finger-like deposits called dendrites that cause most commercially available lithium-based batteries to overheat and rupture to bring the commercial enterprise into vision yu and vasudevan credit the guidance from the office of commercialization and entrepreneurships venture creation team which provides researchers relevant training on turning research discoveries into businesses and products through start-up formation and strategies to advance the commercialization the office also connects researchers to private sector entities to facilitate licensing and investment opportunities the true impact of the technology is only realized when it reaches the commercialization partner who is able to sell the product globally to the end customer said dr saurabh biswas executive director for commercialization and entrepreneurship at tees our office provides support during the early stages of research and development to enable continued product development and commercialization he added that the commercialization and entrepreneurship office supports all innovators across texas a&m engineering through its three groups: licensing and intellectual property management venture creation and innovation programs and strategic projects the commercialization and entrepreneurship team also provides support across the total lifecycle of the innovation from its inception to intellectual property filing prosecution process licensing venture creation and finally working with external partners to enable commercialization of the technology
2111,"petroleum engineering faculty members at texas a&m university and texas a&m university at qatar were named international and regional award recipients by the society of petroleum engineers (spe) awardees included four faculty members from the harold vance department of petroleum engineering and one from the texas a&m university at qatar dr george moridis professor and robert l whiting chair in petroleum engineering received honorary membership the highest honor given by the spe honorary members demonstrate distinguished scientific or engineering achievements within the scientific or engineering scope of spe i am honored and humbled by this award which would not have been possible without the support and working environment of the faculty staff and students of the petroleum engineering department of texas a&m university said moridis dr oliver mullins adjunct professor was awarded the anthony f lucas gold medal for his distinguished achievement in identifying and developing new technology and concepts the award comes with an automatic distinguished membership mullins a science advisor and schlumberger fellow is the originator of reservoir fluid geodynamics a new technical discipline he will introduce to students this fall in the department ""i am very grateful for the opportunities provided to me by schlumberger and for the recognition from the spe "" said mullins ""i have benefitted enormously working closely with so many skilled energetic experts across this great industry"""
2112,"dr jc cunha professor of engineering practice received the degolyer distinguished service medal an international award highlighting exemplary service to the spe and the petroleum industry he also received automatic distinguished membership as part of the award ""i am honored to receive these two awards and to be on the same shortlist as some of the greatest professionals in our industry and academia "" said cunha ""some years ago i had the privilege of serving spe as a distinguished lecturer and as a member of the board of directors but receiving these awards is certainly one of the most important moments of my professional career"" dr eduardo gildin class of 1975 dvg developmental professor received distinguished membership for his achievements in the petroleum industry and the academic community i am honored to be recognized by my peers and be part of this selected group of giants in our field "" said gildin ""it is not only a milestone in my career but also evidence that solidifies texas a&m as a premier institution in petroleum engineering dr albertus retnanto interim program chair and professor of practice at qatar received the middle east & north africa region distinguished achievement for petroleum engineering faculty this regional award recognizes his exemplary work in education retnanto will officially become the program chair at qatar on sept 1 ""i am truly honored to receive this award and grateful to my department at texas a&m and all my students who always support me "" said retnanto ""these award winners are a verification of the hard work and energy our outstanding faculty demonstrate year in and year out "" said dr jeff spath head of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering ""im proud of this years winners and congratulate them on their continued success"" international and membership award recipients are formally recognized during the spe annual technical meeting and conference in dubai united arab emirates in september 2021"
2113,dr tracy hammond and pauline wade both faculty members in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university were recently presented with national awards from the american society for engineering education hammond director of the institute for engineering education and innovation chair of the engineering education faculty and director of the sketch recognition lab received the chester f carlson award in recognition of her work as an educator the national award is presented annually to an individual innovator in engineering education who by motivation and ability to extend beyond the accepted tradition has made a significant contribution to the profession it is named after carlson who invented xerography which is the process of dry copying using electrostatic charges to transfer printing halftones to paper through her work hammond continues to make a significant contribution to engineering education and further development at texas a&m her many goals include developing new technologies to improve engineering education bridging the gender and diversity gaps in engineering and industries and creating inclusive classrooms by helping faculty to engage with students hammonds work in engineering education research has positively impacted learning across k-12 and is part of the engineering curricula at georgia tech texas state university san jose state university letourneau university texas a&m and several high schools she has received over $13 million in research funding including 28 engineering education research grants with 13 of them from national science foundation engineering education directorates she has been named a 2020 association for computing machinery distinguished member the 2020 recipient of the texas a&m engineering experiment station faculty fellows award and the 2011-12 recipient of the charles h barclay jr 45 faculty fellow award wade associate professor of practice received the 2021 isadore t davis award for excellence in collaboration of engineering education and industry this award which is given annually to an outstanding engineering educator celebrates the spirit and leadership of individuals who make a mark in the collaborative efforts of engineering with industry she is also the faculty lead for the department's industry capstone program which allows companies to sponsor and mentor a senior design project to allow students to benefit from the experience of working with an industry practitioner wade has more than 25 years of information technology (it) industry experience and her contributions to engineering education and bridging the industry-academia gap are highly remarkable she makes sure to help her graduates be successful in industry through the engagement of industry practitioners to team-teach courses and participation in course content and curriculum improvement the students wade has mentored on the knowledge skills and attitude needed to succeed in industry achieved nearly a 100% employability rate her contributions included the development of 28 capability building programs over 14 years helping to prepare over 3 000 undergraduates for industry and the creation and funding of a technology business incubator which has incubated over 60 it start-ups with some involving alumni wade has also raised funds and in-kind donations to support infrastructure and educational improvement programs established a continuing education program consisting of over 30 courses for it professionals and designed and deployed new employee training programs for 400 employees of three multinational it companies co-taught by faculty and industry professionals
2114,what big idea can you create with cardboard and lego pieces in the hands of a group of high school students you might find the answer to reducing space debris or a dome to filter pollution texas a&m universitys spark! pk-12 engineering education program offered a free five-day virtual camp this summer to high school students in the 9th through 12th grades the whats the big idea camp attracted students from multiple areas around texas including corpus christi el paso and los fresnos interested in learning engineering concepts fourteen students and six camp mentors gathered virtually to hash out various engineering ideas and concepts each day the students were exposed to various components of engineering such as the design process problem justification brainstorming and research tools each student was provided a maker kit of supplies worth about $100 including cardstock wheels and gears lego sets chenille stems glue and tape all things they could use to do low-fidelity prototyping of their ideas using the maker kit and an engineering journal provided by the camp students would start the day with a brain starter pam simmons-brooks the spark! program manager gave the students a prompt and the task to invent something within 15 minutes such as a wearable medical device when the time was up the students would then share their ideas what the invention would do and the thoughts behind it my favorite part of the camp was the brain starters said paulina lopez it was fun to come up with ideas and bring them to life on the first day the students formed teams of three to five to work together to solve an engineering goal or problem the students were challenged with not only coming up with an idea but figuring out how to solve a problem looking at the research already done then bringing that information together in a presentation to be given at the end of the week to a panel of experts the camp mentors who are current and former students in the texas a&m engineering academies assisted the campers in working out their invention ideas through zoom breakout rooms this camp felt like future preparation said michelle alcala i loved how while we had assistance we also had independence in our work its almost as if we were already in the field in addition to the daily schedule an extra camp was offered to the students monday through wednesday evenings during that time the students were able to participate in a 4d printing workshop presented by dr jeeeun kim assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering and director of the human computer interaction engineering and design lab in the 4d workshop the students were introduced to various 4d printing techniques and expected to fabricate real-world artifacts (eg wearables) with the provided material and information workshop kits were shipped to the participants ahead of the camp which included various samples of previously printed 3d shape memory polymer (smp) fabric thread for sewing printed circuit boards to control heating of conductive thread smp printed in the form of weavable looms to make artifacts 3d-printed polyvinyl alcohol weaving guides that could be stuck to the smp looms and miscellaneous craft material the final day of camp featured the team presentations each team was given four minutes to pitch their big idea to a panel of engineering experts the team members all participated virtually in presenting the pitch explaining their concept pitches included a description of the goal or problem any constraints their methods to creating the prototype projected costs for the project as well as the results and feasibility of their idea the students big ideas included how can we reduce space debris and providing an affordable and usable prosthetic each presentation required presentation slides a digital poster quad chart slide and the project prototype the expert panel consisting of rodney boehm director of texas a&m engineering entrepreneurship and associate professor of practice; randy brooks associate professor of practice at the texas a&m engineering academy at blinn college-brenham; and david mccarroll associate professor of practice for the texas a&m-concho engineering academy at midland college then asked the teams various questions about their design and process this gave the students the ability to defend their idea including how the project is an improvement or advancement over what is currently available and the applications and impact such an idea could have my favorite part of camp was the fact that we were encouraged to think freely and explore our creativity said manuela gracia this program from the start gave us beneficial insight on what we are to expect from the future from the process of coming up with something to how we are to present it
2115,"dr karan watson regents professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2021 american society for engineering education (asee) lifetime achievement award in engineering education watson was recognized for her pioneering leadership and sustained contributions to education in the fields of engineering and engineering technology this prestigious award recognizes individuals with significant contributions in teaching education research administration or educational programs professional service or any combination thereof ""while i can mention many mentors who have helped me throughout my career and even more students who have taught me as much or more than i taught them i especially want to recognize carl erdman who introduced me to engineering education as an important research area for engineering thank you to all who were involved in the nomination and to all my colleagues at texas a&m university and around the world said watson in the past watson was the recipient of the following awards: institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) fellow asee fellow us presidents award for mentoring minorities and women in science and technology the american association for the advancement of science mentoring award ieee international undergraduate teaching award and the texas a&m university college of engineering crawford teaching award watson holds a phd from texas tech university her research interests include engineering education organizational change and computer systems dr tracy hammond director of the institute for engineering education and innovation says ‘karan watsons accomplishments in teaching and mentoring students and faculty her academic leadership professional service and her contributions to engineering education are outstanding she has served as a mentor to myself and countless others always driving us to become better educators and citizens of the world"
2116,dr dinakar sagapuram from the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university and dr osman el-atwani and dr yongqiang wang from the materials science at radiation and dynamics extremes group at los alamos national laboratory (lanl) are using new metal manufacturing techniques to create stronger materials that have a higher capacity to withstand radiation from nuclear reactors most of the engineering metals used today are polycrystalline which means that they are made up of many individual crystals or grains packed together one type is nanocrystalline metals which have a grain size less than 100 nanometers and are exceptionally strong they recently became a focus of interest in the nuclear materials community after researchers found that these fine-grained metals have a high irradiation tolerance the downside of relying on nanocrystalline metals is the lack of suitable manufacturing processes that produce them in large volumes and thin sheet metal forms which is where many important applications lie rolling is a well-established method for manufacturing thin metal sheets the rolling process involves several steps in which the material is heated and manipulated during which the grain sizes increase as a result of these processes it is extremely difficult to refine the grain size to anything smaller than a micron during the rolling process the process the team has been developing focuses on producing thin metal sheets while maintaining a small grain size the process involves ‘peeling a thin continuous metal strip directly from a solid metal feedstock surface using a knife edge wherein we exploit the extreme plastic deformation and heat that is generated as part of the process to break down the grain size to sub-micron levels sagapuram said another unique feature of the process is that it can produce a sheet of metal in a single step the resulting sheet comes in forms and sizes that are easy to use for a variety of structural applications this particular collaboration is significant because it demonstrates a strong application for a new technology in terms of end users we have been so far thinking about primarily the automotive and electric power industries where a strong need exists for high-strength sheet materials sagapuram said but during our discussions with lanl it has become clear that they also have a great potential to improve the performance of nuclear reactors lanls expertise in irradiation materials science and irradiation capabilities and characterizations could help evaluate and expand potential applications of these materials in nuclear reactor environments wang said sagapuram said since there are several applications for this new manufacturing process it would positively affect the sheet metal manufacturing industry by providing a less energy-intensive more efficient process than rolling
2117,texas a&m universitys dr robin murphy professor in the department of computer science and engineering has responded to 30 natural and man-made disasters where robotics were used for the first time in disaster response including the world trade center site after the sept 11 terrorist attacks she recently returned from surfside florida where the 12-story champlain towers south condominium building partially collapsed in june murphy explains how rescue personnel used robotics to search through the rubble pile of one of the deadliest structural collapses in us history q: how were drones and robots used to search for victims inspect the damage and document evidence what can you tell us about the different kinds of robots used and the tasks they performed a: the majority of robots at surfside and other disasters are aerial vehicles or drones these drones are generally small and inexpensive between $1 000 and $4 000 you can buy them on amazon the more expensive ones carry a small thermal imager and can be outfitted with spotlights and two-way audio we saw five major uses for the drones during the response phase: tactical life-saving operations such as gaining situation awareness of the amount of damage points of access danger to the responders searching for victims spotting fires and helping get water to the right spots and general overwatch of the responders; strategic operations and planning such as mapping; structural forensic evidence collection which was handled by the national institute of standards and technology construction safety team with miami-dade fire rescue (mdfr) helping and florida state university (fsu) and myself trained as a backup; public information for the families and the press that showed the scope of the disaster without violating privacy and respect for the missing; and general assistance such as flying inside any condos wherever possible to look for pets and to help families document what was in their apartments for pet lovers and our vet school responders please note that a lot of effort by mdfr and fsu was put into looking for pets especially after a cat was seen on a balcony there were several very challenging drone flights indoors by both mdfr and fsu dodging rubble but no sign of pets eventually as a last-ditch effort responders got into a man lift and put out an animal trap on the balcony but to no avail q: how long were you in surfside and what was your role in assisting first responders at the site of the building collapse a: i was in surfside for eight days assisting fsus disaster incident response team an official state of florida asset assigned to florida task force 1 (fl-tf1) fl-tf1 is operating under the direction of the miami-dade fire rescue department the fsu team led by david merrick was called in immediately to provide additional drones and mapping expertise for the response miami-dade fire rescue has been providing as needed and on demand tactical flying flying 24/7 from right after the collapse starting in the dark using thermal imagery and onboard spotlights fsu has been providing the imagery that is used as the base maps for responders as well as for planning drone mapping is still fairly new at a response because it requires specialized software for collecting and post-processing drone imagery at the start of each shift the responders working in the rubble download the latest map from the drones to their mobile devices so that they have the most accurate information for searching and dropping pins during the search essentially they are the google earth of the response and recovery fsu also provides elevation maps and general maps three to seven times during the day depending on what incident command needs they also flew and created a 3d reconstruction of the rubble and standing portion of the building the afternoon before it was demolished while my group pioneered the use of drones for disasters with the first use at hurricane katrina (2005) fsu is the world leader in the use of drones for disasters and has developed procedures and training for the state of florida and the federal emergency management agency that we are incorporating into procedures for the state of texas my lab and my colleagues camille peres (school of public health) and ranjana mehta (wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering) work with merricks group through the center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) which used to be a texas a&m engineering experiment station center but is now a nonprofit fsu came and assisted us with hurricane harvey and we assisted them with hurricanes irma and michael plus we jointly flew for the kilauea volcanic eruption we have had multiple national science foundation (nsf) grants together on the use of drones human-robot interaction and computer vision/machine learning for disasters my role at surfside was minor i was there to support fsu with the drones and while i got to fly two missions i was mostly there to help them fly to document the rubble in ways that can help quantify what ground and aerial robots need to do in the future i was also able to make connections i reached out and connected the nist construction safety team which is conducting the forensic investigation with the drone teams which gave nist greater capabilities for collecting forensic evidence i led development of an nsf rapid grant for fsu texas a&m and carnegie mellon to collect and analyze the robot data
2118,q: what ground robots were used what are the advantages of using ground robots at building collapses to augment the work of human responders are there any challenges in using robots in a rubble environment a: ground robots were not used extensively at surfside and that seems typical in general i was able to document only one mission and heard of a second mission but there may have been more in contrast fsu flew 169 missions from june 25-july 7 (the response ended on july 7 and the recovery phase began) and mdfr probably flew that many as well it is difficult to get information since the recovery is still active there are many agencies involved and a lot of data has to be approved for release; well know more in a few months in both missions they were bomb squad robots about the height of a motorcycle but twice as wide their only advantage is being able to go into standing but unsafe portions of a building which reduces the risk to the responders and saves time since they dont have to shore it up to make it safe
2119,some small throwable robots first look were shipped down but not used that i know of the idea there is that you can throw them up and into the upper stories of a building or over a wall or in this case a mound of rubble they were from one of the teams that i worked with at the world trade center when crasar was just started the collapse did not appear to use any of the much smaller tethered robots robots the size and shape of a snake or ones that look like a miniature lunch-box sized tank that we have used at 9/11 and the berkman plaza collapse and that have been used at the hackensack parking garage collapse and the mexico city earthquake the advantage of those robots is that they can go into tiny voids some as small as three to six inches wide and usually holes less than 15 feet wide far too small for a person or dog and they often can go further into the rubble than a borescope or camera on a wand which may get only a few feet indeed robots at the world trade center were going about 60 feet into the rubble many of the robots can still function in high heat which means they can crawl through areas still on fire to get to an area where there might be a survivor plus they often have two-way audio which means if a survivor is found responders can talk to them we had a wonderful practice session with the medical members of texas task force 1 a few years ago besides helping search for survivors the robots in the rubble give the structural specialists an inside view of the rubble one described it as a pile of pick-up sticks: you dont want to just start moving debris because you dont know what may cause a secondary collapse and kill the people you were trying to rescue but with a robot looking from the inside experts can get a better real-time understanding of all those pick-up sticks and if moving something is causing something else to wobble on one hand it is wonderful that a robot can be used to do multiple things simultaneously to help with the response on the other designing user interfaces and work processes that dont cognitively overload the responders with too much information or at the wrong time is hard and that has been a major aspect of our nsf- and darpa-funded research unfortunately ground robots are rare because they are very specialized and since thankfully there are few building collapses there is no economic incentive whereas a $1 000 drone can be used for mapping ground robots for rubble run around $50 000 which is pretty pricey to maybe never use as we saw with the nuclear accidents specialized robots for a nuclear accident were old and no one was really familiar with using them so those robots didnt get used instead military bomb squad robots which get used every day by the army and fairly frequently by large police departments were the workhorses meanwhile drones are used by most metropolitan fire and law enforcement departments on a weekly basis so you go with what you know and trust accelerating adoption is something that weve been working on with jason moats over at the texas a&m engineering extension service q: what other building collapses have you responded to during your career a: in terms of building collapses i have been at four: the 9/11 world trade center (which was the first use of robots for response) the berkman plaza parking garage collapse in jacksonville florida (2007) cologne germany archives building collapse (2009) and the fukushima daiichi nuclear accident (2011) plus two mine disasters and one earthquake q: is there anything else youd like to share about your experience and observations in surfside a: two things actually one is that i wore my maroon texas a&m ball cap whenever hard hats were not needed lots of responders commented on it everyone knew the aggie color and logo the other is that surfside reminded me a great deal of the world trade center its the 20th anniversary so it has been on my mind but it more so reminded me of the berkman plaza collapse berkman plaza was also a pancake collapse and also had a portion still standing surfside and berkman plaza were about the same size about two acres actually affected in jacksonville one worker was killed a single father with small kids i will always remember how hard the jacksonville fire rescue department responders worked to try to search through the rubble and how much they cared and i saw that effort and caring at surfside as well but the loss of life at surfside was so much larger and that adds an even greater sense of tragedy and horror for the victims with even more admiration for the responders and a bit of pride to see that drones were helping them this article by caitlin clark originally appeared in texas a&m today
2120,texas a&m universitys team the 12th unmanned took first place in the overall dynamic event during the fourth and final competition milestone of the 2021 autodrive challenge held in ann arbor michigan june 5-14 the autodrive challenge began in 2018 after general motors (gm) and the society of automotive engineers international announced the inaugural competition where eight university teams from across the us and canada including texas a&m would compete to develop and demonstrate a fully autonomous passenger vehicle that can navigate an urban driving course by the end of three years but due to the covid-19 pandemic last years dynamic event was held virtually and postponed computer science and engineering doctoral students aaron kingery (team captain) shu-hao yeh di wang aaron angert and shuangyu xie traveled to michigan to participate in the year-four event yingtao jiang and suni komadam who are both masters students in the department served as virtual programming support from college station overall more than 200 texas a&m students from across the college of engineering have contributed to the project with more than 70 undergraduate and graduate students participating during its fourth and final year
2121,"""its just very rewarding after a lot of hard work to get back on schedule and actually meet the demands of the competition said kingery it was really satisfying to get there and have the vehicle actually perform im so thankful for all of the people who put in a lot of time and effort into this project through the years kingery said while texas a&m placed first in the competition the road to the final challenge was not an easy one after going through a series of major setbacks during the second year followed by a global pandemic that forced team members to work virtually the team overcame great obstacles and remained determined to win after year two we realized that the vehicle in its current setup really needed a shift in order to perform in the way that the whole team wanted it to kingery said so taking the lessons we learned from those first two years of the competition we adjusted course and redesigned the structure of the cars software which ultimately resulted in us doing the equivalent of four years of work in the last year this years competition was held at the university of michigans mcity which is a testing facility that simulates various driving situations that a vehicle might encounter while driving in a typical urban area during the event the teams had to face two dynamic challenges to test the cars full capabilities and their technical competence the first event challenged the cars ability to interact with and respond to stoplights a railway crossing street signs and pedestrians for the second challenge the cars gps sensors were turned off suddenly and the team had to demonstrate what they would do if the systems failed the 12th unmanned has already been selected to compete in the second autodrive challenge which is scheduled to begin this fall the students were led and supported by gm advisor matthew t boyle; project leader dr dezhen song from the department of computer science and engineering; dr jian tao from the department of electrical and computer engineering; and dr debiyoti banerjee dr swaroop darbha and dr swaminathan gopalswamy from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering"
2122,coastal events like rising sea levels the moon wobble and the tragic collapse of the champlain towers south condo in miami florida are bringing coastal structure safety to the forefront of the media the saline-rich and humid environment of the ocean and coast is hazardous to building materials causing them to corrode and break down over time as waters rise coastal structures are put at more risk against the aggressive elements of their oceanic home dr marcelo paredes assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university bridges the gap between ocean engineering and materials science with his research developing corrosion-resistant high entropy alloys and materials modeling until we find or discover new materials that are able to withstand these very aggressive environments structural engineers are going to have to continue to face the possibility of the types of accidents seen in miami he said in the meantime ocean engineers must push to find another solution to avoid these tragedies one possible solution is paredes corrosion-resistant high entropy alloys while not ready for commercialization these alloys offer a glimpse into the future of coastal engineering as they combine five elements in near equal parts to create a material with enhanced qualities the idea is that you have a super material in these high entropy alloys paredes said lightweight durable and resistant not only regarding mechanical loads but also against environmental stressors now we must make these materials affordable to manufacture by developing new materials and continuing to investigate the different factors that affect material performance researchers provide industry engineers with the tools they need to better understand the physical and mechanical processes building materials undergo and how it impacts the health of coastal structures as paredes explained when buildings are constructed their frames are often made out of reinforced concrete and steel this is usually achieved by embedding steel bars inside the concrete to give it extra strength however along the coast cracks and spalling (chipping and flaking) of the concrete over time eventually expose the steel to the saline and humid air causing it to corrode and rust this not only weakens it but also increases its volume which causes further cracking of the concrete and degradation of the overall structural integrity if left unfixed it could lead to a collapse this means two things for engineers involved with ensuring the ongoing safety of standing coastal and offshore structures: first regular evaluations (and the implementation of structural recommendations from the evaluations) are vital and second structures in critical condition need to be decommissioned ocean engineers paredes explained are vital in future safety and construction of coastal structures as they continue to research how materials are affected by the ocean and coastal environment this includes for example researching how metals are impacted by water what chemical reactions take place on the surface of materials exposed to salt water and how much oxide is released working in this field is exciting and at the same time its overwhelming he said the potential impact of our research directly influences peoples lives and safety it isnt just advancing research but its results that industry will use in policies structure construction and other future applications
2123,the texas a&m engineering experiment station will lead energy-sector stakeholders several national labs and universities in 10 states in a five-year $40 million agreement with the us department of the interiors bureau of safety and environmental enforcement and the us department of energy learn more about the ocean energy safety institute
2124,two students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university received best paper awards in the aerospace sciences group at the 2021 aerospace institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) aviation forum doctoral student anuj rekhy won the aiaa plasmadynamics and lasers student paper competition with his submission titled lidar requirements and approaches for transcontinental supersonic flight this paper aimed at understanding the feasibility of an airborne lidar system on a supersonic aircraft to provide current information of the atmospheric properties ahead and below that of the aircraft said rekhy he used 28 years of collected data from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration (noaa) to study temperature wind velocities and relative humidity according to rekhy these properties provide a design space for modeling and optimization of lidar onboard a supersonic aircraft which provides shape-morphing options to the aircraft aimed at reducing the supersonic boom to measure atmospheric properties his paper proposed a new detection technique where a cesium prism filter acts as a spectrometer as an aerospace engineer it was a bit of a risk going outside of my main field of study to do big data analysis on noaas millions of lines of stored data said rekhy i followed my instinct anyway and learned big data analysis and saw some amazing results that helped me create a design space for lidar specific to the united states currently rekhy is working on developing a novel optical diagnostic technique of thomson and rayleigh-brillouin scattering based on prism spectrometers utilizing resonant atomic vapors graduate student atulya kumar received the aiaa walter lempert best student paper award for his submission titled spatio-temporal studies on laser-induced plasma interactions with micro-particles using stereo-imaging this paper describes an experimental approach to analyzing aerosol and micro-particles using optical emissions from interactions with laser-induced plasmas said kumar kumar explained that after a plasma plume is created in the vicinity of a microparticle a stereoscopic imaging setup is employed to collect the resulting optical emissions this laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is supplemented by a simultaneous stereo high-speed imaging system to quantify the spatial and view-angle variation of optical emission and electron temperature and number density its very exciting to see that our research has captured the attention of the aerodynamic measurement technology technical committee of the aiaa said kumar it also motivates me to continue working in the present direction to understand laser-based combustion and ignition systems currently kumar is working on research to understand fuel droplet interaction with laser generated plasmas by looking at hydrogen diffusion in the plasma plume using h-alpha emissions
2125,while medical materials have come a long way toward treating conditions in the body sometimes theyre a bit too stiff to be a perfect fit research at texas a&m university aims to engineer new biomaterials that will provide effective treatment while also moving better with the body i think at the biggest picture what gets me excited is to build dynamic responsive materials and use those to make medical devices said dr taylor ware associate professor in the departments of biomedical engineering and materials science & engineering wares lab work ranges from new material development to device engineering one project is finding innovative material solutions to treating urinary incontinence a condition where there is uncontrolled leakage of urine treatment may include a surgical option where a mesh sling is implanted underneath the urethra to provide support this device has to balance between ensuring there is no leaking while the person is doing day-to-day activities but can release when they need to void however current slings are limited because the clinician has to find the perfect balance to make sure the patient doesn't suffer unintended consequences ware's research aims to develop a device similar to human tissue thats adaptive using a type of material called liquid crystal elastomers that react to heat the team's idea is to 3d print a material that would heat slightly and change shape when illuminated with infrared light allowing a person to void their bladder easily when the material cools it returns to its original shape allowing the person to remain continent in wares lab this project is led by doctoral student seelay tasmim the work is collaborative with dr philippe zimmern professor and clinical urologist at the ut southwestern medical center and dr mario romero-ortega at the university of houston the research is funded by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering at the national institutes of health ware said these types of biomaterials could open the door for a variety of applications these materials are artificial muscles and we see these materials as useful in a variety of biomedical applications that require mechanical motion ware said for example surgical or even wearable robots may benefit from these soft materials that may be able to replace traditional motors and actuators
2126,ritika bhattacharjee senior in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering has a rare perspective on life at texas a&m university as both a student blogger and student podcast host she views the world as an aspiring engineer and someone who actively seeks out stories in others ingenium the official student blog of the college of engineering at texas a&m launched in 2018 with the goal to give students a space to be themselves share their experiences and learn from one another ingenium was designed to inspire creativity and to provide a window into all the opportunities and resources that are available to students in the college of engineering while also building on the camaraderie for which aggies are known nobody can tell our story but us there is significance and power in the unique perspective we all bring to the table said bhattacharjee ingenium the blog written for engineering students by engineering students is a window into the soul of student life that allows us to connect over our shared experiences roughly a quarter of current aggies study engineering; that's a lot of people to reach and not everyone finds exactly what they want to do at their new student conferences ingenium is like the older sibling who's already in college that we all wish we had coming into texas a&m bhattacharjee went on to explain that the inherent authenticity that ingenium offers will allow the platform to remain relevant in the golden age of media where the written word is constantly adapting and reaching more people than ever before
2127,on ingenium students will find blog posts covering internships and study abroad experiences academic and entrepreneurial activities and the breadth of student engagement opportunities available to engineering students ingenium features blog posts from undergraduate students and graduate students and even covers topics relevant to prospective students looking to attend texas a&m engineering in the future former students also have a space on ingenium to reflect on lessons learned before and after graduation allowing current students a crystal ball view of their academic endeavors as they still walk the halls of the zachry engineering education complex one year later engineering soundbytes was launched the official podcast of the college of engineering it consists of three segments that encompass stories about all aspects of engineering including significant research professional growth opportunities and student life guests come from all walks of life at texas a&m faculty staff and current and former students in a way my college identity ‘grew up with the podcast because i started so early said bhattacharjee i didn't realize how amazing and special it was until i met with leanne our new student host for the first time she was asking me questions and i didn't even realize that in all of my time of having fun and planning episodes with this amazing group of people that i was actually learning and expanding my horizons i thoroughly enjoyed the creation of each episode but that single conversation was incredibly eye-opening as a reflective tool for realizing my own growth engineering soundbytes covers topics ranging from hurricane recovery research to what academic dishonesty means in a virtual classroom to what its like being an international student at texas a&m as second student co-host and electrical engineering senior drew dehaven explains its like listening to a mentor explain various aspects of the college of engineering
2128,guests include faculty members and graduate students presenting their cutting-edge research undergraduates showcasing their college experiences former students offering advice to aspiring engineers staff and administrators sharing college-wide opportunities and the founder of the reach project encouraging aggies to give back to their community during my time as a student host we got the chance to highlight a lot of different organizations and activities and talk about some key issues facing our student population today said bhattacharjee those key issues will evolve as our student population evolves and i know that one day i will be listening to an insightful vulnerable and empathetic conversation on the podcast about something that's critical to the student experience decades from today each of these platforms provides an exclusive look into the groundbreaking research new developments and student experiences found only in the texas a&m college of engineering i have learned that my voice has power that words have influence and that's something i'll take with me from classrooms to conference rooms to boardrooms and the world beyond bhattacharjee said
2129,elise shauf spent her childhood tinkering with fm radios and dissecting pens the daughter of two engineers her parents created an environment that fostered self-learning and discovery while other kids at school dreamed of living in castles and healing pets shauf fantasized of a world she could build herself now an undergraduate student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university and the recipient of a scholarship from the department of energy (doe) she is turning her dreams into a self-fulfilled prophecy ever since i was 5 years old i was content knowing that i was going to be an engineer she said i wanted to know things i wanted to understand how things worked and i wanted to determine how to make things function better a dedicated student shauf had several choices when applying to colleges however she always felt a desire to be part of the aggie family and specifically a member of the college of engineering i came here because of the stellar engineering curriculum and the aggie atmosphere she said the school spirit and core values that inspire and guide us as undergraduates turn into a powerful network of former students that offers recognition and opportunity to those who achieve a texas a&m degree she decided she wanted to be a nuclear engineer after hearing about it during a chemistry class in high school she was further influenced by her father who served aboard the uss virginia relaying tales of his times out at sea she has contemplated the idea of becoming a nuclear reactor operator in the navy
2130,although still not fully decided on her career path she possesses a love for research and hands-on experiences this was also spurred by her parents who allowed her to explore museums probe libraries and bought her endless graphing paper packages if you happen to accompany me for dinner i usually have a portable thermocouple and a small balance in my purse just in case we need to calculate the heat of vaporization of my water glass condensate she said this is just how i am as the recipient of the nuclear energy university program scholarship created by the doe she can continue exploring her deep intrigue with research her current studies at texas a&m focus on the dyeing of liquid beryllium this award significantly helps me financially she said because of the funding that it provides i can focus solely on doing my best in my senior year instead of worrying about tuition costs i am very grateful for this honor as she continues to build the world she dreamed of in kindergarten she also hopes to construct a better world for others she is anxious but confident that her education as a nuclear engineering student has prepared her to make impactful contributions to society i would like to understand and apply nuclear engineering in a way that makes the world a better place and peoples lives easier said shauf i want to make a difference push the envelope think outside of the box and challenge the status quo!
2131,"turbomachinery is a crucial component in many applications requiring high power density equipment such as rockets planes and power plants a critical part of their success is the bearings that help keep their rotors spinning texas a&m university researchers are working to improve this rotation advances in process fluid-lubricated bearings used in turbomachinery technology could lead to direct benefits for the power generation oil and gas and aviation industries dr adolfo delgado associate professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is working to increase the technology readiness level of these bearings by developing new designs and characterizing their performance particularly those that use gas as the working fluid delgado has published his research on this topic in the american society of mechanical engineering journal of engineering for gas turbines and power ""we are currently looking at smart dampers for hybrid bearings and conducting system-level tests using a turboexpander dummy rotor "" delgado said ""we need to prevent contact between the rotor and the bearing surface while maintaining acceptable vibration levels as the rotor transitions through critical speeds"" delgado said that while gas bearings themselves are not a new concept they can be found in many applications including dentist drills gyroscopes small power generation turbines and even air cycle machines in airplanes their use in megawatt-class turbomachinery has not yet come to fruition ""gas bearings are currently used in many applications with a direct impact in our lives "" delgado said ""this technology will enable the development of higher power density turbomachinery able to reach higher speeds with a smaller footprint among other benefits gas bearings will allow us to reduce the weight and footprint of turbomachinery while allowing operation at higher speeds and temperatures in other words gas bearings will enable the development of higher power density turbomachinery"" delgado said the goal of preventing contact between the parts could be achieved by applying a damped flexible support alongside the gas film however this is the greatest challenge facing the bearing's progress toward being a viable replacement for oil-lubricated bearings ""the most significant challenge that we still need to tackle is damping as difficult as it may seem we can easily levitate a 500 kg rotor with two gas bearings having a gas film of roughly 12 micrometers a width thinner than a human hair "" delgado said ""that is not the difficult part the actual challenge is to spin that rotor to 20 000 rpm while minimizing vibration levels and keeping the system stable"" delgados research is currently supported by the texas a&m turbomachinery research consortium"
2132,in the last few decades metal 3d printing has spearheaded the efforts in creating custom parts of intricate shapes and high functionality but as additive manufacturers have included more alloys for their 3d printing needs so have the challenges increased in creating uniform defect-free parts a new study by texas a&m university researchers has further refined the process of creating superior metal parts using laser powder bed fusion 3d printing techniques by using a combination of machine learning and single-track 3d printing experiments they have identified the favorable alloy chemistries and process parameters like laser speed and power needed to print parts with uniform properties at the microscale our original challenge was making sure there are no pores in the printed parts because that's the obvious killer for creating objects with enhanced mechanical properties said raiyan seede doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering but having addressed that challenge in our previous work in this study we take deep dives into fine-tuning the microstructure of alloys so that there is more control over the properties of the final printed object at a much finer scale than before the researchers have published their findings in the journal additive manufacturing like other 3d-printing methods laser powder bed fusion also builds 3d metal parts layer by layer the process starts with rolling a thin layer of metal powder on a base plate and then melting the powder with a laser beam along tracks that trace the cross-sectional design of the intended part then another layer of the powder is applied and the process is repeated gradually building the final part alloy metal powders used for additive manufacturing can be quite diverse containing a mixture of metals such as nickel aluminum and magnesium at different concentrations during printing these powders cool rapidly after being heated by a laser beam since the individual metals in the alloy powder have very different cooling properties and consequently solidify at different rates this mismatch can create a type of microscopic flaw called microsegregation when the alloy powder cools the individual metals can precipitate out said seede imagine pouring salt in water it dissolves right away when the amount of salt is small but as you pour more salt the excess salt particles that do not dissolve start precipitating out as crystals in essence thats what is happening in our metal alloys when they cool quickly after printing he said this defect appears as tiny pockets containing a slightly different concentration of the metal ingredients than other regions of the printed part these inconsistencies compromise the mechanical properties of the printed object to rectify this microdefect the research team investigated the solidification of four alloys containing nickel and one other metal ingredient in particular for each of these alloys they studied the physical states or phases present at different temperatures for increasing concentrations of the other metal in the nickel-based alloy hence from detailed phase diagrams they could determine the chemical composition of the alloy that would lead to minimum microsegregation during additive manufacturing next they melted a single track of the alloy metal powder for different laser settings and determined the process parameters that would yield porosity-free parts then they combined the information gathered from the phase diagrams with that from the single-track experiments to get a consolidated view of the laser settings and nickel alloy compositions that would yield a porosity-free printed part without microsegregation
2133,last the researchers went a step further and trained machine-learning models to identify patterns in their single-track experiment data and phase diagrams to develop an equation for microsegregation applicable to any other alloy seede said the equation is designed to predict the extent of segregation given the solidification range material properties and laser power and speed our methodology eases the successful use of alloys of different compositions for additive manufacturing without the concern of introducing defects even at the microscale said dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and head of the materials science and engineering department this work will be of great benefit to the aerospace automotive and defense industries that are constantly looking for better ways to build custom metal parts research collaborators dr raymundo arroyavé and dr alaa elwany added that the uniqueness of their methodology is its simplicity which can easily be adapted by industries to build sturdy defect-free parts with an alloy of choice they noted that their approach contrasts prior efforts that have primarily relied on expensive time-consuming experiments for optimizing processing conditions arroyavé is a professor in the materials science and engineering department and elwany is an associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering other contributors to this research include austin whitt and william trehern from the materials science and engineering department and jiahui ye from the industrial and systems engineering department the research is supported by the united states army research office and the national science foundation
2134,for the first time in nearly two years texas a&m university engineering students gathered in person for aggies invent sponsored by the national security agency (nsa) this 48-hour design competition enabled students from all educational backgrounds to form teams and develop solutions for pressing societal issues with the common theme of utilizing technology as a real-time assistant each of the 11 teams developed a solution (some even invented prototypes) a business plan and a sales pitch that they would present to a panel of judges
2135,each project utilized enhanced artificial intelligence to combat tasks as simple as cycling to more complex ideas such as mass agriculture with 11 presentations the judges deliberated and narrowed down winners to the top three teams each given cash prizes the competition highlighted every student's creativity no matter where they were in their educational journey for first-timers like freshman engineering student matthew coomes whose team green thumb placed first the competition was truly an unforgettable experience
2136,"""we met a lot of new people and gained a lot of knowledge over the last few days said coomes we each have skills like mechanical programming and financial a large variety really that intellectually challenged each other which all played together to add on to the experience"" coomes and his team took home the top prize of $1 000 for their idea of an agricultural environment monitoring system with live feedback through an app it measures soil and water system quality phosphorus mineral content and temperature and analyzes the data that is then compared to more ideal levels this gives the user specific instructions for how to fix problems with their soil or water even for returning winners like computer science graduate students mohammad sagor and amran haroon there's always something to look forward to improve on and learn their teammates tori chandler and sarah gauthier two international studies graduate students brought a different perspective in the globalization aspect of the challenge to the team"
2137,"""it's not all about if your solution is solid but also did you prepare your presentation from start to end did you have an implementation plan sagor said reflecting on his third second place victory with his team response aid which won $750 third place went to sensory overload which took home $500 their idea was to utilize sensors and vibrational speakers to enable peripheral vision and make it accessible to everyone from law enforcement and the military to cyclists and the visually impaired"
2138,if it werent for a little push from their mentor bailey they wouldnt have expanded their idea into the accessibility market he told us ‘theres a bigger market than what you are currently doing widen your lens and dont limit yourself said loran oswalt electrical engineering senior
2139,"plastic is a part of modern life and has been integral to societal advancement still its use poses a global environmental hazard plastic waste especially mixed plastic waste is durable and ends up in landfills and the environment a texas a&m university and university of oklahoma team of researchers will establish an efficient plastic waste biodegradation strategy thanks to a $2 million grant from the national science foundation's emerging frontiers in research and innovation program according to the us environmental protection agency it is estimated that only about 9% of plastic waste generated in the country is recycled and the rest ends up in landfills incinerators or marine environments because of the time it takes for these plastics to break down the national oceanic and atmospheric administration estimates they will be there for 100 years or more ""the research objective is to develop technology and methods that can mitigate this problem specifically by decomposing plastic waste and then converting the degradation products into high-value products "" said dr arum han professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m and principal investigator on the project ""establishing an efficient plastic waste biodegradation strategy will be a game-changer in overcoming the mounting global environmental and health concerns"" the team will utilize microorganisms fungi and bacteria to essentially break down plastic components which could be used as source material for other material production ""our multidisciplinary team of investigators with expertise in microfluidics engineering synthetic biology and microbiology will work together to decipher how these microorganisms degrade plastic waste and use this information to engineer bacterial cells to improve degradation efficiency "" han said ""we will also utilize a mixture of different bacteria and fungi as a consortium to improve the plastic degradation efficiency mimicking how microbes work together in decomposing complex materials in nature"""
2140,"there are many types of plastics but this research will focus on degrading the two most common plastics in packaging polystyrene used in disposable coffee cups and polyethylene commonly used in packaging films the team has already isolated several different bacteria and fungi that show promise in degrading these plastics in addition to han co-principal investigators are dr xuejun zhu and dr qing sun assistant professors in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m; dr won-bo shim professor and associate department head for academics in the department of plant pathology and microbiology at texas a&m; and dr aifen zhou research scientist at the institute for environmental genomics at the university of oklahoma han will utilize high-throughput microfluidic devices to screen millions of individual strains/variants from microbial libraries to identify the most efficient microbes in plastic degradation and reutilization zhu is an expert in synthetic biology natural product discovery and microbiome engineering who will work on plastic degradation product identification and enzyme discovery and use this knowledge to improve the efficiency of plastic-degrading enzymes through directed evolution sun is an expert in synthetic biology and microbiome engineering and will work on engineering bacteria and creating a bacterial community that can more efficiently degrade plastic waste shim an expert in fungal biology and genetics will study fungi that degrade plastic identify their mechanisms and the most effective strains and then create tailored synthetic fungal-bacteria consortia to improve the potential for plastic degradation zhou an expert in environmental microbiology and molecular biology has been working on isolating plastic-degrading microbial strains from mealworm gut microbiomes and naturally weathered plastic waste sample enrichments which is the source of bacteria and fungi that will be used in this project she will continue to work on isolating and identifying the most promising plastic-degrading microorganisms from the environment ""we will utilize multiple engineered microorganisms as a 'consortia' to degrade plastic waste so that we can deal with mixed plastic waste "" han said ""in parallel we will utilize the latest synthetic biology technique to engineer microbes so they can use the degradation product as a source to create high-value products"" the team will train next-generation researchers through exposure to multidisciplinary science and engineering at the high school and undergraduate levels as part of the grant the team will also create online learning modules presentations and social network materials to build partnerships between academia and the public to communicate and enhance the scientific awareness about the future of plastic waste and the potential for bioremediation"
2141,the threat of catastrophic wildfires has led california investor-owned utility pacific gas and electric company (pg&e) to significantly expand its use of a fire prevention tool developed at texas a&m university the tool is called distribution fault anticipation (dfa) its a unique hardware and software system that detects circuit anomalies notifying utility operators to address issues before they cause power outages or spark fires two veteran pg&e engineers eric schoenman and john mead highlighted the utilitys growing use of dfa in an article last month titled new tools in the fight to reduce wildfire ignition it was published in t&d world a leading utility industry magazine in 2019 pg&e installed dfa on seven circuits to evaluate its effectiveness based on the results the utility is adding dfa to 50 circuits in 2021 and anticipates adding 600 circuits over the next three years priority will be given to circuits in the areas most vulnerable to wildfires nearly one-third of pg&e electric lines are in state-designated high fire-threat zones dfa detects low-current events that conventional systems do not detect schoenman and mead wrote the fundamental key to addressing these phenomena is knowledge that they are occurring knowledge that dfa can in many cases provide a texas a&m team of engineers that developed dfa is led by distinguished professor dr b don russell and research professor carl l benner both in texas a&ms department of electrical and computer engineering
2142,the team has worked closely with pg&e engineers on integrating dfa with the utilitys other equipment including other types of risk-reduction tools were proud to make a positive difference in a region of the country so vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires russell said the expansion at pg&e is the latest example of utilities turning to dfa the system is also being used by southern california edison in california and a number of utilities in texas georgia indiana oregon tennessee virginia the united kingdom australia and new zealand mid-south synergy electric co-op in texas which operates in small towns and rural areas southeast of college station is placing dfa on all of its circuits its a great system general manager kerry kelton said we have miles and miles of exposed feeder lines across pastures that are not easy to inspect directly dfa gives us the intelligence we need to prevent many outages it can help us every day electrical power outages commonly are caused by falling tree branches errant animals or failures of devices such as clamps switches conductors and connectors the conditions can build up over weeks or months impacting electrical currents in small ways before actual failures dfa monitors currents and applies algorithms to detect and report abnormalities for investigation and repair until now utilities have had little choice but to wait and react to actual failures operators recognize that something better is needed given the growing threat of wildfires dfa gives operators real-time awareness of the health of their system benner said while nothing will ever prevent all outages dfa can increase reliability for a utilitys customers and reduce ignition risks
2143,doctoral candidate jesse fine is expanding his knowledge of regulatory practices after being awarded a $55 000 national science foundation (nsf)-intern supplement to work with the food and drug administration (fda) over a period of six months fines research at texas a&m university revolves around using computational modeling to design medical devices that aim to expand accessibility to health care he works with dr mike mcshane head of the department of biomedical engineering and dr gerard coté regents professor in the department and director of the precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) engineering research center i was excited about this nsf-funded internship opportunity for jesse to gain real-world experience working with the fda since one of the goals of paths-up is to provide such an experiential opportunity for their phd students coté said part of my modeling work within paths-up is for designing noninvasive photoplethysmography devices; i develop models that look at how light travels through skin fine said one of the uses of light in health care is tracking changes in blood volume as a function of your heart beating to monitor cardiovascular parameters such as heart rate and blood pressure among others fine said one aspect of computational modeling is the potential for reducing the number of experiments to reduce the burden and cost to get regulatory approval for medical devices which is why he was excited to intern at the fda specifically fines internship is in the division of biomedical physics within the office of science and engineering laboratories (osel) of the center for devices and radiological health opportunities like this not only allow us to bring in researchers with fresh ideas to help address important regulatory science challenges but also provide the opportunity to expose and train them on how science impacts regulatory decision-making and can help accelerate patient access to new medical devices said dr edward margerrison osel director
2144,osels mission is to accelerate patient access to innovative safe and effective medical devices through best-in-the-world regulatory science which can involve developing tools that can be computational to help better understand new devices fine said one of fines research goals at the fda is to take heartbeat monitors a step further to be used for continuous blood pressure monitoring he said this topic is of particular interest because the performance of these devices can be affected by demographical information such as skin tone age and body mass index among others new non-clinical test methods are needed to help understand how measurements like blood pressure derived from ppg waveforms can be affected by these factors fine said i believe my work at the fda will help develop tools that can be used to assess changes in the performance of post-processing and machine-learning algorithms when faced with physiological/anatomical variations you would experience within a population fine said his interest in early diagnostic tools started by hearing about how engineers could play a role in lowering the costs of health care by focusing on designing tools that preempt health issues from there he transitioned to continuous monitoring with wearable devices which led him to research in paths-up the statistic that goes in much of my work is ‘57 million americans are underserved primarily meaning they don't have access to doctors fine said so our focus is to develop affordable and accessible monitoring and wearable devices that can be used by underserved individuals and provide actionable data to remote health care providers to preempt hospitalizations and partially mitigate the emerging health care crisis in these communities
2145,when she was 10 years old collette gillaspie caught her first glimpse of a future on mars while visiting a nature and science museum during a family road trip gillaspie was mesmerized by an exhibit about a martian habitat memorizing all the bite-sized facts the information display had to offer and letting her mind imagine what it would be like to visit the red planet today shes a doctoral student studying aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and conducting research related to habitats and getting humans to the moon and mars sustainably an early introduction to the wonders of stem (science technology engineering and mathematics) inspired gillaspies interests and education and shes found a way to spark that same enthusiasm for a group of fourth graders in her home state of nebraska by embracing the virtual learning environment after giving a virtual presentation to young students during a women in science and engineering (wise) event gillaspie reached out to a cousin-in-law who teaches elementary with an idea together they set up a virtual learning opportunity for the fourth graders at plattsmouth elementary school to learn from students at texas a&m its just been so difficult to get everyone excited about science and engineering and mathematics during this time said gillaspie i really want this experience to give them a glimpse of stem and some topics they might not otherwise be exposed to gillaspie organized about 15 texas a&m engineering students to deliver a 30-minute presentation with a 15-minute q&a once a week to a class using nebraskas science standards as a guide the volunteers presented topics like electricity heredity traits motion and forces rocks and engineering design according to gillaspies cousin-in-law stephanie icenogle – mrs ice to the fourth graders – the class has had a blast learning from new faces or as she says not the same boring teachers its just really fun to see them get really excited about the different topics and all raise their hands at once to answer a question said gillaspie im just so impressed by how easy it was to interact with them and how willing they were to learn the fourth graders were eager to meet the student presenters every week and never short of questions one class thought gillaspie and a fellow graduate student were siblings because they both presented about a space topic so with the fervor of a 9 year old they asked him the same questions they asked gillaspie to test him to see if he also knows the answers the 45-minute commitment of a few aggies has reinvigorated the learning space for these young students after the pandemic uprooted the structure of school gillaspie said she doesnt think she would have had the idea had it not been for the circumstances of the pandemic but the experience has been rewarding for everyone involved with kids there just seems to be this innate love of learning and curiosity said gillaspie i think doing experiences like these and volunteering with kids who are excited to learn is the best motivation for bringing back your natural curiosity and getting excited to learn again a native nebraskan gillaspie made unique connections to the lessons by incorporating experiences the fourth graders would be familiar with when she was in high school she worked at omahas henry doorly zoo and aquarium so during her presentation on different environments and ecosystems she created a fun connection for the class by referencing the local zoo and its makeup you can definitely tell when someone understands something and it clicks in their head and to be able to see that as a teacher the light bulb go off its priceless said gillaspie when she decided to go to graduate school she had a soft goal of becoming a professor that goal has been kindled by opportunities like this volunteer experience and being a teaching assistant in the department along with her own experiences learning from advisors through human spaceflight research and a nasa tipping point project its now her long-term goal to stay in academia to teach and conduct research with students guiding them through their academic success and helping them realize their own interests i think professors have just a really special job to enable this next generation of scientists and doctors and engineers and inventors and people who change the world said gillaspie what a humbling experience to enable that growth for another person with the help of texas a&m college of engineering student organizations gillaspie is furthering that growth opportunity for current students interested in volunteering to teach topics to the fourth grade classes what started as a spark of motivation in gillaspie has now developed into a full outreach opportunity for students involved in wise the society of women engineers the society of women in space exploration and student teachers its an exciting experience to be able to instill that passion that you have for a subject into a fourth grader said gillaspie you cant beat it
2146,"lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries commonly used in electric vehicles small appliances and electronic storage systems are rechargeable and energy-efficient as the demand for li-ion batteries escalates the elements needed to create them such as cobalt nickel and lithium are in short supply dr jodie lutkenhaus professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and dr daniel tabor assistant professor in the department of chemistry both at texas a&m university are using machine-learning techniques to optimize polymers needed for developing metal-free recyclable organic batteries the research is funded by the national science foundation (nsf) and in collaboration with dr juan de pablo and dr stuart rowan from the university of chicago with the approaching li-ion battery shortage metal-free batteries offer great potential in theory organic batteries could be locally sourced decreasing demands on supply chains they also provide the possibility of being environmentally benign ""most powerful li-ion batteries contain cobalt which only comes from a few places globally contributing to the global supply chain issue enhanced by the pandemic "" said lutkenhaus ""there's an effort by scientists to find alternative battery chemistries that are completely metal-free which means that in principle you could synthesize the materials for your batteries domestically"" although promising a substantial problem with metal-free polymer batteries is their lifespan they are also notoriously inefficient at storing energy since most polymers possess insulating qualities for this reason the researchers are targeting redox-active polymers capable of electron storage once stored they can release electrons comparable to how metal-containing batteries operate ""metal-free batteries are far away from practical commercial applications "" said lutkenhaus ""our work is going to discover new polymers that might enable these batteries for use in real-life applications specifically we are determining polymers that have improved voltage and stability translating into batteries that are more powerful and last longer"" polymers are chains of molecules linked together each molecule has a unique set of characteristics if there are 100 molecules with 100 different functions there are infinite ways to connect them producing slightly different polymers ""a polymer is like a chain of legos "" said tabor ""each different shape of lego has different properties but can also connect with numerous others let's say the goal of this specific chain of legos is to make a durable structure there may be several ways to make the chain but we would want to find the exact combination of legos that will provide the most durability similarly we are trying to find the exact polymer that produces the best battery"" in search of the most energy-efficient polymer the researchers will use bayesian frameworks to sift through thousands of combinations of molecules that can produce a polymer chain capable of energy storage in turn creating longer-lasting organic batteries ""we are using theoretical chemistry to predict the properties of materials in advance alleviating the need to test each combination in a laboratory "" said tabor ""this reduces the magnitude of options and provides fundamental insights that can improve performance it's deciding the best option based on all of the knowledge available"" the nsf grant will also help educate students on alternative chemistries and machine-learning technologies specifically it will help graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering ""we want to inform the next generation of students in this dynamic area "" said lutkenhaus ""with increased adoption of machine learning future professionals in these areas need to be well versed in data science and able to participate in computational and experimental science"
2147,the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university increased in rank to seventh among public undergraduate engineering programs according to the recently released 2022 us news & world report best college rankings our department provides an exceptional education to our students and these rankings are a reflection of that said dr guillermo aguilar james and ada forsyth professor and department head of the mechanical engineering department the prestigious faculty in our department are dedicated to ensuring the next generation of mechanical engineers is well-equipped to solve the complex engineering challenges of todays world the department improved two places in the overall ranking to 12th and one place among public mechanical engineering programs improving from its previous number eight ranking the college of engineering as a whole was ranked in the top 10 among public institutions the department ranks eighth among public institutions for its graduate program according to us news and world report and was ranked third overall internationally by shanghairankings for 2021 this rank is based on a range of metrics to measure a university and programs success including research output research influence international collaboration research quality and international academic awards
2148,dr kenneth peddicord professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2021 alvin m weinberg medal from the american nuclear society (ans) the award recognizes an individual for outstanding international technical and policy leadership in nuclear science and technology over a sustained period of several years for nearly 50 years peddicord has advanced nuclear technology on an international level his technical interests include nuclear engineering education and training human resources and nuclear workforce development and small modular reactorsthe nomination was prepared and submitted by dr warren f miller jr to honor his lasting work and seconded by several of peddicord's colleagues a hallmark of his activities has been the consistent and innovative inclusion of students both at the university and high school levels in international activities said miller the breadth and scope of dr peddicords activities have been extraordinary he is an outstanding candidate for the alvin weinberg medalthe award was established in 1995 to honor dr alvin m weinberg one of the founders of the american nuclear society and their fifth president to provide recognition for contributions to the understanding of the social implications of nuclear technologythe award consists of an engraved medal and a monetary award of $2 000 which will be presented to peddicord during the opening plenary of the ans winter meeting and technology expo in washington dc
2149,"first-year biomedical engineering doctoral student elizabeth bullard expected to hear whether shed made it into the national science foundation's (nsf) graduate research fellowship program (grfp) from the foundation however as an additional surprise the first email she saw didn't come from the nsf but rather from her new principal investigator dr kristen maitland ""she emailed me saying 'congratulations! i was going to call you but it's eight in the morning "" bullard said ""it was such a shock i think it's going to be really great"" bullard will join the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university in fall 2021 with a focus on optics and imaging she said her interest in imaging likely sprung from a general fascination for cameras that soon took on a biomedical theme with a bioinstrumentation course in college ""i took an advanced course in microscopy "" bullard said ""that was really cool to dive more into biomedical applications of imaging so different types of microscopes and then you learn about all the imaging instruments they use in the hospitals ultrasounds mris you think about where do they come from the doctors and the nurses don't have time to build those things so who was the mind behind all that"" bullard also received the 2021 national excellence fellow position a department initiative to support students who intend to pursue translational research that impacts the biomedical engineering industry biomedical engineering at texas a&m appealed to her due to the number of faculty who focus on imaging research bullard's research in her undergraduate years focused on imaging in the intestinal system her first project used a miniaturized diffuse reflectance spectroscopy probe a device that allows researchers to measure tissue properties noninvasively bullard's device was specially built to be threaded through a veterinary endoscope to monitor physiological values of the blood oxygenation and hemoglobin content in the colon for monitoring cancer she also applied the technology to ulcerative colitis an autoimmune intestinal disease there the measurements detected any signs of healing in the ulcers over time ""it's such a difficult disease to manage and i think there's so much more that we can do in that area "" bullard said ""so that's exciting to be able to work on something like that"" bringing her knowledge to texas a&m bullard's first project will likely involve working with the vet school to create an endoscopic system for imaging nanoparticles in colon cancer in the future she will have more flexibility to choose a topic for her dissertation thanks to the grfp not only will it support her day-to-day expenses as a graduate student but the grant also allows her time to begin experimenting on a project independent of external funding ""it gives me a lot of freedom to work on a project that i want to work on "" she said ""if there's no funding for a project i'm interested in the nsf funding can help me pay for those initial experiments and the data analysis and then i could submit another funding request"" while bullard is unsure what path she'd like to take after completing her doctoral degree she said one dream would be to work for a nonprofit such as engineering world health to work in biomedical engineering abroad one highlight she remembers seeing while touring the university of arkansas for her undergraduate degree was a senior design project to develop a surgical lamp made out of pvc pipes for a hospital in africa ""i thought that was fascinating that they were able to make something that was so low cost and easy maintenance something that we just take for granted in our high-resource nations "" she said ""that got me into more of the global health scene if there's an opportunity for me to go overseas sometime as a grad student i think that would be phenomenal"""
2150,from ocean exploration to unmanned repairs on offshore oil rigs the application for underwater robotics is vast this summer texas a&m university at galveston offered the inaugural integrated ocean systems – design and deployment course (ocen 689) which challenged ocean engineering graduate students to build their own underwater robots through experiential learning practices the course was created by dr paul mario koola professor of practice and department head dr sharath girimaji in tandem with the department of ocean engineerings 30-credit master of science in ocean engineering degree program currently underwater remotely operated vehicles (rov) are heavily used in subsea work koola said underwater inspection and survey are two other domains eventually renewable-powered autonomous systems will roam our oceans monitoring the health of our planet we are training our graduates to meet this future demand the feedback we got from industry was that there is a shortage of folks with ocean domain knowledge who can define ocean engineering-related missions and execute them he said through this course we believe our graduates will be better prepared for successful careers by not only knowing general ocean engineering principles but by also having the experience of putting together systems and knowing design choices and their effect on missions in the course graduate student teams are tasked with identifying a mission statement for their rov then designing and building an underwater robot using a triggerfish seamate rov kit that would fulfill that mission additionally students learn how to operate and deploy a bluerov to take sonar scans in addition this course also teaches students to build realistic simulations of renewable energy devices i've really enjoyed working with my hands which is not something i've been exposed to in a lot of my other courses said kacey green we're able to design an rov based on theory and see what will and won't work in fresh and saltwater settings it's been a great opportunity to take what we've learned in previous courses and apply it in real life green and her project partner sophia kirschner designed an rov they named yellow submarine as described the lightweight and simple orthogonal box-framed design was chosen for ease of movement and better controllability their design allows for their rov to move in all six directions while underwater ricardo torres jr and morgan humphrey constructed an rov designed to remove invasive species from the ground and ship hulls this inspired them to develop a design that could easily move forward and make slow turns additionally where many of their peers had cubical creations theirs was elongated and boasted a scraper on the end to remove unwanted material robots and automation are the future torres said this course gave us firsthand experience of the challenges that we as engineers will have to solve the final team consisted of julia gionet-gonzales ashley mullen and hayden smith their robot was designed to pick up trash from the ocean as such they designed it to be robust and strong with cross beams for added stability coming from a mechanical background i was excited to finally bring that aspect into ocean engineering and be able to build something to test gionet-gonzales said this course has integrated many aspects i learned from ocean engineering courses into the field it is one thing to learn in the classroom but when you can actually go out in the field and experience it it is more impactful
2151,two faculty from the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university received awards from the human factors and ergonomics society (hfes) demonstrating their accomplishments in education practice and professional service in human factors engineering dr nancy currie-gregg was awarded the 2021 paul m fitts education award presented to an individual in recognition of their outstanding accomplishments in human factors engineering education and training dr farzan sasangohar was awarded the 2021 william c howell young investigator award recognizing his scientific contributions that demonstrate emerging influence in human factors and ergonomics currie-gregg professor of engineering practice in industrial and systems engineering and aerospace engineering has research interests that include aerospace human systems integration human-robot interaction and quantitative risk-analysis and systems safety engineering she received a bachelors in biological sciences from the ohio state university a masters in safety engineering from the university of southern california and a doctorate in industrial engineering at the university of houston i greatly appreciate this recognition from hfes it was a great honor reading the comments submitted by my former students currie-gregg said reading accounts of how their classroom experiences at texas a&m impacted their professional development as engineers is the greatest honor sasangohar assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering also received the 2021 bentzi karsh early-career service award presented to an individual for their outstanding contributions and professional service and outreach as an early-career professional in human factors and ergonomics this is the first time in hfes history that these two awards have been presented to one individual i am grateful and truly honored that both my scholarly work and service to profession have been recognized by my professional society sasangohar said winning these awards would not have been possible without the inspiration i have received from my advisors mentors students and colleagues his research interests include understanding and improving human decision making in safety-critical work environments using a wide range of analytical techniques and technological innovations including remote monitoring of health and performance sasangohar received a bachelors in information technology from york university a bachelors in computer science and masters in systems design engineering from the university of waterloo a masters in engineering systems from the massachusetts institute of technology and a doctorate in industrial engineering from the university of toronto
2152,in their roughly 35 billion years on earth bacteria have fine-tuned the art of colonizing all kinds of habitats from the inner lining of digestive tracts to the blistering hot waters of geysers but in their quest for world domination bacteria face a critical snag when moving across diverse environments preserving their navigational apparatus in a new study published in the journal nature communications researchers at texas a&m university have found that the appendages controlling bacterial navigation called the flagella adjust to changes in the viscosity of fluids very precisely this adaptation enables the bacterium to continue using its flagella for searching for nutrients sensing surfaces and establishing colonies in different habitats there is a significant interest in the biomedical fields to understand how individual bacterial cells transition from a lonesome existence to a community lifestyle said dr pushkar lele associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering to answer this question we are investigating the role of the flagellum as a response hub when a bacterium encounters different types of environments to navigate toward nutrients bacteria employ chemotaxis a process by which they sense chemicals and swim in the direction of increasing or decreasing concentrations the role of the flagellum in navigation is known it reversibly switches between clockwise and counterclockwise directions of rotation to facilitate chemotaxis flagellar rotation is powered by internal stator units similar in concept to the stator that rotates the rotor within an electric motor of a ceiling fan but more recent evidence suggests that the flagellum also plays a role in sensing changes in the cells mechanical environment a process called mechanosensing so if the bacterium encounters an increase in resistance to the rotation of its flagella it would be sensed as an increase in the viscosity of the environment in response the flagellar motor recruit extra stator units to compensate by developing more power however research has also shown that such an increase in the resistance prevents the flagellum from switching directions of rotation potentially rendering the chemotaxis machinery defunct this observation posed a conundrum said lele chemotaxis is unlikely to be restricted to one type of viscous environment so we wondered if there were any adaptations happening within the flagellar motor that restored directional switching and by extension chemotaxis in varying viscous environments for their experiments the researchers chose a strain of e coli with a fluorescently-labeled chemotaxis protein chey-p that binds to the flagellar motor to initiate flagellar switching the researchers applied resistance to the motor and then observed the level of fluorescence using high-powered microscopes they found that the fluorescence dropped below baseline when they removed the stator proteins using genetic techniques
2153,in comparison the fluorescence level remained at the baseline when the stators continually delivered torque to rotate the motor this suggested that the presence of the stator units promoted chey-p binding to the motor based on these observations the team theorized that in high viscosity environments the increase in mechanical torque provided by the extra stator units increases the binding of chey-p to the motor thereby maintaining homeostasis in the switching function of the flagellum
2154,lele pointed out this phenomenon of fine-tuning the internal state to adapt to changing mechanical loads bears a crude resemblance to proprioceptive adaptation whereby organisms with a nervous system continuously intuit their position and velocity to make adaptive changes to achieve homeostasis or a stable physiological state for example insects muscular skeletal systems internally adapt and adjust to varying loads on their limbs to maintain their posture and grip when walking on the floor or the ceiling homeostasis in flagellar switching appears to help motile bacteria form swarms and colonize different environments said lele explaining the basis for the observed link between mechanosensing and chemotaxis will be important in preventing bacterial colonization infections and antibiotic resistance in the future dr jyot antani is the lead author on the work and is former doctoral student from the chemical engineering department at texas a&m other contributors to this research include rachit gupta annie lee and kathy rhee from the chemical engineering department; and dr michael manson from the department of biology at texas a&m this research is funded by the department of defense and the national institute of general medical sciences united states
2155,seven departments in the texas a&m university college of engineerings undergraduate engineering program climbed in rankings among public engineering schools offering a doctorate in the recently released 2022 us news & world report best college rankings with one department retaining its no 1 ranking this years undergraduate rankings are the result of the hard work and dedication of our faculty members and department heads who remained focused on providing a quality education to texas a&m engineering students despite a global pandemic said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering texas a&ms college of engineering continues to be a destination for undergraduates looking to pursue a world-class engineering educationoverall the college of engineering and eight departments were ranked in the top 10 among public institutions the college was ranked 15th overall and eighth among public universities two of the departments were ranked in the top five with the harold vance department of petroleum engineering ranking first among public institutions and overall the department of biological and agricultural engineering which is part of both the college of engineering and the college of agriculture and life sciences at texas a&m was ranked fourth among public schools and overallother departments ranking in the top 10 of public institutions include the department of aerospace engineering (6) the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering (7) the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering (7) the department of electrical and computer engineering (8) the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering (9) and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering (10) completing the list is the department of computer science and engineering (11) the department of materials science and engineering (13) and the department of biomedical engineering (17) all of the departments were ranked in the in the top 20 overall
2156,shape memory alloys have been in use for a few decades especially in the biomedical industry they are also incorporated in a number of advanced technologies and applications ranging from jet engine exhaust nozzles to solar panels on the mars rover unfortunately current alloys have been found to have significant limitations in their temperature range of operation preventing widespread utilization in transformative technologies especially at high temperatures this has led researchers to explore alloys with more complex properties and more than three or four elements being present in their makeup to develop such materials with better performance the national science foundation recently awarded $40 million to 25 projects as a part of the designing materials to revolutionize and engineer our future (dmref) program a team led by dr raymundo arróyave professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has received $18 million to explore multi-principal element multi-functional alloys (mpemfas) in this project we are investigating new shape memory alloys with improved properties such as the ability of undergoing reversible transformations at very high temperatures without much efficiency loss said arróyave we are putting together an effort combining computational and experimental materials science with artificial intelligence so we can explore this vast chemical space much faster than with traditional methods the project titled artificial intelligence-guided accelerated discovery of multi-principal element multi-functional alloys aims to discover mpemfas with extreme property combinations such as ultra-high temperature martensitic transformations with low hysteresis stable reversible shape change under stress and superelasticity multicomponent shape memory alloys offer a lot of new opportunities such as reversible ultrahigh temperature martensitic transformation and dimensional stability; however there are a lot of potential issues at high temperatures we have to address in this new project said dr ibrahim karaman department head in the department of materials science and engineering its challenging but we expect to discover new physical principles to address this challenge the researchers proposed to develop a new closed-loop materials design framework that could integrate experiments computational materials science models and machine learning/artificial intelligence (ai) approaches with customized interfaces connecting experiments models existing data and more critically researchers across disciplines traditional materials research tends to be edisonian in nature: one tries all kinds of recipes to see what works said arróyave here we are leveraging advances in ai to try to explore a vast chemical space in an iterative manner: we carry out some experiments and simulations feed them to an ai algorithm and then the algorithm suggests the next recipes to try in addition to speeding up new multi-functional alloy discovery by this closed-loop framework we are also hoping that newly required data from the designed alloys can help better understand physics principles of multi-functional alloys properties which can help refine both the computational and physics-informed machine-learning models said co-principal dr xiaoning qian associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m who will focus on developing machine learning and optimization methods on this project the project will leverage the recently established graduate certificate called data-enabled discovery and design of energy materials and training doctoral students in an enhanced understanding of an important class of materials enabling a wide range of technologies karaman and qian are also part of the team leading this project
2157,what if both the water and carbon dioxide (co2) produced from a vehicles exhaust system could be captured and used for growing food repurposing these two wasted products would be a game changer for reducing the carbon footprint of roadway traffic and helping the agricultural industry feed a growing human population three faculty members at texas a&m university dr maria barrufet dr elena castell-perez and dr rosana moreira were casually discussing simple ways to lessen the human impact on the environment when this idea came to them they wrote a white paper reporting their initial analysis and published it in hopes of obtaining the funding needed for doing formal multidisciplinary research on the project
2158,i started reading the related literature and did simulations of what was possible said barrufet professor and baker hughes endowed chair in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering this is entirely realistic several proposals have already been written for large trucks and marine vehicle applications but nothing has been implemented yet and we are the first to think of a passenger car engine a simple idea with big potential harnessing the waste from car exhaust sounds like a small thing but the impact could be enormous in 2019 the number of vehicles estimated to be in use around the world was 14 billion an average passenger car in operation can emit about 5 us tons (approximately 46 metric tons) of co2 per year meaning a significant amount of greenhouse gas is going into the environment one cars fuel combustion also creates a large amount of water per year about 5 547 gallons (approximately 21 000 liters) castell-perez and moreira both professors in the department of biological and agricultural engineering know this wasted co2 and water could be put to good use especially in cities recent expansions in us urban agriculture rely on industrial greenhouses which use an artificially enriched atmosphere containing up to three times the amount of co2 in normal air to improve plant health and harvests these urban farms would greatly benefit from a steady source of free reclaimed co2 and water as they currently purchase and use almost 5 pounds (over 2 kg) of co2 and nearly 6 gallons (22 liters) of water to grow just over 2 pounds (1 kg) of produce and these numbers dont include the water and co2 needed for post-harvest food processing and dense-phase pasteurization how it might work the three faculty members outlined how the integrated device could work heat from the engine could power an organic rankine cycle (orc) system essentially a small closed unit containing a turbine heat exchangers condenser and feed pump that works like an old-fashioned steam engine but on a much smaller scale and with far less heat needed to produce electricity the orc would power the other components such as a heat-exchange system that could cool compress and change the co2 gas to a liquid for more compact storage years ago we didnt think we could have air conditioning in a car said barrufet this is a similar concept to the air conditioning that we now have in a simple way it's like that device it will fit in tight spaces preliminary simulations are encouraging no significant reduction in a cars engine power or increase in its fuel use is predicted any potential corrosion in the heat exchange system could be addressed with the use of new coating materials theoretically vehicle owners could turn in full cartridges of co2 and water at reclamation centers just as people bring in aluminum and steel cans nowadays or drivers could even use the co2 and water in greenhouse systems of their own or within a community provided the co2 was used responsibly and fully absorbed by the plants questions remain though such as how big these cartridges would need to be how the water would be handled since it cannot be compressed and at what weight would the stored co2 and water affect the cars performance making the idea a reality barrufet castell-perez and moreira are actively seeking funding to continue their work while research is already in place in national labs and industries on improving devices for large-scale co2 capture nothing currently exists on a scale this small so it could be 10 years before they have something ready for testing the greatest challenge could come from assembling a multidisciplinary team to conduct the research the components for the device already exist in some form but will need a cohesive team of engineers from different specialties to redesign them to work together in such a confined space all of these independent ideas and technologies have no value if they cannot connect said barrufet we need people concerned about the future to make this happen soon energized students in petroleum mechanical civil agricultural and other engineering disciplines who can cross boundaries and work in sync
2159,"born in virginia to a military family anthony roman has lived in many places around the world – from germany to new york roman knew from an early age he wanted to continue his family's tradition of serving in the military he dreamed of becoming a nuclear engineer for the navy working on aircraft carriers and nuclear reactors finding a home in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university roman is the new chief of staff for the corps of cadets ""i am honored to be named chief of staff "" said roman ""in this role my job is to ensure the standards of the corps are being upheld"""
2160,"throughout his time in the corps roman has held many positions his journey to chief of staff began his freshman year when he became the commander of the fish drill team ""moving mid-year to a new role was a tough transition "" he said ""i had to learn about a semester and a half's worth of content in a month and a half however it was worth it because we ended up winning the national championship in new orleans beating out many of the senior military colleges and academies"" that summer roman landed the job of his dreams acquiring a contract with the navy in pursuit of becoming a nuclear surface warfare officer ""i had pushed myself to achieve that role since high school "" he said ""it was truly an amazing experience and inspired me to keep moving toward my future aspirations"" his sophomore year roman became an advisor on the fish drill team training the class of 2023 as an advisor he was assigned the tasks of mentoring and training the team"
2161,"balancing his nuclear engineering studies with the cadet life has been no easy feat but one he is extremely proud of nuclear engineering is challenging and complex but his work in the corps has directly impacted his ability to manage his duties ""the corps helped me with discipline and learning how to accomplish tasks "" he said ""everyone in the nuclear engineering department has a different background and story being a corps member has helped me work successfully in groups and teams with individuals from all over the world"" roman is now a senior as he accepts his new title and duties his mission is to make an impact that expands beyond the scope of the corps of cadets ""my goal is to move us into new territories "" said roman ""i desire to help others inside as well as outside the corps i'm learning how to take the corps mentality and apply it to other aspects of my life"""
2162,leo predanic has always been drawn to the analog sector of electrical engineering this interest led to a special opportunity to complete a summer internship with one of the largest recruiters of students from the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university texas instruments (ti) during the internship predanic worked alongside the design verification team on pre-silicon design projects which focus on the design of the integrated circuits (ic) before they are fabricated and ultimately undergo the manufacturing process one of his teams responsibilities was to run simulations on the ic designs to ensure that despite inevitable variability during the manufacturing process they would function as expected
2163,due to an initial lack of confidence in his programming skills a couple of his assigned projects were daunting at first but ended up being notably fulfilling over the summer his confidence in his programming abilities grew exponentially and the tools he used will stay with him throughout his academic career and future professional endeavors one of the things that i didn't know going in was how much some of the skills such as programming that i had already picked up during my time at a&m were used by engineers in the industry having run into many challenges along the way predanic explained that the most rewarding aspect of this internship was seeing his projects come to fruition before his eyes its hard to see the big picture of the final machine compared to just your little gear he said if you had asked me four months ago if something like that was possible i would have said i really don't know but seeing how all the pieces are integrated and come together to finally work from inception to final product was one of the most impressive things during his internship predanic was also able to shadow some of the other engineers on the design verification team and see firsthand what they do on a daily basis as these designs are prepared for fabrication he also was able to attend kickoff meetings for other projects and see how the company plans projects from start to finish and executes them as successfully as possible those are all things that i never would have heard of at school predanic said the sheer scalability of a company like ti was extremely eye-opening and far more impressive than i could have imagined
2164,"researchers at texas a&m university will lead a hub of five institutions across the country to conduct fundamental research to support holistic decision-making for historically underrepresented communities impacted by coastal hazardsthe focused coastline and people research hub at texas a&m which will bring together communities stakeholders and researchers has been established thanks to a five-year nearly $42 million grant from the national science foundation along the northern gulf coast communities from texas to florida are particularly at risk for coastal hazards including hurricanes tsunamis coastal storm surges flooding sea-level rise and erosionthe national science foundation's (nsf) coastlines and people (cope) program an interdisciplinary research initiative supported by several nsf divisions is aimed to study complex interactions between coastal processes human dynamics and the built environment these studies require a focused investment in novel multidisciplinary science that engages diverse local stakeholders the cope program supports coastal research hubs which aim to accomplish the above objectives by incorporating a convergent science approach the project was also endorsed by the united nations decade of ocean science for sustainable developmentdr maria koliou assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m will serve as lead principal investigator of the focused coastline and people research hub""through an integrative research approach this focused hub will lead to the development of a framework that will quantify the interdependence between coastal hazards built environment geodemographics and social and cultural factors thus enabling decision making aimed at minimizing the socio-economic impact of coastal hazards to historically underrepresented communities "" she said ""what sets this focused hub apart is that through fundamental research we will build a community digital twin that will enable decision making for short- and long-term resilience actions through a new holistic perspective on diverse communities based on cultural and social aspects""in addition to researching various tasks koliou will oversee the project schedule community engagement and ensure all milestones and deliverables are metthrough community events surveys roundtables and discussion forums this project will identify critical community needs priorities and concerns determine critical issues co-collect data and solicit expertise co-develop and refine research and create evaluation metrics""this framework will be validated with data collected from tribal communities in the northern gulf coast and cultural preservation sites through engaged research and experiential drills to understand assess measure and enhance resilience "" she said"
2165,"there will be five other co-principal investigators from texas a&m: dr petros sideris assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering; dr siyu yu assistant professor in landscape architecture and urban planning; dr anand puppala professor in civil and environmental engineering; dr jim kaihatu professor in civil and environmental engineering; and dr michelle meyer associate professor in landscape architecture and urban planning and director of the hazard reduction and recovery center there will also be four co-pis from other institutions: dr jayur madhusudan mehta assistant professor in anthropology at florida state university; dr stuart nolan research assistant/emergency management analyst at the stephenson disaster management institute at louisiana state university; dr haizhong wang associate professor of civil and construction engineering at oregon state university; and dr andres gonzalez assistant professor in the school of industrial and systems engineering at the university of oklahoma""conducting scientific research on community resilience is a complex and multidimensional undertaking that relies on expertise from multiple disciplines including anthropology archeology urban planning and engineering principles via community-engaged research koliou said the team is truly excited to receive a nice comment from the nsf panel that summarized that 'it was so beautifully written such a pleasure to read' all the hard work put in by the team over the past year in collaborating on this proposal has been truly rewarded in a nice way and we all are looking forward to an excellent start""the team will also collaborate closely with the us department of the interior south central climate adaptation science center part of a federal network of nine centers that work with natural and cultural resource managers to gather scientific information and build tools needed to help wildlife and ecosystems adapt to the impacts of climate changeas part of the grant an engagement program will also be established to support a pipeline for high school students from these underrepresented communities into and through graduate school"
2166,on july 2 a fluorescent vortex illuminated the waters surface was the gulf of mexico on fire as terrifying images that seemed to show an ocean engulfed in flames went viral many wondered how this could be possible at an offshore oil and gas rig a corroded pipe likely leaked causing gas to bubble to the surface and ignite the initial leak is cause for concern and the failure of underwater pipeline systems in offshore locations has been a topic of discussion among engineers for decades as an engineer we are focused on the corrosion and material failure of pipelines said dr saadat mirza professor of practice in the subsea engineering program through the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university there are ways to safely build and maintain these systems that researchers like myself are actively pursuing mirza and doctoral student naga venkata saidileep korlapati are working with dr faisal khan professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and director of the mary kay o'connor process safety center (mkopsc) and dr noor quddus assistant research engineer in the mkopsc to develop bayesian networks capable of predicting pipeline failure additionally they would like to apply machine-learning techniques to create instruments that can effectively detect potential failures subsea engineers battle harsh corroding marine environments as well as corrosive fluids that flow inside the pipeline leaving pipelines extremely susceptible to damage there are also many variables to consider when dissecting pipeline systems such as differing installation processes diameter and thickness of a pipeline aging in hardware and materials failure for instance rigid pipelines are often made of carbon steel and are stiff and hard to install in contrast flexible pipelines are relatively easier and cheaper to install but difficult to maintain however despite being the industry standard in many countries flexible pipelines fail frequently due to their limited design that is comparative to that of a rubber and steel hose-like complex structure in addition many offshore systems were built decades ago without strict guidelines set in place for how to safely build structures that can withstand the test of time allowing for differentiation creates issues; there are hundreds of reasons a pipeline can fail dependent on the characteristics of that specific system unfortunately many pipelines are not checked for corrosion because they span millions of miles said mirza some are over 50 years old and they were designed with different design codes without proper maintenance if theres a leak we can only know if it is reported to the government small leaks often go undiscovered or unreported we want to use the available data to create tools that predict failure but also make it easier to determine and report the researchers are developing a bayesian framework that can foresee pipeline failure based on analyzing past incidents and variables such as structure installation methods and materials by looking at the available databases we see the past pipeline failures and can likely determine why they occurred said korlapati by researching and condensing the data we hope to predict pipeline behavior more accurately moving forward the next step in the process is instrumentation the researchers plan to create technology that can be placed on pipelines to provide data in real time if successful the research could potentially help avoid detrimental pipeline accidents which in turn helps the environment and the subsea engineering industry if we can develop the right tool placed on the correct spot on the pipeline many problems can be avoided said korlapati we are taking the things we can control and using them to ensure reliability so while a fire on the ocean is certainly scary texas a&m faculty and students are working to decrease these occurrences and improve the offshore systems that cause them
2167,if interested in the subsea engineering program please visit the about the subsea engineering program page
2168,for 50 years the department of ocean engineerings center for dredging studies (cds) at texas a&m university has hosted an annual dredging engineering short course for professionals around the world though this past year it had to move to an online format due to the covid-19 pandemic the five-day course still upheld its reputation and legacy as a world-class continuing education experience by bringing in esteemed lecturers from the dredging industry government and academia to present the latest science and technological advances in the field completing the dredging engineering short course was a fantastic way to get a taste for the comprehensive and fascinating world of dredging said dr ana e rice physical oceanographer in the marine minerals program at the bureau of ocean energy management despite having to run the course in a virtual format this year dr ram mohan and his staff did an excellent job communicating and covering all the required material to increase engagement they made sure to provide ample time at the end of each session for q&a and for discussion they even successfully ran laboratories two of the afternoons in reduced groups where videos were shown in lieu of in-person laboratory visits i highly recommend this course to anyone involved in the world of dredging no matter their background or level of expertise in the subject matter over 90 participants attended the course spanning a wide range of industries including government consulting firms ports and dredging companies the dredging engineering short course is a very well-organized and well-presented class said kelly e alford lead construction control representative for the us army corps of engineers in jacksonville florida the lecturers and presenters have a wealth of knowledge that gave me an understanding of the historical aspects of dredging and the pathways that the dredging field has taken to its current globally ecological and economical relevance and impact a terrific blend of theoretical field contract administration and ‘engineering with nature provided by approachable and relatable people with solid backgrounds expertise and credentials topics covered in the short course included basic dredge laws hydraulic and mechanical dredges dredge pumps and performance characteristics dredging best management practices and claims avoidance beach and dune restoration ecosystem (wetlands) restoration hydrographic surveys and dredge cost estimation the course also included virtual labs and exercises mohan adjunct professor in the department and director of the cds led the course in coordination with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) continuing education office tees edge it has been incredible to be part of a practitioners course that has impacted so many people over the span of 50+ years we have been fortunate to bring in the leading experts from industry to share their expertise with our participants and we plan to continue doing so for many years to come said mohan the audio-visual support from tees facilitated a seamless execution of the week-long online course established in 1968 by the late dr john herbich and nurtured by dr robert randall (ocean engineering professor emeritus) the cds is currently under the direction of mohan in addition to applied research and industrial testing the center's activities include teaching university courses and providing annual seminars and short courses concerning advances in dredging engineering technology over the years more than 2 000 dredge professionals have participated in the dredging short course the 51st dredging engineering short course will also be held virtually it will run from jan 10-14 2022 the course fee is $1 500 our classes do get filled to capacity by around the end of october showing their high demand in the industry so early registration is strongly recommended said mohan applications and more information are now available on the cds website
2169,"""i know that what i'm learning in school will give me the tools i need to be successful when i start the real learning in the field "" said emer phelan '22 learning is critical to phelan a senior undergraduate student in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university every step she's taken to become someone who can make a difference for others has involved upping her education phelan spent her childhood in ireland with her mom but moved in with her dad in boston to finish high school ""i always loved america and saw my future here "" phelan said ""i went from being top of my class overseas to three years in a school where i felt behind the moment i set foot in it i lost the attitude of thinking i could know everything and accepted that i had to work really hard and learn at my own pace"" when she chose to study petroleum engineering at texas a&m the top program in the country for the degree she convinced her dad to transfer within his company and move to texas that way she could get in-state tuition and handle much of the cost herself with student jobs and scholarships going into her junior year phelan received the full-ride joe & susan richardson scholarship which allowed her family to worry less about expenses and phelan to concentrate more on her academics ""i was already considering texas a&m when i met an aggie family in ireland "" phelan said ""i was trying to decide on universities while visiting my mom and they told me all about their school and showed me their rings i thought it was a sign that a&m was the place for me"""
2170,"like many students phelan came to texas a&m not knowing anyone else she signed up for engineering honors right off the bat planning to take advantage of early registration for classes and quickly realized the program offered two significant benefits: meeting other academically focused students and attending weekly seminars featuring industry professionals through honors scheduling socials she learned valuable tips from older students on choosing professors and preparing for labs and exams but the industry speakers were always the highlight of her week ""those seminars would give me that pick up i needed when i was in the weeds "" phelan said ""i would call my dad as i walked back to the dorm so i could tell him what i learned because it made me so excited"" phelan was dead set on petroleum engineering though several students tried to talk her out of it seeking support she attended a sophomore retreat hosted by the student chapter of the society of petroleum engineers there phelan met students who had the same passion for the major she had she also spoke with former students in the oil and gas industry one of whom offered her an internship once she finished her sophomore year that first internship had a considerable impact on phelan anxious to learn fieldwork firsthand she jumped at every opportunity to go out with her foreman and listen closely as he explained operations while they happened when the reality of workovers and pump teardowns knitted together with the academic information crammed into her head during classes she understood things on a different level ""i had so many epiphany moments that summer "" said phelan ""i was writing stuff in my notes app all the time trying to remember everything i could everything i was told i almost didn't want to come back to school but i need my degree"" phelan enjoys being an aggie she has embraced the aggie spirit marveled at a seven-overtime football game and despite any temporary separations caused by covid-19 made the kind of friendships that last a lifetime three weeks after her graduation in may she will marry a fellow aggie a young man she met in a tradition-oriented student organization the spring semester of their freshman year phelan also gives back to younger aggies every chance she gets last year she planned the same sophomore retreat she once attended though it had to be held virtually this year phelan helped with prospective high school student sessions and department recruitment anything to provide choice-of-major support for others who might feel pressured to go elsewhere ""even when people tried to make me doubt i knew i wanted to be petroleum "" said phelan ""i knew this was for me petroleum is a necessity the backbone of today's energy and i want to be a part of that"""
2171,dr vinayak krishnamurthy assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was presented the 2021 american society of mechanical engineers young engineer award from the computers and information in engineering division receiving the young engineer award marks an important event in my academic career said krishnamurthy i am happy to see the work of my research group recognized by my colleagues in the broader research community as a result the award will help make my work visible to a wide range of potential collaborators toward many new research directions this esteemed national award recognizes up-and-coming researchers making outstanding developments on computers and information in engineering krishnamurthys research interests include computer-aided product design through fundamental advances in geometric modeling human-computer interaction and the application of artificial intelligence to promote creative thinking in design additionally he has made significant contributions in intelligent user interfaces augmented and virtual reality and geometric computing for designing complex 3d shapes he was officially presented the award at the 2021 international design engineering technical conferences & computers and information in engineering conference
2172,it was 33 years ago when dr john e hurtado took a greyhound bus from fresno california to college station texas following the sage advice of his professor at san diego state university he visited aggieland to see if it would be a good fit for him to attend graduate school the rest as they say is history and now more than three decades later hes leading texas a&m universitys college of engineering as interim vice chancellor and dean
2173,hurtado grew up in fresno in the san joaquin valley where canals dug more than a century before transformed a once barren gold rush town into a fertile valley ripe for agriculture his grandparents owned a small farm and hurtado worked alongside his family picking grapes after graduating from high school he worked for a few years before deciding to go to a community college where he excelled in math and physics i had some wonderful teachers there who were encouraging me to study engineering he said and thats what i did after completing some years at fresno city college he transferred to san diego state university and majored in aerospace engineering a first-generation college student hurtado relied on the advice of faculty and advisors who encouraged him to go to graduate school i remember visiting texas a&m university he said i came here and i fell in love with it hurtado earned his masters and doctorate from texas a&m both in aerospace engineering before starting his career as a researcher at sandia national laboratories in albuquerque new mexico i really liked that work he said it was very applied engineering and my education at texas a&m prepared me so well a few years into his career at the national lab hurtado joined a small team to develop swarm robotics together they built more than 30 sugar cube-sized robots that could communicate with one another while working independently their goal was to discover if collective behavior could accomplish a task that a single robot working alone could not the patented robots from that project are now part of a permanent collection at the smithsonian institutes national museum of american history
2174,returning to aggieland in 2001 hurtado returned to aggieland as a faculty member in the department of aerospace engineering he later joined the leadership team of former vice chancellor and dean dr m katherine banks as an associate dean in that role he helped shepherd the development of academic success programs like the zachry leadership program and engr[x] he also assisted in designing the curriculum for the bachelor of science in interdisciplinary engineering degree as well as the engineering medicine (enmed) programi thoroughly enjoyed that and was able to help dr banks accomplish some of her vision for what the college would become he said hurtado later served as interim department head in the department of nuclear engineering before leading the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) at its inception
2175,focusing on faculty hurtado said he wants to ensure that engineering faculty at texas a&m are supported and elevated we are investing in facilities and in many other areas for them to be successful in conducting their basic and applied research he said we have an opportunity to make a significant impact here in the state of texas and in the nation through our relationship with los alamos national laboratories and with our applied research being conducted at the bush combat development complexsome of the primary focus areas of the bcdc are autonomous systems hypersonics and directed energy research in the college of engineering we have experts who lead these fields and its a wonderful opportunity to have a national impact he saidhurtado said that with more than 700 faculty ranging from national academy members to professors of practice the college brings a full spectrum of education to students we have faculty who are improving autonomous vehicles and energy efficiency he said we have faculty who are finding cures for cancer we have faculty who are involved in sending the next generation to marsand with research opportunities available to both undergraduate and graduate students the college continues to prepare engineers for success the same way it prepared hurtado more than three decades ago taking texas a&m to the next level as vice chancellor hurtado is also tasked with leading the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) tees has served the state and the nation for more than 100 years by providing innovative solutions to some of the most challenging problems he said in the tees strategic plan we are committed to growing and strengthening the relationship between fundamental and applied research tees is also helping develop future leaders by providing workforce training and professional education one additional aspect of tees is helping researchers develop and commercialize their technologies hurtado said an open door as hurtado walks through the halls of the zachry engineering education complex sometimes donning one of his many bow ties he greets the faculty staff and students he passes with a smile and a howdy its the aggie way im excited to serve as interim vice chancellor and dean he said there is no other engineering program that moves with this tempo and is on this trajectory to impact this country im looking forward to the future
2176,two students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have received prestigious awards from the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) akanksha baranwal received the 2021 orville and wilbur wright graduate award and alexander gross received the cary spitzer digital avionics scholarshipbaranwal is a doctoral candidate pursuing research in high-speed turbulent boundary layers and thermal nonequilibrium under the supervision of dr diego donzis the main focus of her research is simulation and modeling of momentum transport and nonequilibrium energy transport processes in high-speed turbulent flows she holds bachelor of technology and master of technology degrees in aerospace engineering from the indian institute of technology madras india and was previously selected as a 2020 amelia earhart fellowthe orville and wilbur wright graduate award which includes $5 000 is given annually to two graduate students conducting research in fields of science and engineering encompassed by the technical activities of aiaai express my deepest gratitude to aiaa for offering recognition to my research said baranwal the award acknowledges my dedicated endeavors and sincere guidance of my professor dr donzis as well as his collaborator dr (rodney) bowersox at texas a&m i feel elated and inspired to continue my best efforts toward my research and contribute to the advancement of the field of aerospacegross is an engineering honors undergraduate student pursuing his degree in aerospace engineering with minors in mathematics and computer science in addition he is an undergraduate researcher in the vehicle systems & control laboratory at texas a&m under the guidance of dr john valasek his goal is to work in the aerospace industry as a vehicle guidance navigation and control engineer for spaceflight vehiclesthe cary spitzer digital avionics scholarship is an award of $3 000 gross received the scholarship for his research contributions on the aided threat recognition from mobile cooperative and autonomous sensors project and in applications of the cycle-of-learning methodology for training of mars rover vehicles and their interaction with human operatorsthroughout my collegiate career i have always pursued avenues to continue my educational and professional development said gross receiving this scholarship greatly reduces the financial burden necessary to continue my education allowing my goal to enter the aerospace industry to become increasingly real every dayaiaa distributes over $70 000 in scholarships and graduate awards yearly to students studying aerospace engineering at accredited colleges and universities throughout the united states
2177,"dr limei tian assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university recently received the trailblazer r21 award from the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering part of the national institutes of health to support her research developing biosensorstians current project focuses on developing biosensors to detect biomarkers for an acute kidney injury (aki) where the kidney suddenly stops working normally this would involve monitoring the concentration of proteins in urine while there are established protein biomarkers the challenge is continuously monitoring them detecting aki can be a time-sensitive process for determining proper treatment and protein concentrations can change rapidly meaning a continuous monitor would also benefit cliniciansthere are current procedures that can detect those proteins very accurately but every time the doctor orders these it's going to take several hours depending on whether the hospital has the capability of logging them tian said in most cases you have to send these samples to a central lab and it's going take several days to turn around resultstian said the goal is to design a biosensor that could detect the concentration and provide an update every 30 minutes which could provide more timely clinical intervention on the patients behalf the biosensor would be small and ideally could easily be integrated into a catheter or implanted into the bladder in a minimally invasive process because the sensor would be designed in a soft electronic format tian said the applications for the biosensor extend outside of detecting akione example would be analyzing protein levels in the fluid outside cells the interstitial fluid by monitoring concentrations and comparing them to protein levels in the blood researchers can better measure correlations between the twothose are interesting clinical questions and with this tool we can answer those fundamental questions which can impact many other areas tian said thats what we are excited about we are developing an enabling technology not only for this project but its really a platform technology we're hoping not only revolutionizes disease diagnosis but in general health monitoring"" the trailblazer award supports high-impact projects with the potential to transform understanding or practice by applying an innovative approach to biomedical challenges the team was awarded $589 100 for use over three yearsthe theme of our lab is developing novel biosensing platforms tian said this is a biosensing project and also it's funded by a very prestigious award that is very encouraging for a starting lab"
2178,synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary field of study that applies engineering principles to biology and enables the engineering of microorganisms to have new functions and produce new materials through this researchers can solve real problems faced by society including those in the areas of medicine agriculture and national defense to name a few but this technique has only been applied to a very limited number of well-known laboratory microorganisms until now dr arum han presidential impact fellow and professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and dr jose wippold and dr bryn adams with the us army combat capabilities development command (devcom) army research laboratory (arl) collaborated to develop a device that accomplishes a task never done before the automation of dna transfer into a broad range of synthetic biology host cells or chassis using high-throughput microfluidics allowing for a large number of experiments to be conducted in a very short time their technology the dna enhanced transfer platform (dna entrap) is a microfluidic device that leverages a cell-to-cell dna transfer tool xport previously developed through a collaboration between the massachusetts institute of technology and arl texas a&m and arl then took the strategy and designed developed and tested a microfluidic device able to automate the steps needed to achieve xport dna transfer the device can enhance and screen for efficient dna transfer between cells ultimately making high-throughput genetic modification possible in a variety of organisms outside of the usual laboratory strains
2179,han explained that harnessing the power of these diverse environmental microorganisms is of high interest to the military because they have so many different and unique functions that are currently untapped while these microorganisms are conventionally very difficult to engineer the entrap device provides the capability to readily engineer these natural microorganisms allowing synthetic biology techniques to be applied to the vast and diverse natural microorganisms enabling the agile development and manufacturing of new materials microbes in the environment are extremely diverse where we know less than 1% of these diverse microbes and thus provides a rich source of new functions and materials han said the collaborative project with the army research laboratory allows us to apply synthetic biology techniques to this extremely diverse environmental microbes opening up new ways of harnessing the power of microbes from nature dna entrap directly addresses the need for high-throughput reliable accurate and automatic systems that can be employed to streamline the labor-intensive and inefficient genetic modification processes into a rapid discovery engine the end result is a unique system that overcomes the time-consuming and labor-intensive process currently being used while also enabling multi-parameter adjustments and screening of cell-to-cell dna transfer conditions and their outcomes one of the enabling technologies to achieve high-throughput screening is microfluidics and its subset droplet microfluidics which enables researchers to study hundreds to thousands of experiments per second examined simultaneously through the use of microdroplets picture a bottle of oil and water that has been shaken up each droplet of water bouncing around in the oil would be a test event you can imagine the physical time it takes to do something on a benchtop in the lab with the movement of a hand is on the order of maybe 10 seconds per action with a lag time between each action wippold said the automated nature of microfluidics enables up to thousands of these actions per second the ability to massively scale up this process and allow us to do hundreds of thousands of different experiments in one run is just game-changing wippold said the droplet microfluidic system within the dna entrap device is composed of a series of separate but interconnected microfluidic liquid handling functions to accomplish this rapid direct cell to cell dna transfer further the number of each cell type (dna donor and receiver cells) within the droplet co-cultivation conditions and size of the droplet (thus the average distance between the cells) can all be controlled with high accuracy enabling the rapid identification of the conditions and/or cell strains that show the best dna transfer efficiencies wippold explained that the team expects the amount of time saved to be over 6 000-fold compared to a conventional assay and a corresponding reagent consumption saving of at least 100-fold for example testing a library of 1 million dna donor cells against a novel host cell (the cell receiving dna or other genetic material) under a single condition through conventional means will take an estimated 650 months wippold said in comparison running such a library through the invented droplet microfluidic platform will be accomplished within three days
2180,in a discovery published in the journal nature an international team of researchers has described a novel molecular device with exceptional computing prowess reminiscent of the plasticity of connections in the human brain the device can be reconfigured on the fly for different computational tasks by simply changing applied voltages furthermore like nerve cells can store memories the same device can also retain information for future retrieval and processing the brain has the remarkable ability to change its wiring around by making and breaking connections between nerve cells achieving something comparable in a physical system has been extremely challenging said dr r stanley williams professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university we have now created a molecular device with dramatic reconfigurability which is achieved not by changing physical connections like in the brain but by reprogramming its logic dr t venkatesan director of the center for quantum research and technology (cqrt) at the university of oklahoma scientific affiliate at national institute of standards and technology gaithersburg and adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at the national university of singapore added that their molecular device might in the future help design next-generation processing chips with enhanced computational power and speed but consuming significantly reduced energy whether it is the familiar laptop or a sophisticated supercomputer digital technologies face a common nemesis the von neumann bottleneck this delay in computational processing is a consequence of current computer architectures wherein the memory containing data and programs is physically separated from the processor as a result computers spend a significant amount of time shuttling information between the two systems causing the bottleneck also despite extremely fast processor speeds these units can be idling for extended amounts of time during periods of information exchange as an alternative to conventional electronic parts used for designing memory units and processors devices called memristors offer a way to circumvent the von neumann bottleneck memristors such as those made of niobium dioxide and vanadium dioxide transition from being an insulator to a conductor at a set temperature this property gives these types of memristors the ability to perform computations and store data however despite their many advantages these metal oxide memristors are made of rare-earth elements and can operate only in restrictive temperature regimes hence there has been an ongoing search for promising organic molecules that can perform a comparable memristive function said williams dr sreebrata goswami a professor at the indian association for the cultivation of science designed the material used in this work the compound has a central metal atom (iron) bound to three phenyl azo pyridine organic molecules called ligands this behaves like an electron sponge that can absorb as many as six electrons reversibly resulting in seven different redox states said sreebrata the interconnectivity between these states is the key behind the reconfigurability shown in this work dr sreetosh goswami a researcher at the national university of singapore devised this project by creating a tiny electrical circuit consisting of a 40-nanometer layer of molecular film sandwiched between a layer of gold on top and gold-infused nanodisc and indium tin oxide at the bottom on applying a negative voltage on the device sreetosh witnessed a current-voltage profile that was nothing like anyone had seen before unlike metal-oxide memristors that can switch from metal to insulator at only one fixed voltage the organic molecular devices could switch back and forth from insulator to conductor at several discrete sequential voltages so if you think of the device as an on-off switch as we were sweeping the voltage more negative the device first switched from on to off then off to on then on to off and then back to on i'll say that we were just blown out of our seat said venkatesan we had to convince ourselves that what we were seeing was real sreetosh and sreebrata investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying the curious switching behavior using an imaging technique called raman spectroscopy in particular they looked for spectral signatures in the vibrational motion of the organic molecule that could explain the multiple transitions their investigation revealed that sweeping the voltage negative triggered the ligands on the molecule to undergo a series of reduction or electron-gaining events that caused the molecule to transition between off state and on states next to describe the extremely complex current-voltage profile of the molecular device mathematically williams deviated from the conventional approach of basic physics-based equations instead he described the behavior of the molecules using a decision tree algorithm with if-then-else statements a commonplace line of code in several computer programs particularly digital games video games have a structure where you have a character that does something and then something occurs as a result and so if you write that out in a computer algorithm they are if-then-else statements said williams here the molecule is switching from on to off as a consequence of applied voltage and thats when i had the eureka moment to use decision trees to describe these devices and it worked very well but the researchers went a step further to exploit these molecular devices to run programs for different real-world computational tasks sreetosh showed experimentally that their devices could perform fairly complex computations in a single time step and then be reprogrammed to perform another task in the next instant it was quite extraordinary; our device was doing something like what the brain does but in a very different way said sreetosh when you're learning something new or when you're deciding the brain can actually reconfigure and change physical wiring around similarly we can logically reprogram or reconfigure our devices by giving them a different voltage pulse then they've seen before venkatesan noted that it would take thousands of transistors to perform the same computational functions as one of their molecular devices with its different decision trees hence he said their technology might first be used in handheld devices like cell phones and sensors and other applications where power is limited other contributors to the research include dr abhijeet patra and dr ariando from the national university of singapore; dr rajib pramanick and dr santi prasad rath from the indian association for the cultivation of science; dr martin foltin from hewlett packard enterprise colorado; and dr damien thompson from the university of limerick ireland venkatesan said that this research is indicative of the future discoveries from this collaborative team which will include the center of nanoscience and engineering at the indian institute of science and the microsystems and nanotechnology division at the nist this multidisciplinary and multinational research was supported by the singapore national research foundation under the competitive research programs; science and engineering research board india; the x-grants program of the presidents excellence fund at texas a&m; science technology and research singapore under its advanced manufacturing and engineering individual research grant; startup funds at cqrt university of oklahoma; and the science foundation ireland
2181,growing up in norway stein rasmussen 93 was never too far from the coast he was sailing at a young age his parents owned a sailboat and he was always on the water during his free time combining that with norways involvement in the oil and gas industry ocean engineering was a natural evolution for him however coming to texas a&m university was a bit more of a leap than a step rasmussen knew he would need to move to continue his education in ocean engineering past a bachelors degree as norway only had one place where students could obtain a graduate degree in the discipline at the time the decision became whether to move to another city or country at my university in bergen (norway) there were some former students that had gone to the us he said there was some connection between the faculty at bergen and the professors at texas a&m university so i reached out to the students to understand how the transfer was if they were able to transfer their classwork and what was it like to be at texas a&m through that i quickly realized that if i want to move i might as well really move not just domestically in norway but take a bigger step and that's what i did likewise rasmussen now advises students to pursue graduate work be curious and take chances not only in their education but also in their careers there is no defined path you have to find out yourself he said but i think the advice i would say is to try to be a bit bold don't play it safe every step take some chances if it doesn't work out you move on that's what i did and i wouldn't do anything different today if i were to do it over again i would do exactly the same rasmussen went on to receive both his bachelors and masters degrees from the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m he explained his time in the department and the university set him up to successfully work in a global community and field with how internationally diverse the population was and the plethora of cultural organizations and events available now he is the chief strategy officer of sbm offshore an international company sbm offshore is a pioneer in the offshore energy industry with a focus in designing supplying building installation operation and maintenance of offshore energy production systems such as floating production storage and offloading vessels as well as floating offshore wind and wave energy
2182,with sbm offshores global reach and the nature of ocean engineering as a whole rasmussen explained that since attending texas a&m he hasnt worked in his home country in norway instead he has traveled around the world for his career and learned that understanding cultures and listening carefully is key to being an effective leader to that end he challenges current students to prepare for a continuous learning journey after university saying that part of the fun of a career is discovering new things each day and always being a little uncomfortable in ones expertise along with traveling to meet with clients and employees he oversees a wide range of responsibilities including the corporate strategy technology innovation corporate development (a subset of strategy focusing on partnerships joint ventures mergers acquisitions etc) and transformation housed within transformation are the companys digital transformation program and a program titled emissionzero which aims to develop products with zero emission for the energy market additionally rasmussen is responsible for the companys sustainability efforts an area that is rapidly growing in the offshore energy and oil and gas industries with the rise of the energy transition and other sustainability movements as rasmussen expressed the company is investigating ways to leverage their resources technology knowledge and partnerships to come up with solutions that can reduce and ultimately eliminate emissions from how they produce hydrocarbons at the same time they are also developing offshore renewable technology so we are looking at both sides: we are cleaning up the emissions from the core of the business and then we are developing renewable energy solutions for the future he said as the company and ocean engineering continues to advance rasmussen said he is excited for the prospective expansion that the industry holds two-thirds of the surface of the world is covered by water so i think there is huge potential in the oceans and we are just scratching the surface of it he said i really think that when it comes to climate change a lot of the answers for the future will be found in the oceans it's really up to us to find solutions do research build understanding and come up with ideas on how we can harvest energy for the world in a sustainable way
2183,over the past year there has been a sharp increase in cyberattacks using malware to target the systems of critical infrastructure such as utility companies government agencies and organizations that provide services and products that we rely on daily according to a report from the cybersecurity firm checkpoint software in the first half of this year there was a 102% increase in these types of attacks compared to 2020 one of the biggest this year was the ransomware attack on the colonial pipeline where hackers gained control of the control room computers and demanded a $44 million payment before they would return the system back over to the company the colonial pipeline supplies about 45% of the east coasts oil and diesel fuel supply and they were offline for several days due to the attack this not only impacted the companys bottom line but it also affected consumers as a major fuel supplier went offline for several days if that wasnt bad enough it was recently announced that the company had to notify employees that their personal data may have also been compromised during the attack a few weeks later global meat supplier jbs foods paid an $11 million ransom after an attack that caused them to temporality suspend meat processing at their plants as a result there was an uptick in beef and pork prices in years past a lot of internet attacks were done for fun but these days they are all for profit said dr guofei gu professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university the most popular and profitable type that we see nowadays is ransomware ransomware is an advanced type of malware that installs itself onto a users machine or device undetected encrypts their data files rendering them inaccessible and demands a ransom payment to decrypt them but even if the ransom is paid the decryption process to get the files back to normal is a slow one these groups will put several locks on the data said dr dilma da silva professor and holder of the ford motor company design professorship in the department while you may be able to get through them all with the key that they give you it is going to take the computer a long time to get through them all and theres always a possibility they will leave an extra hack behind for themselves or to sell to other cybercriminal groups cybercrime is a growing business the fbi reported that in 2020 despite most of the country being focused on the covid-19 pandemic they received a record number of complaints about cybercrimes which cost americans about $42 billion in losses cybersecurity ventures predicts that by 2025 that number could grow to $105 trillion per year worldwide what is malware malware is an umbrella term for any malicious software such as viruses worms and spyware that is intentionally designed to cause harm or damage computers computer systems devices and networks it can get into a system through various methods including email attachments infected applications and usb drives phishing emails text messages and malicious advertisements recent malware attacks have a couple of new features that set them apart from past attacks the first is that the malware is a sophisticated software written by highly skilled professionals it explores a computers software vulnerabilities that even the owner of the system has not discovered the second new feature is that these professional groups have begun targeting more profitable victims one of the nations most vital infrastructure systems utilities are among the most vulnerable to cyberattacks many large utility companies run on very old systems and software and have highly constrained resources the reason why these out-of-date platforms are still in use is because they were created to perform specific tasks and they still work when a vulnerability is found updating the system it is not a simple process in addition if one element of it is changed then it can affect other parts of it in unpredictable ways and result in more issues they are also not able to run additional software alongside it to protect it better protecting critical infrastructure systems when it comes down to developing solutions to improve the strength of these systems to protect from future cyberattacks there is a dilemma unlike the computer systems that we use every day like windows or linux many of these critical infrastructure systems are highly closed to outsiders including cybersecurity experts on the one side these organizations want their systems to be secure but at the same time they are not able to achieve the level of security they need said gu they either cannot use existing solutions or they are unwilling to open their systems for experts to assess for possible vulnerabilities while there may be good reasons to keep the details of their systems hidden it makes collaborating with security experts who want to help difficult to help improve communications between these organizations and cybersecurity experts gu suggests that the solution could be designing these systems to be more open a lot of the time an open design is actually more secure because a lot of experts will be able to analyze it he said if they are not able to find any problems or break them it typically means that the systems security is good its all about finding a good balance between openness and security cybersecurity research at texas a&m texas a&m is one of only a handful of colleges and universities in the nation designated as a center for academic excellence in all three national security agency focus areas: cyberoperations cyberdefense and research da silvas work which is funded by the national security agency centers around making computer systems more suitable for security work it is essentially about the computational power to be able to process data very quickly said da silva when there is a lot of data coming into a system at a rapid pace the system needs to be able to consume that data very quickly and run algorithms that run closer to where the data is produced were really refining and specializing the things that google and facebook for instance use to process a lot of data but for cybersecurity specifically gus research is focused on achieving defense in depth which is a security approach that utilizes several layers of defense mechanisms that are thoughtfully placed throughout a computer network to protect the valuable data within it from a variety of threats in the event that a mechanism fails then another will immediately step up to stop the attack weve done a lot of work in terms of how we can proactively prevent detect and recover from cyberattacks said gu for example we built a system to detect new vulnerabilities inside a computer systems software that needs to be fixed before a cybercriminal could get in and explore the system as cybersecurity is virtually its own ecosystem that covers a lot of different aspects of our society a wide breadth of expertise is needed to cover them all the texas a&m cybersecurity center is building a strong team of faculty and students that work on various aspects of security such as in the internet of things cloud computing blockchain and software
2184,the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university donated a 10-year $50 000 sponsorship for the frank and lillian gilbreth industrial engineering award given by the institute of industrial and systems engineers (iise) the department is the first sponsor of this award since its inception in 1962 the award is the highest most esteemed honor given by the iise it recognizes individuals for their contributions to the profession our department has recipients of this award including dr kem bennett in 2016 and the late dr ralph lynde disney jr in 1993 said dr lewis ntaimo department head for industrial and systems engineering some of our faculty are heavily involved with iise and we are very supportive of this commitment my department sees iise as a flagship organization and we want to continue to support the organization especially during these difficult times eligible candidates must possess demonstrated contributions to the benefit of humanity in at least two of the following areas: management technical achievement innovation or patents and research candidates for this award also must have represented industrial engineering to the public and the profession in three of the following five areas: publications public relations interdisciplinary activity humanitarian service and service to iise watch the interview with iise ceo don greene and industrial and systems engineering department head dr lewis ntaimo this video was uploaded by iise
2185,ashley hicks is a fifth-year student in the biomaterials track of the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university halfway through her sophomore year she participated in a yearlong co-op for johnson & johnson q: what was your co-op experience likea: i worked in the business excellence department which involved responsibilities related to industrial engineering i used my biomedical engineering background as part of the manufacturing team to help redesign processes safely and effectively the particular site i worked at manufactured needles and sutures i had a very limited background because i was only a sophomore but they wanted somebody who had a general understanding of the fda (food and drug administration) to help monitor processes on the manufacturing floor and improve them in ways that were fda compliant as well as more efficient q: what do you think you got out of the co-opa: that co-op changed my life it bestowed upon me confidence in my ability to adapt to an environment and to something that i didn't think i was going to be able to do i learned so much about fda regulations about auditing and industrial distribution that opened my eyes to the realm of medical device manufacturing one thing that i was told over and over again that i won't forget is that when biomedical engineers design something in a lab they don't always think about how easy that's going to be to manufacture and reproduce on a grand scale that's something that needs to be taken into consideration q: have there been any standout classes for youa: bmen 344 which is biological responses to medical devices dr daniel alge taught that; its a materials-oriented course that is one of the most interesting classes i've ever taken i felt like it really tied everything together that i've learned from introduction to materials and general chemistry as well as physiology it was a very integrative course q: you do research as part of your engineering honors work can you talk about your projecta: i work in dr melissa grunlans lab my undergraduate thesis work involves exploring alternative polymer architectures for use in shape memory polymer tissue scaffolds to hopefully lower their melt transition temperature we use this material to treat craniomaxillofacial defects for instance if you have a tumor removed or suffer some sort of traumatic head injury instead of auto grafting which has a higher risk of graft resorption we can use a synthetic material that we can heat up and press fit into the shape of your defect upon cooling it will regain its initial rigidity the material itself is bioactive which will encourage cells to attach and form bone through the pores of the scaffold as it is slowly degraded by the body q: what are your plans after graduationa: the next step for me will be pursuing my phd in biomedical engineering ideally my end goal is to run my own research lab i don't know if that's going to be through industry starting my own company or working for a university i want to be able to decide the direction of the research that i'm doing and be my own boss in that sense q: what advice would you give to prospective biomedical studentsa: work on building a good network of students and colleagues because there is a lot of teamwork required for this major also the quicker you learn to be a team player in situations that are out of your control the more successful you will be
2186,with the economy looking toward the oceans as the engine for sustainable and equitable progress the blue economy movement means that emphasis must be placed on increasing the safety of offshore assets on sept 29 2021 to delve deeper into the emerging issues surrounding such economic expansion the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university hosted an offshore safety industry panel with five experts from various areas of the profession and one faculty member the department plans to host one industry panel each semester related to a prevailing topic in the field moderated by department head dr sharath girimaji this panel hosted virtually included: dr jeffery falzarano texas a&m ocean engineering professor dr alberto morandi general manager at gustomsc in houston peter noble president and principal advisor at noble associates inc richard simpson creative director at innovative collaboration and solutions adm jim watson consultant former director at the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement and former president and chief operations officer for the american bureau of shipping americas division evan zimmerman '98 group chief executive of merman group ltd there are very few (documentaries) that praise engineering as engineering marvels rather they highlight engineering failures said noble thats part of the perception that we have to deal with as engineers in the good old days of engineering engineers were heroes today were not seen that way and i think thats a fundamental thing we need to work on in our communication the reason we live safe and healthy lives is because of technology falzarano who has more than 30 years of naval architecture experience said when he thinks of advancing offshore safety he first thinks of notable past accidents as he explained to understand how to increase safety researchers must study post-accident investigations continue to conduct stability design assessments and operational monitoring and research new approaches to stability and issue management morandi also a naval architect with 35 years of experience described one framework for action engineers could take to help avoid future accidents if you look at what the us europe and asia are committed to doing we are looking at 254 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 said morandi this is more than the 40 largest hydroelectric dams in operation so we are going to have to learn very quickly and develop technology quickly and safely morandi explained that its important for engineers to have a base understanding of marine structures rigs and vessels and the issues they might encounter such as in stability and watertight integrity station keeping structural and foundation integrity or tie-downs and by correctly reporting and learning from smaller issues or near misses professionals can be proactive in reducing the potential for large-scale accidents that cause major injury or financial losses however morandi concluded sometimes accidents happen even when existing practices and reporting have been adequate this makes it even more important to review accidents and learn from past events to understand the deviations that could have caused them and improvements needed to prevent reoccurrence noble a marine and ocean engineer who has worked at shipyards oil companies and classification societies discussed the difference between safety and risk and the levels of safety as he described there are three areas of safety personnel safety involves keeping people safe environmental safety encompasses keeping the environment safe and reducing the risk of harm such as an oil spill or emissions and asset safety which includes the product the ship or the offshore platform or oil rig that a company paid for each of these is governed differently simpson a master mariner with command experience has some 40 years involved with a wide range of vessel types worldwide both onboard and in shoreside management during the panel he stressed the impacts of design impacts versus operational errors he urged the audience to focus on fundamental engineering practices he also explained that the simplest of design errors often became the biggest issue because they were overlooked risky operations garner lots of attention but routine activities involving poor designs such as a masthead light that must be changed in a less than ideal way or simply boarding a vessel tend not to be recognized as significant hazards watson spoke on the importance of preparedness before an accident to do so engineers need to develop relationships with key project players in their field and government before an accident occurs and have contingency plans in place that are tested regularly they must also standardize crisis terminology into a common language such as the incident command system in the us watson said crisis management and safety require a plethora of people coming together in a unity of effort zimmerman encouraged the audience to think about the full life cycle of the system they are designing as he explained its important to make sure to have a diverse set of perspectives both making up the team and the mentors who are able to provide input into the concept of the asset on that same note he also emphasized the importance of a design basis in industry having good engineering practices includes asking the right questions and being able to evaluate the potential options for design and execution when considering all angles of a project theres really no greater time for an engineer to make an impact than at the beginning of the design process he said because those decisions made at the very beginning could either prevent those future incidents from occurring or can actually enable them these comments are part of a larger conversation for a full video version of the panel please contact meredith brown
2187,dr cynthia hipwell from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university recently received the 2021 robert henry thurston lecture award from the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) established in 1925 this prestigious award provides an outstanding leader in pure or applied science or engineering with the honor of presenting to asme a lecture on a subject of broad interest to engineers she will present heat-assisted magnetic recording (hamr): a nanoscale heat transfer adventure to the society on jan 21 2022 i am excited to share the story of heat-assisted magnetic recording technology with the next generation of mechanical engineers said hipwell my advisor chang-lin tien presented the thurston lecture in 1993 encouraging the mechanical engineering community to ‘go to extremes and explore the new area of nanoscale heat transfer it is a huge honor and extremely meaningful for me to be presenting this lecture 28 years later about a technology made possible by the very nanoscale heat-transfer research that he encouraged us to pursue hipwell is a member of the national academy of engineering the national academy of inventors and the academy of medicine engineering and science of texas she is a technology and business process innovator with more than 20 years of experience leading engineering research and product development hipwell is known for establishing new business processes and an organizational culture that focuses on developing innovative solutions from root cause understanding improved pace of learning and discipline in experimentation her research interests include nanoscale energy transport and tribology of small-scale devices surface interface physics and sensors and actuators for haptic and human/machine interfaces and innovation business processes
2188,"dr iman borazjani is being honored among the 2022 class of american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) associate fellows borazjani serves as associate professor and sallie and don davis '61 faculty fellow in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university ""it is a great honor to join the 2022 class of aiaa associate fellows "" borazjani said ""it is gratifying to have one's contributions be recognized by colleagues and the aiaa community"" according to the institute's criteria those selected as aiaa associate fellows are considered to have ""accomplished or been in charge of important engineering or scientific work"" an associate fellow must be an aiaa senior member in good standing with at least 12 years of professional experience three current associate fellows or fellows must also recommend them the class of 2022 associate fellows will officially be honored on january 3 2022 in san diego california during the 2022 aiaa scitech forum"
2189,"harold u escobar-hernandez a doctoral student in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is the recipient of the prestigious christine mirzayan science and technology policy graduate fellowship ""this fellowship has the potential to launch my career in many directions and i feel honored to represent texas a&m at the national academies in the city of magnificent intentions washington dc "" said escobar the fellowship is a training-based educational program providing the chance for early-career scholars to spend 12 weeks at the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine participants discover the intricacies of science and technology policy and how scientists and engineers can effectively advise the general public ""this opportunity is highly significant to me from a professional standpoint "" he said ""it means a great deal to me personally because of the training i have been able to receive it's crucial to be able to explore nontraditional programs and career paths outside academia and industry that can relate to government programs and have an impact on society"" escobar has worked as a research assistant at the mary kay o' connor process safety center at texas a&m for over seven years according to escobar one of the highlights of his academic career is being mentored by the late dr m sam mannan professor in the chemical engineering department and the previous executive director of the center escobar is working toward a doctoral degree in chemical engineering and his research encompasses identifying correlations between the chemistry and stability of novel compounds focusing on safety applicability and sustainability concerns additionally escobar is a student senator for the safety engineering program within the graduate and professional student government ""i consider graduate school as a constant opportunity for growth "" he said ""i've worked passionately in different roles for the texas a&m university system and i have been part of the aggie family for a long time this fills me with pride and gives me a sense of motivation while also awakening a desire to achieve more"" as he makes his way through the fellowship escobar strives to be a voice for underrepresented groups in scientific fields while advocating for delivering independent bipartisan scientifically based advice to the nation escobar hopes his experiences can inspire people with varying backgrounds to push their limits while also promoting collaboration between different institutions ""it brings me great joy and a sense of accomplishment thinking about my path from my early school days in colombia to aggieland and now to the federal city he said as a representative of texas a&m i'd like to use my position in this fellowship to highlight underrepresented groups such as latinos lgbtqia+ and others who look like me and deserve recognition and opportunity i think it's important that we collaborate with other universities and communities who have similar goals to progress in hopes of expanding our horizons"""
2190,marcy and ron newman have established the marcy newman 80 deans scholar award at texas a&m university distributions from this endowment will provide scholarships for freshman students pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering the newmans hope this endowment will grow exponentially by instilling the value of selfless service in recipients lives drawn to the traditions discipline and values she witnessed marcy eagerly selected texas a&m as her university of choice marcy came to texas a&m as a first-generation college student she was faced with financial challenges as she and two of her siblings attended college at the same time to help pay for her tuition and living expenses marcy had multiple jobs that scheduled difficult and late night working hours meanwhile engineering classwork was heightened by her strenuous work hours and financial hurdles freshmen in engineering have to make it through a really tough year in order to continue in their chosen field she said the support of other aggies allowed marcy to overcome her difficult situation i had a lot of mentors and teachers and friends who helped me succeed once i was at a&m she said marcy was inspired by the selfless service she experienced i want to be a part of giving back to help others the way i was helped she founded the endowment specifically to aid freshmen my husband and i wanted to establish an opportunity for a freshman student to succeed and get that first solid year behind them with some financial support marcy was highly impacted by the strong aggie network she found on both campus and after graduation the aggie network in texas is probably one of the strongest that there is she said that network from the beginning gave me a leg up in my career marcys academic advisor at texas a&m gave her a list of people to contact in her job field and the one she chose as her mentor has remained good friends with her family for over 35 years texas a&m isnt just a university she said its a part of your family and i believe in supporting your family embodying the values of leadership and selfless service marcy gives back to her aggie family through her organizational involvement she continues to grow her aggie network specifically among other women aggie women in particular have a special place in my life she said at the time she pursued her degree in civil engineering marcy was one of the few women studying a stem field she has served on the aggie womens network as a board member secretary and president and the aggie women engineers network as an executive committee member my ongoing support of the aggie womens network and the aggie women engineers network and this deans endowed scholarship is my way of hoping to inspire others in the future to do the same whether its in their career or giving back to a&m marcy graduated from texas a&m with a bachelors degree in civil engineering she enjoyed her career working in both the public and private sectors spending the last 15 years working for jacobs engineering group marcy retired in 2020 and is living in san antonio texas she and her husband enjoy traveling volunteering and the extra time to continue to give back to texas a&m
2191,a deans scholar award can be established as an endowment of $100 000 or by committing to a four-year contribution of $4 000 each year for a total of $16 000 if you are interested in supporting the deans scholars award program or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
2192,"dr ali erdemir has joined the world academy of ceramics as a professional member of the organization's 2022 ""science"" class a member of the national academy of engineering erdemir serves as the halliburton chair in engineering professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university new members of the world academy of ceramics must have made a sustained and globally significant contribution to the advancement of ceramics science and technology including through substantial scholarly contributions through high-impact archival publications erdemir said his election to the academy is the culmination of dedicated work over nearly three decades according to his official award citation he is being honored ""for advancing the frontiers of ceramic coatings for tribological applications providing increased efficiency reliability and environmental sustainability"" ""being elected as a professional member (or academician) of the world academy of ceramics is a great honor and a long-awaited dream since i started my work in the fields of superhard and low-friction ceramic coatings as well as diamond and diamond-like carbon films back in the early 1990s "" erdemir said ""it is extremely heartwarming to see that scientific innovations i was able to contribute to in these areas are now recognized at this highest level for which i am truly grateful"" the world academy of ceramics was founded in 1987 as a center for the international community of researchers working to promote progress in the field of ceramics"
2193,dr arum han professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering chancellors edges fellow and presidential impact fellow at texas a&m university was the keynote speaker at the institute for electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) biomedical circuits and systems conference (biocas) held oct 6-9 in berlin germany the goal of ieee biocas is to foster research development education and dissemination of knowledge relating to the emerging field of microelectronics and nanotechnology which utilizes tiny or micro components to manufacture electronics that can be used for a range of applications in biology and medicine hans keynote speech centered on how high-throughput microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip systems especially the use of dielectrophoretic force for targeted cell manipulation are rapidly changing biomedical research and development the high-throughput microfluidic lab-on-a-chip system is finding ever-increasing new applications in broad areas of biomedical and synthetic biology research due to their high throughput single-cell and pico-liter-volume control capabilities han said the use of dielectrophoretic force for cell manipulation has been around for quite some time now combined with the latest developments in high-throughput microfluidics it is providing unique capabilities in distinguishing and separating target cells with of interest such as separating high oil-producing microalgae separating pathogenic bacteria cells from nonpathogenic ones and providing new capabilities to the growing area of high-throughput droplet microfluidics han is the director of the aggiefab nanofabrication facility and has affiliations with the department of biomedical engineering the texas a&m health science center the texas a&m institute for neuroscience and the interdisciplinary faculty of toxicology his research focuses on the development of microfluidic lab-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip systems he has pioneered the area of high-throughput microfluidics for microbiology applications and has been applying these technologies for synthetic biology host-pathogen interactions infectious disease and microbial bioproduction he has also pioneered the area of organ-chip development for preterm birth studies he has more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and 10 patents/patent applications and has been leading and co-leading numerous multidisciplinary projects supported by the us federal government
2194,in manufacturing work-related lower-back injuries from lifting and handling heavy objects account for approximately $100 billion in medical bills annually in the united states according to data from the bureau of labor statistics although novel ergonomic interventions such as industrial exoskeletons have shown promise in reducing the risk of musculoskeletal injuries new research finds that the cognitive fit (where the wearer has ample mental resources available to accurately operate the exoskeleton while conducting their daily work tasks) of such wearable robotic solutions in the workplace may impose newer risks on workers these findings address some of the critical concerns by the national institute of occupational safety and health (niosh) on occupational robotics researchers at texas a&m university and the ohio state university have determined that increased cognitive demands in the workplace often associated with new technologies or automation can offset the mechanical advantages of wearing a low-back exoskeleton a wearable device that is aimed to reduce or redistribute biomechanical spine loading associated with heavy manual work these findings are published in the latest issue of applied ergonomics the research team includes dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and director of the neuroergonomics laboratory; yibo zhu graduate student in industrial and systems engineering and member of the neuroergonomics laboratory; eric weston graduate research associate in industrial systems engineering at the ohio state university; and dr william marras professor of integrated systems engineering neurological surgery orthopedics and physical medicine and rehabilitation at the spine research institute at the ohio state university
2195,this is the first study looking into the brain as a user was performing a lifting task wearing a back exoskeleton mehta said we were able to document the neurocognitive ‘cost of wearing an exoskeleton and identify adaptation strategies adopted by users over time to mitigate the cognitive risks introduced by the exoskeleton we were also able to demonstrate the utility of using ambulatory brain imaging and connectivity analysis during this highly movement-oriented physical task the team recruited healthy adults both men and women with no history of lower back injuries to participate in the study that required extensive lifting both with and without the help of a low back exoskeleton participants attended two sessions one session focused on performing the lifting tasks while wearing an exoskeleton and another session without the exoskeleton each participant was fitted with a mechanical exoskeleton attached to their chest and legs while they repeatedly lifted a medicine ball for 30 minutes after a similar amount of rest break they were then asked to perform the same task with the help of an exoskeleton but were also asked to simultaneously perform a mental task: subtract 13 from a number between 500 and 1 000 each time they lifted the ball these tasks allowed the researchers to measure spinal load using advanced emg (electromyographic)-assisted biomechanical modeling and monitor functional brain activation during the task using an ambulatory brain imaging device called functional near-infrared spectroscopy integrating traditional biomechanical/ergonomics and ambulatory neuroimaging techniques allowed them to assess the neuroergonomic fit of human-exoskeleton interaction the results show that the exoskeleton did not significantly reduce spinal compression loads and had a marginal practical benefit in reducing spine shear loads compared to not wearing an exoskeleton however the cost of wearing the exoskeleton was captured via the neuroergonomic assessment compared to the no exoskeleton condition the use of exoskeletons during lifting recruited additional regions of the brain that are typically involved in regulating alertness and vigilance the study also found that when each individual was tasked with solving a math problem to accompany the lifts to simulate external cognitive demands on workers they lost whatever biomechanical benefits were offered by the exoskeleton in the first place cognitive demands have been shown to exacerbate spinal loading during lifting that these demands completely offset the small mechanical advantage of the exoskeleton is a remarkable finding of the study mehta said we wanted to shed some light on how the use of an industrial exoskeleton impacts the workers motor and cognitive capabilities given that the worker has to learn new motor strategies to work efficiently while wearing exoskeletons to do their work a neuroergonomics approach ie evaluating brain-behavior relationships at work was able to capture cognitive risks of exoskeletons that traditional ergonomics and biomechanical measures were not able to the data concludes that an increase in an individuals cognitive response to tasks will hinder and even cancel out the benefits that are associated with wearing an exoskeleton we wanted to document how the brain processes human-exoskeleton interaction to identify potential training strategies that can be utilized to minimize the cognitive risks and support faster motor adaptation strategies mehta said while exoskeletons hold great promise in alleviating physical loads in the workplace these findings can guide the development of decision support tools for ergonomists to determine when/how and during what tasks exoskeletons should be used on the factory floor to maximize worker safety
2196,the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineering dedication took place on friday oct 1 in honor and recognition of sugar and mike barnes and their endowment to the department we are very grateful to mike and sugar barnes for their generosity to our department said department head dr lewis ntaimo the opportunity to celebrate their generosity at the dedication ceremony with their family our faculty and staff and students made this event very special in may 2020 sugar and mike barnes established a major endowment of $10 million to support the now named industrial and systems engineering department barnes was named a distinguished alumnus in 2016 by texas a&m university and the association of former students for excellence in the profession of industrial and systems engineering and his contributions to the university this is the highest honor to be bestowed upon a former student and only 306 aggie graduates since 1962 theres a clear obligation that comes with this [donation] that we continue to excel and prove our academic programs said dr kem bennett senior professor of industrial and systems engineering this gift while generous to me has an obligation and that is to continue to get better and better at what we do barnes received his bachelors and masters degrees in industrial engineering and his doctoral degree in operations research all from texas a&m he was the second doctoral graduate from the industrial and systems engineering department in 1968 while he was a student barnes served as president of alpha pi mu and has been a member of tau beta pi since 1964 his family includes his wife sugar son wm bradley 90 and two grandsons wm alexander and wm luke this support will help us attract and retain world-renowned faculty because they see texas a&m as a place worthy of investment its a place that encourages innovation and academic excellence said dr john hurtado interim dean of the college of engineering they want to be a part of conducting cutting-edge research and educating students who will make a difference in our community nation and world
2197,texas a&m university engineering students recently gathered in person for aggies invent sponsored by los alamos national laboratory this 48-hour design competition enabled students from all educational backgrounds to form teams and create solutions to combat nuclear threatssix very skilled teams developed a solution (some even invented prototypes) a business plan and a sales pitch to present to a panel of judges the fact that these teams came up with some creative solutions in such a short period of time is quite impressive said evelyn mullen 88 chief operating officer at los alamos national laboratory and a judge for the event i know there were quite a few mentors who also gave time to this event and their guidance made this an even more positive experience for these talented students the competition is structured to ensure that every persons voice is heard and their idea is implemented in the final product
2198,the solutions focused on providing ways to strengthen nuclear security with only six presentations the judges struggled to narrow down winners to the top three teams but when they did each of the winning teams was given cash prizes ive seen the texas a&m students that take part in aggies invent set themselves apart in so many ways said obinna osourji consulting manager for accenture and returning judge as always the competition had a wide variety of students from all different majors and degrees it offers students a different perspective personal to every student on the possibilities of what they can do with their careers
2199,as a graduate student i have a good technical knowledge but i dont have any managerial skills said electrical engineering masters student bengisu genc by working in a group of different majors i got to know about how we can work together and how we can segregate our work and come back together to make something valuable gencs team revolve placed third in the competition and earned $500 their solution was a dual-access centrifuge that was able to replicate the experiences of the earth in the course of a nuclear explosion during launch and reentry
2200,the second-place team kraken created a cryogenic space cooler to keep sensitive tempered sensors cool the team consisted of returning champs matthew coomes rachel simms and devon reber as well as new comers anthony lestone and konstantine nelson we definitely relied on them for help and guidance nelson commented we all worked together as a team; we delegated out things we couldnt do ourselves to other people who could
2201,comradery is an important value that many of the teams discovered through this experience especially first-place team master blaster who won $1 000 for designing a shock wave engine to test the survival of infrastructure during earthquakes and nuclear bomb explosions each one of us was an effective team member and could focus in on one skill that we were very strong in and didnt have to worry about pulling everything at once montana welch from master blaster said we could focus specialize and conquer
2202,haoning wang is a senior studying computer engineering at texas a&m university with a strong work ethic and an eagerness to dive into new experiences he has found himself a part of many different opportunities within the university throughout his academic career wang has been involved with the corps of cadets since he joined texas a&m as a freshman he credits the corps with building up his leadership skills and broadening his perspectives his early involvement with the corps has served as a catalyst for the other activities outside of his coursework in which he has participated during his sophomore year wang participated in the endeavr (envisioning the neo-traditional development by embracing the autonomous vehicles realm) smart city project a nonprofit organization led by a multidisciplinary group of texas a&m professors the project is dedicated to preparing small communities to tackle future challenges by enabling them to become smart cities the idea of endeavr is to train the next generation of aggie engineers to work with diverse stakeholders perform sophisticated analyses and make decisions under complex and often uncertain situations this program allowed wang to work with students in other majors across campus in a team setting to execute road flooding prediction utilizing their different skill sets the following year he pursued two separate undergraduate research opportunities one through aggie_challenge and the other as part of human factors and machine learning lab under dr tony mcdonald assistant professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering
2203,aggie_challenge is designed to engage engineering undergraduate students with multidisciplinary team research projects related to engineering challenges facing our society as part of it wang participated in the disaster informatics solutions challenge under dr ali mostafavi associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering aggie_challenge was a rewarding experience because i got to work on something that had a real-world impact while also expanding my skills in terms of coding wang said in the human factors and machine learning lab i was able to apply the skills taught in my coursework to analyzing cyclist overtaking behavior in simulated driving this past summer wang completed a 12-week internship with general motors (gm) where he worked as a design release engineer intern under gms electronic components and subsystems function in this role he used skills obtained through his computer engineering coursework to evaluate the data from suppliers to ensure that what they were offering would be beneficial for use in future vehicles (texas) a&m offers a variety of opportunities both within the college of engineering and outside wang said i think one of the strongest points about a&m is that you're not just siloed with the college of engineering for four years there are so many opportunities here at a&m to grow your hard skills as well as your soft skills in terms of communication leadership and character development each of these experiences has built upon one another to create a unique and fulfilling academic experience by stepping out of his comfort zone and pursuing vastly different opportunities at every turn wang has proven that sometimes the need to succeed is the motivation to continue putting yourself out there even when it might seem daunting i think what drew me to study at texas a&m is obviously that it has a really fantastic engineering program wang said students who graduate from a&m go into a variety of industries and are a part of some of the best companies in the world i feel that if you do come to a&m to study engineering you'll have as many opportunities offered to you as you desire
2204,"kishan badrinath a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the nokia bell labs summer intern award for outstanding innovation during his internship this past summer during the internship badrinath focused on applying deep reinforcement learning algorithms which are algorithms that learn how to achieve a goal over time to autonomous drone navigation for avoiding obstacles and collisions using microsoft airsim the microsoft airsim physics-based simulator provides access to the near real-world drone equipped with many sensors such as the first-person image view depth image collision sense with an obstacle and much more realistic sensory information he said over the summer he was able to develop these algorithms to make a drone fly over small distances by avoiding one single obstacle then scaled that to larger distances or areas with more obstacles the final experimental setup was to get a reinforcement learning algorithm to maneuver the drone autonomously over long distances with many obstacles i managed to get this during the last two weeks of the internship this helped me reach the top 18 among a couple of hundred intern work showcases to bell labs top executives getting an intern award for outstanding innovation for my summer work via mail after a month of my internship ending was an unexpected bonus apart from research activities that he took part in badrinath also attended various activities such as lunches and technical talks hosted by bell labs badrinath started studying reinforcement learning in fall 2018 when he joined the electrical engineering phd program at texas a&m under his advisor dr dileep kalathil assistant professor in the department he completed his masters degree at the indian institute of science (iisc) in bengaluru india where he was first introduced to the world of research badrinath explained that he had an early introduction to online learning algorithms at iisc but that dr dileep kalathils research interests at the intersection of reinforcement learning and control theory sealed the deal for him to pursue his phd in this area ""i am really happy that kishan received this prestigious award from nokia bell labs said kalathil he is always seeking opportunities to broaden his knowledge boundaries by reading research articles and attending seminars i am really excited about the important problems we are working on now and i look forward to continuing our collaborations in the coming semesters"""
2205,from the ongoing covid-19 pandemic to the suez canal being blocked by the ever given container ship 2021 has seen major disruptions in global supply chains impacting how consumers and companies have made and transported materials and goods but supply chains have been struggling for longer than that dr eleftherios iakovou the harvey hubbell professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university is putting his years of knowledge toward finding ways to decrease the impact of disruptions on these systems business leaders understand that the lengthy supply chains are very brittle iakovou said they're exposed to a wide range of disruptions due to earthquakes floods hurricanes…today the upcoming holiday season supply chains are threatened by disruptions in demand we have a surge in demand that we have never seen before iakovou who also serves as director of manufacturing and logistics innovation initiatives at the texas a&m engineering experiment station said instead of focusing on just the last-mile logistics of the supply chain policymakers and business leaders will need to need to expand the view to look at ways to make the whole supply chain from producer to consumer more resilient in the wake of disruptions unfortunately what happened during the years is the message has been distorted so they focused on a small last-mile logistic or transportation issues iakovou said today due to covid we are forced to look at the entire picture and as the us i think we have a responsibility to the world and also to the citizens the men and women of this nation to do that as quickly as possible these comments are part of a larger conversation to hear more listen to this engineering soundbytes podcast episode on any major audio platform or on our buzzsprout homepage
2206,using sophisticated microscopy and computational analysis texas a&m university researchers have now validated the merit of a water purification technology that uses electricity to remove and inactivate an assortment of waterborne viruses they said that the yet-to-be-implemented water purification strategy would add another level of safety against pathogens that cause gastrointestinal ailments and other infections in humans there is always a need for new techniques that are better cheaper and more effective at safeguarding the public against disease-causing microorganisms said dr shankar chellam professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering the water purification technique investigated in this study is a promising strategy to kill even more viruses at the earliest stages of water purification the researchers have detailed their findings in the journal environmental science & technology before water reaches homes it undergoes multiple purification steps namely coagulation sedimentation filtration and disinfection conventional coagulation methods use chemicals to trigger the clumping of particles and microbes within untreated water these aggregates can then be removed when they settle as sediments while very effective chellam noted that the chemicals used for coagulation could be very acidic making their transport to treatment plants and storage a challenge thus instead of chemicals-based coagulation the researchers investigated if an up-and-coming coagulation method that uses electricity was as effective at removing microbes from water in particular they used a surrogate of a nonenveloped virus called ms2 bacteriophage for their study their choice of microbes was motivated by the fact that ms2 bacteriophage shares structural similarities with many nonenveloped viruses that can persist in the water after treatment and cause disease in humans for their experiments the researchers inserted iron electrodes in a sample of untreated water laden with viruses when they passed electrical currents the anode oxidized releasing iron ions into the solution these ions combine with dissolved oxygen to produce hydroxyl radicals and also iron-rich precipitates in the process they found that as the iron precipitated the virus attached to these clumps to form bigger aggregates which could be easily removed from the water next they investigated if this process also inactivated the virus but while the iron aggregates helped in capturing the virus they presented a problem to picture inactivation using electron microscopy clumping causes a tremendous challenge because there is no easy way to isolate the virus from the iron-rich aggregates making it difficult to visualize viral damage and analyze if electrocoagulation was the cause of the viral damage or the virus extraction from the iron-rich clumps said dr anindito sen a research scientist at the texas a&m microscopy and imaging center to address this problem chellams graduate student kyungho kim with sens guidance developed a novel computational technique to directly image the viruses aggregated alongside iron put briefly they digitally inflicted damages on 3d images of an intact ms2 bacteriophage then they generated 2d versions of the damaged 3d model last they compared these images with 2d microscopic images of the virus obtained after electrocoagulation
2207,the researchers found that the damage in electrocoagulated viruses ranged from 10% to greater than 60% further by following the same analysis with bacteriophages isolated from conventional coagulation they observed that the viruses were not inactivated the traditional multistep process of water purification has been there to ensure that even if one step fails the subsequent ones can bail you out a multiple barrier approach so to speak said chellam what we are proposing with electrocoagulation is process intensification where coagulation and disinfection are combined within a single step before subsequent purification stages to ensure better protection against waterborne pathogens this study is funded by the national science foundation dr jothikumar narayanan from the centers for disease control and prevention also contributed to this research by demonstrating genomic damage in the virus caused by electrocoagulation the microscopy results in the study were confirmed with enumerations of infective viruses by traditional cell culture techniques spectroscopy and genomic analysis
2208,in order to move people and products across oceans naval architects have designed behemoth-sized floating vessels – some greater in length than the empire state building as developers of some of the largest moving human-made structures naval architects and engineers must take into consideration the challenging waterscape that ships must endure to reach their destination as dr jeffery falzarano explained unlike a car which can instantly react to the input of its driver a ship does not have an immediate reaction time nor does it have tire-to-road friction to aid in turning and speed changes while a car can stop almost instantly emergency braking for a ship can take distances of a mile or more furthermore these ships must be able to withstand waves and on occasion storms recently a noble corp drillship survived hurricane ida in the gulf of mexico though an extravagant example of what ships are pitted against in the sea it does beg the question: with the added difficulties of wave dynamics wind and other environmental influences how do ships stay afloat and carry goods across the seas falzarano a professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university with almost 40 years of experience in naval architecture has conducted projects for organizations including the national science foundation the office of naval research the us coast guard and the american bureau of shipping he offered a bit of insight shape and buoyancy while there is not a golden rule for ships of all sizes there are a few general concepts that engineers must keep in mind before they embark at the most basic level is the shape of the ship and how it affects buoyancy basically you have the volume of water and the volume of the hull falzarano said the hull is going to displace a certain amount of water and that displaced mass of water is equal to the mass of the ship there's a center of that volume of displaced water and as the ship moves that center will move to create a restoring moment that will help the ship resist heeling over or capsizing the u-shaped hull of a ship adds to its buoyant nature filling it with more air than cargo and also giving it a better balance load lines ships – constructed with steel and welded at the seams – weigh tons add to that the additional heft of cargo containers and products its a wonder that ships dont sink to the bottom of the sea thats in part thanks to plimsol marks or load lines – horizontal lines painted on the outside of a ship representing the maximum depth a ship can be safely be submerged during various seasons and water types this visualization helps reduce the risk of overloading a ship and in turn allows for greater stability and less stress on the ships hull tipping point imagine an invisible line drawn vertically down the center of a ship when its upright thats the metacenter it helps to mathematically visualize the ships ability to resist overturning at small angles when a ship tips due to wind or waves there is a righting motion caused by several engineered elements that brings the vessel upright once more this includes the structural weights like how high or low the deck is placed setting the heavier equipment and cargo below deck to create a low center of gravity and the use of ballast which provides resistance to lateral forces imparted on the hull its important to understand that the waves the wind – basically everything is random and we want to quantify that randomness falzarano said these vessels are constantly exposed to random influences some minor and others catastrophic and so these changes have to be calculated for the lifetime of the vessel however there comes a point in which a ship cannot correct itself and will capsize this is the tipping point or angle of vanishing stability knowing at what angle a ship can safely roll and when it is in danger are crucial for naval architects and pilots alike as they work to keep the lives of those on board safe sometimes accidents do happen and thats why you need highly skilled people operating and designing ships falzarano said you see a lot of people with advanced degrees working in the offshore industry because they're faced with difficult and new problems that haven't been solved before so i think we as ocean engineers and naval architects fulfill a very important purpose and i think we should continue to do that falzarano is currently teaching two naval architecture courses in the department arming students with the fundamental knowledge to become experts in designing the next generation of ships and offshore vessels
2209,"dr jodie lutkenhaus professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university will be awarded the arthur k doolittle award by the american chemical society's (acs) division of polymetric materials: science and engineering (pmse) ""receiving this award is a major highlight for me "" said lutkenhaus ""i am honored to be considered among the researchers that have accepted this award in the past"" lutkenhaus earned this honor for her outstanding talk on flexible mxene coatings at the acs pmse fall symposium mxenes are two-dimensional nanomaterials that are incredibly conductive and used in various applications including electronics energy storage and sensing since they are transition-metal carbides or nitrides they can be layered as well as altered to obtain specific chemical properties by alternating layers of mxenes and polymer a composite mxene film can be created prior to studies conducted by texas a&m researchers mxenes were studied without a polymer additive producing films that easily cracked and flaked away ""a mxene film contains many of these two-dimensional nanosheets stacked together like a brick wall "" she said ""in our work we use a polymer additive as the ‘mortar to hold all of the mxene nanosheets together in a robust film"" the polymer acts as a glue adhering to the faces of the mxene sheets furthermore the researcher's processing system organizes all of the mxene sheets into a flat and layered structure this research is a step toward applying mxene films to numerous different surfaces including fabrics plastics or paints she hopes these developments can lead to innovations such as spray-paint batteries supercapacitors within fabrics or painted-on sensors this work is part of a collaborative grant from the national science foundation with dr micah green professor in the chemical engineering department and dr miladin radovic professor in the department of materials science and engineering lutkenhaus will be formally presented the award at the acs spring national meeting"
2210,dr daniel a jiménez professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named recipient of the 2021 b ramakrishna rau award by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) computer society (cs) for his contributions to neural branch prediction in microprocessors the rau award recognizes jiménez as one of the worlds leading contributors to branch prediction a technology essential to the microarchitecture of high-performance microprocessors jiménezs groundbreaking work on neural branch predictors has fundamentally changed the way research and industry think about branch prediction josep torrellas saburo muroga professor of computer science at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign said in the ieee cs press release his research ideas and implementations have been incorporated into the branch predictors of many commercial processors his impact on industry has been remarkable established in memory of b ramakrishna rau a widely recognized expert in the field of microarchitecture the rau award recognizes raus distinguished career in promoting and expanding the use of innovative computer microarchitecture techniques including his innovation in compiler technology his leadership in academic and industrial computer architecture and his extremely high personal and ethical standards jiménez received his doctoral degree in computer sciences from the university of texas at austin and his masters in computer science and bachelors degree in computer science and systems design from the university of texas at san antonio he is an ieee fellow national science foundation faculty early career development (career) award winner and an association for computing machinery (acm) distinguished scientist he is a member of the acm/ieee international symposium on computer architecture ieee international symposium on high-performance computer architecture and ieee/acm international symposium on microarchitecture (micro) halls of fame jiménez will be presented the award at the micro-51 conference scheduled to take place oct 18-22 during the award ceremony jiménez will give a 20-minute acceptance talk
2211,jacob gartrell a biomedical engineering junior at texas a&m university is focused on the biomolecular and cellular engineering track one highlight of his 2021-22 school year is he plans to study abroad in the spring through the semester exchange program with swansea university in wales q: why biomedical engineering a: i always really liked biology and math i was in the academic decathlon in high school and my senior year at the science unit was the medical application of lasers initially i thought oh i probably won't like this and then i read about it even past the competition i also had a really influential biology teacher and my stem teachers were always really supportive q: why biomolecular and cellular engineering a: that field is so new and so innovative we're still learning how to model cell processes and try to take advantage of these systems i have an emphasis area in bioinformatics so i really like the computational side of modeling cell systems q: are you involved in research a: i do research in the computer science department on parkinson's tremors there's this process called deep brain stimulation and about 37% of deep brain stimulation patients have really bad patient outcomes not because of the implanted device but because of faulty programming on the neurologist side because they don't have enough information i'm trying to develop a system where it can monitor tremors on a fitbit and say ok your tremors escalated this far in this week we can take this data and say these are the parameters that you might need to look at your next meeting giving that neurologist more information to make the clinical outcome better q: youre planning on studying abroad in the spring what drew you to that experience a: i was all set to study abroad in germany in 2020 and then everything was canceled i stayed with a host family in germany throughout high school so i was all on this study abroad bug and then i came here thinking ok i'm going to do the germany biosciences course i'm going to go back; this is going to be amazing and then it got canceled i looked into other programs and specifically with swansea they have a lot of equivalent courses for biomedical engineering so i don't have to ever get behind q: what has been your favorite class in biomedical engineering a: i honestly would have to say bmen 207 im in honors and the honors project was an introductory machine learning project i had no clue what machine learning was i remember binge-watching hour-long videos from mit at first things were going so over my head but then i just kept doing it and doing it i made a classification model that worked at the end which was really cool that really inspired me to think if i want to do this i want to go into a lab in machine learning and i have some of the skills necessary to do that that was really formative q: what is your ideal career path after graduation a: i'm a brockman scholar here at texas a&m that means that i get to do my masters in science and business so that's my next step after my undergrad after that i really want to go into the biotech industry in computational diagnostics or anything in the bioinformatics scene i don't really know if that entails going back to get further graduate studies in biomedical engineering or computer science or something but i'm still evaluating my options q: any final thoughts a: i had to tread water a little bit freshman year it was kind of a shock then going into biomedical engineering i'd say it didn't get any easier but i was a lot more interested in it i think biomedical engineering is really for people who are interested in health care it's really rewarding in the classes and it doesn't feel as much like work because you're doing something you're interested in
2212,"graduate fellowships provide young researchers and scholars opportunities to advance their careers and receive hands-on training in their chosen fields the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university named 10 students the recipients of various graduate fellowships the most awarded in department history the 10 students include: baizhen gao md nazibul islam shuhao liu ju hyun julie oh trent parker kathy rhee roshan mammen regy ruiqing ryan shen jia quan alan su and haoran wu ""these fellowships recognize the accomplishments and success of our students "" said dr arul jayaraman chemical engineering department head and professor ""i hope it will encourage them to excel further in their academic careers"" among these students rhee is the recipient of the brunner-barnes fellowship and liu is the recipient of the phillips 66 technical fellowship ""receiving this fellowship showcases the amount of work that i have done throughout my phd "" said rhee ""it's recognition that i have worked hard for and i am very honored to receive this prestigious fellowship"" rhee didnt know what she wanted to pursue for her doctorate degree when she decided to attend texas a&m after hearing a lecture during her first year from dr pushkar lele associate professor in the chemical engineering department she became fascinated with bacterial systems ""my area of focus is bacterial motility "" said rhee ""the cells are able to swim around using appendages known as flagella that are attached to their bodies i am particularly interested in the quantification of flagellar rotational speed and its transfer of energy liu chose texas a&m due to the college of engineerings outstanding reputation after completing his master's degree in materials science and engineering he transferred to chemical engineering for the doctoral program his advisor dr mustafa akbulut is an associate professor in the chemical engineering department ""i first decided to join texas a&m because the school has a strong background and various resources across many engineering fields "" he said ""dr akbulut has been a very kind and helpful advisor who created a path for me to achieve my research goals"" liu's research focus encompasses many fields he received his fellowship for extensive work in complex dynamic fluids related to oil production and the energy field ""receiving this opportunity is amazing to me "" said liu ""i've worked for more than four years to gather achievements in my area i think it is confirmation of my several years of work"" each of the recipients will conduct extensive research receive guidance from faculty experts and be exposed to new and exciting experiences the awardees were honored at the scholarship and fellowship banquet that took place on thursday oct 7"
2213,meet the 2021 chemical engineering graduate fellows
2214,"baizhen gao: gao is the recipient of the paul & ellen deisler fellowship he received his bachelor of science in chemical engineering from the university of minnesota and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2016 he collaborates with dr qing su assistant professor in the chemical engineering department his research interests include microbe-host interactions and strategies to improve rna stability gao was published in nature communications for his work titled ""programming gene expression in multicellular organisms for physiology modulation through engineered bacteria"" he has two other notable publications including ""nucleic transformer: deep learning on nucleic acids with self-attention and convolutions "" and ""a peek in the micro-sized world: a review of design principles engineering tools and applications of engineered microbial community"""
2215,md nazibul islam: islam was awarded the jim and cathy holste graduate fellowship he completed his bachelor of science at bangladesh university of engineering and technology and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2018 he is working with dr zachary gagnon associate professor in the chemical engineering department to develop a low-cost sensor that uses interfacial electrokinetics to characterize biomolecular interactions he has a provisional patent application for his innovation and has received grants from the texas a&m innovation corps site and the national science foundation's innovation corps his research has received over 160 citations
2216,"shuhao liu: liu is the recipient of the phillips 66 technical fellowship he received his bachelor of science in chemical engineering from nanjing university of technology and science china and joined texas a&m to pursue his master's degree in materials science and engineering in 2016 he is now working toward his chemical engineering doctoral degree with guidance from akbulut liu is working with functional nanoparticles antimicrobial coatings and materials dynamic complexes fluid for oil production and thermal management materials he has published six first-author papers and eight co-author papers his paper ""dual-functional superhydrophobic coatings with bacterial anticontact and antimicrobial characteristics"" was published in applied materials & interfaces"
2217,ju hyun julie oh: oh was awarded the phillips 66 technical fellowship she completed her bachelor of science and master of science at korea university south korea and joined the texas a&m chemical engineering doctoral program in 2018 she is working with dr micah green professor in the chemical engineering department her research interests include radiofrequency heating nanomaterials conductive polymers and actuators she has 14 peer-reviewed journal articles that include three first-author papers
2218,trent parker: parker is the recipient of the coleman fellowship he achieved his bachelor of science at mcneese state university louisiana then joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2018 he is working with dr qingsheng wang associate professor in the chemical engineering department his research interests are process safety human factors runaway reactions and thermal hazard analysis he has been the lead author on three papers and co-author on seven papers he also received the american institute of chemical engineers award for academic excellence in 2016
2219,roshan mammen regy: regy has received the paul & ellen deisler fellowship regy earned his bachelor of engineering in chemical engineering from birla institute of technology and science pilani india in 2017 coming to texas a&m as a fourth-year doctoral student regy works alongside dr jeetain mittal professor in the chemical engineering department regy has authored eight research articles in peer-reviewed journals during the past three years including the proceedings of the national academy of sciences and nucleic acids research previously he received fellowships and awards such as the mohamed el-aasser travel award and the leonard a wenzel award for his performance in the phd qualifying examination
2220,kathy rhee: rhee is the recipient of the brunner-barnes fellowship she received her bachelor of science in chemical engineering at the university of california los angeles and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2017 she is working with lele and her research focuses on quantitative assay development for bacterial systems she has published three papers in one of which she is the first author previously she received the engineering merit graduate fellowship and won third place for an oral presentation at the chemical engineering graduate student association symposium
2221,"ruiqing ryan shen: shen was awarded the jim and cathy holste graduate fellowship he completed his bachelor of science at oklahoma state university and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2019 shen is working with wang and his research interests are flame-retardant materials polymer nanocomposites and chemical process safety so far he has authored over 27 peer-reviewed journal articles served as a reviewer for 16 journals and delivered three technical presentations one of his studies ""manufacturing of high-performance intumescent flame-retardant polymers "" is patent pending"
2222,jia quan alan su: su received the dr mn karim graduate fellowship the dr mn karim graduate fellowship was established by the department to honor the late department chair dr naz karim who tragically passed away in 2019 he completed his bachelor of science from national taiwan university and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2018 his research interests include thin film nano and microelectronics and plasma technology on applications in electronics and optoelectronics he works with dr yue kuo professor in the chemical engineering department su has four years of experience working in a class 100 clean room and over 10 papers and presentations in top-tier conferences he is the recipient of the best presenter award in the eighth chemical engineering graduate student association symposium and the qualifying exam excellence award
2223,haoran wu: wu was awarded the brunner-barnes fellowship he received his bachelor of science in chemical engineering from qingdao university of science and technology china in 2016 wu joined texas a&m as a master's student and transferred to the chemical engineering department's doctoral program working with dr mark holtzapple professor in the chemical engineering department wu's research interests include sustainable production of chemicals and fuels from renewable resources and low-cost bioseparations he conducted research at argonne national laboratory to successfully develop a novel bioprocess for the valorization of waste streams through the carboxylate platform he has four journal publications and multiple conference presentations
2224,"texas a&m university students won both the doctoral and masters divisions and took second place in the undergraduate division of the highly competitive society of petroleum engineers (spe) 2021 international student paper contest held during the annual technical conference and exhibition in late september undergraduate competitor anthony small has graduated but phd student debora martogi and masters student oluwatobiloba tobi adebisi from the harold vance department of petroleum engineering took time to discuss how important the student paper contest is paper contests require students to give an oral presentation in front of a panel of judges on their research with an advisor or a problem they are solving by themselves the three levels of competition include: a local contest held at a university or spe student chapter a regional spe contest and an international spe contest local first- and second-place winners advance to the regional level to compete against students from nearby schools and regional first-place winners advance to the international level where they compete against others from around the globe at the final level all students must submit papers on their work in addition to the oral presentations q: what was it like presenting internationally adebisi: i didn't go expecting to win i was focused on doing my best and sharing the work that my advisor dr david schechter and i and some other members of my research group have been doing the competition was virtual so we had to submit a prerecorded video that involved going over my slides reviewing everything and recording the presentation several times in live presentations stumbles are fine but with prerecorded presentations you're careful to avoid them martogi: there's definitely a lot of editing and repeating it was more nerve wracking for me in the q&a session that was the live section where the judges asked about the work i did answer one with ""i don't know "" but i did well based on the results adebisi: there were i think three or four judges and i got a question from every single one of them the q&a was supposed to be five minutes but it was roughly 10 because they kept asking questions they were curious wanting to dive deeper into what i was doing their questions and feedback offered new perspectives on my research martogi: at the local level the judges were asking ""it's great work but what do you think about this"" the main thing i learned from that is that sometimes our research tends to stay in academia especially when it's something new what they were trying to get out of me is how is this applicable to the industry that helped me refine my presentation i incorporated their feedback because at the international competition there are many more industry-related questions q: can you explain a little bit about your research adebisi: my research is about designing surfactant systems for enhanced oil recovery applications in high-temperature shale reservoirs surfactant fluid systems work by altering the rocks wettability and increasing capillary pressure basically seeping into the rock and expelling the oil and its interesting because the range of temperatures we're looking at hasn't been explored before typically studies of these surfactants are done below the boiling point of water with shale being at the forefront of oil recovery in the united states and many of these reservoirs have a very high temperature this opens up a new world of research for us to explore and we not only explored temperatures we successfully designed surfactant systems that will function at about 350 degrees fahrenheit without breaking down martogi: i'm measuring the rock strength and how elastic the rock is in reservoirs using drill cuttings to get high-definition data reservoir engineers need these two properties in their simulations to know how the rock deforms or fractures when they develop a well or analyze the reservoir to see how much production they can get out of it most conventional methods to get rock data use core sampling or well logs these are very expensive and almost always done only in vertical sections because of the risks of tool jamming and instability but normal drilling produces cuttings from both the vertical and the horizontal sections in all wells i'm using those cuttings to identify the heterogeneous rock mechanical properties in the areas they actually drill through this makes it easier and cheaper to know which regions to fracture we're comparing these analyses with well log analyses and so far it's promising q: are these paper contests significant adebisi: very significant as a grad student youre focused on the problem you're working on and researching things in that line of thought participating in the local paper contest at texas a&m then going into regionals and the international contest lets you see all these other interesting problems that people are working on and creating solutions to its interesting being exposed to these problems and unique solutions it challenges you to be more creative and innovative and more than that it piques your interest how can the work this person is doing influence mine martogi: you also get the diverse perspective of industry people and thats where you test yourself like can you explain your research in a simple manner to people from different backgrounds and technical disciplines that was tough for me at first my advisor dr sara abedi supports me going to conferences and presenting at different industry meetings because i get that feedback my research is refined so that i know what the industry needs research is not always implemented it always comes down to is it applicable and is it economic to develop"
2225,texas instruments (ti) the leading manufacturer and seller of semiconductors and integrated circuits held a stem night workshop on oct 4 for a group of students in the texas a&m university college of engineering the workshop focused on using ti calculators to navigate a mobile robot through python code weve been working with ti for about three years now said dr sonia garcia senior director of the access and inclusion program they are interested in really showing students the kind of engineering that texas instrument does the goal is to introduce students to the company networking professional development and also to project teams
2226,throughout the workshop the engineers received hands-on training and explored their new skills through trial and error the instructors engaged with the students and helped them with any miscalculations throughout the event harshal chhaya assistant engineer with ti was an instructor for the workshop i am one of the engineers who worked on the products the students are using so i really love going out and doing workshops where i can see the students actually using them said chhaya these newly explored skills allowed for the engineering students to consider their career options as they prepare to enter such a competitive field knowing industry partners are already interested and invested in the college of engineering gives students a leg up they know our students have a lot of value and [that they] are really on top said garcia partnering with these companies really seals what we always thought that our students are really that good
2227,the event aimed to allow freshman engineers to get exposure to skills that the job market desires ti focused on utilizing coding language in calculators for multipurpose use we bring ti technology into labs we also impart technical lectures in classrooms said ayesha mayhugh 98 product and strategy manager for ti and electrical engineering graduate we also make sure that the faculty have [the tools] industry requires in terms of hiring [our students] so having that knowledge helps [students] build that skillset that can make them very marketable the students used pre-developed programs to stimulate a rover to move around without a remote control my favorite part was when we worked with the rovers because they showed us some of the features that we can add to computer chips said eyoel ghebremeskel a freshman engineering student we simulated a car backup camera with sounds using the proximity sensors on the rovers
2228,filza walters professor of practice in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university recently became a fellow of the american society of heating refrigerating and air-conditioning engineers (ashrae) this prestigious title recognizes walters as a person of excellence in the industry and her positive impact on the advancement of heating ventilation air conditioning and refrigeration (hvac&r) the built environment and the sustainable world walters previously served as a college professor for lawrence technological university (ltu) and an owners representative at wayne state the largest urban university in michigan with a bachelors degree in architectural engineering and a masters specializing in global business walters was the sole founding director of the integrated bachelors-masters architectural engineering program at ltu the first of its kind in michigan and second in the nation to obtain abet (accreditation board for engineering and technology) accreditation the program was created to try and fill the pipeline of engineering graduates needed in the work force for the built environment and her students achievements are a testament to the programs success under her tutelage five cohorts of students have graduated from the program joined the hvac&r industry and obtained their engineering license some within two years of graduating i tell my students that every professional opportunity i have had in my career has been a direct result of my ashrae involvement and network even being here at texas a&m said walters so this award is more than an honor it is confirmation of the old adage ‘the more you put in the more you get out and my way to pay it forward for future generations
2229,walters worked previously as an engineer and project manager at two consulting firms ranked in engineering news-record midwest top 20 and us top 300 design firms 2021 she has firsthand experience in large and complicated hvac designs for university health care automotive and commercial building projects for clients in southeast michigan some of which include the university of michigan michigan state university daimlerchrysler technology center and general motors lansing grand river assembly plant she attributes her professional experience to helping her identify what skills students need for the building design industry her course structures emphasize building systems integration and optimization sustainability and resilience and occupant health she challenges her students to consider energy-efficient and carbon-neutral solutions for the built environment walters considers herself to be a lifelong learning advocate and does her best to lead by example throughout her 30-year career as an active member of ashrae walters has served in a variety of leadership roles at both the chapter regional and societal level she was the first woman to be elected president of the detroit ashrae chapter and has since sought to encourage diversity in the field to the multidisciplinary engineering department walters brings her passion for education and desire to serve humanity to her greatest extent as the existing building stock continues to increase climate change and carbon emissions begin to pose real challenges and expose inequities on a global scale said walters our task as educators is to nurture and teach students to learn from and care for the natural and built environment
2230,"public temperature checks have become a common practice across the world during the covid-19 pandemic and researchers at texas a&m university are working to make it possible to conduct the test across a large group of people quicker and less expensive than current methods dr choongho yu professor and sallie and don davis 61 faculty fellow ii in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering is working alongside his students to harness the thermal energy generated by body heat to power a small self-sustaining electronic device capable of detecting fever in its wearer the team's research was recently published in nature communications if successful yu said such a device could benefit a large number of people especially when implemented in a public setting by quickly and efficiently identifying fever the fever detector can be distributed to many unspecified people at public places at a low price and this technique could be helpful in the early and fast detection of fever commonly observed from a viral infection such as covid sars mers and swine flu yu said graduate student yufan zhang who works with yu on the project said that while fever detection can serve as an effective way to minimize viral transmission during a pandemic a cheap visible and self-sustainable technique is needed to accomplish this goal ""thermal energy scavenging shows great potential since an output voltage can be obtained by a temperature difference supplied by the fever "" said zhang ""to visualize the temperature changes an electrochromic fever detector has been fabricated and connected to the thermal energy harvester"" using new principles of thermo-hydro-electrochemical energy conversion yu and his team are working to develop an effective method of providing charge to their fever detection device by harnessing the thermal energy typically wasted by its user via the corrosion properties of carbon steel electrodes ""our device is based on carbon steel corrosion to generate voltage and current "" yu said ""the lifetime of our device depends on the speed of the corrosion process"" given the typical rate of corrosion for carbon steel yu said the amount utilized by their device could last for more than a decade while the team is still working to improve the power and current of their device the results so far have been promising with the observed thermal-to-energy conversion generating an unprecedented 87 millivolts per degree celsius this has provided a few volts large enough to operate typical wearable electronics by connecting between four to eight devices in a series unlike conventional thermoelectric devices that require at least 1000 devices to get an equivalent voltage"
2231,"dr shankar bhattacharyya robert m kennedy 26 professor ii in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university co-authored a new book titled ""linear multivariable control systems the book examines the area of control systems which spans many disciplines including electrical engineering mechanical engineering aerospace engineering chemical engineering biological systems and economics examples of applications include power electronics robotics and autonomous vehicles unmanned aerial vehicles chemical process control gene regulation and cancer therapy and inflation control this book which will serve the needs of two graduate courses in the department covers fundamental theory and design techniques providing a blend of theory and practical results this textbook has been in the making for at least 30 years and contains a large amount of research material developed at texas a&m over the years bhattacharyya said it also benefits from our accumulated experience of teaching this material for over 50 years the intended publication date is december 2021 bhattacharyya has taught generations of aggie engineers the elements of control theory his research interests include automatic control systems multivariable control system analysis and design computer-aided control system design and robust stability and control theory applications"
2232,"the next time you buy a new couch you may not ever have to leave your old one to get a feel for the texture of the new material dr cynthia hipwell oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair ii professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is leading a team working to better define how the finger interacts with a device with the hope of aiding in the further development of technology that goes beyond sensing and reacting to your touch the team's research was recently published and featured on the cover of the journal advanced materials the ultimate goal of furthering this human-machine interface is to give touch devices the ability to provide users with a richer touch-based experience by equipping the technology with the ability to mimic the feeling of physical objects hipwell shared examples of potential implementations ranging from a more immersive virtual reality platform to tactile display interfaces like those in a motor vehicle dashboard and a virtual shopping experience that would let the user feel the texture of materials before purchasing them ""this could allow you to actually feel textures buttons slides and knobs on the screen "" hipwell said ""it can be used for interactive touch screen-based displays but one holy grail would certainly be being able to bring touch into shopping so that you could feel the texture of fabrics and other products while you're shopping online"" hipwell explained that at its essence the ""touch"" in current touch screen technology is more for the screen's benefit than the user with the emergence and refinement of increasingly sophisticated haptic technology that relationship between user and device can grow to be more reciprocal"
2233,"she added that the addition of touch as a sensory input would ultimately enrich virtual environments and lighten the burden of communication currently carried by audio and visuals ""when we look at virtual experiences they're primarily audio and visual right now and we can get audio and visual overload "" hipwell said ""being able to bring touch into the human-machine interface can bring a lot more capability much more realism and it can reduce that overload haptic effects can be used to draw your attention to make something easier to find or easier to do using a lower cognitive load"" hipwell and her team are approaching the research by looking at the multiphysics the coupled processes or systems involving multiple physical fields occurring at the same time of the interface between the user's finger and the device this interface is incredibly complex and changes with different users and environmental conditions ""we're looking at electro-wetting effects (the forces that result from an applied electric field) electrostatic effects changes in properties of the finger the material properties and surface geometry of the device the contact mechanics the fluid motion charge transport really everything that's going on in the interface to understand how the device can be designed to be more reliable and higher performing hipwell said ultimately our goal is to create predictive models than enable a designer to create devices with maximum haptic effect and minimum sensitivity to user and environmental variation"" as research into and development of the technology continues to progress hipwell said she predicts consumers will begin to see early elements implemented into common devices over the next few years with some early products already in development ""i think early elements of it will definitely be within the next five years "" hipwell said ""then it will just be a matter of maturing the technology and how advanced how realistic and how widespread it becomes"""
2234,my second earliest memory is the moon landing said dr kathryn hurlbert 90 a former graduate student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university my father was taking pictures of the landing as we watched on our black and white tv and i remember thinking how i wanted to go and play on the moon that was one small memory for hurlbert one giant leap toward her future career hurlbert received her bachelors degree from embry-riddle aeronautical university her masters degree from texas a&m and her phd from the university of houston while attending texas a&m hurlbert applied for and was sponsored by the nasa fellowship program through that she was able to get her first taste of what her future would hold with directed research at texas a&m to support the organization in microgravity fluid dynamics in 1997 she was hired by nasa and became part of the organization she once admired from a television screen during her tenure she has held management leadership and supervisory positions now she is the human landing system (hls) and commercial test manager in nasas crew and thermal systems division planning for large-scale test programs in support of nasas future missions life has a way of steering you down the path youre supposed to be on no matter how hard you try to derail it she said hurlbert has worked on many different projects utilizing her various degrees and expertise during her time at nasa early in her career in the 1980s she participated in flight testing flying with dr fred best also from the department of nuclear engineering using a zero-gravity kc-135 aircraft years later she led teams to complete several suborbital test projects on blue origin and virgin galactic missions she will continue to do ground research and flight payloads in support of future missions for beyond earth orbit and to the moon nuclear (engineering) is a great degree to have she said it supports a multitude of disciplines such as thermal hydraulics power systems fluid dynamics and computer modeling one notable project in hurlberts career was her participation in the lunar-mars life support test project in the late 1990s phase ii of the project aimed to test an integrated closed-loop system that employed biological and physiochemical techniques for water recycling waste processing and air revitalization for human habitation for a month a small team lived and worked in an enclosed 20-foot chamber the crew members did not switch out and were fully responsible for internal maintenance and repairs phase iii of the project increased the time in the enclosed space to 90 days for a four-person crew hurlbert was the first woman on a crew of this kind where previous testing in that chamber had been dedicated to nasas skylab mission and crews in the 1970s my journey to nasa certainly wasnt an easy or straightforward path she said my best advice would be to just take a chance on something i didnt even think i had a chance at a nasa co-op and look where i am now
2235,"""feeling like an imposter is more common than you might believe but it's nothing you can overcome it; you're stronger than you would ever think"" - victoria clark '22 clark understands all too well the challenges and self-doubts that come with being an undergraduate student in engineering at texas a&m university and though she didn't always dream of being an engineer she cant imagine being anything else nowadays prior to her senior year of high school clark thought she would go into accounting a suitable major for her strong love of math but that year she toured the texas a&m campus and immediately fell in love with the atmosphere the people the traditions and the color maroon since texas a&m is renowned for engineering and engineering involves lots of math she took a leap of faith and chose it as her career path during the entry to a major process she visited advisors in her top three department choices clark said all were very helpful but the advisor from petroleum engineering stood out he went ""above and beyond"" to provide her with everything she needed to make an informed decision additionally he sent her to a function hosted by the student chapter of the society of petroleum engineers (tamu spe) where she met and chatted with several upperclassmen clark heard everything she needed to know about the major internships and the oil and gas industry the good and the challenging a few days later she decided on petroleum engineering the hard part was making the grades to be accepted i thought i was going to be an accountant so i took microbiology in high school while my peers were taking classes like calculus ab/bc and physics ap clark said when i took calculus and physics here it was the first time id seen the material doubts gnawed at her confidence every week during her freshman year instead of quitting clark put together a support system her parents provided steady guidance especially her mom who had recently been through college to obtain a teaching degree clarks roommates now some of her closest friends also assisted her through some rough patches yet her greatest assets were the hard work she put in and the many hours she spent in the evans library and zachry engineering education complex academic study halls with really helpful tutors clark finished her freshman and sophomore years in good standing the summer after her sophomore year she earned an internship with concho resources one summer of being out in the field meeting petroleum engineers and excelling at the work she was given confirmed that her choice of major was a wise move ""getting out there being involved and getting that internship really helped me overcome that imposter syndrome "" said clark ""its like my dad always tells me ‘keep plugging along youve got this! through friends in other majors clark found out all disciplines are similarly tough and challenging yet in her mind petroleum engineering is different especially in attitude this department encourages collaboration between the students and everyone clark said it was the same with my internship no one's trying to really compete with each other they want each person to succeed equally to themselves which i think is very cool success taught clark that a love of math hard work and a willingness to raise her hand and ask questions could work wonders against self-doubt now shes come full circle and is re-embracing her finance ideas from high school she enrolled in the graham petroleum ventures program where she takes elective courses in the mays business school and learns from business leaders in the oil and gas industry to gain her petroleum ventures certificate it can't ever hurt to know the money side of a technical venture because that's a huge part of it said clark that's why the oil and gas industry makes the decisions it does clark has stepped up and pushed herself in areas other than classes she placed first in the junior division of the local student paper contest held by the harold vance department of petroleum engineering she took part in and then led the recruitment committee of the tamu spe and currently helps the petroleum engineering department give tours to interested students while shes quick to talk about the joys she hopes to experience as a petroleum engineer such as working all over the world her goal is to let others find their own path just as she did the important part isn't convincing someone to join petroleum said clark it's helping people find what works best and what's going to be the best fit for them in the future"
2236,"dr jacqueline chen and dr nancy sottos have been selected as members of the 2021-22 class of hagler fellows both chen and sottos are members of the national academy of engineering (nae) and will be collaborating with students and faculty from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the hagler institute for advanced study was founded in 2010 to bring world-class scholars called hagler fellows to texas a&m to collaborate with faculty and students at the university the institute's purpose is to recruit talented faculty-researchers who strive for innovation and excellence in their respective fields since its inception the institute has hosted more than 80 fellows including nae member dr james hubbard jr hubbard joined the mechanical engineering faculty at texas a&m after his time as a fellow ""we look forward to collaborating with dr chen and dr sottos in their time as hagler fellows "" said dr guillermo aguilar head of the mechanical engineering department ""they both bring incredible experience and expertise which will serve as a great benefit to the faculty and students of our department"" chen is a senior scientist at the sandia national laboratories combustion research facility and has contributed broadly to research in direct numerical simulations of turbulent combustion these interactions govern overall combustion rate emissions degree of local extinction and ignition timing chen is also a fellow of the combustion institute and the american physical society division of fluid dynamics sottos holds the maybelle leland swanlund endowed chair and is head of the department of materials science and engineering at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign she leads the autonomous materials systems group at the beckman institute for advanced science and technology and serves as director of the university of illinois component of the bp international center for advanced materials sottos is also a fellow of the society for experimental mechanics and the society for engineering science"
2237,not many students tackle earning two degrees at the same time from texas a&m university but engineering graduate student kaushik manikonda is doing just that plus he is exploring the world gaining research experience and networking with industry professionals manikonda is participating in a visiting researcher program between texas a&m and texas a&m university at qatar programs like this allow qualified graduate students to spend multiple semesters or even years abroad in doha with no changes in their enrollment or immigration status apart from applying and getting accepted into the program by a hosting advisor in qatar the only official university procedure is getting approval from the education abroad office to conduct research abroad dr rashid hasan a research professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering and dr aziz rahman associate professor in the qatar petroleum program are co-advising manikonda on his doctoral degree in interdisciplinary engineering by completing his doctoral degree in the department of multidisciplinary engineering manikonda is able to create his own path by merging his cross-discipline research interests rahman and dr ibrahim hassan the hosting advisors oversee the research manikonda does while on the qatar campus for his master of science degree manikonda works with dr natarajan gautam professor and associate department head for graduate affairs in the wm michael barnes '64 department of industrial and systems engineering i am specializing in data science for industrial and machine learning applications for well control automation for petroleum said manikonda most of my industrial coursework is symbiotic with my petroleum research and i try to include parts of my research in the graded coursework where possible i am extremely grateful to my advisors for letting me pursue this manikonda admits the two degrees create an immense workload but says there are incredible advantages to being a visiting researcher for instance the qatar foundation and texas a&m at qatar covered the cost of his travel to doha his apartment and will pay the cost of getting him back to college station when he leaves the program they even pay for travel to and from major conferences that have accepted papers manikonda submits on research he does while participating in the program the most appealing benefit is the free housing said manikonda but theres so much more including help with moving arrangements getting around education city and even business travel within doha education city is a special area in doha developed by the qatar foundation to host satellite campuses of texas a&m and seven other foreign universities plus a local university the area includes student housing complexes for each university a student center and several other amenities all the complexes contain fully furnished apartments meeting and community spaces recreation areas a food court and a massive open-air outdoor social space theres a mind-numbing selection of foods manikonda said doha is littered with an amazing assortment of indian arabic italian and mediterranean restaurants im having a field day trying new places almost every week due to its geographical placement doha is a dream city for the young researcher manikonda originally from india enjoys the ability to hop on a plane and be with his family a few hours later he can also reach other nearby travel destinations such as dubai cairo istanbul moscow rome and athens with similar reasonable airline flights though he doesnt have much time for traveling thanks to studies and long hours in the lab manikonda noted that all his hard work in the program has provided positive benefits in other ways this is an opportunity to show future employers i can adapt and thrive in a foreign environment said manikonda also i have the chance to network with oil and gas professionals in the middle east region at major conferences over here the skills im learning are invaluable as they would be for any young professional visiting researchers do face significant challenges such as language barriers cultural differences currency exchanges international travel cards desert climates and even vendor interactions while he cautioned that female visitors should dress conservatively while traveling in doha or elsewhere in the region manikonda found everyone inside education city to be accommodating professional and respectful to foreign students manikonda fully promotes the program and recommends other students check with their advisors for the qualifications but recognizes it may not be for everyone since i frequently travel to the middle east india and europe i already had most of these challenges sorted and never faced any major issues said manikonda but for someone with limited international travel experience i recommend a good deal of preparation before boarding that flight to doha
2238,on oct 1 the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university celebrated the renovation of the equipment used on aggie well no 1 the renovation allows petroleum engineering students to learn from understand and work with the same technology that currently exists in oil and gas fields attendees included descendants of the wells founder jt rollins former students responsible for organizing the renovation and their families faculty staff and industry board members from the department the students can walk out from the classroom environment and enter a small piece of the oil and gas field with a real pump unit installed on a real well said dr ibere alves professor of engineering practice this is a lifetime experience the students can operate the unit learn how to measure with it for lab work and more it is very important to have this connection of theory from the classrooms with actual equipment behavior
2239,aggie well no 1 came about in late 1983 when faculty member dr jt rollins lobbied hard to drill a water well on campus and outfit it with a pump jack and other equipment so the department could instruct students firsthand on how well systems worked at that time the doherty building housed the petroleum engineering department so the site was planned near the south end of the building the well was drilled between mid-december 1983 and february 1984 with a shallow rig manned by donated student labor and supervised by rollins according to an article by the bryan college station eagle in april 1984 lufkin industries (now part of ge oil and gas) donated the size-modified maroon and white pump jack sargent industries donated the motor and controls trico industries donated the sucker rod and pump and ruthco donated the concrete foundation faculty and students made full use of the unique teaching tool for years until the pump jack aged beyond safe operating parameters when alves joined the faculty in 2015 he often walked by the pump jack and wondered if it was a monument asking questions led him to dr thomas blasingame robert l whiting professor and the last faculty member to use the well for testing together they serviced the unit enough so alves could perform short controlled demonstrations for his students in january 2020 two former students kory kress and mike samford of halcyon equipment stepped forward and proposed a way to bring the well back to life as the teaching tool it was meant to be arrangements were made to renovate the pump jack and upgrade the area surrounding the well for observation and safety purposes while the plans were delayed by the pandemic they were not halted the renovation was completed this summer thanks to donations from halcyon the pump jack is now capable of operating safely and for longer times allowing students to easily perform lab testing a new variable frequency driver interfaces communication with the unit to automate certain processes and perfectly control the wells motor speed and flow rates an installed dynamometer lets students see and calculate operating characteristics such as plunger loads and displacement fluid levels can also be monitored along with suction pressure and hydraulic power levels we have something much better than a static monument it is a piece of equipment that works and is very related with texas a&m history said alves i have already scheduled my class on location in october and am excited to see my students use this piece of field equipment to put theory into practice i hope this will help generations of aggie petroleum engineers to come
2240,dr steven l hayes was recently named the department of nuclear engineerings distinguished former student an annual award given to former students who embody texas a&m universitys core values in their research and career he is being recognized for his distinguished career with national laboratories his expertise and leadership in nuclear fuels and materials navigating highly complex and challenging situations strong leadership skills and selfless dedicationhayes is director of the nuclear fuels and materials division and a fellow of the nuclear science and technology directorate at idaho national laboratory he has more than 25 years of increasing leadership responsibilities in developing testing and modeling nuclear fuels including metallic oxide and nitride fuels for liquid metal fast reactors high-density dispersion fuels for research reactors and advanced fuels for light water reactorshayes a longtime member of the american nuclear society received his bachelors masters and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering from texas a&m attending texas a&m was the obvious choice because he loved science especially nuclear physicsi have to admit i didnt really know what nuclear engineering was when i enrolled but i assumed it was nuclear physics without the other stuff said hayes that proved to be wrong but i learned to love it anywaymoving into graduate studies hayes loved the opportunity to focus exclusively on the technical aspects of the field and develop a specialization which for him was nuclear fuels performing research in a university setting is an extraordinary opportunity that cant be matched anywhere else said hayeshis advice for current students is to get engaged in research as soon as possible even if youre an undergraduateits an experience you will never regret said hayes at the graduate level many engineering programs are beginning to graduate more masters degrees without requiring research and a thesis – dont do it even if you dont plan to do research as a professional career the experience gained by doing a thesis will serve you well in any capacityhayes is the author or co-author of many publications related to nuclear fuel performance fuel modeling and fuel development/qualification he has been awarded a us patent for an innovative nuclear fuel design enabling the enhanced destruction of plutonium
2241,creating a successful startup is just a dream for most people for former student grant singleton 20 his dream came true when he started pangobooks a fast-growing venture-backed marketplace for books singleton graduated from texas a&m university just a year ago with a degree in computer engineering the now-founder and ceo of pangobooks cant help but reflect on the opportunities provided by the texas a&m college of engineerings startup incubator the engineering entrepreneurship program cleared up the mystery of a startup and i learned that it's really just a lot of hard work and critical thinking he said it's important to surround yourself with other entrepreneurs and driven people engineering inc is exactly that singleton participated in the 2019 aggies invent for special operations command where his team developed a prototype solution for an army maintenance problem its here that singletons interest in utilizing technology to connect people and build a business peaked his teams innovation maintain ar addressed the currently inefficient and unreliable military maintenance process utilizing a cloud-based mobile application with augmented reality it provided military mechanics and their supervisors with paperless instruction manuals 3d models and a digital system for checks and balances their solution was designed to reduce repair time and costs and most importantly mechanical failure maintain ar was a business solution my friends and i built he said i wanted to put this experience online and go beyond goodreads and other social platforms
2242,through aggies invent singleton was mentored by rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship who taught the value of a compelling story when pitching a startup he cut straight to the point and let me know (to drop) these minute details i was getting into with my pitch singleton said about his time with boehm this skill is exactly what helped me tell a compelling story that got my current company funded he also had the opportunity to work with jim donnell professor of practice in the engineering entrepreneurship program who offered useful insight that he now uses for his company when our team talked with him during our face-to-face meeting his main focus was on what value our company could bring he recounted this seems obvious but my top focus with my current startup has been ‘what value can i create for my users a company is really only worth the value it can bring to customers it is singletons belief that engineering and entrepreneurship these days are inseparable as they both deal with solving complex issues every day theres also the added perk of being able to invent a prototype of your idea before pitching it being able to engineer the product yourself gives an entrepreneur the ability to bring a product to market at a low cost this is crucial since an investor is much more likely to invest in your idea if you have already built it he said
2243,the amount of data produced each year by scientific user facilities such as those at national labs or government organizations can range up to several billion gigabytes per year this massive amount of data generation has now begun to exceed researchers capacity to effectively parse this data in order to accomplish their scientific goals a supersized problem when it comes to achieving new scientific advances to develop new mathematical and computational techniques to reduce the size of these data sets the us department of energy (doe) awarded $137 million to nine projects as a part of the advanced scientific computing research (ascr) program in september 2021 a team led by dr byung-jun yoon associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has received $24 million to address the challenges of moving storing and processing the massive data sets produced and processed by scientific workflows the overarching principle of this project is to focus on the scientific objectives of each data set and maintain retention of the quantities of interest (qoi) that pertain to the objectives by optimizing the representation of the data while keeping the focus on the scientific goals at hand yoons team is able to preserve the important information that can lead to scientific breakthroughs despite the significant reduction in data size our idea is to not only significantly reduce the amount of data but to ultimately preserve the goals for which the data is intended to serve said yoon that's why we call it the objective-based data reduction for scientific workflows we want to reduce the amount of data but not sacrifice the quantities or qualities of interest one of the first steps yoons team will take to accomplish this goal is to utilize an information-theoretic approach to find a compact representation of the data by exploiting semantics and invariances they will also look at how data reduction impacts the achievement of the final goals based on which they will jointly optimize the models that compose general scientific workflows
2244,an example of how an overwhelming amount of data can become unmanageable is cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-em) which is a method widely used for molecular structure analysis during cryo-em typical datasets are composed of thousands of micrographs that contain projection images of the molecules in various orientations that are several terabytes in size another example is through x-ray scattering experiments which are routinely performed to analyze material structure when performed in a mapping mode where the x-ray exposures are performed across a samples cross-section a single scattering map is a 4d dataset that may contain around 10 billion values the thing that i'm most excited about is probably for the first time we are looking into this data reduction problem from an objective-based perspective which i believe may not have been done by others yoon said we are proposing a metric that can be used for objective-based quantification of the impact of data reduction and then optimizing the data reduction pipeline by using this metric so that we can preserve the usability of the data to support the final goal the ultimate performance that we can bring by applying this idea to our data reduction is also very exciting the mission of the ascr program is to discover develop and deploy computational and networking capability to analyze model simulate and predict complex phenomena important to the doe and the advancement of science in addition to yoon co-principal investigators are dr edward dougherty and dr xiaoning qian from the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m; this project also involves collaborators at brookhaven national lab and the university of illinois at urbana-champaign
2245,advances in directional drilling and the control of drilling robotics could be critical for discovering potential microbial life and signs of water resources on mars on earth such technology is equally impactful significantly decreasing the cost of producing geothermal renewable energy reducing the environmental impact of constructing new clean energy sites and accessing underground oil reserves and increasing production safety additionally it allows scientists at the south pole to evaluate climate change patterns and predict future impacts such as the evolution of global warming the challenge lies in controlling this technology between overcoming barriers in the environment such as rocky terrain vibrations and wellbore formation interaction located deep underground and the risk of human error the operation of directional drilling provides a unique set of operating conditions dr xingyong song associate professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university received a national science foundation (nsf) faculty early career development program (career) grant to advance the control of deep underground directional drilling systems through this project he aims to create a more reliable drilling process of automating controls by developing a new computational framework for operating directional drilling technology in this world and beyond as song explained automation and machine intelligence have advanced dramatically in recent years but have lagged behind in its implementation in the drilling industry in its stead many processes still rely heavily on human workers and their experience response time and ability to react this is an issue when dealing with stimuli and feedback at the end of a drill bit that is 10 000 feet away and underground in drilling youre allowing sensors to see whats underground and when this information is transmitted to the surface a lot of times there is a time delay song said and if you only rely on humans to make decisions and send back a control command after this feedback comes in oftentimes it will already be too late additionally regardless how experienced a worker is with as complicated as a drilling environment is having one or two people have full decision-making power makes it an unreliable strategy so song asks why not hand the reigns over to machine-learning techniques based on big data and advanced modeling of the whole directional drilling process to allow computers to make the decisions for the field engineers over the next five years song plans to utilize the $638 000 awarded to him to develop a new directional drilling control model and a new computational algorithm to address state-barrier avoidance control that will address the complex barriers faced by the drilling industry this will be used to teach artificial intelligence programs to handle the complex obstacles it may face when handling real-world directional drilling applications
2246,a team of students from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university participated in the 2021 international collegiate programming contests (icpc) north america championship competition in august a total of 48 teams competed in the national championship round and the texas a&m team named tamoo placed 11th in the united states and 15th overall qualifying them to advance to the world finals round where they will face off against the best problem solvers in the world for the title of icpc champions this is only the second time in the past 20 years that a texas a&m team has advanced to this stage of the competition the members of the team include tanner hoke matthew tran and naixin zong dr john keyser professor in the department of computer science and engineering serves as a coach for the students im happy with how we performed in the championship round said hoke our goal as a team was to move onto world finals and weve achieved that personally ive hoped since my freshman year to be able to move on to this final level of icpc and it feels great to finally be here to reach the north america championship round of the contest the team advanced through regional and divisional rounds where they defeated some of the top schools in the country since forming in 2020 the team has held several practice sessions while also juggling classes jobs and internships to reach this point during the competition they were given 13 real-world problem statements and three and a half hours to solve them the problems covered topics such as recovering a travel log with missing entries to reconstruct an individuals path to determining the largest cleaning robot a company could buy to clean an entire room thanks to support from our coach dr keyser as well as the college of engineering we received well-designed training problem sets for our practice sessions said zong the world finals round is expected to take place in 2022 visit the icpc north america championships website to view the contest scoreboard
2247,"a new startup company that could profoundly change the sterility testing techniques of vaccines and other biopharmaceutical products has been launched with the support of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) office of commercialization and entrepreneurship formed in collaboration with texas a&m universitys nanobio systems lab (led by drs arum han and paul de figueiredo) heliowave technologies llc is developing heliosafe a fast high-efficiency and automated sterility and bioburden testing system that uses lab-on-a-chip microfluidic-based approaches to detect contamination in therapeutics and therapeutic manufacturing workflows the project is led by dr adrian guzman chief technology officer and interim chief executive officer of heliowave and supported by han presidential impact fellow chancellors edges fellow and professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and de figueiredo professor in the department of microbial pathogenesis and microbiology the team is using a lab-on-a-chip miniaturization technology to provide a small chip-scale footprint where the embedded microfluidics technology provides low-cost and rapid testing to identify the presence of any living microorganisms in the solution being tested this automated system ensures pharmaceuticals remain contamination-free and allows companies to identify and remove any contaminations in a timely and cost-efficient manner initial commercialization funds have been provided by the us department of defenses small business innovation research program conventional sterility and bioburden testing systems utilize milliliter volume samples and days/weeks-long assays to test for sterility of therapeutic products whereas heliowave's technology uses micro-to-pico-liter (1 000 to 1 000 000 times smaller) sample volumes and can be conducted in hours/days guzman said in addition there are currently no real-time monitoring systems for sterility and bioburden testing of the intermediate and final products which can lead to large batches of products being unknowingly contaminated during the biomanufacturing process therefore requiring disposal which can cost manufacturers greatly heliowave's technology also provides continuous monitoring that can be directly integrated in the therapeutic manufacturing workflow providing manufacturers an additional tool to ensure their current production batch is free of any biological contamination this significantly reduced testing time will allow potential sterility problems in the final product to be detected much faster as well as help identify problems in the therapeutic manufacturing workflow earlier to mitigate any problem han said the disposable lab-on-a-chip device can also significantly lower the cost of testing the researchers are currently in the prototyping characterization and validation stages of their lab-on-a-chip platform to ensure the system meets the required standards set by regulatory bodies they are hoping to soon move into the pilot testing stage to demonstrate the enhanced performance of their system compared to conventional sterility testing methods something they couldnt have easily accomplished without support from the tees office of commercialization and entrepreneurship most technology platforms emerging from academia face significant barriers when it comes to reaching the market said dr saurabh biswas executive director for commercialization and entrepreneurship at tees deep-tech ideas require significantly longer development time because of the interdisciplinary nature of the research and also significant capital is required beyond the basic r&d our office provides support during the early stages of research and development to enable continued product development and commercialization"" the commercialization and entrepreneurship office supports texas a&m engineering through its three groups: licensing and intellectual property management venture creation and innovation programs and strategic projects they also provide support across the total life cycle of the innovation from its inception to intellectual property filing prosecution process licensing venture creation and finally working with external partners to enable commercialization of the technology (because of the tees office of commercialization and entrepreneurship) we are better positioned to bridge the gap from research and development to final production and mass fabrication of our chip for commercial use guzman said"
2248,"dr shawanee patrick is passionate about giving everyone the ability to walk as comfortably and effectively as possible through the use of walking assistive devices such as prosthetics and orthotics a phd student in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university patrick was inspired to help develop better walking assistive devices by the partial paralysis of her grandmother she is determined to make a positive impact on the lives of the people she works with as well as the thousands more like them patrick earned her undergraduate degree in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m before earning her master's degree in the mechanical engineering department she has been advised in her phd program by dr douglas allaire associate professor and sallie and don davis '61 faculty fellow and former mechanical engineering faculty member dr pilwon hur her research focuses on developing and refining walking assistive devices by determining what inputs are important and outcomes that could improve the design process ""i like to say my research is about how to help people who can't walk be able to walk and how to help those who do walk walk better "" patrick said ""that's kind of my tagline walking improves the quality of life so it's really important we help those facing challenges when we can"" the covid-19 pandemic brought challenges to patrick's research as well patrick's research which works with human studies had been delayed several times by the health and availability of her subjects patrick said the process of conducting her research includes investigating the user's needs from various angles from the perspective of the user themselves to their physician and family members patrick said it is necessary to build a complete picture of them ""getting a whole picture of your true stakeholders seeing what their needs are how they walk and how much you can actually improve the walking is essential "" patrick said ""it has been really great to work with people who could directly benefit from the work"" patrick said one of the most rewarding aspects of the work comes from the enthusiasm and desire for collaboration that she has seen in the people she works with often she has been inspired by their interest not only in the potential outcomes but also in the process of creating a better more intuitive prosthetic although the specific project she is working on will not be going to market patrick said she is hopeful that the research she is conducting could one day influence the development of a product that makes its way to those who could greatly benefit from the support ""i'm a woman on a mission to truly help people make a difference in people's lives in some way form or fashion "" patrick said and that's kind of always been my mo it's a blessing for me to be able to do work to help others i feel like that can lead me to a fulfilling work experience in the future"" in addition to her research patrick is also a passionate educator she was one of 10 aggies recognized as a 2021 distinguished graduate student for teaching by the association of former students ""shawanee is a passionate and dedicated researcher as well as an exceptional teacher said allaire i look forward to learning about the impact she is sure to have in her career"" looking ahead patrick looks forward to pursuing a career in academia where she can continue to teach and further her research ""i really love to teach "" patrick said ""i think it's really important to focus on the person the students i'm mentoring and making sure to give them the information they need so that they are confident in their skills and they are confident when they leave"" having successfully defended her dissertation during which she was able to acknowledge her grandmothers impact on her and her research patrick is headed to the ohio state university where she received the legacy postdoctoral fellowship while she will miss those who have supported her in her journey at texas a&m patrick said she is excited for all that lies ahead i have worked really hard for this moment and had a lot of ups and downs along the way patrick said i had over 35 people attend my defense and many more who supported me that were not present i hope in the future at ohio state i can continue to grow as an educator and researcher helping people to move forward physically intellectually and every way"
2249,joshua lund a junior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university and recipient of one of the 2021 american bureau of shipping scholarships skated his way into engineering after playing hockey in scandinavia and canada introduced to the sport by his mother as his family moved around the world for his fathers petroleum engineering career lund initially took to the collegiate rink at trinity western university in langley british columbia just outside of vancouver where he was also a chemistry and mathematics double major there he played goalie for the university hockey team and while hockey had become a passion it was not his life goal i wanted to become an engineer since i was in the first or second grade lund said ive read my dads old textbooks and my grandfathers old textbooks and for my fluid dynamics class i took my dads copy from home that ive read five times over so its nice to finally be doing something that ive been looking forward to for a long time though his initial interest started with aerospace engineering lund discovered that ocean engineering as a discipline is highly translatable additionally having grown up in norway lund often saw ships and vessels on the ocean and understood both the pitfalls and potential for the expansion of ocean engineering its a really cool industry lund expanded because when you think about it weve studied a wide variety of topics that can be applied in lots of ways it could be used for a dam or boat each with unique problems to solve he said that hes excited by the prospect of the energy transition and blue economy movements putting more emphasis on exploring the oceans and marine-related economy along with the industry growth revolving around ocean engineering fields the greater focus on issues like sea levels rising and coastal preservation have also highlighted the need for engineers trained to tackle issues involving near and offshore processes lund said hed like to focus his studies and future career on underwater facilities and submarines he recently started working alongside dr mirjim furth assistant professor and naval architect on research projects in her lab im interested in the propulsion of ships but what i really want to work on is submarines and subsea structures like the underwater research facility off the coast of florida on the ocean floor he said i want to look into the development of making that more standard for researchers or even for travel developing easy transitions through pressure differentials
2250,in 2001 the late dr daniel jennings ‘86 started an online master of industrial distribution program at texas a&m university designed for individuals in leadership roles to further their education and careers while working full time most people thought it had little chance for success jennings had said twenty years later the master of industrial distribution (mid) program boasts over 700 graduates and is part of the top-ranked online graduate engineering program in the state of texas mid currently has 103 enrolled professionals from 12 states and three countries built upon the oldest and largest undergraduate distribution degree in the nation the 21-month online lockstep program focuses on business-to-business sales customer experience operations supply chain management and profitability of distributors and manufacturers in industrial channels the mid program at texas a&m was a tremendous experience and certainly helped me transition from active-duty military service to the private sector said 2001 mid graduate thomas tomberlain sales manager of industrial products for bnsf railway company the staff faculty fellows and former students were and are the reason for the programs great success the flexible program is structured with online classes two week-long residencies on the texas a&m campus and a global and capstone project that offer real-world industry experience phil evans 01 an inaugural graduate of the mid program shared his thoughts on the impact that his degree had on his personal and professional lives ive not only received a hard return on investment in terms of professional relationships and career development from my mid experience but the soft benefits of my aggie spirit born and curated over time has been the most rewarding said evans speaking about the program content dr f barry lawrence leonard and valerie bruce chair professor and program coordinator of the industrial distribution program said the mid program in its 20 years has evolved into a program that brings academic excellence and industry specialization for student development mid faculty include academic faculty and industry leaders who co-teach each course allowing students to learn not only academic theories but also relevant and practical applicability within industry the mid program is considered a unique and premier program of its kind in the nation said engineering technology and industrial distribution department head dr reza langari the quality of the faculty the selective nature of the admissions process and a continued effort to ensure the mid curriculum is up to date and relevant have made this program a star among distance education professional masters programs i expect even greater accomplishments by the mid team and its graduates in the years ahead the mid program is used by many companies to develop and retain their top talent said dr bharani nagarathnam associate director of the mid program the capstone projects have the potential to bring significant value to a students employer in a time of unprecedented uncertainty the mid program offers both academic and industry experience that prepares students for future success without sacrificing or postponing their professional careers i hope the program can continue to grow educate and help people to excel both professionally and in their daily lives said jennings education is the key to all success for more information on the mid program visit midtamuedu
2251,a grant from the us department of education is paving the way to address the country's need for resilient infrastructure while training the next generation of engineers in advanced construction methods and technologiesdisasters from natural hazards such as hurricanes floods and earthquakes increase the need for rapidly constructible and resilient infrastructure to expedite the recovery of affected areas and minimize socioeconomic impacts while also preventing future disastersthe graduate assistantships in areas of national need (gaann) program in infrastructure resilience in the context of advanced construction methods led by project director dr petros sideris will adopt advance and implement novel cutting-edge construction methods such as large-scale 3d printingadvanced construction methods offer out-of-the-box design solutions that can achieve decreased construction times through automation lower environmental impacts through reduced materials use and waste and potentially lower construction costs sideris said affordable resilient structures are also key to addressing the housing crisis both nationally and internationally thus contributing to social resilienceour gaann program constitutes a unique educational and research approach that will provide engineers with special training to enter academic industrial and government fields and serve the country's needsthe gaann program specifically supports diversity in academia and the civil engineering profession as a whole by joining the efforts of texas a&m's louis stokes alliances for minority participation program the texas a&m college of engineering's access and inclusion program and the college of engineering's women in engineering program sideris said they are working to reach a broad and diverse pool of highly qualified applicants especially women and underrepresented minoritiesthe program will offer gaann fellows well-rounded training in research and teaching as well as professional development opportunities and international experiences all gaann fellows will also have access to cutting-edge experimental facilities such as the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) with its advanced equipment including small- and large-scale 3d printers the project team also includes lead co-director dr anand puppala professor and cir interim director; and co-directors dr maria koliou assistant professor; dr luciana barroso associate professor; dr zachary grasley department head and professor; and dr mary beth hueste professor and associate department head for undergraduate programslearn more about the gaann program
2252,"chances are youve either heard of the global semiconductor chip shortage or been personally affected by it when looking into purchasing a new or used vehicle over the last year and a half you might be wondering why this has happened and how the situation can be remediated two faculty members in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university dr paul gratz professor and stavros kalafatis professor of practice and associate department head are weighing in to provide answers over the last 20 years the semiconductor chip manufacturing process underwent a large shift resulting in most fabrication occurring overseas this change worked well for the semiconductor industry pre-pandemic because manufacturers were able to design the chips in house and have them fabricated for much less at overseas locations in 2020 when the pandemic shocked the world consumers were purchasing less of everything and subsequently tech companies stopped purchasing inventory when the world kept spinning in a new virtual way with many working from home items such as laptops and other electronics became in extremely high demand personal computer sales grew by 11% in 2020 the highest growth for that technology in a decade this unexpected demand shocked many in the electronics business no one was prepared for all that ensued in 2020 but the automotive industry was particularly affected by the shortage and continues to feel those consequences today this in part stems from the decision to cease orders for microcontrollers and other chips early in the pandemic due to the prediction that consumers would not need or want to buy a car during that time coupled with these chips being used for cars as well as other technology such as smartphones and laptops the stock is simply not available at this time ""there are only so many chips that can be built per unit of time "" gratz explained ""right now all of the fabrication facilities are running out of inventory and are still not able to keep up with the demand it takes a long time (around two years) to build new ones so we are stuck with what we have until more fabrication facilities can come online"" kalafatis a former senior director with intel explained that intel is the last volume processor manufacturer in the united states with fabrication facilities that are local and what that means for the computer and automotive industry which both use these chips a lot of these high-end fabs that are local are targeted toward the production of microprocessors kalafatis said so that helps the laptop and desktop market but it doesn't help automotive very much the international data corporation predicts the semiconductor market to reach $600 billion by 2025 representing a compound annual growth rate of 53% through the forecast period which is higher than the typical 3-4% mature growth seen historically so where do we go from here gratz says a start would be to house more fabrication facilities in the us in addition to benefiting national security this could help with fabrication time in the long run in the short term chip companies such as taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company intel and samsung are actively spending hundreds of billions on increasing capacity to meet the demand despite these efforts both gratz and kalafatis believe it will take at least six months to a year for the semiconductor chip industry to get back to more normal operating procedures closer to home the texas a&m engineering experiment stations hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research made possible with a generous donation from hewlett packard enterprise is providing the capability for researchers to design novel semiconductor chips that will change the landscape of computer architectures through academic-industry collaboration the center is working to ultimately make a long-term impact in this area of semiconductor chips"
2253,"karen mcclure and gurvis j jeff post have established the karen mcclure and gurvis j ""jeff"" post iii '81 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of ocean engineering in the texas a&m university college of engineering post and mcclure both come from aggie families post originally came to texas a&m to study oceanography but he quickly realized that he was more interested in the engineering aspect than the general sciences after his first semester he switched his major to ocean engineering studying engineering was a perfect fit for post ocean engineering was a great option for me to switch to and it was one of the most important decisions of my life he said post became a member of the marine technology society on campus and completed his bachelors degree in 1981 after graduating he went on to enjoy a successful career in offshore engineering his career lasted almost 40 years and gave him the opportunity to travel all around the world working in the ocean engineering field inspired post to give back to the students who are future contributors to the blue economy post and mcclure established the endowment to open doors for students hoping to pursue a degree in ocean engineering the scholarship is specifically dedicated to students who are residents of texas i think ocean engineering will play a major role in the future of texas he said i think it is a responsibility of a&m to produce high-quality engineers to help meet these needs in the future post currently works as the facilities engineering manager at chevron corporation the second largest oil company in america he and his wife reside in houston"
2254,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown assistant director of development
2255,"janice and edward nick mcgowen have established the janice and edward ""nick"" mcgowen '93 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in ocean engineering from texas a&m university in galveston texas nick attended his first aggie football game as a freshman in high school and was instantly drawn to the culture at texas a&m when it came time to apply for college he chose to study at texas a&m at galveston to chase his dream of being an aggie ive never looked back on my decision to be an aggie at a small campus he said nick was the first in his family to attend a four-year university unsure of how to develop successful study habits he left school his sophomore year to work a full-time job but after several years of working he felt texas a&m calling him back to fulfill his dream my goals were not attainable without accomplishing my desire to graduate as an aggie he said motivated by his desire to achieve his goals nick put in the work to get back into his dream school he enrolled in junior college to retake courses and prove his ability to achieve academic excellence he met with the dean of engineering and was granted reacceptance into the university once back at texas a&m nick applied himself to his studies to demonstrate his commitment to his academic pursuits at his graduation the dean of admissions found him in the crowd and gave him a hug she said ‘i knew you were going to make it you've worked so hard for this day nick said from that moment he knew he wanted to give back to texas a&m clearing a financial hurtle is the simplest thing i can do for someone with a passion to succeed nick said the mcgowens established the scholarship to give students the opportunity to achieve their goals they hope their demonstration of commitment to texas a&m and higher education will inspire recipients and enable them to pay the gift forward in the future the mcgowens live in league city texas they have three children kaitlyn ethan and nicholas 23 nick is currently the senior director for travel quality engineering at pros a computer software company he has worked at for the last 16 years"
2256,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2257,the covid-19 pandemic exposed the critical need for new risk management strategies that can quickly shift production and logistics to meet customer demand surges during disruptions to address this problem the secureamerica institute (sai) launched a nationwide search for projects that could further empower and secure a resilient us manufacturing and defense industrial base dr eleftherios iakovou director of supply chain management for sai and director of manufacturing and logistics innovation initiatives for the texas a&m engineering experiment station is working on a holistic end-to-end supply chain management data-driven framework to detect problems and increase supply chain resiliency and agility of supply chains in the united states resilient supply chains must be cost-competitive to be sustainable in the future said iakovou who is also the harvey hubbell professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university we have adversaries who are aggressively trying to undercut the united states industrial base by producing and selling at low cost an agile resilient supply chain is one that bounces back as quickly as possible from a disruption with the ability to ramp up and sustain production efficiently thus ensuring business continuity for the defense industrial base and other critical supply chains of the nation to meet this moment where economic security and national security have become so tightly interwoven iakovous project will identify the data needed from internal and external stakeholders to discover paradigm shifts and provide a roadmap for designing next-generation supply chain networks that are more robust in a cost-competitive fashion resiliency needs supply chain visibility and mapping and ensures business continuity iakovou said take for example news of the decline in cdl drivers who transport cargo across the united states this impacts our supply chain but the issue extends further its not simply the lack of drivers hurting our resilience its the wait times these drivers experience when arriving at todays clogged ports or terminals indicatively there are serious flaws in todays digital appointment platforms at marine container terminals which along with other inefficiencies hinder drivers from ensuring their appointment windows are honored after 14 hours the federal government mandates drivers must clock out iakovou said what happens when they are forced to leave without meeting their delivery requirements the impact of these unfulfilled deliveries then propagates across the supply chain according to iakovou the ability to rapidly discern these types of issues is crucial to achieving resilient supply chains in the united states by taking into account the vast amount of data that is available today and by harmonizing the strategies and tactics of corporations and governmental entities we can increase our ability to detect and respond faster to problems while increasing our effective supply chain capacity he said iakovous framework is currently published in the international journal of production research the leading operations management journal and will provide a synergistic framework for the flows of information products cash and work processes to solve crises and solidify resiliency a steady flow of information and collaboration across all stakeholders of the end-to-end supply chain is what has been missing at the very core of our supply chain networks he said breaking down silos and creating a path toward the uninterrupted sharing of data will help the nation secure our manufacturing industry and better address many of the challenges and bottlenecks we are encountering in our nations supply chain network sai and its network of partners are committed to leveraging technology solutions to address nationally impactful challenges please contact chief technology officer dr darrell wallace at dwallace@tamuedu to discuss how we might work together to develop integrate and deploy technology solutions to ensure the security and resilience of the domestic manufacturing base
2258,the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university hosted its first annual artistic engineering art contest during the fall 2021 semester biomedical engineering-affiliated students faculty and staff were invited to submit images in any medium and could include themes such as research people in stem computer-generated imagery photo composites or others voting took place and the top five submissions were selected these will be featured on the fifth floor of the emerging technologies building
2259,first place: laura rivera tarazona doctoral student in dr taylor ware's lab for living materials save the environment the glacier presented in this piece is an scanning electron microscopes image of engineered living materials (elm) the elm material in this image consists of escherichia coli contained within a hydrogel matrix in the ware lab they are synthesizing these elms to replace traditional plastics and help the global sustainability of natural environments
2260,second place: members of the cardiovascular pathology laboratory led by dr fred clubb for their work serendipity: trichrome a stained histology image of a subcutaneous polymer serendipitously shaped like a heart
2261,third place: members of the quantitative optical imaging lab led by dr alex walsh for fluorescence collage representative label-free fluorescence images of cell metabolism from the quantitative optical imaging lab fluorescence lifetime imaging is used to quantify the amount of time a fluorophore is in an excited state which can enhance our understanding of certain microenvironmental changes contrast comes from molecules within cells nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (nadh) or flavin adenine dinucleotide (fad) which are energy carriers used in metabolic reactions within the cell collage contains images of cancer cells liver tissues macrophages and organoids
2262,fourth place: ryan farrell masters student in the department of visualization who works with associate professor dr akhilesh gaharwar bioprinting is a cartoon that depicts the recent efforts of the gaharwar and dr abhishek jain labs on 3d bioprinting blood vessels these 3d bioprinted vessels mimic pathophysiological features of disease and health vascular tissue and can be used for drug testing
2263,fifth place: jim tronolone doctoral student in jains lab for small blood vessels forming perfusable networks in a medical device blood vessels are a crucial component of most tissues of the human body yet they are often neglected when engineers devise medical devices that model human tissues outside of the body such devices called organs-on-chips represent a new push towards advancing human in vitro research and replacing animal models for drug studies this fluorescence micrograph demonstrates how an advanced organ-on-a-chip called a vascularized tissue-chip is fenestrated with small blood vessels called microvasculature such advanced devices are crucial for the translation of organ-chips to drug development and testing as well as basic biological investigation
2264,as part of the energy transition the energy industry is looking toward the oceans for reliable sustainable and renewable energy sources researchers and engineers aim to create technology that can supply cost-competitive ocean renewable power to support coastal communities which comprise half of the us population dr heonyong kang assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university is stepping up to this challenge with two separate projects focusing on wave energy converters: one for small-scale and the other for utility-scale applications progress with federal support kangs first project initially came from the us department of energys (doe) wave energy prize competition in 2015 the competition showed that a few conceptual floating wave energy converters are promising but their designs tend to result in expensive or uncompetitive capital expenditure (capex) and operational expenditure (opex) to achieve competitive levelized cost of energy (lcoe) below 40 cents per kilowatt-hour kangs doe-funded project involves a team of multidisciplinary researchers seeking to actualize their patented surface riding wave energy converter (sr-wec) as a cost-competitive solution for small- to intermediate-scale power supplies sr-wecs feature a unique adaptive resonance for varying random waves which produce high-capture width ratios and a modular lightweight system that has the generator sealed these properties substantially reduce capex opex and consequently the competitive lcoe
2265,since this project was initially introduced to the department kangs team has developed two optimum prototype designs of sr-wec: a small-scale sr-wec for self-recharging autonomous underwater vehicles and an intermediate-scale sr-wec for kilowatt-scale power supplies for powering the blue economy applications now they are working on crafting scaled prototypes the prototypes will first be tested in a dry testbed and then in the 2d wave-current-wind basin in college station although we have been facing numerous challenges throughout this pioneering research we get more excited and motivated as we discover new knowledge and recognize we are helping the energy transition said kang partnering with industry to commercialize ocean wave energy kang is also working with global perpetual energy (gpe) a texas renewable energy company to create a utility-scale wave energy converter that will be able to produce megawatt-scale power evolving from gpes patented ocean renewable energy platform kang is developing an optimum wave energy converter system that effectively extracts energy from elastic deformation resonance with waves over a large area the system design was inspired by the fact that the wave energy spans the entire length of the wave measuring tens to hundreds of meters the goal of this gpe-sponsored project is to test a prototype offshore in galveston what we are trying to do is find a solution both effective and cost-competitive he said by combining both we can reach a competitive lcoe so that the public can access wave energy that is renewable clean close to half of the us population and consistently available throughout the day and night and in mild to severe sea states
2266,millions of barrels of oil are produced daily from us shale reservoirs yet this quantity is small in comparison to the actual amount of oil locked away in these subsurface rocks the oil and gas industry has put fiber-optic sensing cables downhole to better understand hydraulic fracture results and why stimulation and production processes dont free the trapped oil at expected rates unfortunately the streams of information received from these sensors are massive and hard to sort through a multidisciplinary team including researchers at texas a&m university and a faculty member from the colorado school of mines has created an algorithm to clean up the subsurface data from fracturing efforts and offer a clear view of how and where these processes succeeded and failed in shale reservoir rocks our quantitative characterization retrieves more information about fracture geometries within a reservoir than a simple qualitative analysis would said dr kan wu associate professor and chevron corporation faculty fellow in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering weve tested our algorithm and already applied it in the field the results were published on nov 11 2021 in the society of petroleum engineers spe production & operation journal traditional data interpretation methods though incredibly helpful to engineers are based strictly on qualitative information or probabilities based on patterns of information in contrast the algorithm was developed to gather quantitative data thats countable like temperature pressure or rock deformation changes within a reservoir it recognizes the outcomes that occurred to create the changes and accurately models how far and fast the fractures traveled what directions they went and how big they became low-frequency distributed acoustic sensing (das) data gathering has only been around for five years so not all information received from the wells with fiber optics has been fully deciphered also each well has its own range of characteristics due to the enormous variations of subsurface structures this complexity is why wu and her colleagues fellow faculty member dr george moridis professor and robert l whiting chair and dr ge jin assistant professor of geophysics at mines needed a considerable amount of time to meticulously develop their algorithm first the researchers tested the algorithms ability to clean the data and interpret simple streams from known fracture processes that way they could backtrack or reverse the information to find the starting point of a fractures growth as the algorithm was expanded to understand more complex information they improved its ability to think in a forward manner and predict how new and complex fractures initiate and grow
2267,wu is an expert in rock mechanics jin an expert in geophysics and das technology and moridis is an expert in advanced numerical methods and high-performance computing of coupled processes because of the multidisciplinary backgrounds of the project team the algorithm possesses incredible flexibility to grow and adapt to the type of data it receives for instance yongzan liu the graduate student on the project for over two years is now a postdoc researcher using similar methods and modeling on fiber-optic data from hydrate-bearing sediments to monitor natural gas production for the lawrence berkeley national laboratory liu wu moridis and jin are the first to develop this type of algorithm and publish results the goal of their research is to eventually automate the algorithm so that feedback from fracturing events happens in near real time on a drill site this way engineers can quickly tailor fracture design efforts to each wells particular composition the industry needs this type of tool to understand fracture geometry and to monitor fracture propagation said wu the more efficient it becomes the better it will help optimize hydraulic fracture and completion designs and maximize well production
2268,texas a&m universitys department of materials science and engineerings data-enabled discovery and design of energy materials (d3em) program has been highlighted as part of four objectives in the 2021 materials genome initiative (mgi) national strategic plan ten years ago the white houses office of science and technology policy released the mgi which recognized that the lack of suitable materials constituted a significant barrier to technology development necessary to enhance our economic well-being health environment and national security the mgi sought to cut in half the time and resources needed to discover develop and deploy materials by integrating experiments simulations and data science the 2021 mgi strategic plan sets the path forward for the following decade according to their website the mgi is a federal multi-agency initiative for discovering manufacturing and deploying advanced materials twice as fast and at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional methods the initiative creates policy resources and infrastructure to support us institutions in the adoption of methods for accelerating materials development one of the goals of this strategic plan is to educate train and connect the materials research and development workforce with education being a significant part of this blueprint the d3em program has been highlighted as an exemplar for graduate education to meet the workforce development needs of the mgi d3ems overarching goal is to develop and institutionalize a new training model that produces scientists and engineers grounded in one discipline with professional and technical skills additionally they hope to mold engineers capable of effectively communicating within collaborating and leading interdisciplinary teams throughout their academic careers focusing on materials development and aligning with the 2021 mgi national strategic plan goals the mgi has revolutionized the materials science discipline and in the next decade it is likely that machine learning and artificial intelligence will become even more prominent in the materials research practice said dr raymundo arróyave professor in the department and program director for d3em to fully realize these opportunities the next generation of materials researchers need to be well versed in these transformative techniques d3em has already trained more than 50 phd and ms students in interdisciplinary approaches to materials discovery and design we are looking forward to training the next cohort of students as we enter into this new exciting decade the mgi aims to transform education and training by supporting programs that help tackle the challenges engineers face today they propose addressing current challenges in the materials research and development of a workforce prepared for the next generation
2269,kathryn and thomas ta smith 66 have established two more scholarships in addition to several that have been established for many years distributions from these endowments will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering the college of engineering and the corps of cadets at texas a&m university thomas was attracted to texas a&m because of the corps of cadets and the great reputation of the engineering school kathryn and thomas were married during his senior year at texas a&m kathryn worked in the agronomy department while thomas completed his studies years of hard work while struggling to build a life and family paid off and resulted in life experiences we enjoyed thomas said now its time to help others achieve those same benefits by being part of the donor family at aggieland we are extremely proud to be a small part of helping a&m produce the kind of engineers our country needs thomas said his success was primarily due to the excellent education and leadership skills he received during his time at texas a&m he was honored in 2001 as a distinguished graduate of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and served for 9 years on the college of engineering development council a&m produces quality graduates that are ready to go to work he said many of the students are hard-working and make great contributions to the success of our country the smiths are longtime supporters of the college of engineering and want to help those already on the path at texas a&m we hope the recipients will remember the help and recognition from this scholarship and become future donors to a&m thomas said thomas graduated from texas a&m in 1966 with his degree in chemical engineering and was a member of squadron 12 in the corps of cadets he and kathryn have three sons two of whom are texas a&m graduates they also have two grandsons who are aggie graduates and two who are currently enrolled at texas a&m
2270,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president of development
2271,joining the global effort to curb air pollution researchers at texas a&m university have developed computational tools to accurately assess the footprint of certain organic atmospheric pollutants their simulation described in the journal environmental science and technology could help government agencies keep a closer check on human-made sources of carbon-based pollutants human activity has led to a substantial increase in organic air pollutants like aerosols which has caused a deterioration of air quality in many places around the world and even changes in climate said dr qi ying associate professor from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering but by gaining a better estimate of organic aerosols through specific marker compounds we can develop better emission control measures for cleaner air for all according to published reports 20-40% of the particulate matter in the lower atmosphere comes from organic aerosols air pollution contributed by these compounds is an ongoing menace that affects climate health and visibility for example depending on the type of aerosol some can change the amount of heat coming into the atmosphere while others influence the quantity of heat leaving also organic aerosols can be inhaled easily and if present in the body in high enough concentrations can worsen many health problems from asthma to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease these compounds can also reduce visibility by causing haze organic aerosols begin their journey into the atmosphere as volatile compounds that are released into the air from a variety of natural and human-made sources such as burning fossil fuels and vehicle emissions these precursor aerosols then react with oxidants and condense onto existing particles in the atmosphere to form secondary organic aerosols thus from an air quality management's perspective ying said it is necessary to know which precursors contribute to the build-up of secondary organic aerosols so that their specific sources can be curtailed the extent of certain precursor aerosols is calculated from the ratio of the abundance of a marker molecule called 2 3-dihydroxy-4-oxopentanoic acid (dhopa) to the amount of secondary organic aerosol in air samples from field experiments historically this ratio is determined using laboratory test chambers wherein very controlled atmospheric conditions are maintained however the ratio may not be suitable for use in different atmospheric conditions in the field we really don't know whether this ratio is fixed or changes in the open environment said ying in ambient air humidity temperature and other climatic factors change continuously which in turn could impact the estimates of the concentration of the secondary organic aerosols to overcome this drawback the researchers used a supercomputer at the high performance research computing facility at texas a&m to simulate the atmospheric chemistry based on the ambient conditions over east asia including china japan and korea as inputs the simulation was given information on where the emissions are coming from the emission rates and the meteorological data at different locations the simulation focused on how much secondary organic aerosols are formed from different precursors particularly the ones that contained the molecular signature dhopa upon running the simulations the research team found that the ratio varied with the ambient temperature and the levels of organic aerosols in the air they also observed that the ratio determined from previous chamber studies would lead to significant errors in the estimation of secondary organic aerosols without a correction however for regions with comparable levels of air pollution the correction for the ratio remained the same we have come a long way in reducing inorganic air pollutants but as the contribution of these compounds becomes smaller a much higher fraction of air pollution will be from organic precursors said ying we have started with dhopa as a marker for some precursor aerosols but would like to identify molecular markers for other precursors which still remains to be done other contributors to this research include doctoral student jie zhang from the civil and environmental engineering department; dr xiao he dr shuhui zhu and dr jian zhen yu from hong kong university of science and technology; dr yaqin gao dr shengao jing and dr hongli wang from shanghai academy of environmental sciences china this research is supported by the hong kong research grants council and the science and technology commission of shanghai municipality
2272,engineering students were recognized at the texas a&m university college of engineering student awards banquet on nov 4first presented in 1947 as the engineering faculty senior award the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award is the most prestigious honor bestowed on a graduating senior in the college of engineering the award is based on outstanding scholastic achievement leadership and characterthe college of engineering outstanding graduate student award recognizes one masters student and one doctoral student who have demonstrated excellence above and beyond usual levels of achievement2021 craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award jainita chauhanindustrial and systems engineeringin fall 2019 jainita chauhan was one of two students selected to represent texas a&m at the global grand challenges summit in london that same year she also partook in a study abroad in peru and a volunteer trip with global engineering brigades to honduras during covid-imposed isolation she led a research study in the applied cognitive ergonomics lab to improve response efforts among incident management teams battling the severities of the virus in addition to her undergraduate research she published a conference proceeding and presented the work at the human factors and ergonomics society international annual meeting in baltimore in october 2021 chauhan currently serves as a global ambassador for the halliburton global programs office and president of alpha pi mu in the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineeringmichael garnerelectrical engineeringduring his time at texas a&m michael garner has demonstrated a record of outstanding academic performance he is an ultrafast fiber laser researcher with the lawrence livermore national laboratory and is working toward completing an undergraduate thesis as an opticalwireless communications researcher at texas a&m in addition to these pursuits garner enjoys serving and mentoring others through leadership he serves as the commanding officer of squadron 11 in the corps of cadets and as an operations group commander in the air force rotc detachment garner will commission in may 2022 as an air force officer where he plans to use his knowledge and skills to benefit the service and the national interestnoble knight gutierrezmechanical engineeringnoble gutierrez completed the university honors engineering honors national academy of engineering grand challenge scholar undergraduate research scholar-thesis national science foundation texas a&m innovation corps site fellow exxonmobil hispanic heritage foundation loft-stem fellow and college of engineering reciprocal exchange programs with a near-perfect gpa his 2020 invent for the planet team earned first place at texas a&m and second place internationally and his aggies invent-special operations command team won first place at texas a&m gutierrez is a recipient of the craig c brown outstanding senior engineering award 2020 kr ramamani undergraduate thesis award 2019 and 2020 gathright phi kappa phi deans excellence award finalist for the college of engineering and deans honor rolltanner hokecomputer scienceapart from working toward a double major in computer science and applied math tanner hoke has spent his time at texas a&m serving others and promoting learning among students he volunteered as a leader in youth impact an organization focused on partnering with parents of under-resourced youth in the bryan-college station area and is the founder and president of the aggie competitive programming club in addition to growing the competitive programming community locally he is a member of the texas a&m international collegiate programming contest (icpc) team his team recently qualified for the 2022 icpc world finals which will take place in dhaka bangladesh he is currently researching linear algebraic graph algorithms via sparse matrices with dr tim davis in the computer science departmentryan lotzaerospace engineeringoutside of aerospace coursework ryan lotz found a passion for international service and student development through engineers without borders he serves as vice president of development where he oversees recruitment fundraising and communication even during covid-19-related challenges lotz focused on growing the organization in a creative way earlier in his college career he helped students transition to college as an impact counselor he also conducted undergraduate research in an aerospace lab co-authoring two conference papers in smart materials he was involved in other student organizations as a delegate for the msc abbott family leadership conference a member of msc aggie leaders of tomorrow and a texas a&m national scholar ambassadorruby rossbiomedical engineeringruby ross joined engineers without borders (ewb) her freshman year and has helped the organization grow from 20 to over 100 members increase its financial stability with grants and an endowment and serve more than 12 000 people worldwide under her leadership as president the organization was awarded texas a&m student organization of the year and ewb-usa premiere chapter she is also active in leadership at the wesley foundation where she serves as publicity chair in the summer of 2021 ross worked at ibio a plant-based pharmaceutical company as a project management intern where she oversaw contract development and manufacturing organization projects communication on the supply team and helped lay the groundwork for the new oncology branch these experiences have led ross to find her passion in project management which she plans to pursue after graduation peter simmonsmechanical engineeringpeter simmons serves as the president of the student-athlete advisory council and one of his duties is to represent student-athlete interests to the texas a&m athletic department the sec and the ncaa he is currently coordinating and executing the largest student-athleterun can drive in the nation aggiescan which raised 57 000 meals for the brazos valley food bank additionally he serves as the student-athlete representative for on-campus organizations such as aggie commitment and the student leadership group academically simmons has worked with the mixed interactive design lab where he developed a prototype for vibro-tactile feedback for aiding computer-human design with 3d printing pens he has also researched the effectiveness of portable sensors for pedestrians and bicyclists in measuring air pollution vivie tranchemical engineeringvivie tran has maintained a 40 gpa as a member of both the university and engineering honors programs she has also conducted undergraduate research with both the biology and chemical engineering departments tran has interned for a range of companies including prolytx olin and bp she is an active member of the american institute of chemical engineers and has mentored younger aggies in her roles as a fellow for the engineering community of scholars and as a general engineering and chemical engineering peer tutor tran has also been recognized for several honors including presidents endowed scholar bp scholar axalta bright futures scholar transocean scholar houston livestock show and rodeo scholar and is a recipient of the texas society of professional engineers scholarship chi st josephs auxiliary scholarship and sophomore gathright deans excellence awardgabriel zoltonchemical engineeringgabriel zolton embodies excellence in all his endeavors though he will be graduating with degrees in chemical engineering and english his passion for learning extends well beyond the classroom zolton has conducted research on nanocomposites 3d printing and electrospinning he has also written a creative works research thesis on radicalization and technologically catalyzed change which he developed for the undergraduate research scholars program and the aggie creative collective alongside his work-in-progress fantasy novel zolton serves as a peer mentor and leader within university honors and as a texas a&m national scholar ambassador he received several different scholarships including being named a brown scholar and a university scholar zolton had internships with albemarle and altria and study abroad experiences in both egypt and italy2021 college of engineering outstanding graduate student awardshadi shariatniaoutstanding doctoral award mechanical engineeringshadi shariatnia started her phd in mechanical engineering at texas a&m in summer 2018 her research is focused on engineering the bottom-up fabrication of nanostructures that are created through evaporation-induced self-assembly of colloidal droplets she has developed a novel atomization system for targeted delivery of functional multimaterial systems on unconventional substrates her work has numerous applications in advanced manufacturing functional coatings 3d printing and electronics shariatnia has published seven journal articles and eight conference papers from her doctoral research prior to starting her phd she co-founded a medical device startup called ictero medical which provides the first minimally invasive and definitive treatment for high-risk patients with gallstone disease shariatnia obtained her bachelors and masters degrees in mechanical engineering from ferdowsi university in iran in 2014 and the university of houston in 2016 respectively shariatnia will join amazon as a product design engineer after graduating from texas a&mkay yeeoutstanding masters award nuclear engineeringkay yee is a master of science student in the department of nuclear engineering with a specialization in nuclear materials she graduated from texas a&m with her bachelor of science in nuclear engineering in 2019 yee started working in the fuel cycles and materials laboratory under dr sean mcdeavitt as an undergraduate technician in the summer of 2018 she is now a graduate assistant researcher there conducting research on the production of prototypic fuel for the aneel thorium dioxide uranium dioxide fuel concept she is also an active member of the navigators student ministry on campus and likes to bake and spend time with her dogs yee is looking to graduate next spring and get a job to further work on nuclear fuel and materialsthe college of engineering also recognized the following newly endowed scholarships:becky and regnald reggie boles 83 deans scholar awardbetsy 77 and mike carrell 75 endowed scholarshipcarolyn and edwin moerbe endowed mechanical engineering scholarshipcarolyn wolfman-estrada 12 endowed scholarshipdr thomas l frey jr 85 endowed scholarshipengineers without borders endowmentginger and pat obrien 57 memorial deans scholars awardkatharine 10 and blaine larson 09 family scholarshipkathryn and thomas ta smith 66 endowed engineering scholarshiplaura e and gary c timmermann 77 endowed scholarshiplinda and joe r fowler 68 engineering scholarshipmarshall endowed engineering scholarshipsheryl and james h jim prestidge jr 80 endowed scholarshipstephanie 00 & donald murph murphy 97 aegis endowed scholarship
2273,yvonne and kevin newman have established the yvonne i '84 and kevin d newman '89 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering in the college of engineering at texas a&m university the newmans were inspired to establish this scholarship because of the impact that their professors and the aggie network had on their lives they wanted to give a gift to the department that allowed them to get to where they are today both of us have been aided supported and encouraged throughout our careers in civil engineering by the friends we made at texas a&m and the aggie network they said for the newmans the civil engineering department was crucial to providing them with a world-class education as native texans they hope this scholarship will help other texans to receive that same opportunity we wanted to support students from texas to study civil engineering at texas a&m and become leaders in their field the newmans said kevin graduated with his bachelor of science in civil engineering in 1989 following in the footsteps of his uncle john ellis 75 yvonne was drawn to the quality of education in the college of engineering and graduated with her undergraduate degree in civil engineering in 1984 after working with the texas department of transportation for several years she made her way back to college station to get her master of science in civil engineering kevin was also working on the same degree and it was during this time that their paths crossed at the texas a&m transportation institute yvonne and kevin got married after graduate school and they both enjoyed successful careers in engineering by 1995 yvonne started her own business yvonne newman engineering inc after working in consulting engineering for over 20 years kevin launched newman construction management llc the newmans now work and reside near tyler texas which is kevins hometown they have two children garrett and madison they both shared their parents love for the aggies and graduated from texas a&m in 2017 and 2019
2274,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
2275,"through three awards granted by the united states department of energy's nuclear energy university program the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university is leading efforts for a push toward a cleaner energy future the awards will fund research to optimize current and novel nuclear materials to further establish nuclear energy as a viable sustainable source ""we'd like to develop superior materials for reactors and gain a fundamental understanding of the degradation mechanisms of different types of nuclear fuels "" said dr karim ahmed a recipient of all three awards and an assistant professor in the nuclear engineering department ""the grants will help us put the spotlight on nuclear energy as an emission-free source deeming it a critical tool in combating climate change"" the first project ""demonstration of a methodology for direct validation of marmot irradiation-induced microstructural evolution and physical property models using u-10zr "" determines the effects of irradiation on u-10zr alloys a material that could potentially be used to build fast reactors the metals will be run through an advanced test reactor to determine if changes in microstructure and thermal conductivity occur due to radiation the researchers will then use this information to validate the accuracy of the mesoscale marmot models which are the current standard used to predict material performance under irradiation the second study is titled ""statistical modeling of the effect of microstructural heterogeneity on the irradiation behavior of triso fuel buffer layer"" this proposal investigates the tearing of the tristructural isotropic (triso) particle fuel buffer layer triso fuel is made of uranium carbon and oxygen and is regarded as the most robust fuel on the planet the carbonaceous buffer prevents swelling and absorbs fission gases while triso particles have exhibited excellent performance the buffer layer in some of these fuel particles tends to debond and fracture the researchers envision that a firm understanding of the microstructure-property relationships will help develop predictive models for buffer malfunction the third project ""multiscale modeling and experiments for investigating high burnup lwr fuel rod behavior under normal and transient conditions "" will help the researchers achieve a fundamental understanding of the fuel rod behavior under novel regimes dubbed ""high burnup"" conditions to increase the fuel peak burnup beyond the current regulatory limit the team will combine modeling quantitative characterization and measurements to investigate the effects of the nuclear fuel microstructure on the performance of fuel rods at high burnup together the grants will total nearly $3 million shared between texas a&m the university of wisconsin-madison los alamos national laboratory idaho national laboratory and oak ridge national laboratory over $1 million will be awarded to texas a&m with a part going toward funding six graduate students by 2024 helping educate and prepare the next generation of the nation's skilled workforce"
2276,the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university recently sent six students in its local branch of the society of naval architects and marine engineers (sname) to the 2021 sname maritime convention in rhode island as part of its ongoing push to further the educational experience of its students and expand the knowledge of its faculty the department was excited to offer this opportunity for students to both network with fellow student society members as well as learn from industry and academic members in attendance so first i just wanted to say a huge thank you to the department because this was such an awesome opportunity for all of us to go and learn said megan hinks an ocean engineering junior the department paid for the whole trip and if that wasnt the case i probably wouldnt be able to go im so grateful hinks said that the conference included several panels and presentations from expert professionals and students spanning a wide range of topics from naval archeology to renewable energy one industry presentation discussed a project involving data samples taken from different shipwrecks that were cross-referenced against a known sample of a specific vessel that researchers were looking for in the harbor near providence rhode island a student presentation hinks sat in on described how ships carried turbines to offshore wind farms and proposed new designs for making the process more efficient in addition the student chapters of sname were brought together not only to network with other branches from across the nation but also to have a large-scale meeting in which the directors of each branch presented challenges they faced and their visions for the future it really got me excited for my future within sname and also whats to come for ocean engineering hinks said after the director talks students put their engineering minds to the test as they were challenged to make ships made from household items split into teams consisting of students randomly assigned from various universities groups were tasked with crafting boats that could float in a water tank out of items such as aluminum foil balloons paper towels and their rolls among other items its fun because you get to see how other students have been taught to apply the things they learned and get to compare that and bounce ideas off one another hinks said we work with people from texas a&m all the time but whenever youre taught by different professors from different states with different backgrounds you get to hear a variety of ideas that youve never thought of before its really cool she explained that meeting peer society members was an enlightening experience being able to compare how their ocean engineering programs were set up at their universities and learning from their scholastic perspectives allowed her to better reflect on her own aggie experience in the classroom you hear a lot about industry and whats going on but opportunities like this allow students to see firsthand that the lessons we learn will be applied in our careers hinks said i learned a ton and getting to see how the terminology and techniques ive learned turn into something tangible is really impactful as someone interested in sustainability hinks was enthusiastic about the theme of the conference being just that allowing her to hear several discussions about the emerging field of offshore sustainability she continued by explaining that while the major is broad in the lessons learned the convention showed her that her industry options are equally vast thats what i have to look forward to theres such a wide variety of things i can choose from hinks said and i feel like theres a lot of growth for the future theres a lot of possibility
2277,melissa and randall ramey have generously established the melissa m 81 and randall f ramey 81 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will provide a scholarship to a full-time student in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university melissa grew up spending time with her father in his shop working on cars and other hobbies together her father worked in water quality control focusing on protecting the environment inspired by his career and his do-it-yourself mentality melissa decided to pursue a degree in civil engineering with a focus on environmental engineering when discussing college options with her father his preference was clear he advised me that a degree from a&m would open doors to many opportunities she said randall planned on visiting several schools for engineering but felt an instant connection with texas a&m i stopped in college station first and did not have to travel any further because this school was the perfect fit for me he said it was here that he and melissa met while pursuing their degrees in civil engineering when it came time to apply for jobs randall was encouraged by a professor to consider applying for integrated oil companies inspired by the story of bill haynes an aggie civil engineer who was at that time the ceo of chevron randall broadened his career opportunities by applying to oil companies he was offered a position with chevron and enjoyed a career with the company that lasted over 38 years texas a&m provided the rameys with a robust network that allowed for their successful adjustment from college to their careers texas a&m excels in developing students with the type of background needed to succeed as they transition to their professional careers they said the educational opportunities the rameys experienced helped prepare them for their professional careers in ways that not every school does through our careers we have had the opportunity to interact with young professionals from several different universities they said weve seen how important it is to have a solid background supporting the transition into the workplace the rameys established the endowment with a desire to provide more students with the financial assistance needed to receive the well-rounded education that the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering offers we wanted to target an endowment to help future aggie civil engineers be successful in their life pursuits and impacts on society they said they also hope their contribution will help to expand diversity within the field of engineering randall and melissa have three children perry morgan and madeline their daughters morgan and madeline both followed in their parents footsteps and attended texas a&m through our children we continued to see the importance of pursuing a secondary education through universities that invest in the students they said madeline graduated with a bachelor of science in civil engineering in 2016 we are thankful to texas a&m for the support and contributions that enabled madeline to pursue her civil engineering degree and successfully transition into the workplace they said randall and melissa are now retired and living in the woodlands texas they enjoy spending time with their four grandchildren who they hope will become aggies as well attending and graduating from texas a&m is one of the most important decisions we made and we will reap the benefits for the rest of our lives they said
2278,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
2279,the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university was created as a way to allow students to pave their own way in their academic careers as innovative as it is challenging multidisciplinary engineering offers degree options for students who want to specialize in a nontraditional engineering discipline building a degree plan is simple and interim undergraduate advisor doug beck and interim graduate advisor angie dunn explain how to know if its the right fit for you q: what sets multidisciplinary engineering apart from the other engineering departments at texas a&m beck: multidisciplinary engineering is a contemporary way to educate future engineers as our world becomes more complex and technology advances students can specialize in areas that may not be provided in a traditional department degree plan and as such they graduate with a specific skillset from a unique program of study in a nutshell it is a new degree program that can combine relevant coursework in two or more engineering disciplines dunn: we are so very unique; we allow our students to self-design their degree so they have to know what they want to do and how they want to do it our program isnt for the weak of heart our students are paving the way for some of the most unique areas of research imaginable q: could you describe the bachelor of science in interdisciplinary engineering what would it look like if a student were to build their own degree plan beck: we call it a design your own degree with the interdisciplinary curriculum students would combine coursework from at least two different engineering disciplines and take coursework in other math or science areas for a total of 128 credit hours this creates quite a bit of flexibility when you look at all of the technical electives a student must take additionally we have a few predefined tracks in planetary exploration automotive engineering entertainment engineering and management consulting to name a few students interested in law or public health can also seek a combined degree program q: what are some of the graduate programs currently offered by the department dunn: we offer several masters programs: master of engineering or master of science in subsea engineering master of engineering with a specialization in cybersecurity master of engineering with a dual physician degree through the college of medicine (enmed) along with a master of engineering in engineering for transportation professionals our doctoral degrees include a phd in interdisciplinary engineering and a doctor of engineering both of which are offered as distance programs q: what advice would you offer to someone who is considering a degree within multidisciplinary engineering what sort of things should they keep in mind when making their decision beck: id encourage them to reflect on why they want to major in interdisciplinary engineering what engineering disciplines do they want to combine either with another engineering field or with disciplines outside of engineering what are their plans immediately after graduation and what are their long-term goals next look at 400-level courses in the engineering disciplines they identified and trace back to the courses prerequisites its also worthwhile to consider engineering minors and certificate programs dunn: as a potential graduate student its encouraged that students do their research about our programs our students come in knowing what they want to do and understand it doesnt neatly fit into any other engineering discipline our students are passionate about their ideas and excited about the opportunity to do things others only dream about when you apply to our program we read every statement of purpose to look for that passion and excitement
2280,"the use of adaptive swarm robotics has the potential to provide significant environmental and economic benefits to smart agriculture efforts globally through the implementation of autonomous ground and aerial technologies ""agricultural robots when used properly can improve product quantity and quality while lowering the cost "" said dr kiju lee associate professor and charlotte & walter buchanan faculty fellow in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the project is led jointly by lee dr muthukumar bagavathiannan in the texas a&m department of soil and crop sciences and dr juan landivar in the agrilife research and extension center at texas a&m university-corpus christi the research has been recently funded by the united states department of agriculture national institute of food and agriculture through the national robotics initiative 30 program the entire multidisciplinary group comprised of members from several texas a&m university system departments institutions and agencies is working to establish a configurable adaptive and scalable swarm (cass) system consisting of unmanned ground and aerial robots designed to assist in collaborative smart agriculture tasks ""we will develop the technical and theoretical groundwork for the deployable scalable swarm system consisting of a physical robotic swarm of both ground and aerial robots a digital twin simulator for low- and high-fidelity simulations and an easy-to-use user interface for farmers to make this cass system into use "" lee said this approach to smart agriculture enabled by the cass technology could result in long-term benefits thanks to reduced waste through better logistics optimal use of water and fertilizer and an overall reduction in the use of pesticides the research team believes that by utilizing smaller machines to reduce soil compaction and working to avoid herbicide-resistant weeds through nonchemical methods of control significant ecological and environmental benefits can be achieved recent trends in smart agriculture focused on the usage of large machinery have had the objective of maximizing product quantity and minimizing costs an approach that has resulted in some economic and environmental concerns lee said issues including soil compaction a limited ability to address small-scale field variability and reduced crop productivity are some of the long-term issues that have emerged from this approach by leveraging the flexibility of swarm robotics the cass system is intended to become a platform technology that can be configured to meet application-specific needs ""current trends in precision agriculture and smart farming mostly focus on larger machinery or a single or a small number of robots equipped and programmed to perform highly specialized tasks "" lee said ""this project will serve as a critical pathway toward our long-term goal of establishing a deployable easy-to-use swarm robotic system that can serve as a universal platform for broad agriculture applications"" although other systems employing swarm robotics exist they are typically designed to perform just one specific task rather than being adaptable to a variety of situations moving forward the team will have the opportunity to address several challenges related to the complex and varying scale of agriculture applications through the design and implementation process of their system ""despite the great potential swarm robotics research itself has been largely confined to low-fidelity simulations and laboratory experiments "" lee said ""these rarely represent the intricacies of an agricultural field environment also human-swarm collaboration has not been extensively explored and user-in-the-loop development and evaluation approaches are needed in particular for the target end-users in our case farmers"" other investigators on the team include dr john cason in texas a&m agrilife research dr robert hardin in the department of biological and agricultural engineering dr luis tedeschi in the department of animal science and texas a&m agrilife research dr dugan um in the texas a&m-corpus christi department of mechanical engineering and dr mahendra bhandari in texas a&m agrilife research"
2281,in august 2021 the college of engineering at texas a&m university launched a new certificate program training undergraduate students to excel in data science skills and practical interdisciplinary understanding so they can solve global challenges faced by the petroleum industry funded by a $1 million gift from conocophillips that will be spread out over 5 years the interdisciplinary data analytics for petroleum industry certificate program was developed jointly with the texas a&m institute of data science (tamids) the college of engineering the college of science the college of geosciences and the mays business school into a program ideal for students eager to gain experience in a growing field of study the program also supports course development capstone teaching graduate assistants and undergraduate scholarships
2282,"""several students signed up for fall enrollment in the program "" said dr siddharth misra associate professor and douglas von gonten faculty fellow in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering ""the enrollment window is opening again for spring and we want students to know conocophillips scholarships for students are still available"" students in the certificate program need to complete 13 hours of coursework chosen from electives such as statistical computing reservoir modeling and computational data science the program is suited for geology geophysics petroleum engineering civil engineering chemical engineering mechanical engineering computer science statistics and business majors skills gained will prepare graduates for integrated data science and analytical roles in the petroleum industry ranging from exploration and production to transport refining and marketing the industry currently provides most of the world's energy needs yet today's unconventional reservoirs are not easy to produce or manage multiple technologies are used to gather data during subsurface exploration drilling and production processes in order to research and develop better methods but the feedback is intensive analytical data management is needed to find critical answers for improving reservoir characterization and simulation reducing time and resource waste optimizing performance increasing safety and improving asset management conocophillips funded this program to create graduates with these computation and machine-learning skills misra is the program coordinator for the certificate managed by tamis and housed in the petroleum engineering department and he is both honored and excited to be a part of such an exceptional opportunity for students ""a petroleum engineer cannot solve all the problems the industry faces "" misra said ""no one discipline can but by bringing all these students from various diverse backgrounds together we can solve these challenges and more through interdisciplinary thinking"" interested students should contact jake williams assistant director for undergraduate advising services in the petroleum engineering department"
2283,dr shuiwang ji professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was among 20 faculty members from across the university to be named a 2021 presidential impact fellow initiated by president michael k young the award recognizes rising stars in their respective fields and those who embody the university commitment to advancing knowledge through transformational learning innovation discovery and impact for texas and the world as part of the fifth class of presidential impact fellows ji joins more than 75 colleagues recognized in prior years with one of the most prestigious scholarly impact awards bestowed upon texas a&m faculty he received his doctorate in computer science from arizona state university and is also the director of the data integration visualization and exploration lab his research interests include machine learning graph and image analysis deep learning and quantum systems presidential impact fellows receive an annual stipend of $25 000 for three years and retain their title for life so long as they remain a faculty member in good standing
2284,two years ago walid azzam '79 began frantically searching his house leaving no couch cushion unturned no nook or cranny unexplored he called every place he had visited in the last week and enlisted friends and family to form a makeshift search party but to no avail after nearly 40 years he lost his aggie ring
2285,"more than its weight in gold for azzam his aggie ring was a symbol of his journey to the united states his on-campus job that helped pay his tuition the hundreds of cocktails he mixed as a bartender at el chico's restaurant to afford housing and the thousands of burgers he flipped working the graveyard shift at jack in the box a gig he took solely to pay for his ring an aggie ring means a lot to me said azzam ""it lets people know i'm an engineer and i'm a texas a&m graduate ive had my ring since 1979 and then it disappeared i was so mad i had to work a third job from 11 pm to 7 am to come up with the $350 to buy the ring because having an aggie ring just means so much the value of his ring began accumulating long before arriving in college station as an engineering student at his technical school in lebanon azzam had his sights set on moving to texas"
2286,"""in lebanon there is an engineering committee within the government body "" he said ""my dad asked the committee which universities in texas accepted my engineering certificate the choice was between the university of texas austin and texas a&m university so of course i chose texas a&m"" but before his aggie journey could begin he had to learn english azzam arrived in the united states in 1975 and enrolled at blinn college bryan texas after a year of practicing the language and taking classes at blinn he applied and was accepted to the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m where he specialized in engineering design ""since high school i knew i wanted to be an engineer "" he said ""a lot of the courses (in lebanon) were in french but math and physics and chemistry science or english they're all the same thing a formula is a formula"" azzam took his can-do mentality wherever he went and after four years of perseverance he purchased his well-deserved aggie ring walking the stage with his fellow graduates ""nobody can tell me they cannot make it through school "" he said ""i have a lot of people i know who tell me 'oh i cannot pass' i came from lebanon and graduated and got a degree in engineering you can do it it's possible it just takes a little bit of will"""
2287,"the circle of life immediately upon graduation azzam began his career working as a quality control manager at a hangar helping repair various types of aircraft while building his resume he was also building a family starting with welcoming his daughter jaclyn rhie azzam into the world ""my mom cathy arnett 79 was a waitress at el chico's where my dad was a bartender "" rhie said ""my story began because of my dads journey from lebanon to texas a&m on my moms side my grandfather and uncle are aggies as well as a long list of other family members i was born an aggie all the way through"" azzam has remained in the engineering business his entire life a husband and father of four adult children he is currently working as a director of operations for global turbine services inc in miami in his most recent work they are repairing b-52h stratofortress engines for the united states air force ""the head of the engineering department back then used to tell us 'that degree is nothing it is just a piece of paper '"" azzam said ""he was right; it's up to you to see what you can accomplish"" azzam's aggie ring represented a cornerstone in his life being an aggie shaped his family his future and his identity he made sure to pass the aggie spirit down to his children ""i love how tradition is so important at texas a&m "" said rhie ""i remember when i graduated from high school in dallas my dad came to watch from florida and he let me wear his aggie ring for the summer until i saw him again it was a huge deal the ring is a stamp of tradition"""
2288,"an aggie ring is a circle with no end when azzam called rhie relaying the news that the ring was gone she was stunned she understood the adversity he'd faced and conquered to purchase the ring the moment rhie hung up she made a secret vow with her husband that they would order a replacement one day ""aggies are part of my dads strength and happiness i just wanted to make sure that he could carry that with him "" she said on june 20 2021 the day before father's day rhie hopped on an early flight to miami to celebrate with her dad for the first time in almost 20 years upon arrival she rushed into the house to gather their family members in the living room"
2289,"as he opened a perfectly wrapped package he delicately pulled out a small maroon box embossed with the texas a&m logo the whole family anxiously awaited as he slowly creaked open the container to reveal the surprise showing the present to his family first he then slipped the gold ring onto his finger; an exact replica of the ring he ordered in 1979 down to the engraving ""literally i had tears in my eyes "" said azzam ""i was so excited i could not believe she had ordered the same ring"" the aggie ring once again took its rightful place on azzams right hand –– an eternal reminder to himself and his family of what it truly means to be an aggie"
2290,"""when he opened it it was just a pure human moment "" said rhie ""there are no words for it i will carry that (moment) for the rest of my life"" azzam's aggie ring is proudly displayed on his nightstand never again leaving his side ""i'm just proud to be an aggie "" he said"
2291,dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering is among the 20 exceptional texas a&m university faculty honored as 2021 presidential impact fellows the award recognizes rising stars in their respective fields who embody the universitys commitment to advancing knowledge through transformational learning discovery innovation and impact for texas and the world gaharwar received his phd in biomedical engineering from purdue university and completed his postdoctoral training from the massachusetts institute of technology and harvard university since joining texas a&m in 2013 gaharwar has performed impactful leading-edge research at the interface of materials science biomedical engineering and cell biology he has pioneered novel ideas and developed new nanomaterials that have and will continue to shape the field of biomaterials gaharwar is a prolific young researcher in the field of bioengineering he has edited multiple books/journal special issues and is an author on almost 130 peer-reviewed journal articles editorials and review papers and five book chapters he also has submitted five patent/disclosure applications his work has been published in leading journals and routinely highlighted in international media gaharwar has made a lasting impact in various areas of research as evident by the high number of citations more than 10 000 his manuscripts have received he has received funding from the national institutes of health (nih) the national science foundation and the department of defense recently gaharwar was named associate editor for the leading biomaterials journal acs applied materials and interfaces which serves the interdisciplinary community of chemists engineers physicists and biologists focusing on newly discovered materials and interfacial processes gaharwars interdisciplinary research has been recognized with over 30 major national and international awards including the prestigious nih director's new innovator award the dean of engineering excellence award the texas a&m engineering experiment station research impact award the cellular and molecular bioengineering (cmbe)-biomedical engineering society rising star award the cmbe young innovator award and the dimitris chorafas foundation award for the full list of winners visit this linked article from the college of engineering
2292,"""i failed my first exam every freshman year and i thought it was the end of the world "" said abimael macias '22 at first macias a senior undergraduate student in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university felt as though he didn't belong an overwhelming feeling that many first-generation students face ""it was not until i got admitted into the chemical engineering department that i gained a sense of belonging "" he said ""i met some of my best friends and even went as far as to starting our own organization on campus chemical engineering is a very diverse major and to macias that brings him a sense of security a quality that many students look for there are so many opportunities within this major that it just brings a sense of security says macias i hope to one day work within the environmental or pharmaceutical sector of chemical engineering macias started sophomores leading on promoting equality a leadership organization that emphasizes diversity equity and inclusion he said he strives to implement these values in all aspects of his life especially in a work environment going into my career i want to emphasize the importance of those values in a working environment and how they can help shape the company culture previously a mentee in the college of engineerings first-generation students mentoring (fgen) program macias is now a mentor for incoming engineers the goal of the program is to provide a community for first-generation students providing help with personal and educational goals as they trek through college as a mentor i have the privilege to give back to mentees and the program that helped me get to where i am today in my engineering career he said the fgen program has shown to make a significant impact on the success of first-generation students in the college of engineering staff faculty and students are encouraged to join either as a mentee or mentor within the first-generation students mentoring program"
2293,"on nov 8 the college of engineering at texas a&m university held a banquet in honor of its first-generation students staff and faculty with nearly 3 400 first-generation undergraduate students over 19% of undergraduate enrollment college leadership wanted to send a message: texas a&m is a place of belonging and opportunity and there are resources to ensure student success like the first-generation engineering (fgen) students mentoring program ""to meet the college and universitys retention and graduation goals we need to invest in the success of every student said dr michael johnson associate dean for inclusion and faculty success fgen is an investment to ensure that our first-generation students meet their potential and are as successful as they can possibly be"
2294,in his address dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of engineering delivered a message of support and encouragement as one first-generation student to those in the room each college student has a unique story and way forward said hurtado this college is proud to partner with each of you as you continue toward your degree and into your career our incoming students span a spectrum of past opportunities and preparedness for me all along the way mentorship was key the primary goal of the fgen program is to enhance texas a&m first-generation engineering students educational and social experiences on campus it is about leveraging university and community resources to provide a sense of community to fgen students and help them with their personal and professional goals its founded on the basic principle of impactful mentorship at every one of these branch points in my life i had a mentor who helped show me the way said hurtado my encouraging point to you tonight is to seek out mentorship it can really take you a long way thankfully here in the college of engineering we have a community we have a support program that can help first-generation students in so many ways were here to make this a better place for everyone
2295,the celebration included a historical reference to the significance of the date on nov 8 56 years ago the higher education act of 1965 was an important piece of history that leveled the playing field that was heavily weighted against americans from underrepresented backgrounds the act has since enabled universities and institutions to grow programming and support for groups of students including first-generation students mentees arent the only students to benefit from the fgen program which was conveyed during the evenings faculty panel staff and faculty mentors shared how much they have learned from their interactions with those they mentored being a part of the fgen program has been very meaningful to me in many ways said dr bimal nepal fgen program director serving as a mentor means you are able to positively impact a life of one student which means one family which potentially means one community if that family can inspire other community members to send their kids to college likewise to see my mentees progress through and become capable of navigating and overcoming their academic social and professional challenges is very rewarding the fgen program has been shown to make a significant impact on the success of first-generation students in the college of engineering staff faculty and students are encouraged to get involved through the first-generation engineering students mentoring program
2296,while a cookbook can explain how to make authentic paella from spain and a quick google search can provide you with the history of the leaning tower of pisa there is no greater way to gain knowledge of the world than through experience halliburton engineering global programs offered by the college of engineering at texas a&m university hold fast to that belief and although the covid-19 pandemic has left lasting impacts the gradual return of international travel creates opportunities for students interested in studying abroad we want our students to develop global competency said dr maria claudia b alves senior director of global programs for us this means the ability for engineering students to embrace cultural norms and expectations different from their own work inclusively and effectively with diverse populations and develop cultural self-awareness an engineer with global experience can consider multiple perspectives to create engineering solutions and adapt appropriately to global contexts that global awareness flexibility and adaptiveness will guide them through their engineering courses and careers halliburton engineering global programs offers a wide range of culturally and academically diverse experiences that are integrated into the degree plan of the engineering students ranging from research-focused trips to internship opportunities that showcase the internationality of engineering one such initiative is the exchange program through partnerships with universities around the world from denmark to the united kingdom exchange students complete an entire semester at one of the various connected institutions while taking necessary steps toward their desired degrees participants can delve into another countrys culture and history additionally texas a&m hosts students from universities worldwide cultivating an environment where differences are regarded as assets students are welcomed into the aggie community and given the tools and resources necessary for a successful semester an alternative option is a texas a&m faculty-led engineering course for this program students travel to another country for several weeks to take a required course toward their degree the program includes technical visits related to their major cultural visits small class sizes a living-learning community environment and free time for exploration on a global engineering field trip students are immediately immersed in an introductory research experience with a select group of individuals partnered with the yucatan initiative project students and faculty are given access to institutions throughout mexico students are presented with a pressing research problem and required to submit and present a proposal through funding support from the texas a&m university system louis stokes alliance for minority participation this opportunity is available for first-generation minority students engineering global programs also received the 2021 global engagement grant from texas a&m through this grant students collaborate with others from the college of business the college of geoscience and the college of agriculture at texas a&m the beauty for our students will be working in interdisciplinary teams on global projects said alves when they dig into a research problem they will be communicating with students from varying backgrounds to find a solution through a holistic point of view the global programs office also provides an international internship option for those interested in kickstarting their industry experience a program that lasts from eight to 10 weeks many opportunities involve direct projects with researchers or companies globally resulting in real-world projects before students take off on international adventures they are required to participate in the pre-departure workshop called raising your cultural iq this preprogram workshop has students reflect on their experiences while preparing them for the challenges of global traveling the program provides tools for developing their professional skills through methodologies that encourage critical thinking communications teamwork and problem-solving new to the cultural iq program is an industry panel that will answer questions regarding how global competency has enhanced their careers with multiple choices to navigate global ambassadors like jainita chauhan student in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering can attest to the impact of these experiences stumbling upon global programs through the website she took a leap of faith and packed her bags a daughter of immigrants chauhan wanted to learn more about the world surrounding her after her first global experience in peru taking an engineering course she fell in love with travel and has since been involved in various programs even with a multicultural background global programs changed my perspective on international travel said chauhan as global-minded engineers we must be comfortable with overcoming cultural barriers but the courses are only a small part of learning abroad the main purpose is to gain international exposure see different cultures and meet many unique people with differing attitudes and personalities that you would never meet without these opportunities alves is continuing to grow and promote these programs for the benefit of all students the recent recipient of the fulbright us international education administrators award for france she is using the grant to create valuable connections and learn about the nuances of different educational systems she continues to use this knowledge to amplify the significance of global programs at texas a&m we are highlighting the importance of globally competent engineers by integrating the learning outcomes that we expect our students to have by the time they graduate into a study abroad experience said alves in a tangible way participants can understand the value of our programs in their future careers
2297,"dr jeyavijayan ""jv"" rajendran assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2021 institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) ceda kuh early career award for his contributions to secure and trustworthy integrated circuits in the field of electronic design automation the award which is the highest honor for young faculty in the field of electronic design automation was presented at the 2021 international conference on computer-aided design held in munich germany on nov 5 each year the ieee ceda ernest s kuh early career award honors one individual who has made innovative and substantial technical contributions to the area of electronic design automation in the early stages of his or her career (within eight years of getting the highest educational degree) the award is named in honor of the late ernest s kuh who made pioneering contributions to circuit theory electronic design automation and engineering education"
2298,i feel honored and humbled and feel grateful to the students mentors colleagues and staff in the department and the college at large rajendran said the hardware security community has been particularly kind and very helpful to young academics – be it the faculty working on the same research problem at a different university or program managers they always have provided me with great feedback to shape my research though my name is on the award i believe it belongs to the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m and the hardware security community rajendrans research interests are in hardware security with a specific focus on supply chain vulnerabilities and bug detection his research has won many awards such as the national science foundation faculty early career development award the association for computing machinery's special interest group on design automation outstanding young faculty award and the texas a&m engineering experiment stations genesis award for multidisciplinary research
2299,dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university and dr jason moats director of the texas a&m engineering extension service testing and innovation center won honorable mention for the best paper in ethical robotics systems at the 2021 international conference on intelligent robots and systems (iros) the award is sponsored by the center for human-compatible artificial intelligence at the university of california berkeley and the berkeley existential risk initiative in their paper titled responsible robotics innovation for disaster response the co-authors analyzed 36 case studies of various disasters including the response to the covid-19 pandemic where aerial ground and marine robots were used based on this analysis murphy and moats present a model of responsible robotics innovation for first responders during disaster response the project is supported by the national science foundation held annually the iros serves as a premier international forum for the robotics community to explore and discuss the latest advancements in the field of intelligent robots and smart machines it is co-sponsored by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) robotics and automation society the robotics society of japan the ieee industrial electronics society the new technology foundation and the society of instrument and control engineers
2300,the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university presented its 2021 outstanding alumni award to dr winston marshall 88 an interventional cardiologist with baylor scott and white in dallas after graduating from texas a&m marshall attended medical school at ut southwestern and then transitioned to baylor university medical center where he did an internship and residency in internal medicine before pursuing a fellowship in cardiovascular disease he's considered by the other physicians as well as his patients to be one of the top caregivers said dr mike mcshane department head they appreciate his commitment to helping them overcome their difficulties starting by listening to what their issues actually are and then just like a good engineer he works with them to creatively solve their problems he continues to use his engineering degree in problem-solving all the time marshall started his speech with a proverb about a farmer who experienced several negative events in his life while each resulted in additional hardships initially benefits eventually revealed themselves at every turn the moral of that story is you really never know what's going to happen from your misgivings and never know what's going to happen with your future marshall said just keep plowing and keep going marshall attended texas a&m in pursuit of a degree in petroleum engineering however low oil prices made him nervous about the job market and he began to consider switching majors he said an interest in medicine drew him to biomedical engineering and he was welcomed by the department and its head dr william hyman my biomedical engineering degree has meant so much to me marshall said my life is rich every day because of what i've been through and get to do in medicine its just amazing this morning i put a pacemaker in a 93-year-old world war ii vet who had complete heart block i could get paid a quarter of what i get paid and still be happy marshall also works to support young entrepreneurs he runs a fund with his brother to support young startup companies thank you all for this award and yall this is just the beginning marshall said as he accepted the award i plan to do a lot of big things with the department of biomedical engineering the departments outstanding alumni award is given annually to former biomedical engineering students who have gone on to do great things and have an interest in impacting the department the award is based on peer nomination
2301,james jim machek passed away on sept 10 2021 in the three years he served as professor of practice in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university he taught over 750 students spanning sophomore through senior years machek shared valuable insight on the medical device industry and real-world experience in medical device design he had a tremendous impact on the undergraduate experience macheks career spanned over 35 years as an engineer manager executive and educator he led engineering product development teams in several multinational companies including schneider medtronic st jude medical and covidien he contributed to creating innovative medical devices and taking them from concept to market to improve the lives of countless patients around the world alan brewer professor of the practice for innovation and entrepreneurship in the college of engineering was the one who reached out to machek to gauge his interest in a teaching position he met machek in 1990 when they both worked at intermedics pacemakers back then jim was a larger-than-life sort of guy at times being very direct and outspoken brewer said most of the time he drove his (pacemaker) leads engineering team hard and thus he really helped to improve our leads products machek led product development efforts for more than a decade within medtronic resulting in an innovative therapy for the minimally-invasive treatment of aortic aneurysms going from an unproven concept to become the current standard of care for the vascular disease referred to as a ‘silent killer when he joined the biomedical engineering department in 2018 machek became the lead instructor for the capstone senior design courses project-based experiences where student teams collaborate with industry sponsors to design and fabricate a medical device or system dr mike mcshane department head for biomedical engineering hired machek after brewer introduced them mcshane said it was obvious machek would be a naturally effective teacher; he had an extensive network to find project and internship opportunities and brought a unique perspective that faculty and students would both appreciate in a short time jim had a major impact on the department mcshane said his real-world experience was invaluable for mentoring students on their design projects and giving them career advice about the medical device industry he also brought a no-nonsense approach to the academic environment and made sure students understood how to be professional and what would be expected in the workplace machek improved student understanding by connecting complicated engineering principles with the practical experience that students need to succeed in todays environment he was instrumental in reformulating aspects of the design curriculum based on his years of industry experience including setting the vision for a unique active learning environment: the biomedical engineering (bme) design studio jim saw a critical need for dedicated facilities for student projects and worked hard to set the initial vision for what we are building mcshane said he was able to see some of that become reality and was very excited about what it is enabling us to do i know his very significant contributions to our students to bmes design courses and to the department are already sorely missed brewer said
2302,dr dinakar sagapuram assistant professor in the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university has been named a 2021 breakthrough energy fellow for his work on clean energy manufacturing technologies sagapuram will lead the research with his colleague and co-investigator dr prabhakar pagilla professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and associate dean for research in the texas a&m college of engineering to develop their new strip steel manufacturing technology called metpeel to reduce emissions in one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize steel founded by bill gates breakthrough energy (be) is committed to supporting the development and adoption of breakthrough clean technologies the world needs to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 be fellows is their latest program specifically designed to provide researchers with funding mentorship education and access to the be network with the aim to accelerate new technologies from early development to widespread deployment the 2021 inaugural be fellows cohort consists of researchers from leading research institutions in north america europe and new zealand working in steel cement hydrogen fertilizer and electrofuels the projects and fellows were selected through an extremely competitive application process from across the globe sagapuram is one of the only 17 fellows selected this year and the only one working in steel the iron and steel sector is the largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide the primary driver of climate change according to the world steel association almost two tons of carbon dioxide are emitted for every ton of steel produced making the steel industry responsible for about 4 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year or 8% of all global greenhouse gas emissions the significant amount of energy needed to convert raw iron ore into final useful steel is the reason why steel manufacturing is so carbon-intensive for example the principal route to shape cast steel ingots into final products is rolling a complex multistep process where large thickness reductions are achieved in small increments through several hot and cold rolling steps this process requires repeated high-temperature heating (as in thousands of degrees fahrenheit) and cooling of the material as it passes through multiple rollers and nearly 85% of the energy is obtained by burning fossil fuels which results in direct carbon emissions the researchers who are part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) created technology that reimagines how a steel strip is manufactured metpeel disrupts the traditional rolling-based manufacturing processes by producing steel strips through a more efficient single-step process the process involves machining a thin continuous metal strip from the circumference of a rotating feedstock using a sharp cutting tool similar to how wood veneer is produced
2303,dr dinakar sagapuram assistant professor in the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university has been named a 2021 breakthrough energy fellow for his work on clean energy manufacturing technologies sagapuram will lead the research with his colleague and co-investigator dr prabhakar pagilla professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and associate dean for research in the texas a&m college of engineering to develop their new strip steel manufacturing technology called metpeel to reduce emissions in one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize steel founded by bill gates breakthrough energy (be) is committed to supporting the development and adoption of breakthrough clean technologies the world needs to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 be fellows is their latest program specifically designed to provide researchers with funding mentorship education and access to the be network with the aim to accelerate new technologies from early development to widespread deployment the 2021 inaugural be fellows cohort consists of researchers from leading research institutions in north america europe and new zealand working in steel cement hydrogen fertilizer and electrofuels the projects and fellows were selected through an extremely competitive application process from across the globe sagapuram is one of the only 17 fellows selected this year and the only one working in steel the iron and steel sector is the largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide the primary driver of climate change according to the world steel association almost two tons of carbon dioxide are emitted for every ton of steel produced making the steel industry responsible for about 4 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year or 8% of all global greenhouse gas emissions the significant amount of energy needed to convert raw iron ore into final useful steel is the reason why steel manufacturing is so carbon-intensive for example the principal route to shape cast steel ingots into final products is rolling a complex multistep process where large thickness reductions are achieved in small increments through several hot and cold rolling steps this process requires repeated high-temperature heating (as in thousands of degrees fahrenheit) and cooling of the material as it passes through multiple rollers and nearly 85% of the energy is obtained by burning fossil fuels which results in direct carbon emissions the researchers who are part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) created technology that reimagines how a steel strip is manufactured metpeel disrupts the traditional rolling-based manufacturing processes by producing steel strips through a more efficient single-step process the process involves machining a thin continuous metal strip from the circumference of a rotating feedstock using a sharp cutting tool similar to how wood veneer is produced
2304,the primary advantage of metpeel is that the shape change from bulk material to thin strip is accomplished in just one deformation step this lowers energy usage significantly moreover the process reduces the need for external heating and therefore could be operated using electricity alone which eliminates the need for fossil fuels this one-step process for transforming raw material into a final strip product is clean and significantly more efficient than the current greenhouse gas-emitting technologies im honored to be selected as a be fellow and to be joining this impressive cohort said sagapuram who joined texas a&m in 2016 following his phd and postdoctoral work at purdue currently most of the decarbonization efforts in steel focus primarily on ironmaking and steelmaking processes where different clean sources like hydrogen electricity and biomass are being explored as alternative reductants or fuel in place of coal but the practice of shaping cast steel into a thin sheet via multiple deformation steps using rolling has not changed all that much over the last 100 years although rolling is known to be one of the most energy-intensive processes metpeel disrupts this paradigm by enabling strip production in far fewer steps and within a compact physical footprint said sagapuram this directly translates to energy efficiency and lower cost the benefits are tremendous especially for thinner strips this is because in contrast to rolling where specific energy (energy per unit kg) and cost increase exponentially as the strip gets thinner energy consumption in our process is independent of thickness the built-in advantage of being less expensive than conventional technology sets metpeel apart from other clean energy technologies most current clean technology solutions that can replace existing high-emission technologies incur an additional cost the green premium said pagilla metpeel eliminates the green premium for steel it is not only a clean technology alternative to steel strip rolling but it also costs less which essentially means it has a ‘negative green premium
2305,the primary advantage of metpeel is that the shape change from bulk material to thin strip is accomplished in just one deformation step this lowers energy usage significantly moreover the process reduces the need for external heating and therefore could be operated using electricity alone which eliminates the need for fossil fuels this one-step process for transforming raw material into a final strip product is clean and significantly more efficient than the current greenhouse gas-emitting technologies im honored to be selected as a be fellow and to be joining this impressive cohort said sagapuram who joined texas a&m in 2016 following his phd and postdoctoral work at purdue currently most of the decarbonization efforts in steel focus primarily on ironmaking and steelmaking processes where different clean sources like hydrogen electricity and biomass are being explored as alternative reductants or fuel in place of coal but the practice of shaping cast steel into a thin sheet via multiple deformation steps using rolling has not changed all that much over the last 100 years although rolling is known to be one of the most energy-intensive processes metpeel disrupts this paradigm by enabling strip production in far fewer steps and within a compact physical footprint said sagapuram this directly translates to energy efficiency and lower cost the benefits are tremendous especially for thinner strips this is because in contrast to rolling where specific energy (energy per unit kg) and cost increase exponentially as the strip gets thinner energy consumption in our process is independent of thickness the built-in advantage of being less expensive than conventional technology sets metpeel apart from other clean energy technologies most current clean technology solutions that can replace existing high-emission technologies incur an additional cost the green premium said pagilla metpeel eliminates the green premium for steel it is not only a clean technology alternative to steel strip rolling but it also costs less which essentially means it has a ‘negative green premium
2306,"the teams research at the lab-scale has revealed yet another attractive feature of the process the ability to precisely control the internal grain structure of the sheet which is typically difficult to achieve using rolling therefore the strip can even be made with superior quality and mechanical properties compared to conventional rolled steel although the technology can be applied to manufacture virtually any metal with better properties and at lower energy steel is our initial target because of its widespread use and significant potential for impact sagapuram said the breakthrough energy fellows program identifies and supports the best and brightest individuals and teams across the globe working to develop scale and commercialize technologies that have the potential to reduce carbon emissions by at least 500 million tons per year by 2050 said ashley grosh vice president of breakthrough energy fellows were thrilled to support metpeels critical work to decarbonize steel production and help reimagine our sustainable future as part of the be fellows program the team will work toward process scaling and developing control tools needed for widespread adoption while quantifying the emissions and energy-reduction potential of the technology the breakthrough energy fellows program is attractive and unique pagilla said it not only supplies financial resources to rapidly develop the technology but it also provides the support structure through its vast network of business connections and business fellows to create accelerated pathways for transitioning the technology to market intellectual property creation and protection is crucial in developing this cutting-edge technology to realize its true impact said dr saurabh biswas executive director for tees commercialization and entrepreneurship his team is working closely with the tees clean energy incubator to support patent capture and utilization for metpeel the project will also be supported by the secureamerica institute a tees-led private-public partnership focused on advanced manufacturing by providing adequate space to host metpeel machinery in their new facility at the rellis campus as well as necessary resources and industry connections metpeel represents the best of tees abilities to solve real problems for industry and society said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director for tees beyond technology development tees will directly support the development and use of this groundbreaking new manufacturing process through commercialization and product development assistance test facilities market identification and logistics we look forward to the day metpeel drastically reduces carbon emissions while creating new opportunities and jobs for american industries"""
2307,"the teams research at the lab-scale has revealed yet another attractive feature of the process the ability to precisely control the internal grain structure of the sheet which is typically difficult to achieve using rolling therefore the strip can even be made with superior quality and mechanical properties compared to conventional rolled steel although the technology can be applied to manufacture virtually any metal with better properties and at lower energy steel is our initial target because of its widespread use and significant potential for impact sagapuram said the breakthrough energy fellows program identifies and supports the best and brightest individuals and teams across the globe working to develop scale and commercialize technologies that have the potential to reduce carbon emissions by at least 500 million tons per year by 2050 said ashley grosh vice president of breakthrough energy fellows were thrilled to support metpeels critical work to decarbonize steel production and help reimagine our sustainable future as part of the be fellows program the team will work toward process scaling and developing control tools needed for widespread adoption while quantifying the emissions and energy-reduction potential of the technology the breakthrough energy fellows program is attractive and unique pagilla said it not only supplies financial resources to rapidly develop the technology but it also provides the support structure through its vast network of business connections and business fellows to create accelerated pathways for transitioning the technology to market intellectual property creation and protection is crucial in developing this cutting-edge technology to realize its true impact said dr saurabh biswas executive director for tees commercialization and entrepreneurship his team is working closely with the tees clean energy incubator to support patent capture and utilization for metpeel the project will also be supported by the secureamerica institute a tees-led private-public partnership focused on advanced manufacturing by providing adequate space to host metpeel machinery in their new facility at the rellis campus as well as necessary resources and industry connections metpeel represents the best of tees abilities to solve real problems for industry and society said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director for tees beyond technology development tees will directly support the development and use of this groundbreaking new manufacturing process through commercialization and product development assistance test facilities market identification and logistics we look forward to the day metpeel drastically reduces carbon emissions while creating new opportunities and jobs for american industries"""
2308,new research from texas a&m university scientists could help in boosting the efficiency of nuclear power plants in the near future by using a combination of physics-based modeling and advanced simulations they found the key underlying factors that cause radiation damage to nuclear reactors which could then provide insight into designing more radiation-tolerant high-performance materials reactors need to run at either higher power or use fuels longer to increase their performance but then at these settings the risk of wear and tear also increases said dr karim ahmed assistant professor in the department of nuclear engineering so there is a pressing need to come up with better reactor designs and a way to achieve this goal is by optimizing the materials used to build the nuclear reactors the results of the study are published in the journal frontiers in materials according to the department of energy nuclear energy surpasses all other natural resources in power output and accounts for 20% of the united states electricity generation the source of nuclear energy is fission reactions wherein an isotope of uranium splits into daughter elements after a hit from fast-moving neutrons these reactions generate enormous heat so nuclear reactors parts particularly the pumps and pipes are made with materials possessing exceptional strength and resistance to corrosion however fission reactions also produce intense radiation that causes a deterioration in the nuclear reactors structural materials at the atomic level when energetic radiation infiltrates these materials it can either knock off atoms from their locations causing point defects or force atoms to take vacant spots forming interstitial defects both these imperfections disrupt the regular arrangement of atoms within the metal crystal structure and then what starts as tiny imperfections grow to form voids and dislocation loops compromising the materials mechanical properties over time while there is some understanding of the type of defects that occur in these materials upon radiation exposure ahmed said it has been arduous to model how radiation along with other factors such as the temperature of the reactor and the microstructure of the material together contribute to the formation defects and their growth the challenge is the computational cost he said in the past simulations have been limited to specific materials and for regions spanning a few microns across but if the domain size is increased to even 10s of microns the computational load drastically jumps in particular the researchers said to accommodate larger domain sizes previous studies have compromised on the number of parameters within the simulations differential equations however an undesirable consequence of ignoring some parameters over others is an inaccurate description of the radiation damage to overcome these limitations ahmed and his team designed their simulation with all the parameters making no assumptions on whether one of them was more pertinent than the other also to perform the now computationally heavy tasks they used the resources provided by the texas a&m high performance research computing group upon running the simulation their analysis revealed that using all parameters in nonlinear combinations yields an accurate description of radiation damage in particular in addition to the materials microstructure the radiation condition within the reactor the reactor design and temperature are also important in predicting the instability in materials due to radiation on the other hand the researchers work also sheds light on why specialized nanomaterials are more tolerant to voids and dislocation loops they found that instabilities are only triggered when the border enclosing clusters of co-oriented atomic crystals or grain boundary is above a critical size so nanomaterials with their extremely fine grain sizes suppress instabilities thereby becoming more radiation-tolerant although ours is a fundamental theoretical and modeling study we think it will help the nuclear community to optimize materials for different types of nuclear energy applications especially new materials for reactors that are safer more efficient and economical said ahmed this progress will eventually increase our clean carbon-free energy contribution dr abdurrahman ozturk a research assistant in the nuclear engineering department is the lead author of this work merve gencturk a graduate student in the nuclear engineering department also contributed to this research
2309,the human powered submarine team has taken students in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university across the world and to new depths for nearly 30 years this unique student organization challenges participants to construct a submarine powered by a single diver to enter in the international submarine races held at either the maryland naval base or in gosport england though the covid-19 pandemic caused the team to have to quickly adapt and find ways to host remote meetings and solve problems from afar they are overcoming challenges and evolving to offer more opportunities to current and future students this includes adding an electric boat competition to introduce emerging technology elements to their group the way we have pitched the addition of the electric boat is that people can join the submarine team as a whole and can work on which projects they want said james frizzell ocean engineering senior and leader of the human powered submarine team i want the submarine team to expand to be like the texas a&m sae team with its submarine and electric boat the more the merrier frizzell joined the organization as a sophomore in fall 2019 the following spring covid-19 shut down the texas a&m campus and the international submarine competitions – just as the team was working on installing the control systems for their design the pandemic presented immediate challenges for the team: they couldnt meet in person they couldnt compete and they couldnt go to campus to work on the submarine as spaces were shut down for health and safety for several weeks but that didnt deter the students who put together a microsoft teams group to work on design elements for the new submarine we spent all last year designing a new submarine to compete in races frizzell said id say we got fairly far there are still little details like the attachment for the pedal box and control surfaces but the general idea behind what the propulsion will be has been thought of and designed frizzell explained that while the team has made progress with its concept it has struggled with attendance among new recruits who joined the organization looking for hands-on construction experience to help combat this lack of tangible output the team reached out to the low-speed wind tunnel near the easterwood airport in college station and asked to test a new design with their agreement a one-third-scale model of the submarine was created and tested another test will be conducted in early spring we drew a lot of attention when we were pitching the organization at the end of the semester to classes and mentioned the new electric boat competition frizzell said there's a lot that goes into the submarine and it's very difficult to design plus all the logistics but people are familiar with boats frizzell said he is excited to see both products of the team come together as the various components arrive little by little construction is beginning on various aspects of the electric boat and human-powered submarine as the team prepares for competition in maryland at the end of the spring semester for a lot of people this is their first time actually working in computer design and then it's also hands-on he said these are tools that you're going to use throughout your life and getting to experience what it's like building something like this while at university gives you a chance to learn in a way you can't in a classroom environment
2310,"texas a&m university is ranked no 3 internationally and no 1 nationally among mechanical engineering programs for 2021 by shanghairanking xi'an jiatong university and the university of cambridge took the top two spots respectively ""this recognition among our international peers is a reflection of our outstanding faculty and the impactful work they do "" said dr guillermo aguilar james and ada forsyth professor and head of the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m ""our department will continue to support and empower our faculty to continue their pursuit of research worthy of international recognition"" texas a&m is first among us universities ahead of stanford university at no 6 california institute of technology at no 7 university of california san diego at no 8 massachusetts institute of technology at no 9 and northwestern university at no 10 initiated in 2009 the shanghairanking global ranking of academic subjects uses a range of objective academic indicators and third-party data to measure the performance of more than 1800 universities world universities across 93 countries indicators include research output research influence international collaboration research quality and international academic awards"
2311,a senior computer engineering student in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university nadxhieli juarez had to persevere through obstacles that many first-generation students face such as the lack of access to resources i admittedly lacked some level of stem college readiness prior to my time at a&m and this means that i have had to push myself a little more than my peers in a lot of my courses nadxhieli said the lack of a resource is the opportunity to create that resource for yourself and for others coming from humble beginnings juarez is the first in her extended family to move away from home for college defying all expectations set out for her because of that she has become independent and has gained valuable experience being financially independent pushed me to seek on-campus job experiences that have in some way helped me grow professionally in my field as early as my freshman year she said nadxhieli originally from the rio grande valley struggled to decide on a major however she found that engineering combined her problem-solving physics and math interests to confront the problems creatively the best solutions are often the most creative ones and those happen when we allow ourselves to take a step back and evaluate a problem from a different vantage point she said now she is part of aggie hispanics in computing (ahic) an organization that aims to help latinx and hispanic students embolden and explore their interests in technology through this organization juarez found people she connected with dr (dilma) da silva our sponsor for aggie hispanics in computing was the first faculty member i ever shared any of my story with and she has given me so much hope in pursuing my degree she said it really does mean the absolute world to me to come across someone who understands the difficulty of being a first-generation student and can be as inspiring as she is juarez previously a mentee in texas a&m college of engineerings first-generation students mentoring (fgen) program is now a mentor the goal of that program is to provide a community for first-generation students providing help with personal and educational goals as they trek through college looking back i would now consider myself fortunate to have such a strong source of motivation she said i am more conscious of how difficult it can be to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and i am hoping to be patient and receptive to the needs of my mentees through ahic and fgen juarez made interpersonal connections with educators peers and professionals that allowed her to be more confident in herself and her aspirations i came to realize the value of being a first-generation college student and the pride that comes with growing into the role model that my younger sibling and family members deserve she said
2312,a newly published article in one earth hopes to stir discussion around adoption of construction designs and methods that utilize nature to cut costs extend project lifecycles and improve ecological synergy according to a texas a&m agrilife research scientist the lead author is dr rusty feagin agrilife research professor and ecologist in the department of ecology and conservation biology in the college of agricultural and life sciences and the department of ocean engineering in the college of engineering both at texas a&m university in addition to feagin 23 us and european professionals in various fields including engineering public policy construction and biology contributed to the publication feagin said the paper infrastructure investment must incorporate natures lessons in a rapidly changing world aims to initiate conversations about sustainable infrastructure and the need for incorporating natural elements into projects publication of the commentary piece is timely as us congressional members continue to haggle over pieces of a proposed infrastructure bill feagin said natural elements go by many names including nature-based solutions nature-based features or natural infrastructure but regardless of the names used everyone involved in national infrastructure construction needs to shift their mindset toward these ideas he added incorporating nature-based features feagin said can reduce project costs and make infrastructure more resilient in dynamic natural settings helping the structures last longer than traditional constructions people tend to think of roads and bridges when we say ‘infrastructure but infrastructure is really anything that represents the foundation we build society on including our waterways coastlines and ports he said transitioning from concrete and steel to natural elements is not ideal for every project but we need to begin looking at ways to implement these methods especially where natural change is dynamic and projects need to be more flexible within the changing environment opportunity ahead for natural infrastructure natural infrastructure is especially applicable in areas where climate change is impacting weather variability such as coastlines where storm surges can occur and riverbanks where heavy rains can cause flooding for example rather than managing floodwaters with walls of concrete and steel which can degrade over time incorporating natural infrastructure might mean utilizing natural levees and landscape features to steer water via ecosystems like wetlands and retaining ponds natural infrastructure implemented correctly improves with time as well feagin said he said the us army corps of engineers and the texas department of transportation are already incorporating natural elements within projects european countries such as the netherlands are also adopting an increasing number of natural methodologies in construction
2313,for a specific example feagin said the enormous proposed $26 billion infrastructure project in the houston-galveston area nicknamed the ike dike and designed to reduce the impact of the flood events due to hurricanes and torrential rains is an example of a project that could benefit from natural infrastructure elements the goal for any project would be to take advantage of natural processes such as water movement to deposit sediment or the spread of trees and native vegetation to help capture that sediment and build natural levees sand dunes and water detention basins he said by working with nature you can minimize effort and cost and realize maximum efficiency in the overall system challenges to adopting natural infrastructure a shortage of existing expertise and time needed to train the next generation of engineers are constraints to natural infrastructure application in building projects feagin said traditional engineering follows established technical planning criteria whereas natural infrastructure requires technical expertise from professionals outside the field such as ecologists this disconnect in expertise is being bridged by project managers and planners who view natural infrastructure as a way to save money and extend a projects life but feagin said building those collaborations takes time and effort natural infrastructure is being used but its happening because project managers and collaborators see the cost savings or they see an opportunity to add value to the project he said it could be something as simple as making a space that delivers the infrastructure benefit for the project but also makes it good for activities like bird watching or hunting another constraint is bureaucracy that regulates and approves project plans feagin said construction codes and requirements are attuned to traditional construction methods and adding natural infrastructure can lengthen approval processes but feagin said the constraints create an exciting opportunity to train the next generation of engineers and construction professionals the transition will require cross-training and educating people about these new methods and concepts he said that takes generational change it would help if policy makers were emphasizing the benefits of natural infrastructure and providing incentives that spur on change incentivizing adoption of natural infrastructure feagin said there is an opportunity to ride the wave of increased public interest in reducing the carbon footprint of projects during and after construction the broad acceptance of the burgeoning construction concepts can be accelerated by incentivizing their use through an executive order in a way that would expedite implementation in publicly funded projects feagin said offering a discounted or incentivized rate would mean project planning would take a longer-term view of infrastructure projects feagin said and that taxpayers would get more value from their investment the us army corps of engineers already operates at the lower rate which is why they are one of the leading users of natural infrastructure in projects that would be an easy lever to pull and decision-makers would start selecting projects that provide longer-term lifecycles he said its a small incentive to change but it could pay huge dividends when it comes to adopting these concepts and speeding up the transition toward increased use of natural infrastructure within future construction this article was originally published in agrilife today
2314,while a very small percentage of the atmosphere carbon dioxide plays a vital role in sustaining life on our planet however if this delicate balance is disrupted excess carbon dioxide can pose a formidable threat to our environment and the living beings that reside within a team of researchers in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university recently published a comprehensive review article on how carbon dioxide can be isolated through reduction reactions and then transformed into value-added chemicals for fuels thereby providing a path to repurpose excess carbon dioxide people are looking into innovative ways to mitigate global warming and minimize our impacts on the environment said denis johnson the first author on the study and a doctoral student in the chemical engineering department through scientific advancements such as our own we remain hopeful that one day we may be able to start reversing what has already been done the research is led by dr abdoulaye djire assistant professor in the chemical engineering department and co-authored by dr zhi qiao a former postdoctoral researcher for the department the study was published in the journal acs applied energy materials as johnson suggests a potential contributor to global warming is carbon dioxide according to an assessment by the us energy information administration unless the current energy structure is changed carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will continue to increase currently there are several methods to decrease carbon dioxides negative impacts one such method is decarbonization whereby carbon is simply removed from supply chains despite its promise decarbonization requires using other carbon sources such as liquid fuels and feedstocks deeming it unsustainable another method called carbon sequestration where carbon is removed from the atmosphere is not economically viable due to rising industry costs and the lack of technology capable of performing this task excess carbon dioxide does more harm than good said johnson research has found that products derived from carbon dioxide whether they were carbon monoxide methanol or ethanol all have much greater use than carbon dioxide alone with the included benefit of posing less health and environmental hazards hence the researchers are investigating if carbon dioxide reduction reactions converting carbon dioxide to make other carbon compounds using electricity are feasible solutions carbon dioxide can be removed from emissions or the atmosphere through the use of amine columns or similar carbon capture technologies and purified once the carbon dioxide is purified the researchers can then perform the carbon dioxide reduction reaction using a transition metal to initiate the electrochemical reaction furthermore the researchers said one of the advantages of this chemical process is that depending on which transition metal is used copper or nickel for example different products can be made the carbon dioxide can be repurposed for making a variety of carbonaceous products such as propanol for medicines or ethanol for fuels whose value and versatilities are much more significant lets say we get back every amount of carbon dioxide we put in we could potentially use the carbon dioxide to produce ethanol which can then be mixed back into fuel using recycled carbon dioxide said johnson the article starts by reviewing the electrochemical methods currently being used to reduce the damaging effects of carbon dioxide providing a helpful resource for other researchers in the field the article follows with tutorials on the techniques used to help analyze the catalysts and the products of the electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction process this process can fundamentally change the impacts of carbon dioxide making it a form of renewable energy while simultaneously providing carbon sources to industries dependent on the product reducing its negative environmental impact said djire this work summarizes what we know about carbon dioxide recycling and transformation and how we can carry this information into the future
2315,"dr lesley wright is among the newest american society of mechanical engineers (asme) fellows the prestigious title has only been awarded to less than 5% of the society's members wright serves as associate professor and jana and quentin a baker '78 faculty fellow in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university she earned her doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from texas a&m in 2006 wright said it is an honor for her research and educational activities to be recognized by asme ""without the support of my family students and colleagues this honor would not be possible "" wright said ""throughout my career i have been blessed by many people willing to invest in me and my endeavors and i am thankful for this support i hope i can have a similar influence on the next generation of young engineers as we work together to positively impact the lives of others"" wright's research focuses on gas turbine heat transfer convective cooling technology heat transfer enhancement and heat transfer and fluid mechanics experimentation asme fellows have at least 10 years of membership in the society and are recognized as having made significant engineering achievements less than 4 000 of the more than 90 000 asme members have achieved the prestigious grade of fellow"
2316,a joint research project between the us army and texas a&m university led to a development that could accelerate the discovery of unique materials for bioelectronics and other applications army researchers plan to use new tools to find target materials to enhance technologies in rf electronics next-generation combat vehicles soldier lethality and more researchers at the us army combat capabilities development command known as devcom army research laboratory said an invention called a centrifugal microfluidic platform will help advance the goals of one of the laboratorys essential research programs the laboratory which is focused on getting what comes from scientific advances into the hands of soldiers has a program known as the transformational synthetic biology for military environments or transforme essential research program [its] all about taking promising synthetic biology research and applying it to military-relevant environments and systems said dr justin jahnke army chemical engineer theres a lot more that we can do to engineer organisms than was possible even five or 10 years ago and it has really opened up doors for developing new ways of making materials and understanding how organisms behave in the field advancements in synthetic biology rely heavily on the discovery of microorganisms that exhibit desirable traits such as binding to target materials of interest he said binding occurs due to special peptides located on the outer surface of a cell peptides are amino acids that make up certain proteins needed by the skin their relationship to certain materials causes them to latch onto target materials almost like a magnet in order to find the right microorganisms researchers employ a technique known as biopanning they dispense cells from a cellular display library onto a target material of interest and then wash the material to remove all unbound cells this process then repeats until only the desired cells the ones with strong affinity to the target material remain according to jahnke this could either be inserting a peptide into a polymer to give it affinity between two components that dont normally like to mix or it could be taking these peptides and then inserting them into another biopolymer to develop genetic tools cellular display libraries are genetically engineered at the dna level to display millions or billions of unique peptides at the cell surface said deborah sarkes army research biologist when we isolate the cells that bind to the target material we look for trends in the peptides amino acid composition to understand how the interactions with the target material occur in biopanning the rinsing step plays an especially crucial role in isolating the desired cells if researchers do not apply enough shear stress peptides with weak affinity may still linger on the material but if researchers apply too much shear stress they may accidentally wash away the desired peptides with the undesired ones according to sarkes the predominant tool for rinsing a rotating shaker provides an inadequate level of control over the amount of shear force exerted on the cells when bound to the material in some cases researchers have to resort to trial and error to separate moderate binders from the highest affinity binders for some applications a more specific level of affinity whether moderate or high may be preferable when we use the rotating shaker we dont actually know the measured force that were putting on the cells sarkes said we just have to trust that the rotation speed is going to be consistent from experiment to experiment in terms of creating the necessary shear force microfluidic channels allow the binding to occur in a highly controlled environment; however the syringe pumps that normally drive fluid through the channels impose limits in how much shear stress the device can generate without breaking sarkes said in order to address this problem army researchers partnered with texas a&m to develop a tool that uses centrifugal force to remove unbound cells once researchers place the microfluidic channel on a spin coater device platform they can precisely control the degree of centrifugal force by simply setting the rotation speed the novelty of this device is the level of control that we can achieve over the shear force using centrifugal force sarkes said with this device we can achieve a much higher level of shear force and actually isolate binders more precisely than we could before the research team validated the platform with an experiment that successfully isolated peptides from a bacterial display library that specifically bind only to gold indium tin oxide or both as a result the researchers could coat the gold- or ito-printed letters on a glass panel with such high levels of specificity that the bound cells once stained were clearly legible researchers presented their findings in the research paper discovery of targeted material binding microorganisms using a centrifugal microfluidic platform in the peer-reviewed journal advanced materials technologies ultimately new materials like these will give our future soldiers new capabilities and platforms that will help then win on the battlefield jahnke said at the end of the day we at the army research laboratory want to make sure our soldiers have all the advantages that science and technology can provide
2317,anita sumali junior in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university was recently awarded the thermo fisher scientific antibody scholarship the award recognizes students interested in pursuing careers in medicine and biology sumali said shes still in some shock from receiving the scholarship it's honestly still crazy to me she said i never thought that i would get it especially because statistically there's a really large applicant pool and they only award the $10 000 scholarship to one person growing up sumali knew she would pursue engineering her father is a mechanical engineer and at first she focused on applying to those programs however during high school she had the opportunity to shadow local doctors the experience helped her discover a love and passion for medicine i realized that i'm a very extroverted person she said i think that applying stem to helping people would feel so much more rewarding to me than anything else biomedical engineering also brings in her mothers and sumalis background as both were athletes sumali participated mainly in swimming growing up i sustained a lot of injuries from just overtraining and just the way that my knees are built sumali said that's another thing that drew me to medicine my own experiences in athletics and my own injuries i think that being able to help other athletes in the future would be really rewarding sumali is part of the engineering to medicine program meaning she will be able to start medical school immediately after her undergraduate degree the program is open to any engineering major and requires completion of several pre-med classes it allows me to take classes that i probably wouldn't take as a traditional pre-med biomedical engineering major sumali said i'm taking fluid dynamics and a lot of classes that involve electrical engineering concepts i feel like i've been introduced to a lot of those topics and that makes me a more well-rounded student sumali is the president of the international society for pharmaceutical engineering which aims to expand knowledge of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in texas she is also part of the engineering honors program which she said is valuable because of the people involved the other students that i've met in my honors classes are all so smart and driven and motivated that also pushes me to motivate myself to do better sumali said in honors classes i can learn from my professors but also from my peers i think that's a really unique community in that we're all learning together and we're all pushing each other sumali said looking and applying for scholarships doesnt have to take a lot of time and can be useful for undergraduate and graduate students always keep an eye out because i know that even in graduate school there are scholarships that you can apply for so even beyond undergrad there's always opportunities like that sumali said i think just taking a few minutes out of your weekend or out of your day to look for those opportunities can really be worth it
2318,four members of the college of engineering were among 20 distinguished texas a&m university faculty named 2021 presidential impact fellows the recognitions highlight texas a&ms commitment to investing in faculty with significant and sustained accomplishments and the promise of continued high-impact scholarship those named fellows were dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering; dr shuiwang ji professor in the department of computer science and engineering; dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineering; and dr emily pentzer associate professor in the department of materials science and engineeringthe fifth class of presidential impact fellows joins more than 75 colleagues recognized in prior years with one of the most prestigious scholarly impact awards presented to texas a&m faculty the award was initiated by president michael k young to recognize rising stars in their respective fields and those who embody the universitys commitment to advancing knowledge through transformational learning discovery innovation and impact for texas and the worldpresidential impact fellows receive an annual stipend of $25 000 for three years and retain their new title for life so long as they remain a faculty member in good standing these award recipients were identified by their college and dean and confirmed by academic leadership each is considered to be worthy of increasingly prestigious national and international professional recognition the 2020 presidential impact fellows in the college of engineering were dr james caverlee professor in the department of computer science and engineering and dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering for a complete list of these and other internal faculty award recipients from previous years visit the dean of faculties website
2319,that first experience literally diving headfirst into fish camp not knowing what's going on and having a bunch of people screaming in your face was intimidating people in louisiana don't act like this but it was really fun and i ended up liking it – courtney gasser 23 gasser an undergraduate student in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university has experienced many self-discoveries while in college now she actively seeks personal growth moments a self-described engineering nerd musician entrepreneur and football fanatic gasser did not consider texas a&m or petroleum engineering while attending high school in slidell louisiana she was more into chemistry and physics that changed when she watched the texas a&m football team beat louisiana state university after seven overtimes aggies have stamina said gasser the students were still standing it was impressive so i came to tour the school the spring semester of my senior year gasser had no doubts she would become an engineer but didnt consider petroleum engineering until she spoke with current students and cathy sliva associate professor of practice and the undergraduate program director this department is literally the best of the best gasser said you get to be part of the people who power human society i took a picture of myself in front of the statue outside the richardson building and posted right then i would come to texas a&m
2320,though gasser is not shy she did have to adjust herself to the friendliness of the people and students around campus howdy week also startled her but made her feel welcomed and answering an email from the student chapter of the international association of drilling contractors on a whim ended up getting her on a rig tour before freshman classes even started the impromptu trip taught her about the oil and gas industry and even more about how truly encouraging the students in petroleum engineering are being able to forge connections with upperclassmen and peers back then really helped me gasser said they were my mentors getting me adjusted to texas a&m we're still good friends now stellar grades qualified gasser for engineering honors the national merit scholarship the president's endowed scholarship and the nelson scholarship she had a firm grasp of math and science classes from high school but retook the courses at texas a&m to gain a better understanding for more complex subjects to come like differential equations she views tough courses as a challenge and imagines herself succeeding then makes that success happen with hard work yet the strength of her academics was offset by a problem gasser began experiencing in high school: a severe case of test anxiety when the condition started interfering with her studies she tackled it head-on with resources she discovered at texas a&m i met with people on campus like the counseling and psychological services to help me practice different techniques to manage my anxiety gasser said i knew that would be the biggest obstacle in my academic career i'm still working on it but it usually goes away pretty quickly nowadays to keep stress at bay gasser has taken up music again something she finds a pleasant escape she even takes orchestra when her schedule permits to gassers surprise many students in the university orchestras are in science and engineering and she laughs along with her fellow stem majors when the orchestra leader makes jokes about that gasser sees herself as a future reservoir engineer mainly because she enjoys analyzing data and can see herself calculating hydrocarbons in place maximizing exploration and production assets and predicting what can be extracted in the most economical way she already understands the value of economics and entrepreneurship through her own clothing business where she collects old hard-to-come-by apparel evaluates the actual value of the items and resells them for a profit to help finance her education in 2020 gasser attended a biweekly series of virtual summer webinars that allowed her to listen to oil and gas engineers recruiters and supervisors and learn how geology geophysics petroleum engineering and mechanical engineering interrelate in many industry aspects she secured an internship for the 2021 summer and in a move straight out of howdy week reached out to the other internees early so she could make connections before the job began gasser is currently a member of two student chapters related to petroleum engineering has done podcasts on her major as part of her lambda sigma society service and helps the petroleum engineering departments undergraduate program talk to students who are interested in coming to texas a&m that way she can guide others to discover more about themselves and what they are capable of just as she did i tell them it's going be okay just research your professors go to all the departmental events join some clubs etc said gasser dive in headfirst even if you're scared if you learn to believe in yourself anything is possible
2321,dr frances ligler will be joining the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university as a professor this spring i am looking forward to working with talented faculty and students in biomedical engineering and to building collaborations across the university ligler said ligler has published research in the fields of biosensors microfluidics tissue-on-chip systems and regenerative medicine she has also performed research in biochemistry immunology and analytical chemistry she has 37 issued us patents and 11 commercially produced biosensor products before joining texas a&m ligler served as the ross lampe distinguished professor of biomedical engineering in the joint department of biomedical engineering in the college of engineering at north carolina state university and school of medicine at the university of north carolina at chapel hill she earned a bachelors degree from furman university and a dphil and a dsc from oxford university and spent 33 years working in industrial and government research laboratories she is an elected member past chair of the bioengineering section and former councillor of the us national academy of engineering she is also fellow in the international society for optics and photonics the american institute for medical and biological engineering the american association of arts and sciences and the national academy of inventors she is a 2017 inductee of the us national inventors hall of fame honored for her invention of portable optical biosensors in 2020 she received the simon ramo founders award from the national academy of engineering ligler's husband dr george ligler will also be joining the college of engineering in spring 2022 as a professor
2322,"michael garner a senior in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the most prestigious honor available to a graduating senior ­from the college of engineering at texas a&m university the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award the award is presented to a student who excels scholastically exemplifies leadership and whose character exceeds standards it's surreal to receive this award "" garner said ""quite honestly i don't think that i'm exceptional i've just been trying to prepare myself as well as possible for my future career it's hard to put into words it makes me incredibly proud that i can represent the university at such a high level and that they would see me as worthy of this award garner who comes from a long lineage of family military ties chose to attend texas a&m because of its strengths in both a strong military education program through the air force rotc (reserve officers' training corps) and corps of cadets programs and in the quality of engineering education and research opportunities"
2323,"garner is also a brown scholar and credits part of his decision to attend texas a&m because of his connection to craig brown (the namesake of the craig and galen brown foundation) and his interactions with other brown scholars the way mr brown talked about a&m and seeing all of the other students who i'd be working with just how accomplished they were and how driven they were really left an inspiring impression on me "" garner said ""that told me that this is the place that i needed to be"" with his eyes set on pursuing further education he has also participated in the electrical and computer engineering fast-track program which allows students to take graduate-level courses as an undergraduate he was drawn to study electrical engineering because of its versatility and his interest in optics i knew that i really wanted to pursue optics angling toward the high-intensity laser and inertial confinement nuclear fusion research areas garner said but if for some reason that didn't work out electrical engineering would provide plenty of options for me to spin off and do something else i thought it was a very versatile degree that teaches a lot of different things that would be useful in whatever career field i found myself in deepening his involvement in this area he has worked alongside electrical and computer engineering professor dr christi madsen on an undergraduate research thesis in the optics field of study garner will graduate in may and because of his efforts in air force rotc will join the united states air force as a commissioned officer he hopes to complete his graduate degree and continue to make an impact on those around him as a leader and in the field of optics im proud to be carrying on my family tradition of service in the military im trying to balance having a research-oriented career with a leadership-oriented career as a military officer i hope to use my technical background to benefit the air force and make positive impacts in any way i can texas a&m remains one of only six senior military colleges in the us where rotc programs are offered the corps of cadets is the largest uniformed body outside the national service academies and has historically produced more officers than any other institution in the nation other than the academies"
2324,texas a&m university nuclear engineer marvin l adams has been nominated by president joe biden to a key executive branch position for maintaining the us nuclear weapons stockpilethe appointment to serve as deputy administrator for defense programs within the department of energy requires senate confirmationadams would oversee programs for the design maintenance assessment manufacturing and dismantlement of all us nuclear warheads and for related programs that develop and maintain all the associated science engineering technology supply-chain and manufacturing capabilitiesthe announcement from the white house came late wednesday less than three months after adams was tapped for his national security expertise to serve on bidens 30-member panel of top science and technology advisorsadams is the htri professor of nuclear engineering a regents fellow and the director of national laboratories mission support for the texas a&m university system he started 29 years ago at the flagship in college station and has served for decades in advisory roles at the nations three nuclear security laboratoriestexas a&m president m katherine banks has worked with adams for the past decade both banks and adams were instrumental in the texas a&m system obtaining a federal contract in 2018 to help manage the los alamos national laboratory in new mexicoas the nations foremost academic expert on stewardship of the nuclear stockpile i cannot imagine a better person to hold this position than dr marvin adams banks said we are proud to have someone from texas a&m selected for such a crucial role that is consistent with our history of public service and our dedication to national securityadams is considered by those inside and outside the federal government as the nations foremost academic expert on the nuclear stockpile his research has advanced the nations ability to use complex computer algorithms to help assess weapons reliability while explosive testing is bannedchancellor john sharp called the appointment an incredible honordr adams lives the six texas a&m core values of respect excellence leadership loyalty integrity and selfless service sharp said every aggie should be proud of his nomination and every american should be gratefulif confirmed by the senate adams will help manage a $16 billion budget his position is one of four top jobs in the national nuclear security administration that require senate approvali feel honored and humbled to be considered for this kind of service in support of us national security adams said texas a&m has a long tradition of valuing and providing service to the nation in keeping with this the texas a&m university system has supported my national-service activities over the years and i am deeply grateful for thisas an educator adams has taught generations of engineers including many who have gone on to careers at the national nuclear labs los alamos lawrence livermore national laboratory and sandia national laboratories this story originally appeared in texas a&m today
2325,thousands of students every year come to texas a&m university specifically for the stellar reputation of the college of engineering vivie tran and gabriel zolton students in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering came to aggieland for that very reason but have earned far more than an engineering degree tran and zolton are recipients of the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award for their exemplary achievements in and outside the classroom an award that is over 70 years old it is the most prestigious honor that can be bestowed upon a graduating senior i am honored to receive this award and it feels amazing to have recognition for all the things i have done said zolton in a larger sense it spurred my reflection on my college experience as a whole i am extremely thankful for everyone who has supported me along the way i knew i would pursue chemical engineering when i first started here but i would never have predicted the path i ended up taking if i had a chance to do it all again id hardly change a thing zolton is the son of two former students but made his final decision to attend texas a&m when he explored the various research opportunities available through the chemical engineering department between a wonderful welcome from the texas a&m national scholar ambassadors and a great presentation from dr micah green a professor in the chemical engineering department who i later went on to conduct undergraduate research with texas a&m quickly rose to the top of my list of colleges he said zolton has partaken in many research ventures during his time as a student however his interests lie beyond one subject as he will also be receiving a bachelors degree in english completing an undergraduate creative research thesis as part of the undergraduate research scholars program and the aggie creative collective is one of my greatest accomplishments said zolton in the future i plan to finish a novel that i worked on alongside my thesis like zolton tran thrives academically as they each hold a perfect grade point average she is finishing her chemical engineering degree a semester early after getting a jumpstart on coursework through an early college program tran was first drawn to texas a&m by the aggie core values she decided to pursue chemical engineering after hearing the variety of career opportunities the degree provides there is a wide range of industries that i could specialize in from chemical production to pharmaceuticals she said i can envision myself in a role that allows me to do something different every day but the possibilities are endless tran works an on-campus job and holds a leadership role in engineering honors which keeps her involved with various events she has conducted research in both the biology and chemical engineering departments in addition to this award in fall 2020 she was awarded the sophomore gathright deans excellence award recognizing the top students in the college of engineering she is also the recipient of various honors such as the presidents endowed scholar bp scholar axalta bright futures scholar transocean scholar houston livestock show and rodeo scholar and the texas society of professional engineers scholarship and chi st josephs auxiliary scholarship i have been lucky to have made relationships with my professors and peers who have made an impact on my time here at texas a&m said tran i feel very honored to be the recipient of the outstanding senior award a hard work ethic was instilled in me at a young age as i grew up seeing my parents work tirelessly to provide for our three-generation household it means so much to me to make my parents proud the students were presented the award at the texas a&m university college of engineering student awards banquet on nov 4
2326,dr pr kumar is the 2022 recipient of one of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) most prestigious honors the ieee alexander graham bell medal it is the highest award by ieee in communications and networking kumar was recognized for his seminal contributions to the modeling analysis and design of wireless networks kumars contributions to wireless networks together with his students include the development of scaling laws information theory stochastic geometry networking with deadlines and several protocols for multiple access communications power control scheduling and mobility kumar pioneered a new approach for the design of wireless networks his work in scaling laws is one of the most widely cited in the area of communications over the last several decades with more than 10 000 citations it led to the reconsideration of programs for developing large wireless networks his development of an information theoretic approach for large wireless networks resulted in a resurgence of work on issues that were previously considered unsolvable and energized the field he also developed new stochastic geometry approaches for analyzing how the spatial distribution of nodes affects their performance which have since become widespread and standard in the field his modeling of communication with deadlines allowed precise results on scheduling packets in networks he also employed his insights to develop protocols for operating wireless networks besides wireless networks kumars research interests include game theory adaptive control simulated annealing machine learning queueing networks manufacturing systems and scheduling wafer fabrication plants his current research focus includes renewable energy power systems security privacy automated transportation unmanned aerial vehicle traffic management millimeter-wave 5g and cyber-physical systems ieee medals are the highest awards in the hierarchy of ieee awards the ieee alexander graham bell medal was established in 1976 in commemoration of the centennial of the telephone's invention to provide recognition for outstanding contributions to telecommunications the medal is given to researchers inventors innovators and practitioners who have provided exceptional contributions to communications and networking sciences and engineering these achievements and outstanding contributions have made a lasting impact on technology society and the engineering profession previous recipients of the alexander graham bell medal have included trailblazers such as the founders of qualcomm the developers of the internet the ethernet optical communication digital subscriber line (dsl) and cellular telephony they have pioneered electronic switching systems used for telephone systems deep space communication technology geostationary communication optical fiber communications adaptive noise cancellation cellular mobile communications systems the ethernet packet switching coding of pictures digital satellite communications the internet dsl multiple antenna wireless communications used in 4g and beyond and routers kumar has been recognized for his contributions through multiple awards in the fields of communication control and computer science including the ieee field award for control systems the donald eckman award of american automatic control council the fred ellersick prize of ieee communications society the outstanding contribution award from the association for computing machinerys (acm) special interest group on mobility of systems users data and computing (sigmobile) the sigmobile test-of-time paper award the infocom achievement award and the comsnets outstanding contribution award he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the swiss federal institute of technology zurich he is a member of the national academy of engineering the world academy of sciences and the indian national academy of engineering and is an acm fellow and a fellow of ieee
2327,dr rodney bowersox from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university received the regents professor designation from the texas a&m university system board of regents established in 1996 the regents professor title honors individuals at the rank of professor or equivalent whose distinguished performance in teaching research and service has been exemplary it is the highest honor bestowed by the system on faculty members its difficult to find the words to express how deeply honored and grateful i am to chancellor sharp the board of regents and texas a&m university for this award said bowersox during my tenure at texas a&m i have been truly blessed by unwavering support outstanding collaborations with colleagues and most importantly very brilliant students bowersox is a professor in the aerospace engineering department and an associate dean for research he is the holder of the ford motor co design professorship i and is the founder and director of the texas a&m university national aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory his research focuses on theoretical and experimental hypersonic viscous flows (turbulent and transitional) nonequilibrium gas dynamics turbulence modeling laser diagnostics high-speed aerodynamics sonic boom and scramjet flows bowersox received his doctoral masters and bachelors degrees from virginia polytechnic institute and state university­­ he is a department of defense vannevar bush faculty fellow a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers and a fellow of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics
2328,researchers from the university of texas at arlington and texas a&m university have received a three-year $500 000 grant from the nuclear regulatory commission (nrc) to conduct experiments and simulations of liquid metal heat pipes (lmhps) for micro nuclear reactors the microreactor is a compact nuclear reactor design generating up to 20 megawatts of thermal energy that can be converted into electricity or used for a wide range of industrial applications including hydrogen production most microreactors are designed to be portable; many are small enough to be transported by a semitractor-trailer or cargo plane microreactors could be deployed across the state and nation where energy shortages occur one such case happened in february 2021 when a massive winter storm hit texas causing millions to lose electricity and heat dereje agonafer ut arlington presidential distinguished professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering and yassin a hassan texas a&m distinguished professor and regents professor in the department of nuclear engineering and the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering are leading the project agonafer and hassan are members of the national academy of engineering the only two professors from texas to be inducted in 2019 microreactors can make an effective use of liquid metal heat pipe to transport heat from the nuclear core to the secondary system agonafer said one of his major research areas is in the design modeling and cooling of electronic devices everything from computer chips to computer servers the team at ut arlington will actively be involved in both the fabrication and modeling of lmhps the ut arlington and texas a&m teams will produce unique sets of experimental data of internal thermal-hydraulic parameters using advanced measurements techniques quantifying any measurement uncertainties the datasets will address any technological gaps and could be used to develop physical models ultimately advancing the predictive capabilities of computational fluid dynamics codes and fast-running system codes adopted for heat pipe reactor technologies hassan leads the center for advanced small modular and micro reactors which focuses on developing and deploying advanced technologies for safer reliable sustainable clean energy we want to solve some of the challenges texans have faced on the energy front the center looks at various forms of energy to help the growing state needs for future demands hassan said our students are innovating today what will impact tomorrows global society with advancements in sustainability safety and health the project aligns with the federal governments recent decision to fund nuclear energy technology with billions of dollars as well as the white houses broader aim of setting a net-zero emissions goal by 2050 we believe this research has opportunities down the road to expand because of the countrys movement toward all types of more sustainable energy agonafer said this story originally appeared on the ut arlington website
2329,in november of this year texas a&m universitys chapter of the society of hispanic professional engineers or shpe received the national large chapter of the year award the overwhelming amount of support and opportunities i found by being involved have helped me learn how to succeed both in school and post-graduation said shpe member anais baca ‘21 shpe is a nationally recognized organization where hispanic engineers come together and build interpersonal relationships with alumni current students and companies this year texas a&m universitys chapter received the large chapter award which marks the second time they have received it since 2019 the award acknowledges the hard work and leadership of members officers and educators and the diversity in members of the hispanic community in the texas a&m college of engineering as a first-generation latina engineering student i have seen firsthand how having a diverse student body is essential to succeeding in both the academic and professional world baca said this news comes after texas a&m was recognized as a hispanic serving institution by the hispanic association of colleges and universities the members that make up the organization never cease to amaze me and are always there to lend a helping hand said joshua duarte president of shpe when members talk about the organization they bring up this idea of ‘familia and to be completely honest thats exactly what it is shpe has brought me my closest friends and people i can count on regardless of what is happening the organization has helped students through all aspects of life in and outside the classroom shpe hosts numerous events that encourage members to expose themselves to professional and leadership development service mental health and outreach the conventions themselves allow students to challenge themselves with professional and academic development through team-building competitions workshops with professionals working within the field and networking with members educators and business representatives my favorite memory in shpe would have to be competing in the extreme engineering competition at the 2018 shpe convention where i stayed up a full 24 hours to design and create a prototype for an innovative piece of furniture said anais not only was i able to discover my leadership style but i got to network with nine other shpe members across the nation texas a&ms chapter of shpe hosted the annual leadership development conference that could not have been possible without the joint effort of the entire shpe team as a senior mechanical engineering major my experience at (texas a&m) has been nothing short of amazing duarte said the memories and friendships i have made along the way are sure to stay with me throughout my lifetime
2330,"after a challenging year due to the covid-19 pandemic the national action council for minorities in engineering (nacme) hosted its 47th anniversary scholarship fundraising gala on thursday dec 2 and chose texas a&m university as one of six host sites the nonprofit organization set a goal of raising $1 million in just one night to support scholarships for underrepresented minority students traditionally held as an exclusive private black-tie event the coordination team wanted to create an avenue for a more accessible event that put donors with student recipients at localized watch-party events for the 2021 affair at each local event the attendees were tuned into a live-streamed in-person main event while being free to converse and network with donor company representatives these on-campus ""watch parties"" hosted students faculty members of nacme and representatives of corporate sponsors as a result their message of inclusiveness encapsulated the entire event ""these types of programs are so important for students because number one it gives them exposure and access that they may have not otherwise known about "" said crystal lassiter ups (united parcel service) vice president of buildings and systems engineering ""with nacme in particular you have more companies that support the students so it is a great opportunity to get introduced to you know the upss the hps (hewlett-packard) and bechtels of the world and to get an opportunity to start up your corporate career"""
2331,"nacme is the largest provider of college scholarships for underrepresented minorities pursuing degrees at engineering schools ""what we're hoping to do is to continue raising funds for the scholarships of which our universities are a proud partner "" said kevin g smith nacme's director of programs their partners also emphasize enabling students to be an integral part of their workforce ""it was important for us to really have something in place as a partnership to make sure that we were actually going to support underrepresented students in stem "" said kevin edwards chief diversity officer at bechtel corporation ""we're actually going to set ourselves up for the standpoint of talent long term and its our way of giving back"" the gala is an opportunity for students to network with members of the industry they want to pursue and seek opportunities through this experience students can learn how to promote themselves and really establish what will make them stand out to employers ""my story had a good start for success when i started asking questions "" senior chemical engineering student jose pena said ""the power of asking leads you somewhere always ask for opportunities always ask for more the worst thing to happen is no but the best you'll never know"""
2332,"after he graduates pena is set to work for exxon mobil's gulf coast growth venture participating in local research opportunities and internships pena was able to network with professionals and stay connected ""it's really important for students to just stay connected to employers in industries that they're interested in "" said tiffany washington talent acquisition in matching early careers manager for the bp americas region ""i always tell the students to continue coming back continue engaging with that company that you're interested in"" the exposure this event provided students also enables them to go out into the workforce with endless possibilities ""it's truly our vision of being able to create a workforce that looks very much like america the new engineering workforce "" smith said"
2333,since childhood aleida rios 91 has known her purpose to bring energy to the world in recognition of her engineering excellence rios was named an international fellow of the royal academy of engineers making her the first female of latin descent to receive this honor the academy began in 1976 with the support of prince phillip duke of edinburgh who became a senior fellow the fellowship honors only the most distinguished engineers and innovators in the united kingdom selecting a mere 50 fellows each year of which typically five or less are international i am very proud to be named an international fellow of such a prestigious organization rios said i will continue to pay it forward and support others with similar backgrounds who deserve to be acknowledged for their contributions to engineering a graduate of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university rios spent her early years in a small agricultural town in mexico although quaint the town only offered schooling through the fifth grade primarily due to a lack of running water or electricity it was there that rios family saw firsthand what energy and education access allowed immigrating to the us in search of better opportunities energy gives us so much we dont see she said the fact that we can have heated homes and light provides opportunities that other parts of the world dont have my ambition comes from a desire to improve peoples quality of life while simultaneously supporting greater access to science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) education for underrepresented groups
2334,rios family moved when she was only eight years old at the time she did not even know what engineering was but she dreamed of being the first in her family to attend university to help pay tuition her brother gave her his car so she could partake in an internship with her familys help rios became a first-generation student i had privilege and it may not sound like the kind of privilege that we talk about now rios said my privilege was a brother and a family willing to make sacrifices for my education my greatest achievement to date is receiving my engineering degree from texas a&m rios graduated with a chemical engineering degree immediately jumpstarting her career in the industry she has spent the last 30 years climbing the ladder at bp a leading engineering and energy company currently she is the senior vice president of engineering operating the engineering centre of expertise located in the united kingdom and the us where she oversees over 2 500 engineers stationed across the globe i am a frontline person by nature she said i've always enjoyed research and practical application of engineering theories and principles i feel humbled to have received my degree at texas a&m and for all of the places my aggie ring has taken me
2335,rios and her husband eduardo have three boys who have all attended university she joyfully recalls the day she dropped her son gabriel off to start his aggie engineering journey as a proud member of the class of 2022 it was such a special full-circle moment that i will never forget rios said i remember so clearly my mom dropping me off and i am happy to give my son what my family gave to me in 2019 rios received an outstanding alumni honor award from the texas a&m college of engineering she serves on bps supplier diversity council is chair of bp's women international networks globally and is active with the business resource groups to promote diversity and inclusion she was recognized by the financial times as ranking fifth among its top ethnic minority executives in 2018 hispanic executive magazine for being a stem advocate and the association of latino professionals for america and fortune magazine as the 10th most powerful latina in 2017 she is also a chemical engineering advisory board member where she actively promotes diversity efforts and provides industry insights rios and her family continue to put positive energy back into the world through scholarship endowments they hold at texas a&m a decorated engineer and family-oriented businesswoman rios has never lost sight of her why i'm a daughter a mother an engineer and a wife all of which help me in fulfilling my purpose and my why said rios as we sit in comfortable homes we forget that the best way to make a difference is by providing people with the necessities of heat light and mobility so others have access to the prosperity energy enables such as quality education to learn and grow that is and always will be my why
2336,dr mary beth d hueste was recently honored by the american concrete institute (aci) for her contributions to educating the next generation of engineers and her leadership in advancing the concrete industry through research and committee activitieshueste professor and associate department head for undergraduate programs in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university was presented with acis joe w kelly award for 2021established in 1974 the award recognizes the contributions of joe w kelly past president of the institute to concrete technology his devotion to teaching the advancement of his profession and the use of concrete in construction the award is given only for outstanding contributions to education in the broad field of concreteto be recognized with the joe w kelly award means a lot to me aci has supported my professional development for over 20 years and has allowed me to develop a wonderful professional network of colleagues from around the world hueste said i am truly honored to be recognized by aci with this awardhueste joined texas a&m in 1998 she is the major highway structures program manager and acting division head for the construction geotechnical and structures division within the texas a&m transportation institute she is an aci fellow and an aci technical activities committee member she has served on numerous committees and subcommittees and was most recently appointed to aci committee 318 structural concrete building codethrough my service on aci committees i have had opportunities to work with other professionals to make an impact on the concrete industry and the structural engineering profession hueste said aci has also provided a wonderful venue to share my research and stay up to date which helps me to be a better educator for my studentshueste's research interests include the earthquake-resistant design of reinforced concrete structures performance-based seismic design design and evaluation of prestressed concrete bridge structures and assessment of aging infrastructure she has authored or coauthored over 100 technical papers and reports she teaches courses in structural engineering including structural concrete design prestressed concrete design and advanced reinforced concrete design along with an undergraduate capstone design coursehueste received her bachelor of science from north dakota state university master of science from the university of kansas and doctorate from the university of michigan all in civil engineering she is a licensed professional engineer in kansas and texas
2337,"researchers compared measured asphalt binder properties and corresponding asphalt mixture cracking performance parameters in a recent study the results verified the ability of the binder properties to capture significant engineering effects that are especially relevant as recycling efforts continue to increase due to strong economic and environmental motivational forcesdr amy epps martin professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university is a co-author for the paper relationship between rheological indices and cracking performance of virgin recycled and rejuvenated asphalt binders and mixtures that recently won the kb woods award from the transportation research board (trb)co-authors on the paper include fawaz kaseer a pavement design engineer at the michigan department of transportation and edith arámbula-mercado a research engineer at the texas a&m transportation institute the award will be presented at the 101st annual trb meeting in washington dc in january 2022it is a great honor for our research to be given this award as it represents selection from approximately 500 papers submitted for consideration to the transportation infrastructure group that includes 56 technical committees of the transportation research board "" epps martin saidthe kb woods award is given annually by the trb for an outstanding paper published on the design and construction of transportation facilities it honors the 19th chairman of the highway research board who was professor emeritus of civil engineering at purdue university and active in the affairs of the board throughout his career"
2338,mechanical engineering graduate student shadi shariatnia was recently awarded the 2021-22 college of engineering outstanding graduate student award at texas a&m university the award is reserved for students who demonstrate exceptional dedication and tenacity in their research and academic studies shariatnia obtained her bachelors and masters degrees in mechanical engineering from ferdowsi university in iran in 2014 and the university of houston in 2016 respectively prior to beginning her phd shariatnia co-founded a medical device startup ictero medical which provides the first minimally invasive and definitive treatment for high-risk patients with gallstone disease working alongside renowned experts in such a highly specialized environment inspired her to further her education thats why i decided to get my phd said shariatnia not only for the technical expertise but also for the other skillsets you develop along the way throughout her time as a student shariatnia served as a member and treasurer of the mechanical engineering female graduate student organization she also was an executive team member in the graduate consulting club where she began to learn the ins and outs of management consulting working on pro bono projects
2339,shariatnia researched under advisor dr dorrin jarrahbashi in the computational thermo-fluids lab and co-advisor dr amir asadi in the polymer composites advanced manufacturing lab her work focuses on developing bottom-up nanofabrication techniques to fabricate multi-material systems with engineered properties as materials and structures become more specialized so does the need to innovate and improve the functionalities within these systems with the support of her advisors shariatnia developed a novel atomization system for targeted delivery of nanoparticle carrier droplets and their goal is to engineer the self-assembly of nano-colloids within each droplet to achieve the desired shape and properties in the final deposited nanostructure her work has numerous applications in functional coatings 3d printing and electronics manufacturing despite the advances shes made in her academic research she credits her doctoral journey for helping her grow not only as a student of engineering but of life the main thing i learned from my phd is how to learn explained shariatnia the irony is that at the end of your doctoral journey you finally realize how little you actually know after graduating shariatnia will join amazons lab 126 the research and development team that designs computer hardware as a product design engineer shell be working in an innovative and fast-paced environment ive always been passionate about developing new technologies said shariatnia ive always valued working on projects that will at some point improve peoples quality of life
2340,rohith karthikeyan a doctoral student in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the best student paper award by the augmented cognition technical group (actg) of the human factors and ergonomics society (hfes) karthikeyan presented his paper visuospatial working memory under fatigue: observations with cerebral hemodynamics and heart rate variability at the 65th international annual hfes meeting in baltimore maryland in october co-authors include connor johnson and joshua carrizales two 2021 graduates from the department of biomedical engineering both of whom were mentored by karthikeyan through the aggie challenge project hosted by the neuroergonomics lab karthikeyans paper focuses on understanding cognitive fatigue particularly when humans perform tasks for long periods of time he also aims to understand how to predict human fatigue and intervene ahead of time when symptoms of fatigue are observable it was quite special being recognized this way i started working in this specific domain (human factors) in 2019 and this was my first time both attending a human factors conference and specifically contributing karthikeyan said i am a mechanical engineer and my training is mostly in robotics but to attend this conference and talk about my research in person after such a long hiatus and being recognized in that way was special karthikeyans doctoral research focuses on understanding counteracting and predicting mental fatigue his broader research interests include human augmentation across cognitive physical and collaborative interactions in human-human and human-robot systems his present focus is on identifying the physiological representations of cognitive fatigue toward personalized and fieldable neuroadaptive systems karthikeyan is a graduate research assistant in the neuroergonomics lab in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering he received his masters in mechanical engineering from texas a&m and his bachelors in mechanical engineering from bms college of engineering in bengaluru india he had the opportunity to work with dr ranjana mehta associate professor in industrial and systems engineering early on in his masters program in 2017 this experience motivated his curiosity toward human behavior and interaction within complex systems and his eventual transition to research in human factors with the neuroergonomics laboratory i think human behavior under off-normal states such as fatigue is fascinating and there remain many unknowns i hope my research will bring more clarity and operationally significant solutions to the fatigue problem in emergency response karthikeyan said his anticipated graduation date is spring 2022 and he aspires to lead a career in academia he is a college of engineering teaching fellow and a recipient of the fellowship for preparing future faculty in mechanical engineering for 2021-22 i am a mechanical engineering student working with a laboratory in industrial engineering engaged in health and human systems research so this was like a vote of confidence that im going to take forward in how i do my research karthikeyan said
2341,the covid 19 pandemic unearthed numerous weaknesses in the global supply chain the industrial distribution industry is still dealing with the effects of shutdowns and stalled operations followed by a rapid spike in demand distributors cant get inventory manufacturers cant get supplies and both are facing major shipping delays and increased costs toss in a labor shortage and the need for a more skilled workforce and the current supply chain problems can seem insurmountable were currently seeing a bullwhip effect in the supply chain: small ripples toward the end but as you come closer to the whip or distributor the ripples are larger says dr malini natarajarathinam associate professor of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university when customers increase their orders this provides the first smaller ripples signaling a change to the distributors vendors also throw their own ripples into the mix by believing the demand is more than it may be due to this effect the changes become bigger as the supply chain goes on so with changing customer demand and the access to supply being limited the effects seem very pronounced explains natarajarathinam a seamless supply chain is making supply meet demand but right now we have a change in supply and a change in demand its a perfect storm
2342,the importance of people natarajarathinam and craig conrad senior lecturer of engineering technology and industrial distribution and 40-year veteran of the electronics industry both believe the human element the engagement with vendors and customers as well as the recruitment and training of new employees will be a major contributor to propelling companies past the current global supply chain disruption
2343,vendors and suppliers natarajarathinam says that industrial distributors and suppliers have always fostered quality relationships with each other but now is the time to enhance those relationships although you still have to engage with some companies virtually having a close ear to what suppliers are thinking and doing means distributors are prepared and not just waiting for things to happen she says if any part of the supply chain can do this its industrial distributors because that was one of their biggest core competencies in the past: their engagement and how they built relationships and trust with their suppliers natarajarathinam believes its more important than ever to make sure all relationships in the supply chain are strong vendors and suppliers should talk to each other about their production goals and forecasts what they have coming and how this information aligns
2344,customers natarajarathinam also encourages distributors to take this relationship-building a step further and begin engaging more directly with customers these relationships will provide key insights into forecasting so distributors arent left scrambling if their customers change an order unexpectedly when youre planning you want to engage with customers to figure out what theyre going to want she says these honest conversations can help distributors in an instance where theyre not able to provide a certain product due to the current supply chain issues there are so many strategies you can take to smooth that situation out if you know in advance what the customer is expecting she says natarajarathinam poses that engagement and conversations with customers will provide deeper visibility into their operations and wants respectively
2345,current and future employees given the uptick in digitalization across the industry companies are seeing a decreased need for manual labor replaced by an increased need for complex technical skills the labor shortage is directly related to the global supply chain disruption currently rocking the industry and solving it is critical for long-term success in the wake of this chaos distributors will need employees who can help their businesses succeed into the future right now people are training on the job for all the new changes but when we get to that steady state we need people who can come in ready and that should be a priority for companies too says natarajarathinam conrad says companies should also focus on better understanding the wants and needs of their future employees so they can do a better job at attracting new skilled talent there are many jobs where flexibility is going to be very important to the employee but companies are underestimating how much of a big deal this is going to be he adds that this altered landscape of working also has a dramatic impact on management motivating employees hiring and promoting incentivizing and training i think many companies managed a hybrid or remote environment as an emergency tactic because of covid but how do you do this on a sustainable basis conrad thinks that the long-term effects on the business are what companies need to focus on just as much as their current supply chain needs
2346,a student start-up venture at texas a&m university recently was awarded $23 million from the national institutes of health to support the growth of their product a digital platform that connects families looking for senior care to elder care professionals the team has been developing the concept and technology of olera since early 2020 they participated in the 2020 national science foundation i-corps program which allowed them to conduct more than 100 interviews with family caregivers and experts in the elder care ecosystem with the small business innovation research grant which is housed under the national institute on aging tokunbo (tj) falohun biomedical engineering doctoral student and olera ceo said the team can continue to work toward making their vision a reality receiving the news of that grant gave fuel to what we felt like was an already promising journey falohun said it essentially made it very real and gave us the platform that we're going to turn this into something that's even bigger than any of us initially envisioned it's an amazing opportunity oleras goal is to be a digital platform website and mobile application for family caregivers navigating elder care the platform will connect them to experts in the elder care system while also providing information on why that expert might be valuable in specific scenarios there are so many things that can save a lot of time and headache for people that they just don't know and rightfully so falohun said so far the team has worked with small groups to ask where the pain points are in the elder care system going into 2022 the plan is to expand the number of caregivers to test the capabilities of the platform oleras members come from diverse backgrounds and majors which jeswin vennatt first-year medical school student and chief marketing officer for olera said is necessary with this kind of complex problem the kind of problems that we have in this day and age are specialized to the point that you need more than one person's expertise vennatt said an aggregation of individuals that have a lifetime's worth of expertise makes a big difference in the interdisciplinary problems that we see like in elder care olera was born out of sling health a texas a&m student-run health care accelerator that brings together health care professionals and students from numerous university programs to develop and commercialize solutions to real-world problems to learn more about the project check out oleras website the team would like to thank the following entities who have interacted with olera in some way: center for population health and aging department of biomedical engineering sling health mcferrin center for entrepreneurship the college of engineering mays business school texas a&m health science center
2347,the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university hosted their annual pitch up! competition giving undergraduate aerospace engineering students the opportunity to showcase their technical work and receive feedback on their presentation skills based on the three minute thesis (3mt) competition pitch up! challenged the students to effectively communicate their work on a technical project in three minutes the students presented their work to a panel of judges that included individuals with technical and non-technical backgrounds senior isaac andrews won first place and $250 for his presentation on the optimization of an aircraft wing second place and a $150 prize went to junior daniel sanchez for his presentation on adaptive structures for supersonic aircraft senior trevor weidner took third place and $100 with a presentation on spacecraft which simulates space missions in virtual reality
2348,over 30 million people in the united states have diabetes approximately 105% of the countrys population with 15 million new diagnoses made each year and an estimated annual cost exceeding $300 billion because of the acute and severe consequences of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) the fear of it often leads to less aggressive insulin therapy ultimately increasing the long-term exposure of hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) in order to optimize the management of diabetes the long-term risks associated with hyperglycemia must be balanced with the risks for hypoglycemia dr madhav erraguntla associate professor of practice in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and dr balakrishna haridas professor of practice in the department of biomedical engineering are working to develop a prediction model for hypoglycemic events that has a low false-alert rate is highly sensitive and specific and can be applied to new patients and to new time periods the main motivation for this research is to explore ways to further improve predictive performance of hypoglycemia to reduce the rate of false alarms early detection of impending hypoglycemic events based on continuous glucose monitoring (cgm) readings with high sensitivity and specificity and low false alarm rates can help patients with diabetes better manage hypoglycemia and their overall health erraguntla said the accurate hypoglycemia alerts proposed by the team will allow patients to better manage diabetes by reducing the fear of hypoglycemia the research was performed on de-identified retrospective data ie data already in existence the research team obtained cgm datasets from 110 pediatric patients with type 1 diabetes over the course of 30 to 90 days the data was comprised of over 16 million cgm values under normal living conditions and analyzed using machine-learning algorithms instead of focusing on all hypoglycemic events the team focused on sustained hypoglycemic events defined as glucose values less than 70 mg/deciliter for at least 15 minutes focusing on persistent events rather than transient events led to better model performance in prior research the team developed a machine learning algorithm that detects hypoglycemia 30 minutes in advance using cgm readings the team was able to achieve sensitivity (true positive rate) and specificity rates (true negative rate) of more than 90% accuracy however due to a small number of hypoglycemic events compared with non-hypoglycemic events even this relatively high sensitivity and specificity can lead to false-alert rates of around 80% which can result in patients taking unnecessary actions to avoid hypoglycemia improving specificity in such highly imbalanced situations will reduce the false-alert rate and therefore improve user experience and trust in the alerts the machine-learning model ultimately developed accurately predicted sustained events with more than 97% sensitivity and specificity for time frames of both 30 and 60 minutes into the future the false-alert rate was kept to less than 25% compared to around 80% when focused on all hypoglycemic events in other words only one out of four alerts are potentially false compared to four out of five alerts being false before an additional benefit is that while the model focused on sustained hypoglycemic events more than 61% of the transient hypoglycemic events are still detected as false positives by the model the results of this research take us one more step closer to effectively managing diabetes and the huge burden it places on our health care erraguntla said
2349,scientists use tools on the ground and in space to observe the earths processes uncovering information about the ongoings below and above our planets surface the study of geodesy can inform us about anything from earthquake damage to statewide droughts by measuring the earths properties over time as you observe changes in the gravitational field over time you can see whats happening with the mass on earth whats changing where its shifting said dr felipe guzman associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university for example by measuring the gravitational field around the poles scientists have observed a reduction in mass indicative of melting ice caps the mass of that water is being redistributed showing a higher gravitational field across the oceans data like these inform experts across scientific fields influence policy and continue global discussions guzman is working on the future of geodesy by advancing technology that enables these types of critical observations he is working on three projects with a collaborative research center terra-q in hannover germany through a mercator fellowship the respected international fellowship supports long-term project-based collaboration between researchers and is awarded by the german research foundation to researchers who have made meaningful contributions in the field this is guzmans second mercator fellowship now we know and we understand that our current approach has its limitations and can be improved and a lot of that starts at improving technology said guzman the goal of terra-q is to elevate instruments and measurement systems through quantum-based geodesy the first of three projects guzman is involved in is developing atom-interferometric gravimeters which are quantum measurement systems based on cold atoms by merging his groups optomechanical systems with atom interferometers developed by a group in germany they can create a more effective system to measure gravitational acceleration atom interferometers are highly sensitive to environmental noise and vibrations currently the system in germany is constrained to a room rather than being used in the field as intended and relies on a large vibration isolation platform turns out the mechanical sensors we developed in my group are very sensitive and they measure those types of vibrations and seismic noise very well said guzman we can incorporate these sensors into their atom interferometers so that the size decreases and these atom interferometers become more portable the atom interferometers are also limited to measuring slow phenomena while guzmans optomechanical sensors can measure higher frequencies conversely the optomechanical systems drift away over time whereas the atom interferometer does not and holds the advantage in long-term observations
2350,the second project focuses on developing compact laser interferometers to measure the motion of mechanical systems with extremely high precision guzman plans to help the research team in germany set up a system like the one in his research lab at texas a&m which allowed his group to measure their optomechanical sensors in turn the research team in germany will help guzman improve the measurement capabilities for interferometers itll be a really close interaction and thats sort of the vision of this type of fellowship to have a very close interaction and do things together said guzman the third project involves developing a torsion balance which is a large sensitive system that can be used to measure small accelerations and small forces allowing researchers to isolate inertial phenomena because our little optomechanical accelerometers are so sensitive its hard to characterize how good they are because they measure everything he explained we want to mount our accelerometers and use it as a test platform to isolate them from environmental noise overall the goal is to enhance and create technologies that tap into areas of physics that scientists are not currently using to enable new types of measurements for guzman personally its also an opportunity to expand the horizons and applicability of his research to me its an opportunity to extend the impact of the research we do and it gives me an opportunity to work on projects that im interested in with people that i know and work well with so that just makes it more fun he said upon receiving his doctorate from the max planck institute for gravitational physics in hannover germany guzman was awarded a nasa postdoctoral program fellowship with the gravitational astrophysics laboratory at the nasa goddard space flight center later he joined the joint quantum institute with the national institute of standards and technology and the university of maryland he also led a research group at the german space agency in collaboration with the university of bremen before moving on to a faculty position at the university of arizona he is also principal investigator for the texas a&m groups with the ligo scientific collaboration (laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory) and the lisa consortium (laser interferometer space antenna) groups these institutions among others are all involved in the terra-q these are people that i have known and worked with for over 15 years and its great to find ways to continue those relationships and also now to involve my students and offer them the experience to really get to know other institutions how people work in other places and get them involved in these types of big projects said guzman he is hopeful this collaborative effort will expand the impact of his groups research and is equally looking forward to what this experience could mean for his students
2351,if youve ever received a scholarship financial aid or tuition assistance you know that no gift is ever too small whether its $5 or $50 000 any amount can transform a students learning experience and help ease the financial burden of higher education nobody understands this better than former student tanner frisby who recently gave back to the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university its first gift ever you know a hundred dollars is nothing compared to what ive abundantly gained in experience and resources as an undergraduate and graduate student said frisby when the association of former students reached out i decided to pledge $100 as a student frisby was a member of the formula society of automotive engineers team where student teams design build and race a single-person open-wheeled racecar against other teams from across the world i know what its like to have to drum up the thousands of dollars every year said frisby the university provides so many resources but they dont provide any capital thats up to the students frisby was working at a small oil and gas company and had already relocated out of aggieland by the time he began his graduate degree with his employers encouragement frisby was able to complete his graduate degree while working full time something that was made possible with distance learning frisby received his bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and began his graduate career as a mechanical engineering major until he realized he might not be eligible for enough online courses to complete his degree plan by declaring his masters in interdisciplinary engineering frisby was able to construct his own degree plan by picking and choosing courses from any and every department across the college of engineering his degree was tailored to his needs and included courses in mechanical engineering petroleum engineering and industrial and systems engineering the interdisciplinary curriculum that i got gave me a lot of breadth and depth that im still using in my day-to-day job where i work on vehicular forensic analysis said frisby after graduation frisby reached out to multidisciplinary engineering department head dr timothy jacobs to figure out how he could support the department there wasnt a piece of laboratory equipment or a set of textbooks he could buy but the emerging department was still growing and eager for any assistance offered and with the associations guidance and the texas a&m foundation's help frisby was able to specify which department he wanted to directly support then with a flourish of a signature he had donated the departments very first gift
2352,"dr jodie l lutkenhaus professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is the recipient of the 2022 edith and peter odonnell award in engineering from the academy of medicine engineering and science of texas (tamest) she was chosen for her innovation and development of redox-active polymers for metal-free energy storage and smart coatings the edith and peter odonnell awards annually recognize rising texas researchers who are addressing the essential role that science and technology play in society and whose work meets the highest standards of exemplary professional performance creativity and resourcefulness lutkenhaus is receiving this award alongside dr sarbajit banerjee professor in the department of chemistry who is the recipient of the 2022 edith and peter odonnell award in science by developing new molecular-scale characterization methods lutkenhaus discovered fundamental connections among polymer dynamics properties and performance specifically through the use of electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring she developed new ways to closely observe the response of polymers in some of the most challenging environments in 2021 she and her collaborator dr karen wooley professor in the department of chemistry demonstrated the world's first biodegradable peptide battery these types of discoveries have led to new designs for metal-free organic batteries that will address societys needs for materials that are earth-abundant and recyclable or degradable her concept of a 100% polymer battery which would steer battery production away from cobalt and other precious metals has the potential to charge and discharge much faster than traditional versions imagine a battery you never have to throw away one that does not depend on precious metals to work and charges more efficiently than conventional methods said nominator dr mark a barteau professor in the chemical engineering department this rapid charging technology could dramatically change the way batteries are developed and how things like electric vehicles are used today we are just astounded at the ingenuity and innovation dr lutkenhaus shows on a daily basis and are thankful to have her leadership here at texas a&m mentoring the next generation of groundbreaking researchers"" lutkenhaus is one of four texas-based researchers receiving the tamest awards each are chosen for their individual contributions addressing the essential role that science and technology play in society and whose work meets the highest standards of exemplary professional performance creativity and resourcefulness dr lutkenhaus and her team of multidisciplinary researchers are transforming the way we look at the future of batteries and energy storage said dr david e daniel tamest board president we are honored to award her with the 2022 edith and peter odonnell award in engineering for opening up a whole new metal-free world of powered wearable implantable electric devices and more we cant wait to see what reusable and even sprayable batteries will enter the market in the next 10 years thanks to her research lutkenhaus will be recognized at the 2022 edith and peter odonnell awards ceremony on jan 12 2022 and will give a presentation on her research preceding the award ceremony at the tamest 2022 annual conference forward texas imperatives for health in san antonio at the westin riverwalk hotel"
2353,ahmed hamada a graduate student and phd candidate in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university has been numerically researching how varying the shape of buoys affects the power generating capabilities of point wave energy converters (pwec) his paper was presented at the 2021 society of naval architects and marine engineers (sname) maritime convention having obtained his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from cairo university in egypt hamadas background in fluid dynamics led him to pursue his graduate degree with faculty advisor dr mirjam fürth ocean engineering assistant professor energy harvesting is a hotspot in academia and industry due to climate change and fossil fuels said hamada under the blue economy countries want to improve renewable energy especially offshore wind turbines and wave energy as hamada explained moving water has the potential to produce high volumes of energy however one underutilized area of renewable energy is wave energy pwecs generate electricity through the natural rocking motion of ocean waves they absorb energy at a single point and consist of a buoy structure (the part that moves with the waves) and a subsurface component attached to the seabed nevertheless with five common shapes for the buoy structure hamada asked the question: which shape is most effective in terms of maximizing energy output to answer this hamada modeled 3d simulations of each shape in various sea conditions in openfoam using unsteady reynolds averaged navier-stokes equations with the finite volume method in doing so he investigated the lift drag forces amplitudes and frequencies for each shape from there he calculated each shapes efficiency in energy harvesting through researching the displacements frequency and design parameters numerically hamada was able to determine that the spheroid buoy shape was optimal for maximizing energy output the shape is very similar to an american football he said like a football where the shape was chosen because of efficiency in terms of aerodynamic forces when throwing the ball the same concepts can be applied to ocean engineering and fluid dynamic forces hamada went on to explain that having a chance to showcase his work in front of industry and academic leaders at the maritime convention allowed him to not only practice his presentation skills but also gave him a chance to receive vital feedback from experts some sname members asked questions or gave pointers that will help to guide the future of his research additionally he said that hes excited to be working in a realm of engineering that places him at the forefront of the energy transition and blue economy movements two emerging areas of the economy that are not only impactful for innovation but to environmental sustainability i feel like i'm building for the next generation because what i'm doing right now will affect society and will help academia and industry move to the next phase of renewable energy he said our work in energy harvesting is not only related to power and electricity but also to saving our environment
2354,"dr teddy james hirsch professor emeritus in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university passed away nov 10he leaves behind a legacy that impacted the transportation industry leading research teams to many life-saving innovations in highway safety including the breakaway signpost that gives on collision crash cushions in front of concrete freeway abutments median guard rails and more he also was a leading-edge researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) from 1956 until his retirement in 1992in lieu of flowers donations can be made to the dr teddy j and mary j munson hirsch scholarship at the texas a&m foundation 401 george bush dr college station texas 77840 whether mailing a check or giving online please write: ""apply this donation to the dr teddy j and mary j munson hirsch memorial scholarship fund""a celebration of life for hirsch was held sunday nov 21 and streamed onlinea lifelong texan hirsch received his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from texas a&m in 1952 while an undergraduate student he earned the top engineering student achievement award and was a member of the aggie corps of cadets following his graduation he went to work for hb zachry construction co in san antonio with zachry's help he prepared a bid for a new longer runway for faster high-speed jets at bergstrom air base in austin and won the jobhirsch returned to texas a&m for his master's degree after receiving a scholarship from humble oil co it was during his masters he met his future wife and lifelong partner mary jane munson after receiving his masters in 1953 hirsch went to work for humble oil drilling oil wells on king ranch near mexico but after only a month he was called to active-duty military service in the us army corps of engineers hirsch completed a 19-month tour in korea where he was promoted to first lieutenant and became company commander of ""a"" company in the 493rd engineering construction battalion in inchon south koreaupon president dwight eisenhower's passage of the new interstate highway bill in 1956 tti and texas a&m called hirsch to join the civil engineering department to help design the massive project with it they offered him a scholarship to earn his phd hirsch and mary jane returned to bryan/college station her hometown where they settled and raised their four children mary k jim bobby and sarahhirsch dedicated his career to teaching civil engineering at texas a&m he served as associate head and interim head of the civil engineering department during some of those years he also served as the head of the structural engineering division in the department and at ttihirsch traveled to europe several times to be the principal speaker at conferences to present the latest guard rail and other highway safety innovations to engineers worldwide in his study of human tolerance to impact and acceleration he also developed better safety for evacuating oil-rig platforms in the turbulent north sea even after retirement hirsch was frequently called to analyze guardrail bridge and other structural failures and serve as an expert witness in trials after the tragic 1999 collapse of the aggie bonfire stack hirsch became a principal source of explanations to the media including texas monthly and dateline nbchirsch earned many awards for his tireless work improving highway safety and for community service including the paul gray hoffman award by the institute of transportation engineers (1968); texas a&m faculty distinguished achievement award (1969); outstanding faculty award – texas a&m university student engineering council (1983); among many other awards and recognitions throughout his career he also was recognized with the departments distinguished graduate award in 2001 dozens of publications and reports written by hirsch with his distinguished colleagues and closest friends at tti many of which have obtained us patents have been adopted by highway departments across the us and the worldread the full tribute and life of dr teddy hirsch"
2355,is it possible to smell covid-19 the secureamerica institute (sai) and the texas a&m university system collaborated with worlds enterprises inc and the us air force to answer that question last november with the worlds protect breathalyzer kiosk which uses artificial intelligence to smell or detect covid-19 on an exhaled breath the next step is to make this technology even more accessible with funding from the us navy sai plans to explore different ways to ruggedize the worlds protect kiosk so that the technology can be robust enough to function in harsh environments military deployed in regions that are hot and dry or even on ships dealing with the constant jostling motions caused by the ocean must be able to rely on these devices to work correctly the kiosk might not look like a kiosk anymore said chris holshouser sai director of applied programs and strategic partnerships we have to be able to accommodate sand salt and different conditions that the new sensor package is going to be exposed to so that means were looking at options such as miniaturization to deploy the technology so it can survive and function as if it were in a controlled environment miniaturization will expand where and how the worlds protect technology can be embedded such as right into military helmets this opens a path forward to incorporating covid-19 detection technology into wearables or even handheld metabolic breath systems dr david staack associate professor of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university collaborated with worlds enterprises inc to develop the original kiosk prototype which requires a person to use a disposable straw to blow into a copper inlet in less than a minute test results with accuracy comparable to a polymerase chain reaction (pcr) test can be sent to someones smartphone before the delta variant we started to think there was no longer a demand or urgency for our technology said holshouser but with delta and now omicron weve realized the need for this technology is not slowing down we need the ability to rapidly screen and you dont get any faster than this although the sai team is deconstructing the original worlds protect prototype to create more accessible versions of it such as a version for use in heating ventilation and air conditioning (hvac) systems the kiosk still has its uses particularly because it produces results as accurate as the well-known pcr tests as a result sai is working with elbit systems to further commercialize it for use in places where people congregate such as college campuses and amusement parks the technology might also eventually be used to detect things beyond covid-19 such as the flu or other health indicators like fatigue this technology is a game changer and demonstrates the secureamerica institutes commitment to fast forwarding the lab-to-commercialization process said rob gorham sai executive director the public-private model has once again proven to be successful in optimizing team dynamics to make this a reality in 2022 sai is opening a new facility on the rellis campus where they will continue the important work of finding innovative solutions to new questions and problems
2356,if youre interested in forming a strategic partnership or wish to work together to solve the next rapid production challenge reach out to chris holshouser at cholshouser@tamuedu
2357,the nuclear energy university program (neup) developed by the united states department of energy (doe) offers fellowships and scholarships to nuclear science and engineering students who desire to advance nuclear power as a resource jadyn reis 20 a doctoral student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university was awarded a fellowship through the doe to further her academic career after hearing a ted talk about nuclear engineering i was interested in the niche that comes from a smaller field said reis it seemed like the more i researched nuclear engineering the better it became and i found a passion for being part of the movement toward advanced nuclear power reis enjoys expanding her horizons and exceeding expectations especially in academia she finished her associates degree while still in high school although initially part of the class of 2021 she graduated a year early and began her doctoral studies i decided to pursue engineering when i began the early college program she said i found it hard to focus while in classes that lacked challenges i was always excited to find new solutions to math and science problems a native of houston reis was inspired to attend texas a&m after discovering it had one of the most extensive nuclear engineering programs in the country by choosing to be an aggie she was able to stay close to home and follow her desired degree path as a participant in the fellowship she has determined her area of research which focuses on strengthening predictive capabilities of heat transfer correlations in molten salt through experimental and computational data being a neup fellow provides me with a network of like-minded people who share my passion and make me excited for the future of nuclear power said reis upon graduation she plans to work in the nuclear engineering industry to design advanced reactors capable of bringing nuclear engineering into the future reis is involved with the american nuclear society and conducts her graduate research in the thermal hydraulics laboratory she recently held an internship with terrapower gaining hands-on experience in fabricating nuclear reactors in the upcoming year reis will have the chance to present her studies in beijing china and brussels belgium
2358,the texas a&m university engineering advisory council (eac) has established the dr m katherine banks endowed chair in engineering in honor of the former vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering and current president of texas a&m the eac met on nov 5 and surprised banks with the news of the established endowed chair in her honor an endowed chair is the highest academic award the college can bestow on a faculty member and distributions from this endowment will be used to support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the holder the council members wanted to honor banks for all that she had done for the college of engineering during her time as vice chancellor and dean and thought that the establishment of an endowed chair would allow for her legacy to be carried on for years to come i speak for all of our members both individually and collectively when i say that dr banks impact on the texas a&m college of engineering has truly been profound and her accomplishments have changed its trajectory for decades to come said darryl heath chairman of the eac from the day she arrived at texas a&m more than nine years ago her passion and vision her understanding of our aggie core values and her ability to drive excellence for our students and professors have been unparalleled as dean banks led one of the largest engineering schools in the country with 20 800 students and 700 faculty she was also the director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station overseeing research administration technology commercialization and technology workforce development she is a member of the national academy of engineering and a fellow of the american society of civil engineers she leads the texas a&m university system national laboratory engagement and serves as a board member and principal executive engaged with triad national security llc for the management and operation of los alamos national laboratory banks is also the principal investigator for the recent $65 million cooperative agreement with the army research laboratory the idea of giving back is an important aspect of what it means to be an aggie it is fundamental to the values of texas a&m and its former students over the years the greatest leaders have focused on serving others and working toward a vision that is greater than self said eac member dennis seith this idea of servant leadership is not new but in kathy banks we have been blessed with a great servant leader who has led us to invest in the next generation of engineering students and has truly moved texas a&m to be one of the top engineering and research schools in the country
2359,faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president for development
2360,the digital era has transformed the future of manufacturing in texas and across the nation stressing a need to embed emerging smart technologies like advanced robotics and augmented reality into areas such as defense manufacturing recently members of the texas a&m university system formed a consortium with numerous partners to help meet this need and place texas at the forefront of aerospace manufacturingin 2020 the department of defense (dod) created the defense manufacturing community (dmc) support program by the office of local defense community cooperation to support consortiums as defense manufacturing communities that strengthen the national security industrial base through this program the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) was one of five teams awarded grants totaling about $25 million for the second round in 2021 their grant supports a $6 947 453 project to establish the texas defense aerospace manufacturing community (tdamc) tees will lead this five-year program through the secureamerica institute (sai) the institute will inject targeted smart manufacturing skills and technologies into the diverse manufacturing portfolio of the texas defense aerospace manufacturing ecosystem the goal is to deliver outcomes in the areas of workforce development structured networking and supply chain development policy and economic development and research and infrastructurewe were looking to do something where we could serve as a state agency and use our convening power to try to grow manufacturing initiatives and identify new customers new opportunities new programming things that were less traditional college-type projects said rob gorham sai executive director not just looking at how to make the manufacturing process better but how to make manufacturing as an industry betterthe national association of manufacturers says for every $1 spent in manufacturing $279 is returned back to the economy gorham said this shows how much of an economic driver it is the future of manufacturing especially aerospace manufacturing that texas leads by a large margin is going to depend on these next-generation technologiesfor this project gorham and sai teamed up with the texas a&m engineering extension service known for workforce training and professional development to form a collaboration with tees workforce development texas a&m engineering and numerous other partners throughout texas the brazos valley economic development corporation (bvedc) was a co-applicant for the grant and will serve as a community partner of tees the bvedc will organize and manage various regionalization activities and interact with local economic development organizations from across the state to support the tdamc leveraging the assets of those communities to assist in awareness talent and business retention and expansion partnerships between state institutions and economic development organizations can prove extremely productive and partnering with tees from our communitys standpoint will enhance efforts for the defense and aerospace industries said matt prochaska bvedc president and ceo this is an example of how were building an ecosystem to serve an industry and increase our states competitivenessgorham said they looked for a region involved in industry that included demographics with different variables where they could deploy the smart manufacturing for this they chose the texas triangle (the region consisting of the dallas-fort worth houston san antonio and austin metropolitan areas) and the gulf coast 75 miles inward all the way down to the rio grande valley here the tdamc aims to infuse smart manufacturing tools and processes into the region to solidify texas leadership role in the global aerospace manufacturing economy and beyond currently there are only 11 of these dod dmc designations in the nation including the one with tees which is the only one in texas gorham said this designation could also open up the state to many other opportunities now and in the future because of the designation it's putting us in competitive positions for new programming coming out of the federal government he said it's also allowing us to use our designation as proof that we have the capability at tees to reach into different regions across the state and to start working on some of these mission-driven needs that we have at a state levelat this early stage the consortium team is working on a handful of deliverables to provide to the dod including a detailed execution plan they have created a 10-step plan with specific tasks to accomplish tdamc objectives across the three phases: initialize develop and deploy and refine and scale to help with this plan they will create a threat-casting exercise where they project the state of texas and the specified region 10 years into the future trying to imagine what things like energy transportation and aerospace manufacturing will look likeaerospace is our topic so that'll be what we're most focused on gorham said and from there well start to identify existing gaps that are going to depend on the adoption of smart manufacturing for us to be able to realize a future that we're defining so that's going to be an awesome opportunity for us to really project and help the community get to that future state in a successful waygorham said the program would continue to position texas as a leader in manufacturing especially in aerospace instead of trying to chip away at adoption of these next-generation technologies at the individual company level it will bring manufacturers together to understand what standards and technical gaps exist and economic considerations that need to be thought through in the end gorham adds that just like google made peoples lives easier by understanding how to find information that's relevant to the questions being asked he hopes the consortium theyre building is going to serve the same way except with manufacturing in mind there's so much manufacturing information out there there's good information there's misinformation there's confusion on how we embrace and adopt these new processes there's also competition between service providers and equipment providers and confusion around how to integrate processes into factories and production operations he said that's what we're going to help try to bring clarity to instead of everyone trying to figure that out for themselves we want to sort of standardize the approach and the answers so that everyone can make a decision from an equal playing ground and we think that's a huge value proposition
2361,"weather-related delays can cause significant challenges and financial losses to the road-construction process two undergraduate mechanical engineering students seek to reduce the impact of these delays by developing a solution with the support of the national science foundations (nsf) innovation corps (i-corps) program pepito thelly and rami ayari both seniors in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university interviewed 30 industry stakeholders over a six-week period to learn more about the challenges to road construction presented by weather delays as part of their i-corps experience the experience was impactful as it gave them the opportunity to build relationships in a professional environment as they worked toward furthering their project ""through this program we were able to further develop our entrepreneurial and professional skills "" thelly said ""we became much more comfortable speaking with industry experts building a business model and managing a project budget"" ayari said getting to network and interact with industry stakeholders was an invaluable experience which in addition to the feedback they received on their idea proved to be a benefit to their personal development the project itself benefitted greatly from the results of the industry stakeholder interviews too refocusing thelly and ayari's approach to the project in a different and ultimately more impactful direction the duo is now focused on pursuing a method of keeping construction moving in instances where progress would otherwise be inhibited by weather delays ""the most important thing we learned was the importance of going out and actually speaking to people affected by this problem "" thelly said ""at the end of the day we can sit around a table discussing many solutions to many problems but without actually getting input from individuals directly affected by those problems we won't even know if we're solving the right problems"" having learned more from stakeholders who deal with the effects of weather-related delays to road construction ayari said he is surprised that a widespread or effective solution has not yet been identified given the loss in both money and time for stakeholders ""i believe that this issue is an all-too-common problem faced by pedestrians drivers contractors workers and project owners alike "" ayari said ""anyone who has driven before has faced the ramifications of delayed road construction and the inconveniences it causes"" the duo is using the funding they have received through the nsf i-corps program to develop a prototype they can use to begin testing the effectiveness of their design if successful they hope it can reduce the costs associated with weather delays in road construction as they continue their work they plan to apply to the national level of the i-corps program where they hope to receive even greater support in making their vision a reality ayari and thelly are grateful for all the support and feedback they have received on the project including industry stakeholders and faculty at texas a&m ""we would like to thank our mentor rodney boehm for continued mentorship on our project and also magdalini lagoudas and dr saurabh biswas for providing valuable project feedback "" thelly said ""texas a&m has great resources and we would like to encourage anyone who thinks that they have a promising idea to pursue it using these resources"" with graduation approaching both thelly and ayari plan to continue their mechanical engineering education by attending graduate school and continuing to develop their project the construction industry has had many substantial innovations throughout history and we are thankful and excited to have gotten this opportunity to hopefully make our impact on it thelly said"
2362,oscar huang a graduate student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as the transportation consortium of southern states (trans-set) 2021 university transportation centers (utc) outstanding student of the year recipient huangs research focuses on applying geopolymer to replace ordinary portland cement in various transportation infrastructure applications such as soil stabilization concrete and corrosion mitigation he is pursuing his doctorate degree under the guidance of dr miladin radovic professor in the department it is humbling to be selected for this award and i would like to thank my advisor for believing in me and pushing me during every step of my phd journey said huang award recipients will attend the council of university transportation centers (cutc) awards ceremony in january 2022 they will also have their biographies and other information featured in the awards banquet booklet trans-set is a collaborative partnership of 11 institutions of higher learning across five states including arkansas louisiana new mexico oklahoma and texas according to their website trans-set aims to solve emerging transportation resiliency sustainability and economic challenges through the use of innovative materials and construction methods: from research to implementation
2363,organ-on-a-chip technology has provided a push to discover new drugs for a variety of rare and ignored diseases for which current models either dont exist or lack precision in particular these platforms can include the cells of a patient thus resulting in patient-specific discovery as an example even though sickle cell disease was first described in the early 1900s the range of severity in the disease causes challenges when trying to treat patients since this disease is most prevalent among economically poor and underrepresented minorities there has been a general lack of stimulus to discover new treatment strategies due to socioeconomic inequity making it one of the most serious orphan conditions globally tanmay mathur doctoral student in dr abhishek jains lab in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is developing personalized blood vessels to improve knowledge and derive treatments against the vascular dysfunction seen in sickle cell disease and other rare diseases of the blood and vessels current cells used in blood vessel models use induced pluripotent stem cells (ipscs) which are derived from a patients endothelial cells however mathur said these cells have limitations they expire quickly and cant be stored for long periods of time mathurs research offers an alternative blood outgrowth endothelial cells (boecs) which can be isolated from a patients blood all that is needed is 50 to 100 milliliters of blood the equipment and the reagents involved are also very cheap and available in most clinical settings mathur said these cells are progenitor endothelial cells meaning they have high proliferation so if you keep giving them the food they want within a month we will have enough cells so that we can successfully keep on subculturing them forever however the question is do boecs work like ipscs in the context of organ-on-chips a microdevice that allows researchers to create these blood vessel models thats a question mathur recently answered in a paper published in the journal of the american heart association by combining the analytics of our vessel-chip with next-generation rna sequencing i was able to show that boecs do not differ in any statistical way compared to the other cells mathur said not only can you do patient-specific studies with boecs you can also use these cells as alternatives to existing cells because at the end of the day they are still primarily human cells if there is a way for you to get patient-derived cells with the least effort possible that's always the best way to move forward mathurs next step is to begin testing a larger cohort of blood samples with sickle cell disease and bring computation into the project through machine learning and artificial intelligence by developing a chip model that can predict variables such as clotting time inflammation and more the algorithm can relate each patients history and treatment to their disease status say i made a model on 100 patients mathur said if you give me the 101st patient and i run the same methodology for those cells my algorithm should be able to predict if that patient is a severe moderate or mild sickle cell patient it's of importance because the clinician wants to know what is the most effective short-term and long-term treatment strategies for the patient tanmays work lays a foundation for what lies in the future of tissue engineering and organ-on-chip technology and the positive impact that these platforms can make in personalized medicine jain said developing this algorithm will help reduce the guesswork clinicians have to do in creating treatment plans right now we do not know how much of a drug to give to a mild patient that's why we overcorrect or undercorrect for complications mathur said every drug will have certain side reactions which you can only minimize the best way to minimize is to tailor your therapy for each patient i'm trying to minimize this iteration and minimize the cost as well as maximize the success of the therapy for the patient
2364,with an impressive capability of drinking up to three times their body weight in a single blood meal mosquitoes are formidable parasites but to reach adulthood mosquitoes need to be raised in environments where the temperatures are conducive to their breeding growth and development in a new study in the journal scientific reports texas a&m university researchers have developed a mathematical model based on machine learning to precisely predict the local or microclimatic temperature within the breeding grounds of the aedes albopictus mosquitoes carriers of the chikungunya and dengue viruses their algorithm also reveals that even in winter the temperature may be warm enough in certain breeding grounds to allow mosquitoes to grow and thrive our goal is to develop accurate and automated mathematical models for estimating microclimatic temperature which can greatly facilitate a quick assessment of mosquito populations and consequently vector-borne disease transmission said dr madhav erraguntla associate professor of practice in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering responsible for around a million deaths globally mosquitoes continue to wreak havoc to public health in many parts of the world in addition to water temperature plays a critical role at different stages in mosquitoes life cycle furthermore the mosquitoes development reproduction and survival can be mathematically modeled on the basis of temperature past studies have largely relied on ambient temperature or general air temperature to make predictions about mosquito populations however these calculations have not been precise since ambient temperatures can deviate from those within mosquito breeding grounds recognizing this shortcoming scientists rely on sensors called data loggers to continually keep track of the temperature light intensity and humidity within breeding grounds despite their advantages these sensors are inconvenient due to their cost and long-term use people have realized that the microclimatic conditions are important but right now data loggers are the only way to keep track of temperature said erraguntla we wanted to address this gap by automating the process of estimating microclimatic temperatures so that we can model the life cycle of mosquitoes accurately for their experiments the researchers placed sensors in common mosquito breeding grounds around houston texas including storm drains shaded areas and inside water meters in addition they obtained information on ambient temperatures from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration repository with this data as training input to a machine learning algorithm the computer model could predict the microclimatic temperatures for a variety of ambient temperatures and breeding grounds within 15 degrees centigrade further the model now could even forecast microclimatic temperatures for any ambient temperature precluding the need for sensors next they fed the values of the microclimatic temperatures to another mathematical model called the population dynamic model that tracks the life cycle of the mosquitoes based on the microclimatic temperature and other parameters the population dynamic model could estimate the populations at different stages in the lifecycle including eggs larvae pupae and adult aedes albopictus mosquitoes the model also revealed that the insulated conditions of the storm drains could result in the survival of 84% of juveniles and eggs and 96% of adults during the winter months a time of the year when mosquitoes are assumed to be dormant although their climatic temperature prediction model has a high degree of accuracy the researchers noted that additional research is needed to affirm if their model is applicable to places outside of texas our work automates the prediction of microclimatic conditions bypassing an otherwise expensive and time-consuming process of placing the sensors in different breeding spots collecting the sensor data and analyzing it said erraguntla from a public health context this work will help epidemiologists better track mosquito-borne disease transmission and surges in mosquito abundances other contributors to this research include darpit dave josef zapletal and mark lawley from the industrial and systems engineering department; and kevin myles zach adelman and tyler pohlenz from the department of entomology at texas a&m
2365,"dr becky mcgraw-wall and lawrence ""larry"" wall have established the dr becky mcgraw-wall '81 and lawrence ""larry"" wall jr '81 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering from texas a&m university the walls have made an additional preference that this scholarship be awarded to a student who is pursuing a career in the medical field or the enmed program at texas a&m larry wall graduated from texas a&m with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering he has worked for nextera energy us gas assets for 14 years and most recently held the position of president and coo nextera energy is a successful clean energy company that received the s&p global platts 2020 energy transition award becky graduated with her undergraduate degree in zoology she graduated with honors and was a member of the phi kappa phi honor society and the beta beta beta biological honor society at texas a&m after graduation she earned her doctor of medicine from the university of texas southwestern medical center she now works in private practice at houston ear nose throat & allergy clinic the walls two children jonathan and allyson both attended texas a&m becky and larry now live in houston"
2366,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
2367,cynthia and fred balda have generously established the cynthia '82 and fred '82 balda endowed first-generation scholarship distributions from this endowment will support undergraduate students participating in the first-generation engineering (fgen) students mentoring program in the college of engineering at texas a&m university cynthia and fred balda both graduated from texas a&m cynthia graduated with a bachelor of business administration degree in advertising and worked in commercial real estate for eight years fred graduated with a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering and an emphasis in construction management after working for the hb zachry company for several years he started a successful career in real estate he is currently president of hillwood communities one of the top residential development companies in the country in 2017 fred was one of three awardees to receive the annual distinguished graduate award from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering he remains actively involved with texas a&m and has served on the master of real estate advisory board and the civil engineering advisory council the fgen students mentoring program is designed to foster academic success for first-generation students who are studying engineering members are provided with a community of trained peer and faculty mentors who assist them in reaching their personal and professional goals cynthia and fred have three sons brad blake and brett brett followed in their footsteps and graduated from texas a&m in 2018 with a bachelor of science degree in industrial distribution the baldas live in dallas
2368,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president for development
2369,three former students were recently honored by the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university for their career achievements in the engineering industry they were recognized during the annual distinguished graduate scholarship and fellowship banquet which was held on nov 18 at the hilton hotel in college station
2370,timothy j martin ‘92after receiving a sul ross scholarship and the wright galloway asphalt scholarship timothy j martin 92 decided to pursue his engineering degree at texas a&m he was a part of the corps of cadets and the aggie band and said the years he spent with these groups shaped his aggie experiencemartin was encouraged by dr roger smith to pursue a masters degree and provided him with the financial means through an assistantship martin said without his masters degree he wouldnt have had the same opportunities to succeed post-graduation including serving as the principal investigator for the federal highway administrations long-term pavement performance program for the southern regionmartin is currently president and owner of 2tm consulting engineers in austin texas where he provides pavement engineering consultancy to government agencies and contractors he also has conducted forensics engineering on over $600 million in claims based on this experience martin has presented at american society of civil engineers conferences on topics ranging from pavement performance to forensics engineering to highlight and advance needed improvements to engineering standards and specifications he also serves on technical panels for current pavement research and standing committees at the american concrete institute
2371,capt mike monreal ‘91for capt mike monreal ‘91 aggieland has always felt like home its where he joined the corps of cadets made lifelong friendships met his wife and where he was inspired to serve in the militarytexas a&m offered the values and traditions that inspired him to grow into a man a leader and set him on course for a successful careerduring his 28-year marine corps and navy career monreal commanded a navy seabee battalion and field engineering command and held shore duty tours in europe the pacific and the continental united states his operational tours consisted of combat tours in iraq afghanistan kosovo and the south pacificmonreal is a vice president and regional area manager for the broaddus companies he has been a longtime mentor to several young engineers and engineering college students and served as aggie club president and aggie muster chair for various aggie clubs worldwidehe has been recognized with the legion of merit bronze star meritorious service medal and numerous other awards he is a registered professional civil engineer acquisition professional seabee combat warfare specialist and a fellow in the society of american military engineersmonreal lives in floresville texas with his wife stephanie ‘91 the couple has four daughters jessica and son-in-law justin; melissa ‘15 and son-in-law joshua leal ‘15; victoria ‘20; rebecca and son-in-law nick march ‘19; and three grandsons
2372,matt sebesta ‘84matt sebesta 84 is a lifelong resident of brazoria county after graduation from texas a&m he became a licensed professional engineer and a registered professional land surveyorin 1989 sebesta was hired by ralph b hendricks 61 after a 10-minute phone conversation and worked for him until hendricks retired in 1997 sebesta called hendricks an aggies aggie even later in life when sebesta started consulting and became a competitor to hendricks firm hendricks still mentored him even though they competed for businessin 1994 sebesta was selected as the outstanding young engineer of the year by the gulf coast chapter of the texas society of professional engineers now he owns his own company sebesta engineering llc in angleton providing structural design and inspections for windstorm certifications along the entire texas gulf coastin 1990 sebesta began a life of public service when he was appointed to the planning and zoning commission for angleton he is now in his 29th year of elected office currently serving his second term as county judge after serving as an angleton city councilman mayor and county commissionersebesta is also chairman of the lower brazos river coalition and serves as chairman for the conference of urban counties representing approximately 80% of texas residents since 2008 he has chaired the mike ogden memorial golf tournament raising more than $600 000 to benefit the leukemia and lymphoma societysebesta and his wife monica have been married for 35 years and have two sons joshua 12 and ryan 16
2373,dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and assistant director-energy digitization at the texas a&m energy institute has been named a fellow of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) for his contributions to the economic and secure operations of power systems and big data analytics fellow is one of the most prestigious honors of ieee and is recognized by the technical community as an esteemed accomplishment xie is also a chancellor enhancing development and generating excellence in scholarship fellow and presidential impact fellow which are two of the most prestigious scholarly impact awards presented to texas a&m faculty xies research interests include modeling and control in data-rich large-scale systems grid integration of clean energy resources and electricity markets he was an editor of ieee transactions on smart grid and the founding chair of the ieee power and energy society subcommittee on big data and analytics for grid operations my work primarily focuses on designing and operating a future electric grid that provides clean reliable and affordable electricity to power humanity xie said having the work recognized by peer colleagues through ieee which is the world's largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology is both gratifying and humbling i sincerely thank my group members collaborators and mentors for their contribution
2374,dr xinzhu zheng 21 along with her phd advisor dr ankit srivastava associate professor both from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university along with their industry collaborator dr hassan ghassemi-armaki from general motors r&d received the american iron and steel institute (aisi) 2021 finalist medal for their paper titled structural and microstructural influence on deformation and fracture of dual-phase steels the award was presented during the aisi board of directors awards ceremony on tuesday nov 2 at the intercontinental washington dc – the wharf by leon topalian president and ceo of nucor and chairman of aisi i am extremely honored to receive this award said zheng for me it is double excitement since this award recognizes the technological relevance of my phd research in their award-winning paper the researchers demonstrated that the traditional material property measures and microstructure are not sufficient descriptors of a general mechanical response of advanced multiphase steels interestingly they showed that it is possible that more than one multiphase steel microstructure can yield the same traditional material properties but their response differs significantly under bending dominated manufacturing processes or in the presence of structural discontinuities the implications of this work extend to both materials and manufacturing process design and development the american iron and steel institute medal was established by the board of directors in 1927 to perpetuate the memory of the late elbert h gary aisis founder and first president and to stimulate improvement in the iron and steel and allied industries the institute medal and two finalist medals are awarded for technical papers having special merit and importance in connection with the activities and interests of the iron and steel industry
2375,i had a passion for aerospace and for learning but i never expected that through this process i would learn about cryogenic fluid management and its impact on the future of space travel said abigail rajagopal 24 a student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university through the college of engineerings student engineers council six-week directed internship rajagopal competed in the jacobs space exploration space tech challenge where the focus was to efficiently apply cryogenic fluid management during space travel jacobs space exploration group is nasas largest professional and technical service provider rajagopal said that cryogenic fluid management is part of nasas strategic technology plan to enhance in-space technologies and current innovations have issues that range from thermal control to leak detection to achieving a lightweight tank
2376,my first introduction to aerospace was in elementary school through reading comic books about the different rocket launches she said now her aerospace knowledge helped rajagopal and her team lunar fuel reach the final round of the competition though they did not win as project manager she kept track of tasks organized meetings and communicated with their professor of practice shayla rivera according to rajagopal rivera was an instrumental resource to the team she guided them to think outside the box and provided them with advice as she has experience as a former rocket scientist for nasa students learn about themselves and are coached through company culture entrepreneurial and communication skills in order to develop the leader in them which will ultimately be a part of a team of leaders focused on a design a solution and a goal said rivera i have witnessed how going through this particular internship program gives students the confidence to step into their engineers skin with confidence and skill
2377,the lunar fuel teams proposal was to develop a lunar refueling station the team detailed every aspect of the design including launchpads remote-controlled docking systems and more they highlighted how their project would ensure that space missions to mars could be a two-way trip if we could master cryogenic fluid management the team was one of two teams to make it as a finalist for the competition however they did not get past the final round this experience really helped me grow as a leader there were several challenges along the way but it was the perseverance of myself and the team that helped us reach that point rajagopal said i learned how much i valued the perspectives of those who think differently than i do as i worked with all types of engineering majors
2378,the future relies on the present especially regarding global issues such as climate change and depleting natural resources that affect our daily lives the efforts of scientists and engineers to find solutions to these ongoing problems are critical in creating a greener tomorrow dr manish shetty assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university uses chemical engineering to find viable solutions to some of earths problems in sustainability climate change and clean energy a new member of the department shettys desire to make a difference influenced his decision to work for texas a&m texas is a growing state that plays a big role when it comes to the conversation around energy based on sustainability and how the world is going to chart a path forward he said i believe that texas a&m is one of the premier institutes in the state and the country and id like to make contributions and have a spot at the table when discussing issues of this magnitude shetty has an extensive educational background that started at the indian institute of technology bombay where he received a bachelors and masters degree in chemical engineering he later attended the massachusetts institute of technology earning a doctoral degree in chemical engineering the skill sets chemical engineers are equipped with can tackle problems of a generation in terms of making sustainable fuels sustainable materials dealing with the problems of climate change and extending the timescale of our humanity he said
2379,shettys research focuses on catalysis for energy and sustainability for example many products like crude oil can be converted into value-added chemicals through experimentation engineers have discovered ways to use plastic waste in fuels understanding how to repurpose materials through chemical reactions lies at the root of his research i spend my time thinking about how we can redesign materials or use waste in different applications shetty said in this way chemical engineering can make an impact at the state country and global levels as he continues his research and shares knowledge in his classrooms shetty hopes to showcase the importance of his field of study to future generations we have a diverse student body including first-generation students students of different cultural backgrounds and various socioeconomic statuses he said as a faculty member i want to influence students of all backgrounds to contribute to society through chemical engineering
2380,dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university was selected for one of six early-career research fellowships for the offshore energy safety track of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicines (nasem) gulf research program i am deeply humbled and honored to have been selected as a nasem gulf research early-career research fellow i am passionate about addressing worker fatigue challenges in the offshore energy work contexts mehta said this fellowship supports emerging scientific leaders in taking on research projects that have not been tested or explored and in pursuing unique collaboration projects pertaining to offshore energy operations/safety and the well-being of coastal communities and ecosystems fellows participate in a two-year program beginning jan 1 to contribute to the advancement of safer more reliable and more efficient offshore energy operations in the gulf of mexico fatigue is a critical risk factor for injuries and fatalities and can cost employers more than $136 billion in lost productivity and health care costs the chemical safety board found fatigue to likely be a contributing factor in both the bp texas city refinery explosion in 2005 and the drilling rig explosion and fire at the macondo well five years later the critical role fatigue plays not only toward operator well-being but also in their decision-making capabilities is gaining rapid attention in offshore energy communities one of the major gaps in the documentation and subsequent management of systemic risk in offshore activities is the lack of understanding of how fatigue vulnerabilities impact processes and people differently mehta said a second major gap is the lack of tools for industry to assess these fatigue vulnerabilities feasibly and sustainably the third major gap is to close the loop and develop evidence-driven fatigue management strategies that have a direct impact on reducing systemic risks over the past five years mehta has worked to develop and strengthen the fatigue risk assessment and management in high-risk environments (frame) initiative a collaborative academic-industry effort targeting oil and gas and petrochemical environments these efforts have been funded by the nasem gulf research program and the ocean energy safety institute with seed funds from the mary kay oconnor process safety center at texas a&m the goal behind the frame initiative is to develop usable and effective measures of fatigue specifically for high-risk industrial workers in order to mitigate fatigue as a root cause of incidents in oil and gas to date mehta has developed a frame survey that is currently being validated in onshore and offshore oil rig environments the survey was originally developed to address the barriers of fatigue monitoring in offshore environments where existing tools to monitor fatigue such as clinical surveys or wearable devices are not practical for offshore workers and environments in addition to the frame survey mehta and her colleagues are evaluating the use of smart device-based apps to predict fatigue-related declines in alertness vigilance decision making and risk-taking her team has developed a vigilance and alertness app in ios and android that has been tested in both onshore and offshore environments mehta aims to take a use-inspired basic research approach for the next two years which allows for fundamental research to understand how fatigue vulnerabilities impact offshore workers decision-making and coordination capabilities as well as applied research efforts that translate these findings effectively and meaningfully into management and mitigation strategies for industries to successfully adopt this fellowship also allows me formal mentorship and i am honored that dr camille peres a human factors expert in the petrochemical and oil and gas industries to mentor me on understanding and navigating industry dynamics with offshore safety mehta said about the program the foundation for the gulf research program arose out of the settlement language between bp and transocean succeeding the deepwater horizon oil spill of 2010 the national academy of science (nas) created this program to focus specifically on human health environmental protection and offshore research extraction nas was established by congress in 1863 during the lincoln administration to provide advice outside of the government and tap into the nations emerging scientific community
2381,dr zhuo li 05 an electrical and computer engineering former student from texas a&m university recently received the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) council of electronic design automation (eda) outstanding service award for his hard work and dedication to the eda community as the 57th annual design automation conference general chair li is a long-time member of ieee going all the way back to when he was a doctoral student in aggieland advised by dr weiping shi to be honest i was attracted to the first ieee membership club event due to the highlight of ‘free pizza but soon i realized that many fellow graduate students were involved in the organization and most of our papers were being published in ieee-sponsored conferences or journals li said as a new member of the student ieee group at texas a&m li attended several sponsored conferences that gave him the opportunity to meet numerous professors industry leaders and other students he began to contemplate how he could one day give back to the community that was helping him grow professionally after graduation li joined ieee as a full member and had the opportunity to serve as a technical committee member at workshops symposiums and conferences he became a technical reviewer of ieee journals and later served as sub-committee chair executive committee member and eventually general chair of design automation conference 2020 which is the premier and largest conference in eda with over 6 000 virtual attendees that year li has also served ieee at the local and section level as chair of the ieee circuits and systems/solid state circuits-central texas chapter and founding chair of the ieee council of electronic design automation chapter later li served as the secretary and then vice chair of the ieee central texas section for about five years managing over 20 chapters in the ieee central texas area he received the ieee region 5 outstanding individual member achievement award twice for his service for the local chapters and sections he also is a recipient of the ieee council on electronic design automation early career award and was elevated to ieee fellow in 2017 after all the service hes given to ieee li is more supportive than ever of students getting involved in the organization
2382,i definitely encourage aggies to get involved with the ieee student organization on campus li said its a great way to build both your technical skills as well as professional networks you can help with organizing local events inviting technical experts from both academia and industry to the chapter events for the talks interact with other chapters and also enjoy the resources that ieee provides such as professional conferences journal papers and other tech insights such as articles from ieee spectrum magazine li is currently a senior group director at cadence where he is responsible for many functions across both genus and innovus products in their digital and signoff group this includes synthesis placement and optimization he leads an international team located in the united states united kingdom germany india and china he received the cadence achievement award and cadence master invention award in 2018 in addition to a successful industry career li has published over 70 academic papers and his name appears on more than 100 patents li explained how he stays motivated i love what i do and that's why i get up every day he said the work we are doing is critical to mankind as we provide computational software for designing today's electronic systems
2383,dr aj munoz-vazquez assistant professor in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university was elected senior member of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) in the fall of 2021 the ieee is the worlds largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology as a plural and diverse organization around the world it provides the opportunity for engineers to collaborate and learn about the work of other scientists and professionals in the field of electrical and electronic engineering senior member is the highest grade available to which ieee members may self-nominate or be nominated in order to become a senior member engineers must have been in professional practice for at least 10 years (five with a phd) and have shown significant performance over a period of at least five years munoz-vazquez has served as an associate editor for ieee latin america transactions and currently is an associate for the international journal of control automation and systems his research interests include robotics and autonomous systems sliding mode techniques for control and observation fractional calculus applications and lyapunov stability theory (ieee senior membership) constitutes a motivation to do my best in both personal and professional aspects as well as to support future generations of outstanding professionals said munoz-vazquez
2384,this spring the department of multidisciplinary engineering will welcome dr george ligler as a tenured professor and deans excellence chair prior to joining texas a&m university ligler served as the deans eminent professor of the practice at the university of north carolina at chapel hills joint department of biomedical engineering while continuing his 32-year consultancy in interdisciplinary systems engineering ligler has been a member of the national academy of engineering (nae) since 2017 and is the past chair of nae section 12 special fields and interdisciplinary engineering throughout his career he has contributed to nine national academy committees (chairing two) in advising the departments of treasury commerce and transportation currently he is a member of the academies aeronautics and space engineering board after studying at oxford as a rhodes scholar ligler had initial industrial positions as a project manager research manager director of engineering general manager and division and group vice president within various multidisciplinary engineering corporations i decided that i needed to change my career path and do what i enjoyed most said ligler i enjoyed customers but my roots were in system engineering so i opened up a system engineering consultancy and ive done that for the last 32 years we have a total of 40 clients on three continents considered a subject matter expert in aircraft communications navigation and surveillance ligler has been supporting several clients in aviation including the federal aviation administration since the 1990s he helped lead the specification and development of both satellite-based navigation and automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast initiatives as components of the ongoing modernization of the united states national airspace system ligler has received rtcas (an aviation standards development organization) highest award the achievement award twice for his contributions to satellite-based navigation and surveillance system initiatives and the development of standards for unmanned aircraft systems liglers wife dr frances ligler will be joining the college of engineering this spring as a faculty member in the department of biomedical engineering
2385,one of texas a&m universitys small-satellite development teams aggiesat6 won the air force research laboratory university nanosatellite program (unp) flight selection review advancing them to phase b of the four-phase program later phase d will see the aggiesat6 satellite launched to low earth orbit by the space test program the intention of unp is two-fold: to provide systems engineering training to students to prepare them for the industrial workforce and to develop small-satellite expertise at us universities the nationally recognized program is part of the presidents portfolio of science technology engineering and math unp calls on students across the us to design build test and operate small satellites through a rigorous concept-to-flight-ready spacecraft development process ten universities were invited to present their mission designs to representatives from the air force space force and private partners in albuquerque new mexico this year 19 students from texas a&m traveled to the competition where their work was scored on documentation presentation and hardware and software readiness the mission of aggiesat6 is to advance a critical aspect of space operations called space domain awareness (sda) which aims to track and determine the location of objects orbiting in space be it other satellites or debris current tracking systems are ground-based but aggiesat6 is attempting to track objects in space from space equipped with an array of antennas aggiesat6 will listen for and detect signals emitted from other satellites the signal data collected will be processed using an algorithm that allows aggiesat6 to pinpoint the position of a target satellite based on phase differences in the antennas by taking multiple measurements over time aggiesat6 will then be able to determine the orbits of the satellites
2386,aggiesat6 is advised by dr helen reed university distinguished professor in the department of aerospace engineering and is composed of over 60 student members spread across nine sub-teams it is my privilege to be able to interact with such a talented and dedicated group of young professionals said reed i am extremely proud of what this team has accomplished thus far with continued funding and support from unp the team will now purchase hardware construct and test the engineering and flight models of the aggiesat6 satellite then launch the flight model with the space test program aggiesat6 is one of four projects currently hosted by the aggiesat laboratory the lab fully managed by students with the guidance of reed had a fall 2021 membership of over 100 students from 15 different majors more information about the labs projects and the students working on them can be found at the aggiesat laboratory's website texas a&m university is a tier-one research institution with one of the largest student bodies in the united states so it's fitting to have a student satellite program that matches that prominence said alexander duffy lab program manager the aggiesat laboratory is filling the role by granting students hands-on experience in space systems engineering and project management moreso the lab fosters an environment of friendship and collaboration thanks to which i've forged bonds that will last for years to come in addition to texas a&m the other two teams to advance to phase b of the nanosatellite-10 program were michigan technological university and the university of minnesota
2387,jainita chauhan a senior in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering received the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award at the fall 2021 texas a&m university college of engineering student awards banquet the craig c brown award the most prestigious accolade given to an undergraduate student by the college of engineering is given to a student with outstanding achievements in scholarship and leadership and whose character exceeds the standard industrial engineering is an opportunity to always do something different and an opportunity to learn more about yourself whether youre in academia or industry chauhan said ive learned that i have a passion for global involvement and global exposure and thats something i want to see myself pursuing in the future chauhan came to aggieland from garland texas with her sights on engineering she chose to pursue industrial and systems engineering because it provided her the opportunity to focus on her passions: time efficiency operations and global involvement and exposure
2388,most recently she worked the last two summers at raytheon technologies in operations and supply chain on the radar sensor systems team in dallas which she will join after graduation chauhan is also the president of alpha pi mu the industrial engineering honors society a global ambassador for the college of engineering and is involved in the grand challenge scholars program (gcsp) which allows students to pursue research and gain international and leadership experience while still working toward a degree industrial engineering gives us as individuals an opportunity to pursue our strongholds in any realm we can see fit chauhan said for example out of all of my peers that i sat at round tables with in any class i took we could all be industrial engineering majors and could all still be pursuing something different chauhan will graduate this spring and will join raytheon technologies she also plans to pursue graduate school in the future and credits her family for her desire to further her education my parents are very close to me and they have been one of my primary motivations receiving this award was always for them in my mind chauhan said the support that my parents family and my friends have given means so much to me my primary motivation is for my family and i dont know where i would have been without them and without (texas a&m)
2389,team speed hertz made history at the 2021 bonneville motorcycle speed trials breaking national (official) and international (unofficial) records in two classes surpassing the previously set records from 2014 by over 25 mph composed of former students from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the team met while competing in the formula society of automotive engineers (fsae) program which dr make mcdermott advised from 1998-2014 mcdermotts tenure as the faculty advisor for the texas a&m team is one of the most successful in fsae history something that shows in team hertzs success the bonneville motorcycle speed trials or the american motorcycle association (ama) land speed grand championship is the premier motorcycle land speed racing event held near salt lake city utah teams from around the world meet at the bonneville salt flats where the land is so flat you can see the earths curvature to compete against the clock speed hertz broke two records with their electric motorcycle reaching speeds of 141 mph with no streamlining and 167 mph with partial streamlining in the ama sub-150-kilogram electric class the team broke its own record from day two on day four on their last attempt they hit their fastest speed with a peak of 1727 mph speed hertz team members have professional careers in engineering ranging from spacex and toyota to custom manufacturing and machining and they all came together to collaborate and build the record-setting motorcycle from the ground up
2390,dr srikanth saripalli current formula sae advisor spoke about how the fsae experience encourages collaboration and close bonds among engineers given the amount of work they put together for a year in the class as well as the team bonding that happens outside of class fsae enables them to develop strong tries and camaraderie said saripalli in fact speed hertzs team members have nearly 20 years of experience competing together in texas a&m formular sae competitions participants in designing engineering building and operating the record-setting electric motorcycle at the 2021 bonneville motorcycle speed trials include: cole easterling ‘09: mechanical engineering william love ‘07: biological and agricultural engineering john cox 02 08: bs mechanical engineering technology and me mechanical engineering chad kuboviak ‘09: computer science brian bentley ‘09: mechanical engineering luke szrama ‘20: mechanical engineering matt howell 01: mechanical engineering mike love ‘79: mechanical engineering (bs ms) brian auer 05: mechanical engineering scott mcdermott (rider): the university of texas at austin (ut) fine arts make mcdermott: ut bs ms phd mechanical engineering; texas a&m retired mechanical engineering faculty and sae advisor
2391,about a third of the graduates from the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university pursue medical school as with any career everyones journey is a bit different three former students who received undergraduate degrees in biomedical engineering in pursuit of medicine share where they are in the career journey and how their degree has impacted them
2392,a career in the fielddr winston marshall an interventional cardiologist with baylor scott and white in dallas has been working as a cardiologist for over 20 years drawn to science and math as a student marshall knew he wanted to pursue engineering but it wasnt until he was at texas a&m that he decided to pursue health care i initially started in petroleum engineering but got nervous with the drop in oil prices at the time marshall said i have always liked science and math so the transition to biomedical engineering was an easy change after graduating from texas a&m marshall attended medical school at the university of texas southwestern medical center he completed his internship and residency in internal medicine as well as his fellowship in cardiovascular diseases at the baylor university medical center in dallas i love seeing patients and trying to figure out smart solutions to problems they are experiencing marshall said also i enjoy being able to fix problems with my hands like placing pacemakers or coronary stents along with supporting patients marshall also serves on advisory boards at st jude medical (now abbott) and a startup company called healthkarma he aims to help young entrepreneurs launch medical device companies and continue supporting innovative ideas my life is ‘rich not so much in the monetary side of things but in the fullness of relationships with my patients and family marshall said choosing texas a&m has been one of the best decisions of my life and really set me on a path for success
2393,"beginning their careerdr rahul sawhney is a general cardiology fellow at baylor scott & white the heart hospital after graduating with his biomedical engineering degree in 2013 he attended medical school at the university of north texas health science center in fort worth and completed his residency at baylor university medical center sawhney said his interest in medicine started at an early age he has memories of his grandfather receiving bypass surgery and his father having a heart attack he said seeing how the technology had changed and improved drew him to want to learn more i wanted to become an interventional cardiologist sawhney said i knew what i needed to do to get there and i knew i wanted to do biomedical engineering and combine the two whenever we had clinical experiences through biomedical engineering such as observing surgeries at the texas heart institute my desire to be a clinician was reaffirmed sawhney said during medical school he found that the biomedical engineering curriculum was a good primer when we got into clinical medicine that's when my engineering knowledge really helped sawhney said it was a lot of reading between the lines and understanding how to solve a problem from a different perspective he said he continues to learn new things every day i have a never-ending appreciation for the human body and its resilience sawhney said we see people who are incredibly sick whose hearts have failed whose kidneys have failed etc we have the expertise technology and perseverance to put them back together and get them out of the hospital"""
2394,"in schoolmadeline franke is in her second year of medical school at the texas a&m university intercollegiate school of engineering medicine (enmed) program in houston with this program she will graduate with both a master of engineering and a doctor of medicine degree while she decided to pursue medical school during her undergraduate program in the department of biomedical engineering franke said she didnt want to give up her engineering knowledge enmed was something that really intrigued me because they offered a very integrated curriculum franke said there are challenges but it is effortless when the curriculum is so integrated sometimes i do forget that i'm getting two degrees at the end of the four years franke started medical school right after her undergraduate program and she said she has seen many things transfer over from her training in biomedical engineering i think my interests have translated [to medical school] nicely the texas a&m biomedical engineering curriculum does align really well with this program enmed curriculum requires students to work on an engineering-based research project to solve a clinical challenge frankes research project is focused on developing a drug delivery system for patients with osteoarthritis a disease her grandmother has she works alongside researchers at the department of orthopedic surgery at houston methodist research institute on systems involving genetic therapies with nanoparticles a lot of conventional treatments are lacking they either don't last long or they have a lot of adverse side effects franke said im trying to have targeted therapy that can be released over a long sustained amount of time so that patients receive that sustained relief for whatever they're experiencing advicesawhney encouraged students to stay motivated in pursuit of their career goals even if it takes time there's nothing wrong with taking extra time to truly learn the curriculum well don't try to rush through it because you'll do yourself a disservice "" sawhney said marshall encouraged students not to get stressed about being the perfect student it is a long road to eventually practice medicine marshall said don't miss out on some of the fun at texas a&m because you're trying too hard for perfection it takes experiences in life to make a person relate to people franke said her education taught her the importance of keeping an eye out for things that can be improved and fixed in enmed we're always told to innovate and look for clinical needs and find things that our engineering brain can help us fix franke said we can notice them because we have the mindset of a doctor too dont settle with ‘oh this is just how we do things but always ask questions and try to figure out what can be improved not only for the hospital but for the patients"
2395,fatigue due to extended periods of work and insufficient rest can impair job performance situation awareness and decision-making capabilities even when its needed most specifically in safety-critical environments such as responding to wildfires fatigue has been associated with a two-fold increase in the risk of injuries and errors and a four-fold increase in safety-compromising behaviors during emergencies to mitigate these outcomes researchers at texas a&m university are evaluating how the impact of fatigue-causing performance declines in safety-critical workers such as firefighters nurses and emergency room (er) doctors can be delayed through the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tdcs) a wearable and noninvasive brain stimulation technology that uses weak electrical currents to stimulate certain parts of the brain administrative and personal countermeasures such as sleep/shift schedules education and stimulants like caffeine take a reactive approach and are largely impractical during emergencies in some cases they are accompanied by substantial health side effects said dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering transformative human augmentation paradigms to proactively tackle fatigue deficits through noninvasive neurostimulation have proven more effective than stimulants and may address prevailing adoption barriers the research team also includes reed smoot an undergraduate student in the department of electrical and computer engineering and rohith karthikeyan a doctoral student in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and first author and lead student on the study the team conducted a three-session experimental study with 32 participants at each session participants completed an hour-long fatiguing cognitive task that has shown to disrupt and impair an individuals cognitive processes and executive functions ie working memory participants either received anodal stimulation associated with the enhancement of the stimulated brain area received a sham (placebo) stimulation or did not receive the stimulation on each of the three sessions the stimulation was provided at the 20-minute mark during the fatiguing task for 10 minutes at 1 ma (milliampere) task performance fatigue responses effort discomfort and heart-rate variability were also evaluated out of the counterbalance of anodal stimulation sham stimulation and no stimulation the team found that by exciting neuronal activity through anodal stimulation task performance under fatigue improved by approximately 15% (ranging from 10-50% across the study pool) while it decreased under the other two sessions the researchers were also able to capture the selective benefits of anodal stimulation on response selection eg choosing an appropriate action to take which was enhanced when the stimulation was provided while inhibitory control or the ability to inhibit impulsive natural and habitual responses did not increase individuals were able to preserve this cognitive function under anodal stimulation which otherwise declined significantly under sham or no stimulation additionally these improvements were comparable for both men and women fatigue is a personal experience and is impacted by both declines in cognitive and neural resources but also motivation a unique aspect of this work was to understand and capture the various gains that neurotechnologies can provide the stimulation-related improvements were not available at a perceptual level ie individuals did not report lower fatigue ratings under the anodal stimulation we are currently investigating how such solutions will be trusted and operationalized in the field especially within human-centered systems karthikeyan said the study findings emphasize the potency of neurostimulation as an equitable fatigue countermeasure to support workers during high-risk fatiguing operations such as responding to emergencies that can last several days or weeks especially given the shortage in the er workforce we still have some way to go before this technology can be rolled out in the field our study employed stimulation parameters at levels not previously tested largely to shed light on dose-response relationships but also keeping in mind what is practically feasible and ethical if such technology were to be utilized in er operations mehta said the team has since begun the next phase of empirical testing along with customer discovery efforts with emergency responders using the innovation corps sites program offered by the texas a&m engineering experiment station we are committed to developing trustworthy engineering solutions that work for emergency responders when they need it; thus adopting a human-centered approach is critical mehta said
2396,"dr arun srinivasa is the 2022 recipient of the prestigious ben c sparks medal from the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) srinivasa was selected for contributions to integrating technology to enhance the classroom learning experience and efforts to propagate design-thinking and decision-making as an integral part of an inclusive mechanical engineering curriculum according to the official asme citation the asme ben c sparks medal established in 1980 recognizes eminent service to mechanical engineering or engineering technology education through outstanding contributions that bring innovative authentic practice-based engineering design/build experiences to undergraduate students srinivasa serves as holdredge/paul professor and associate department head for undergraduate programs in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he said he is deeply honored by the recognition particularly by mentors and respected colleagues srinivasa said he was drawn to texas a&m for its land-grant mission to provide broad access to education and has spent his career thus far working to help others achieve their educational and life goals with this award he said he has been reaffirmed in this path ""i have had the good fortune to meet key people at different stages in my career who have helped me in so many ways "" srinivasa said ""i think that my way of giving thanks to them is to be the good fortune to others ultimately i feel that our impact as educators has to be in the people that we help not in the grants or the accolades or the achievements in the hustle of our daily life we tend to forget that and our world shrinks to the world of 'me'"""
2397,"as the end of the year approached texas a&m university's college of engineering celebrated its students at the 2021 fall engineering project showcase awards ceremony ""the showcase demonstrates the amazing talent of our engineering students "" said magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships and instructional associate professor to participate in the showcase students must submit a video of their project and a written analysis to provide insight into their extensive research judges representing companies from all over the country can then comprehensively review the projects based on the quality how they can be applied to their industry and more with over 1 200 students participating this year the competition was challenging; however teams such as the electric vehicle autonomous assistant (evaa) rose to the occasion"
2398,"the team's project aimed to develop an autonomous electric vehicle charger and make it commercially viable they used their background in the mechanical engineering curriculum and a detailed business plan to win the emerson overall capstone award and $1 000 ""being on a project like this has helped me feel more confident and prepared to join the workforce "" said sharon pearlnath a senior mechanical engineering student the projects allowed students to celebrate their ideas and test their knowledge within the industry which is especially helpful since 90% of showcase participants were graduating seniors ""they have the skills to develop innovative solutions to real-world problems and the ability to communicate complex engineering designs through engaging videos "" lagoudas said the 2021 virtual project showcase winners are listed below senior capstone design teams emerson showcase award best overall in showcase: $1 000 evaa computer science and computer engineering 1st place: baker hughes award: $1 000 brl-cad innovations 2nd place: $500 product matching via unsupervised machine learning by team drhm electrical and computer engineering 1st place: bechtel award $1 000 solar powered air cooler 2nd place: $500 modeling partial discharge 3rd place: $250 soil sampling rover engineering technology and industrial distribution 1st place: $1 000 tjcc mobile robotics 2nd place: $500 bivot system 3rd place: $250 - rocket industrial and systems engineering 1st place: $1 000 rochester gauges 1 2nd place: $500 chart industries 2 3rd place: $250 production planning automation mechanical engineering 1st place: anderson showcase award $1 000 extreme truck platooning smart towbar redesign 2nd place: $500 3d-printed journal bearing 3rd place: $250 baker hughes shear ram blade"
2399,mike frizzell 04 former student in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is chief technology officer of the aggie 100s no 1 fastest-growing aggie owned business albers aerospace albers aerospace engineering firm specializes in defense related applications frizzell explains we are an action-oriented engineering firm that supports our customers throughout the life cycle of their systems from up-front requirement analysis rapid prototype development automated test and evaluation through production and operations support our innovative technology division is moving the needle in corrosion prevention with some laser tech and were building a platform for the air mobility space as i tell my kids ‘daddys working on a flying car frizzells job in particular as chief technology officer gives him oversight of internal research and development projects at albers aerospace this includes laser texturing technology advanced teaming (collaboration between manned and unmanned aircraft) and vortex their vertical take-off and landing concept in the urban air mobility marketplace with military and commercial applications i work with the technology team to come up with a plan for next years investment to present to our executives i also serve as quality control on program technical deliverables im charged with recruiting development and retention for our engineers we are building and implementing a curriculum for developing systems engineers in our ranks we train coach and mentor aerospace mechanical or electrical engineers and make them a systems engineer he said the road to success for frizzell was a winding one one thing he always knew however was that he was going to be an aggie he was able to go to student bonfire while he was still in high school and was encouraged by his father a texas instruments engineer at the time to investigate computer and electrical engineering by the time he was applying to colleges frizzell was convinced that there was no need to apply to any other universities texas a&m was where he needed to be as an aggie frizzell worked hard in his classes when classes let out for summer and winter breaks he spent his time at co-ops and internships apprenticing under data professionals and programmers whod been doing the job for 20 years gaining valuable insight and experience frizzell was so successful in these internships that he had multiple competitive offers open to him at graduation he could go on to start his career and continue his education at johns hopkins university with the applied physics laboratory or go to work at raytheon technologies he chose raytheon and stayed there with a brief interlude for a total of 12 years during that time he rose to the role of principal systems engineer no small feat for a decade of work frizzell credits his internship experience for fast-tracking him through his entry-level career positions he also expressed gratitude for his many mentors at raytheon who guided and shaped his career after his time at raytheon technologies frizzell worked as a director in the nonprofit technology sector leading web and mobile application development he later began working as a freelancer one day a week with john albers 90 (industrial engineering) and cliff aldredge 04 (computer engineering) who were building a growing engineering company two years later in july of 2021 frizzell joined albers at the albers aerospace fulltime as their chief technology officer he has some advice for young aggies heading out into the workforce i encourage all engineers to get out and intern and co-op whenever you can he said you gain more insight on the job in a few weeks than you could in a semester in the classroom and when you do get hired on be humble - find a good engineer whos been around three years and learn to be them contribute like them know what they know when you can add value like them youll be worth their paycheck lastly frizzell gives his thoughts on leadership the biggest truth ive found about leadership is you have to care about people to be a leader he said you have to show empathy and then you have to be smart enough to put on your management hat understand their skills and passion and figure out how to best utilize your team so that together you can excel
2400,albers aerospace is a family of companies managing a diversified portfolio in information technology aerospace government and manufacturing services they are led by a service-disabled veteran the leadership team has backgrounds in various industries they work directly for the government and with major prime contractors like leidos general electric northrop grumman and raytheon in multidisciplinary engineering projects
2401,its been four years since shes seen her parents and her face lights up when she talks about going home to iran soon dr mahnoosh sadeghi has just graduated with a phd in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university and shes taking her talents to industrybut first the 29 year old is going on a solo journey to the middle east to explore the sights and sounds of istanbul and dubai before heading home to visit family in iran after that shes thinking about road tripping across the united states before landing in houston to begin her new position as a consultant for mckinsey & companysince her days growing up in tehran iran sadeghi was destined to become an engineer
2402,my mom was a teacher and my dad was an engineer she said adding that her uncles are also engineersit was inside the walls of her mothers elementary classroom where a young sadeghi first discovered her love for math that curiosity turned into raw talent in high school as she continued to excel in math winning the prestigious kharazmi award for physics and mathwhen it came time for sadeghi to go to college she decided to major in petroleum engineering and economics at sharif university of technology in tehran irani think i was a junior or senior when i started thinking about grad school she said i knew my options were much better if i went to graduate school because the jobs have better salariessadeghi said graduate school also opened some doors for her to one day work in academia and teach the next generation like her mother hadwhen i was a senior i started applying to graduate schools and i got into texas a&m she saidshe was impressed by the faculty in the industrial and systems engineering department as well as the departments national ranking most recently ranked no 8 best for graduate programs among public institutions by us news and world report after one year in her masters program she decided to apply to the phd program so she could continue the research she was conducting
2403,sadeghi participated in research in the applied cognitive ergonomics (ace) lab under her advisor dr farzan sasangoharmy research is about enabling or creating a system that can detect panic attacks in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) and notify them immediately and help them cope with those events she saidsadeghi worked with more than 300 combat veterans throughout the course of her four-year phd program partnering with project hero a nonprofit organization that hosts bike rides for veterans and first responders texas a&m researchers would accompany participants on weeklong bike rides during the bike rides researchers would follow along in vehicles checking in frequently with participants who were wearing smart watches equipped with heart monitors by collecting and analyzing data the smart watch app can now predict when a panic attack will occur and provide appropriate coping mechanisms to its user the research was life changing for sadeghi because she was able to see the direct impact of applied research one day i got a text from a veteran who said he was feeling bad and the app really helped him she said he had a lot of panic attacks and that was such a big moment because i knew with the work i had done i could have an impact on someones life she said knowing the research she was doing was helping veterans made it even more important observing what they are going through i cant even describe it in words she said sadeghi also served as president of texas a&ms graduate chapter of society of women engineers (swe) which was also important for her education swe helped me a lot she said it gave me a lot of experiences to meet different people from different backgrounds it was one of the best experiences i had here the industrial and systems engineering department also hosts many networking events for graduate students to experience more in their education through those events i found a lot of friends she said while shes packing her bags and leaving aggieland sadeghi said choosing to earn a graduate degree at texas a&m was a great decision give it a try even if its just a masters it adds a lot of value and the jobs you have after graduate school are not comparable to what you have with only an undergrad she said you have different experiences get to know different people and grow a lot as a person its totally worth it
2404,dotty and dr joseph mcadams have established the mrs dotty and dr joseph mcadams endowed chemical engineering scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m university dr joseph mcadams has been involved with the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineerings advisory council for 20 years during this time he developed relationships with the faculty within the department as well as the department head dr arul jayaraman the dedication he witnessed encouraged him to give back to the department as an advisory council member mcadams also had the opportunity to conduct many of the graduating seniors exit interviews he enjoyed seeing how enthusiastic the students were for the department their commitment to the study of chemical engineering impressed mcadams and inspired him to establish the endowment and he hopes this scholarship will help educate chemical engineers on how valuable and needed they are in texas i was impressed by the commitment of the department to undergraduate students mcadams said i hope my gift will ease the cost burden students face while in school at texas a&m mcadams obtained his bachelors degree in chemical engineering from lehigh university he completed his master of business administration in finance and doctorate in chemical engineering at the university of california berkeley he worked for the downstream organization of shell global for over 25 years where he held a variety of roles he is now retired and living in the woodlands texas dr jack rodden a professor of practice at texas a&m served with mcadams on the chemical engineering advisory council for more than a dozen years i have never met a more engaged individual who cared more about the education of aggie chemical engineers and more broadly our university rodden said joes attendance and significant contributions to each committee meeting over many years were outstanding he was always ready to take on work that went beyond the meetings and required even more of his free time although almost anyone who had ever met mcadams assumed he was an aggie he was not he just had a lot of love for texas a&m the chemical engineering department and its mission the contributions he made with the council were already noteworthy but now the department is honored and humbled by his continued generosity which will help support chemical engineering students rodden said
2405,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact anna norville senior director of development
2406,a team of researchers including dr stephen raiman from the department of nuclear engineering has received a grant from the us department of energy solar energy technologies office to investigate additively manufactured ultra-high-temperature ceramics as construction materials for heat exchangers in concentrating solar power (csp) systems through this research the team seeks to improve the economic viability of concentrating solar power by reducing maintenance costs improving thermal efficiency and lowering construction costsdr james kelly from lawrence livermore national laboratory (llnl) is the lead principal investigator while raiman and bruce pint at oak ridge national laboratory (ornl) are co-principal investigators the grant totals $16 million with $300 000 going to texas a&m university in csp the suns rays are used to heat a high-temperature chloride salt mixture to temperatures up to 800 degrees celsius the salt mixture flows through a heat exchanger to capture the energy and transfer it to flowing supercritical carbon dioxide (sco2) it is challenging to find materials for high-temperature heat exchangers that can resist the corrosive molten salt and sco2 simultaneouslyllnl produces ceramics capable of withstanding high-temperature corrosive environments using a unique additive manufacturing process at texas a&m raiman assistant professor will be testing the materials in molten chloride salts to discover how to optimize their ability to resist corrosion and degradation in service additive manufacturing frees designers to use complex geometries that are not possible with conventional manufacturing said raiman this enables higher performance heat exchangers that can fit into smaller spaceshis team will also be developing a robust metal-to-ceramic joining process that will enable ceramic heat exchangers to be attached to metal pipes ornl will be testing the materials in sco2 to determine how they withstand corrosion and mechanical stresses in service-relevant environmentsdue to the combination of corrosive process fluids and high temperatures heat exchangers are among the most demanding components from a materials perspective said raiman to improve thermal efficiency it is desirable to make the walls as thin as possible which makes them more susceptible to failure the use of advanced materials opens up new design possibilities that can improve performance reduce costs and extend service lifetimes the us department of energy solar energy technologies office supports early-stage research and development to improve the affordability reliability and performance of solar technologies on the grid
2407,whether you are taking a muscle relaxant or a heart medication you are possibly using a medication that contains a synthetically produced benzoxazole although natural benzoxazoles show more significant promise in pharmaceuticals their time to develop organically and inherent undesired properties impede their usage dr xuejun zhu assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university alongside graduate student huanrong ouyang and two undergraduate students joshua hong and jeshua malroy are synthesizing natural benzoxazoles using e coli in hopes of developing a more efficient eco-friendly and cost-effective method of producing them for future drug development their research was published in the american chemical societys journal acs synthetic biology 2021 benzoxazole is a heterocyclic compound composed of carbon hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen it can be produced synthetically but is also found in bioactive natural products like nataxazole caboxamycin and calcimycin synthetically created benzoxazoles are found in synthetic pharmaceuticals ranging from chlorzoxazone (a muscle relaxant) to tafamidis (for treating heart disease) however natural benzoxazoles are rarely used because of the time it takes to organically produce the compounds and their unwanted properties such as high toxicity low potency and poor solubility there is limited research on natural benzoxazoles but they contain many qualities that show potential for future use in cancer antiparasitic and antimicrobial treatments for example some natural benzoxazoles show promising cytotoxic activity that fights against various tumor cell lines currently natural methods for producing the compound benzoxazole occur very slowly sometimes taking a week or longer said zhu the natural compounds can also cause excess levels of toxicity or other undesired properties that restrict its applications desiring to extract and combat certain qualities of natural benzoxazoles the researchers turned to the microbe e coli ­ a bacterium found in the environment and within human and animal intestines compared to other microbes e coli grows very quickly said ouyang modern researchers have conducted numerous studies on e coli and it is easier for us to manipulate genetically for productivity improvement especially for large-scale production the researchers modified an e coli with a few essential genes for making the natural benzoxazoles by coupling the engineered e coli with precursor-directed biosynthesis a pathway is developed to produce natural benzoxazoles at a faster rate from our study we found we could produce three different types of benzoxazoles simultaneously said zhu each type could have different biological activities such as antimicrobial antiparasitic and anticancer by tailoring variables such as using different precursors the researchers can further expand the structural diversity of benzoxazoles with the hope to reverse some of the natural benzoxazoles inherent issues to improve solubility and potency while lowering toxicity levels we found that our e coli-based platform can recognize and incorporate selected precursors like fluorine or chlorine into scaffolds said ouyang our research serves as a foundation for future drug discovery and development with a sustainable way to develop natural benzoxazoles they could potentially be used in various medications with more benefits than synthetically produced benzoxazoles the researchers hope this is a step toward a straightforward and cost-effective method of generating novel benzoxazole analogs through protein engineering and combinatorial biosynthesis this work is supported by the texas a&m engineering experiment station and chemical engineering department start-up funds
2408,securing the us supply chain is imperative to protect americas economic future and maximize national security thats why the secureamerica institute (sai) searched nationwide for projects that could fortify a resilient us manufacturing and defense industrial base us supply chain resiliency has taken a hit over the last few decades driven by globalization where large specialized businesses find cost advantages through economies of scale said joe schibi strategy and operations manager for deloitte which is researching multitiered supply chains with sai we can better understand prioritize and ultimately mitigate vulnerabilities when we illuminate the supply chain bringing the most basic product to market involves multiple organizations from those providing raw materials to build the product to others providing value-added services such as warehousing and distribution if any step is compromised nothing gets to the consumer for project deep view researchers at deloitte and sai are evaluating two different supply areas of national interest hypersonic technology and personal protective equipment to identify thematic risks and services that support us industry analyzing a multitiered supply chain begins with understanding the value chain down to the raw materials in hypersonic technology raw materials include items like rare earth elements used in microelectronics for navigation or targeting the majority of rare earth elements production is in china schibi said a lack of diversification is a strategic risk to the us that could result in us being cut off from these critical materials when theyre needed most projects like deep view can further address the ominous trend of diamond supply chains which undermine manufacturing security and resiliency explained dr eleftherios iakovou sais manufacturing supply chain director and harvey hubbell professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university diamond supply chains happen when major components of critical supply chains are all concentrated in certain countries (deeper in the chain in higher-tier suppliers) often as a result of national industry policy iakovou said disruption in the flow of physical goods is just one dimension of supply chain risk indirect goods and services can also impact resiliency indirect goods and services include software used to design and protect sensitive intellectual property (ip) which is particularly relevant in a supply area critical to national security like hypersonic technology when we analyzed a segment of the industry we saw companies using foreign software and web hosting services for product design and collaboration activities schibi said this can increase the risk of ip theft while ip theft is less of an issue in a mature industry like personal protective equipment (ppe) other risks like quality control can undermine resiliency just before the covid-19 pandemic began nine million surgical gowns were recalled because of poor sterilization practices by foreign manufacturers schibi said improper sterilization fractured the supply chain and widened the gap between demand and supply when demand was surging it was truly a perfect storm for the product category in light of the supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic calls for reshoring or transferring manufacturing back to the us from overseas have increased however there are economic barriers for many product categories including ppe we can pursue a multifaceted approach that includes reshoring at strategic points in the value chain as well as stronger partnerships with ally nations schibi said for example a surgical gown company could diminish the risk of poor sterilization practices by reshoring only the sterilization process making this a final activity performed in the us could provide greater oversight while avoiding more significant cost increases of reshoring all manufacturing both schibi and iakovou hope the projects findings will produce safer supply chains in all industries capable of withstanding raw material shocks and rapid demands spikes and will also encourage the manufacturing industry to pursue solutions domestically in the us supply chain visibility and mapping are absolutely necessary to develop next-generation cost-competitive resilient supply chains for the nation iakovou said the supply shocks of the last two years have shown us that viewing raw materials semifinished goods and finished products starting from suppliers to customers is more important than ever
2409,the secureamerica institute and its network of partners are committed to leveraging technology solutions to address nationally impactful challenges please contact chief technology officer dr darrell wallace at dwallace@tamuedu to discuss how we might work together to develop integrate and deploy technology solutions to ensure the security and resilience of the domestic manufacturing base
2410,"dr zafar bhatti an experienced engineer in water and wastewater infrastructural facility design and a skilled regulatory compliance official has joined the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university as an associate professor of practice he has more than 18 years of experience in public service four years as a lead process engineer with consulting engineering companies five years in environmental protection in a developing country and five years of teaching experience at international universitieswith his long association with the ontario ministry of the environment conservation and parks bhatti brings a unique perspective on regulatory compliance including permits licenses and field operations ""legislative compliance is my strength and i bring a well-proportioned experience on the design and compliance of water and wastewater infrastructure facilities stakeholder communications and professional ethics and responsibilities "" he said ""these are the basic ingredients of a professional engineer and i plan to teach these strengths to our students the leaders of tomorrow""bhatti has previous teaching experience and was ready to return to the classroom when he saw the opportunity at texas a&m""i have taught in the past and teaching is something that i enjoy "" he said ""i had heard about texas a&m university and i knew it was a high-ranking university so i didn't feel hesitant to apply the rest is history and i am happy to be here""bhatti said his favorite part of teaching is that he also learns when he teaches""when i am teaching the students i must understand the contents of my lectures but teaching the same lecture recurrently consolidates the basic concepts and allows me to comprehend further possibilities on the subject "" he saidbhatti received his bachelor's in civil engineering from the university of engineering and technology in lahore pakistan a masters in civil engineering from the middle east technical university in ankara turkey and a doctorate in environmental engineering from osaka university in osaka japan his research interests include fixed-film biological wastewater treatment systems anaerobic wastewater treatment systems drinking water treatment and environmental policy"
2411,drew dudley 12 loves his hometown of college station and after receiving his undergraduate degree in structural engineering from the university of kansas he returned to college station to pursue a graduate degree in structural engineering from texas a&m universitydudley was recently named to the newest cohort of 12 under 12 young alumni spotlight this honor from the association of former students recognizes 12 former students who have graduated in the past 12 years for demonstrating excellence in business and service while representing texas a&ms core values of excellence integrity leadership loyalty respect and selfless servicesince the award's inception in 2014 only 108 of texas a&ms 550 000 former students have been recognized with the 12 under 12 young alumni spotlighti am deeply honored and humbled especially when you read the accomplishments of the fellow recipients in my class and those prior he saiddudley is the founder and principal of the dudley engineering firm which began as a startup in a spare bedroom and has risen to an award-winning companywe have a great culture that improves the lives of our associates and society at large he said my greatest life accomplishment is marrying my wife anna dudley 11 (civil engineering) who is now my boss within the company as well as at homewhile a graduate student in civil engineering dudley said one of his most memorable classes was a capstone class with dr luciana barrosogetting to work on a team and apply all of the knowledge obtained through the masters program was a great learning experience he said
2412,"he was also active in the texas a&m student chapter of the structural engineering association of texas he is a volunteer with the ace (architecture construction and engineering) mentor program of america and served as a structural specialist at the federal emergency management agencyas a structural design engineer dudley has impacted the aggieland landscape by working on the 2015 kyle field renovation one of his mentors is bart miller the national sports market leader at global engineering firm walter p moore and the structural engineer of record for kyle field""he is a brilliant engineer and project manager on top of being a great person "" he saidin addition to his professional career dudley teaches architecture and engineering students as a visiting lecturer at texas a&m""i enjoy breaking down a complicated concept into simpler parts so that the students gain a deeper understanding of the subject seeing the light bulb go off in their head when they finally can wrap their head around an issue is very rewarding "" he said ""the feedback i regularly receive from the students is that they enjoy my stories of real-world scenarios in the construction industry they indicate that they help them understand the importance of why we are looking at a concept""for aspiring engineers he shares the best advice he has received""it is ok to fail as long as you learn from your mistakes and keep trying "" he said ""discover what you are passionate about and pursue it relentlessly"""
2413,shari and carlton smith have established the shari 81 and carlton smith 80 endowed fellowship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more fellowships to students pursuing a graduate degree in electrical engineering in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m universityshari and carlton met at texas a&m while pursuing their degrees in electrical engineering they married in 1981 and both accepted jobs with the dow chemical company in houston texas after several years the smiths moved to the louisiana operations site for dow chemical where they remained for the rest of their careers for several years dow chemical has been partnering with employees to provide scholarships for chemical and mechanical engineering students at texas a&m shari and carlton were excited for the opportunity to contribute but wanted to expand the scholarship to include electrical engineering students we wanted to support our degree too shari said over the past several years shari and carlton have established three undergraduate scholarships in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m shari and carlton enjoyed getting to know their scholarship recipients and witnessing the advances in the department we enjoy sharing our experiences with the students of what it was like when we went to school and what the technology was like shari said the smiths decided to take their contribution to the next level and establish an endowed fellowship for students pursuing a graduate degree in electrical engineering we wanted to create something different that still supported the department we studied in shari said they made additional preferences that the scholarship be given to a texas or louisiana resident the department currently has 29 endowed fellowships with a majority of its recipients being first-generation college students we recognize that not everybody is in a position to have their parents pay for school shari said we would like to see that the money is used to help relieve some of that financial burden to enable them to achieve their goals they also aim to instill a spirit of generosity in the recipients lives we hope the students will also give back to the university as they are able to later in life carlton saidshari followed in the footsteps of her father who was also an electrical engineer she knew that studying engineering at texas a&m would be the best fit for her two of sharis younger siblings followed her example and chose to study electrical engineering at texas a&m as well studying in the department of electrical and computer engineering gave shari clarity about what type of career she wanted to pursue i wanted to apply what i learned in school first and then eventually change over to a job that would involve being out in the field more she said coming from a rural town in the texas panhandle carlton experienced a lifestyle at texas a&m unlike any other his aggie degree launched him into a career that would later allow him to travel globally and experience a variety of cultures he lived in the united kingdom for two years traveling throughout europe and the middle east it was an opportunity to see how people lived in different parts of the world he saidafter working with dow chemical for over 30 years shari and carlton are now retired and live in baton rouge louisiana they have four grandchildren who they hope will decide to be engineers as well
2414,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment fellowships encourage collaboration between the faculty students and industry mentors while allowing graduate students to further their education and thus having a greater impact on the industry if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please email true brown senior director of development at tbrown@txamfoundationcom
2415,texas a&m university is a member of the consortium for enabling technologies and innovation (eti) that was given a five-year $25-million award from the us department of energys national nuclear security administration (nnsa) focusing on enabling technologies for nuclear security applicationsthe consortium led by the georgia institute of technology under the direction of dr anna erickson is composed of 14 universities and 12 national laboratories the overarching goal is to create a research and education environment to support cross-cutting technologies across three thrust areas: data science and autonomous solutions advanced manufacturing for nonproliferation and novel instrumentation and sensorsthe umbrella of computer and engineering science research specifically in the form of machine learning and high-performance computing supports and enhances advanced manufacturing and nuclear detection technologiestexas a&m is an active team member in the consortium and is represented by drs pavel tsvetkov and lin shao from the department of nuclear engineering tsvetkov associate professor serves as the principal investigator and lead for the texas a&m team he focuses on anomaly detection and surveillance using cube satellites as data-gathering platforms if equipped with able sensors such as hyperspectral sensors cube satellites are able to serve as a cost-effective monitoring solution to detect man-made and natural anomalies and reach any point on the globe on demand this is of paramount importance for safety and security applications to make the approach work robust smart data science and engineering approaches are being developed to support collected data analysis and prognosticsshao is a professor and director of the accelerator laboratory at texas a&m his research focuses on the materials science side of additively manufactured alloys the study will establish a correlation between 3d printing parameters microstructural changes mechanical properties and radiation responses of alloys if used in a harsh environment the project uses the characterized behavior of material as fingerprints to trace back processing details within advanced manufacturing streams texas a&m is unique in its strong capability of irradiation testing using the accelerator laboratory facility and well-integrated materials characterization using multiple on-campus user facilities the consortium supports several masters and doctoral students and engages a number of undergraduate students in research in the nuclear engineering department texas a&m is working on engaging collaborations with nanoracks llc in houston as well as sandia national laboratory with developments to expand and engage brookhaven national laboratory and pacific northwest national laboratoryin addition to his research role tsvetkov serves as an academic director coordinating academic programs for the consortium he is helping to organize annual summer schools and conduct online courses focusing on fundamentalsin 2020 the consortium held two virtual summer schools focusing on data science and engineering in 2021 a course on novel sensors for fuel cycle applications was offered this year the third summer school is planned to be in person and will focus on advanced manufacturingthe consortium has a virtual course focusing on fundamentals in nuclear security and nonproliferation – eti 101 the course consists of five modules: nuclear science of radiation interactions nuclear engineering of reactors and systems nuclear fuel cycle and waste management overview of nuclear security and nonproliferation and nexus of technology and policy eti 101 is offered every spring semester; its inaugural offering was in spring 2021 the next course is currently scheduled for jan 11dr sunil chirayath associate professor in the department and dr robert brigantic from the pacific northwest national laboratory helped organize and deliver the fourth course module focusing on nuclear security and nonproliferation this module featured national laboratory and university lecturers one of the notable contributors was dr angela lousteau from oak ridge national laboratory a former student of the departmentthe core of the research expenditures from eti is directed at student education and support to grow the next generation of nonproliferation scientists with strong connections to national laboratories through the project texas a&m has developed multiple collaborations with nnsa laboratories students are offered multiple internship opportunities to expand training and research activitiesalong with georgia tech and texas a&m the consortium includes the university of wisconsin and the ohio state university as leads of the thrust areas as well as the massachusetts institute of technology university of michigan university of hawaii colorado school of mines the university of north carolina at chapel hill washington state university duke university clafin university spelman college and the university of texas at austin
2416,"the oil and gas industry has modified the proppants and diverters they use in fracture processes to improve oil recovery in shale reservoirs over the years but the efforts are based on guesswork since proppant and diverter behavior is impossible to observe as it occurs entirely out of sight downhole texas a&m university graduate researcher gabriel tatman has utilized 3d printing to recreate fractures in a way that reveals proppant and diverter behavior as part of a joint industry project his novel use of clear models created from actual rock fracture data uncovered these unseen behaviors and led to the unique ability to repeat fracture flow experiments in exacting detail the project is a collaboration between texas a&m and the colorado school of mines where actual proppant transport experiments occur the goal is to identify conditions that lead to maximized proppant placement and what proppant concentrations and types perform the best in various rock geometries this will improve hydraulic fracturing efforts in oil recovery ""we're not the first to 3d print rock surfaces but we are the first to do resin 3d printing for this particular application "" said tatman oil recovery in shale reservoirs usually begins with hydraulic fracturing where fluid is forced into the rock formation at high pressures to fracture or crack the shale proppants different sized grains of sand are flushed down in a fluid slurry to hold these fractures open after the high pressure is released so oil and gas can flow to the well diverters which are chemical or mechanical materials that can later be dissolved or recovered are sometimes injected to strategically block main slurry paths so proppants are forced into new channels to create complex fracture geometries the process usually goes unseen but 3d printing technology is helping to change that when he was an undergraduate student in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering tatman shared his hobby interest in 3d printing with dr ding zhu professor and mccain engineering chair he even 3d printed a rock casting containing a complex acid-dissolved flow channel structure while he was a student in her class impressed zhu encouraged tatman to experiment with potential applications in research"
2417,"after receiving his bachelor's degree tatman joined zhu and regents professor and noble chair dr dan hill to begin his graduate studies his work with their team researching hydraulic fracturing produced clear 3d-printed samples with micrometer-level details of fracture surfaces when flushed through these transparent fracture models the proppant and diverter behavior could be directly observed seeing actual proppant behavior is groundbreaking but the project also applies 3d printing to fracture conductivity in an unprecedented way in the past researchers built laboratory-scale equipment to study how effectively proppants allow oil and gas to flow in fractures a process called conductivity still the equipment was usually constructed with smooth walls where natural rock fracture surfaces are very irregular rough artificial fracture surfaces can be easily created in detail with 3d printing thanks to current equipment the drawback is 3d printing resins are not strong enough for experiments requiring actual rock-like strength so tatman's 3d printouts are used as molds to create artificial rock structures out of high-strength cement that can capture complex surface geometries and these artificial samples can be infinitely cast from the molds leading to consistent and repeatable test bases for more accurate research results ""we can simulate fracture surfaces by using common geostatistical approaches that capture the characteristics of a particular formation "" tatman said ""with 3d printing we can create physical versions of these simulated surfaces for experiment applications"" since fracture surface characteristics can vary for each shale formation tatman said the team will eventually construct a database of proppant transport behavior in different reservoirs he won't see the end of the project because he leaves after graduation in the spring for a full-time position in the industry but tatman is excited to be part of the cutting-edge research laying the foundation for future work he also looks forward to seeing 3d printing take on other investigations such as plugging agent behaviors in wormhole geometries formed within acid-treated reservoirs ""(in) the past five years the level of development seen in the 3d printing world has been phenomenal "" tatman said ""3d printing has been something i have been passionate about since high school being able to bring the hobby side of my life to the research side and integrate both into something productive has been something i'm really proud of"""
2418,the national academy of inventors (nai) has named two texas a&m university college of engineering faculty to their 2021 class of nai fellows dr gerard coté and dr james hubbard jr are among the 164 prolific academic innovators from across the world named fellow induction ceremonies will be held at nais annual meeting this june in phoenixthe 2021 fellow class hails from 116 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes worldwide they collectively hold over 4 800 issued us patents among the new class of fellows are 33 members of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine and three nobel laureates as well as other honors and distinctions their collective body of research and entrepreneurship covers a broad range of scientific disciplines involved with the technology transfer of their inventions for the benefit of society the caliber of this years class of nai fellows is outstanding each of these individuals is highly regarded in their respective fields said nai president paul r sanberg in a press release the breadth and scope of their discovery are truly staggering im excited not only to see their work continue but also to see their knowledge influence a new era of science technology and innovation worldwide coté is director of the center for remote health technologies and systems a texas a&m regents professor and holder of the james j cain professorship i in the department of biomedical engineeringhe holds the rank of fellow in the institute of electrical and electronics engineers the international society for optics and photonics the biomedical engineering society and the american institute for medical and biological engineering another recent honor includes receiving the walston chubb award for innovation from sigma xi the scientific research honor societycotés research focuses on the development of macro- to nano-scale biomedical systems and point-of-care devices some research applications include the development of innovative noninvasive and minimally invasive ways to test blood sugar levels in diabetes; detecting other body chemicals such as cardiac biomarkers for cardiovascular disease; the use of mobile device and optoelectronics technology to detect malaria at the point of care; and monitoring perfusion oxygenation heart rate heart rate variability and cuffless blood pressure with wearable deviceshubbard who serves as oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair i professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is a member of the national academy of engineering he joined texas a&m in early 2017 first serving as a visiting fellow of the hagler institute for advanced study before accepting a permanent positionhubbard leads the starlab a state-of-the-art motion-capture research space well-suited for testing and developing new methods and technologies he also is internationally known for his research in aeroacoustics for noise control adaptive structures spatially distributed transducers and the extension of modem time-domain control methodologies into the spatial domain to monitor distributed systemsthe nai fellows program has 1 403 members worldwide representing more than 250 prestigious universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes coté and hubbard join 14 current or past texas a&m faculty members selected as nai fellows
2419,dr jean c ragusa professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university has been named a fellow of the american nuclear society (ans)the honored membership grade of fellow is awarded to ans members for outstanding accomplishments in any one of the areas of nuclear science and engineering the honor of receiving the highest membership grade of the society is reserved for senior members of good reputation who have compiled a professional record of experience marked by significant contribution to the advancement of one or more of the various disciplines served by the societyragusa who also serves as associate director of the institute for scientific computation was recognized by the ans for his seminal contributions in high-performance scientific computing applied to nuclear energy and national securityit is a great honor to become an ans fellow i am very humbled by this recognition he said i would like to take this opportunity to thank my former and current students postdocs collaborators in the us department of energy (doe) complex and in academia i am especially grateful for friends and peers in the radiation transport and multiphysics communities and for the opportunity to work on challenging and exciting problemshis accomplishments include the development of novel numerical methods for accelerating transport solutions on supercomputers discretization techniques for improved physical accuracy in radiation transport and multiphysics simulations and applied data scienceragusas research focuses on developing and applying high-fidelity high-performance computing and simulation methods applied to nuclear engineering and science he has successfully tackled several contemporary grand challenges of nuclear computational physicsi look forward to more years of exciting research in computational physics numerical methods and data sciences in support of the advanced modeling and simulation programs of the us doe office of nuclear energy and the stockpile stewardship program of the us doe national nuclear security administration ragusa who has been with the department of nuclear engineering for 16 years received his diplome dingenieur in nuclear engineering from the ecole nationale superieure de physique de grenoble in france his master of science in nuclear engineering from texas a&m and his doctorate in nuclear engineering from the grenoble institute of technology
2420,"dr james hubbard jr is part of the 2021 class of national academy of inventors (nai) fellows hubbard serves as oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair i professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he is also a permanent member of the hagler institute for advanced study at texas a&m and a member of the national academy of engineering hubbard said he is humbled to be recognized by the prestigious organization and its members in 1982 i created the very first smart structure and concomitantly received the first two patents while at massachusetts institute of technology hubbard said as time progresses in an attempt to demonstrate the efficacy of the concept i received on average a patent a year for the next 24 years conceiving of and reducing to practice many new smart systems the nai induction means national recognition of my efforts one of 164 newly elected fellows hubbard leads the starlab at the texas a&m university system rellis campus and focuses on research areas including smart or adaptive structures morphing aircraft autonomous vehicles and human-machine interface ""creativity is an inherent trait of engineers but only a select few have the capacity to transfer that creativity into tangible inventions and even fewer do so while realizing a successful academic career "" said dr guillermo aguilar james and ada forsyth professor and mechanical engineering department head ""dr james hubbard jr is one of those few congratulations on this well-deserved recognition"" nai fellows are recognized as inventors working in government nonprofit or academic research institutes who hold patents with the united states patent and trademark office the goal of the nai is to increase the visibility of academic technology and innovation encourage the disclosure of intellectual property educate and mentor students and help the inventions of its members to benefit society hubbard and his peers will be inducted during the nai annual meeting in june 2022"
2421,dr faruque hasan associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and holder of the kim tompkins mcdivitt 88 and phillip mcdivitt 87 faculty fellowship at texas a&m university was recently elected as a director of the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) computing and systems technology (cast) division for 2022-24 the members of the division executive committees are seen as future leaders of society and the community said hasan it is an honor to serve my professional community and this is a step toward more meaningful engagement that goes beyond this role aiche is the largest professional organization for chemical engineers with over 60 000 members worldwide and several divisions the cast division focuses on a variety of activities involving computing and chemical engineering systematic decision-making and process systems engineering ranging from process design operations intensification optimization and control using techniques from applied mathematics the director position is voted on by aiche members as the director hasan will serve the cast community through varying avenues such as the aiche annual conference and poster sessions the meetings include researchers students and professionals and they are a great platform to exchange ideas he said they showcase the power of servicing a community being a part of the planning of these events is one of the many reasons i am excited to be named director additionally hasan is a recent recipient of the cast outstanding young researcher award and hopes to use his research findings and role as cast director to make strides toward a greener future the chemical and energy industries hold many of the keys for future sustainable and renewable energies like the creation of carbon capture processes environmentally friendly energy storage systems and the development of a sustainable hydrogen economy said hasan we are moving science in a new direction by applying computational and computer-aided methods to solve these pressing issues hasan hopes that by assuming a director role he can further the efforts to solve some of earths grand challenges that align with his research areas such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions developing sustainable energy resources and furthering carbon capture methods what we have been doing and what we can do as a committee is share our knowledge so that upcoming researchers will have the tools and training necessary to solve these problems he said
2422,"high-fidelity touch has the potential to significantly expand the scope of what we expect from computing devices making new remote sensory experiences possible the research on these advancements led by a pair of researchers from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university could help touchscreens simulate virtual shapes dr cynthia hipwell is studying friction at the finger-device level while dr jonathan felts is researching friction in the interaction between single skin cells and the glass of the touchscreen interface the two are bringing together their respective areas of expertise to apply friction principles at the microscopic level to finger-device interaction mechanics hipwell highlighted the significance of the pursuit by comparing it to the technologies currently available for conveying immersive and accurate information through high-fidelity audio and video ""we can view digitally recorded or remotely transmitted audio and video on a screen with great detail "" said hipwell oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair ii professor ""we do not yet have that same capability with touch on a touchscreen imagine you could feel the skin of a snake that lives on another continent or the fabric of clothes you want to buy online"""
2423,"another application of this technology which has received high levels of interest recently is the augmentation of immersive virtual environments such as the proposed metaverse the touch sensations that would be required to really immerse yourself into a reality that is fully digital requires huge advancements in touch perception said felts associate professor and steve brauer jr '02 faculty fellow what weve done is essentially created an entirely new way to modulate the perception of touch that hasnt existed before"" the team is working to show that it is possible to mimic the unique mechanical and thermal sensations associated with different surface textures and shapes their recent publication in the journal science robotics demonstrates the potential for translating these sensations on a touchscreen by using temperature variation alone rather than expressing them through ultrasonic vibrations or electroadhesion methods ""we were actually surprised by the magnitude of the friction increase we were able to achieve "" hipwell said ""its magnitude is competitive with current surface haptic devices meaning that there is another option for friction modulation in surface-haptic device rendering"""
2424,"another exciting development hipwell said is that their research has shown that it is possible to localize the friction to the outer layer of the skin and at least at swipe speeds control friction without making the device feel hot as the research continues felts said many of the questions remaining involve how readily the approach can be incorporated into consumer devices and commercialized ""can it be scaled down can it respond quickly enough can it mimic a wide range of surfaces can it be affordable we think these are fair criticisms yet we look forward to using this phenomenon to improve our basic understanding of haptic feedback and pursuing miniaturization and commercialization avenues "" he said the team is continuing their work to address challenges facing the approach by further exploring the complexities of the finger-device interface and variations that occur due to environmental and skin-property differences they also hope to look at design improvements for miniaturization and integration into touchscreens"
2425,the department of biomedical engineering is celebrating its 50th year as a program in 2022 in recognition of this milestone we reached out to former students from various graduating classes to see where they are now what drew them to biomedical engineering and how they engaged with the program at texas a&m university
2426,elizabeth buck bs 19 & meng 20 senior advanced quality engineer strykerphoenix arizona q: what do you enjoy most about your career a: i love the diversity of opportunities that i have been able to pursue as a biomedical engineer in the medical device industry in the past four years i have worked in neurovascular research and development joint replacement product development surgical robotics quality engineering and sustainable technology development all within stryker as a lifelong learner the opportunity to cultivate a diverse skill set and contribute to different areas of the business is incredibly rewarding q: why did you choose to major in biomedical engineering a: i chose to major in biomedical engineering after suffering a traumatic brain injury in high school this life-changing injury inspired within me a personal mission to serve others in the medical field biomedical engineering has afforded me the opportunity to accomplish this mission by developing innovative products and processes to improve the patient's quality of life q: what advice do you have for current and future students a: find what drives and motivates you and lean into this when faced with challenges and obstacles during your academic career identify what you are passionate about and pursue it wholeheartedly go above and beyond to develop an expertise in an area that makes you an asset to a company cast a wide net when recruiting apply to a variety of positions and remain open minded that your dream job might look different than what you initially envisioned for yourself
2427,bilal malik phd 11 principal clinical imaging scientist genentech; chief science officer qt imagingnovato california q: what do you enjoy most about your career a: in both my startup and large company roles i love being part of the full product cycles of medical devices from conception and early research to product development to receiving regulatory approvals and finally commercializing the devices it requires you to understand both the engineering challenges and the end-user (usually a clinician) requirements and how to translate back and forth between the two i enjoy being the interpreter between the engineers and the clinicians q: why did you choose to major in biomedical engineering a: as an international student the first time i was truly exposed to biomedical engineering was when i joined texas a&m for my graduate studies in electrical engineering i was fascinated by the applications of engineering in medicine and the immediate impact the field was having on the development of new medical devices by the time i finished my masters i had decided to pursue further graduate studies in biomedical engineering q: what were the biggest takeaways from your time in biomedical engineering at texas a&m a: i think the most important thing i realized was that it is never too late to change your field of research and pursue new interests i saw plenty of examples in biomedical engineering where researchers had focused on one area of research until the end of their graduate school and yet successfully switched over to another area of research afterward this encouraged me to embrace new areas of research when i jumped from a masters to phd to postdoc to jobs and i continue to learn to this day
2428,ed marvin bs 00 intellectual property attorney gun lee & cave pcsan antonio texas q: what advice do you have for current and future students a: keep your mind open to alternative careers you can pursue with your biomedical engineering degree and trust your instinct when i decided to pursue a law degree people around me didn't understand why i did not want a career as an engineer now they do i'm glad i trusted myself and went with my instinct q: what advice do you have for those interested in entrepreneurship a: although i am not a founder of a company i work with entrepreneurs on a daily basis many people think the key to a successful invention is to have a well-designed product however that is only part of the equation i can help people legally protect their innovations but there is a lot more to making an invention financially successful learning how to market your invention and communicating the potential for the invention is critical and requires a constant drive most people believe in the potential for their inventions where they fall short is effectively communicating that potential to the market there are over 11 million issued patents for inventions in the us and the vast majority did not result in financial success
2429,alan brewer bs 77 professor of the practice for innovation and entrepreneurship texas a&m universitycollege station texas q: what do you enjoy most about your career a: since 2014 and my starting with texas a&m the biggest joy and greatest rewards have been working with and teaching texas a&m students the very large majority of our students have been interested hard-working and actually fun-to-teach that said i would say i enjoyed almost every major role i had while working in the (medical) device industry especially so at intermedics inc and running new product launches (pacemakers) q: what advice do you have for current and future students a: take some thought-out risks in your careers as such risk will often provide real opportunities for personal and career growth be flexible and open to opportunities that may seem outside of your present comfort zone try a different geography a different engineering role etc but never allow your family and loved ones to take a back seat to excess personal ambition
2430,hillary schatz bs 96 surgical r&d project head alcon laboratoriesfort worth texas q: why did you choose to major in biomedical engineering a: in the 1990s i could see the lines between medicine and engineering were becoming blurred news programs headlines family experience and medical breakthroughs persuaded me that what was once considered science fiction was soon to be reality my passions were physiology science and physics and i didn't think i was cut out for med school so when i found texas a&m's bioengineering program i thought it couldn't be more perfect q: what advice do you have for current and future students a: my advice would be to take advantage of internships opportunities in industry volunteering community programs travel and go to guest speaker nights whenever possible success doesn't just happen in the classroom; it happens in every interaction of every day meeting folks of all different ages and backgrounds working or volunteering in different environments and traveling all create a deeper understanding of the people and world around us problems aren't solved in laboratories they are solved by people collaborating and understanding
2431,the fourth annual invent for the planet (iftp) a global 48-hour design competition hosted by texas a&m university saw more than 400 students from 22 universities around the world collaborate to solve global issues kicking off on feb 18 in the afternoon locally students spent the next two days forming a team developing a plan and prototyping and pitching to a panel of local judges in march a panel of international judges will virtually select the top five teams from the first-place teams worldwide those teams will travel to texas a&m for a final pitch competition held april 7 the winner will be named the champion of iftp 2022 global winners will be awarded $5 000 $3 000 and $2 000 for first second and third place respectively
2432,the sun never sets on innovation international collaboration was highly encouraged and utilized throughout the event communicating through the microsoft teams environment students were able to team up with students at other universities as well as receive mentorship from industry and academia from all over the world it was really interesting to see all the other groups working at the same time even if it was the morning here and night over there said connor barnes member of just dew it iftp is a significantly scaled-up version of aggies invent a 48-hour design competition created by rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship at texas a&m his goal for these events is to ensure aggie engineers are exposed to key learning experiences before graduating like collaboration and innovation of thought the catch-phrase for iftp is ‘the sun never sets on innovation because for 48 hours these universities are all innovating around the clock its one of my favorite events as we see the global impact of our effort said boehm this is especially true as we emerge from the covid-19 lockdown students were as energetic as before just as engaged and developed tremendous solutions to some really difficult problems affecting everyone on the planet i cant wait for the global conclusion in april another goal for iftp is to give student participants access to industry mentors who not only share wisdom and their expertise but provide vital contacts and awareness to the unique need statements universities around the world had industry members on their campus for support and there was a team of volunteer mentors and judges available around the world for students to reach out to over microsoft teams one of the judges mentioned that there was a company here in bryan that outsources aquaculture to places in ghana said sophia abbasali member of aquabox he encouraged us to reach out to them to try and test our system to see if it will work
2433,the texas a&m university winners
2434,aquaculture the process of farming aquatic organisms is known to be labor intensive and unsustainable in underdeveloped nations aquabox the first-place winners at iftp 2022 developed an easy-to-use digitalized aquaculture monitoring system specifically for developing countries therefore it was important for them to break language barriers and provide an affordable accessible and easy system to help increase food production the aquabox is placed in a water channel and is powered by solar panels it has sensors that will notify the farmer about different levels of the water through light patterns and has a user manual that will be provided in a variety of languages to explain those patterns followed by an action for the farmer to take to fix the problem having a team with diverse academic backgrounds and experiences proved a winning formula for aquabox they emphasized relying on using every member to their fullest potential and shared how valuable and experience like aggies invent and iftp can be it helps you work collaboratively with a team and make sure you know how to coordinate with everybody else getting on the same page with other people and working toward the same goal can be difficult sometimes aggies invent teaches you how to do that said devon reber member of aquabox aquabox: rachel simms engineering freshman devon reber engineering freshman natalie new chemical engineering biochemistry sophomore sophia abbasali health policy and management graduate student
2435,when natural disasters such as hurricanes landslides and floods occur clean drinkable water is one of the most difficult necessities to supply even in metropolitan areas with large supply chains just dew it placed second for their creation the dewdrop this easy-to-assemble system consistently captures clean water from the air no matter the location a lot of effort (at iftp) is going into solving problems faced by a large portion of the world it increases the connection between academia and industry industry can then take the solutions and scale it up and take it to (those) who are in need said muhammad ali member of just dew it the system implements six layers of polyethylene umbrella-shaped sheets that are meant to capture and filter the water as it goes into a bucket beneath it every morning dewdrop users will have an average of 8-12 liters of clean and drinkable water solving one of the largest issues experienced from natural disasters i really enjoyed this weekend just to be able to come together as a team none of us knew each other going into this and were all from different disciplines of engineering yet we were able to come up with a common solution i think for me it was a great experience overall and it gave me a lot of confidence to be able to work with any team going into industry no matter what the challenge is said jack jernigan member of just dew it just dew it: nathan hill engineering freshman muhammed tai mechanical engineering senior muhammed ali civil engineering graduate student aimen ahsan hafeez mechanical engineering freshman connor barnes interdisciplinary engineering junior jack jernigan industrial engineering senior
2436,every year over 560 million tons of food is wasted globally with the demographic of 18-35 years of age being the main culprits foodle the third-place team created a community-based app that allows those who live in apartments to give and receive food through communication the team members sought to tackle their need statement from the perspective of their education and backgrounds coming together for one unique solution to wasted food i saw this as a consumer problem and as a software engineer i felt like software had a huge ability to be a consumer product said nathan reddy a member of foodle thats how i could apply my skills on the team if the user wants to give food they can either list it on the app or put it in the foodle box that has a live stream camera attached at a designated drop-off location if users want to receive food they would simply request on the app check the live stream or physically go to the box to check available foods by doing so foodle will prevent excessive food waste and build a better sense of community i saw this issue more as a distribution problem than a quantity problem said embibel bebo amenu a member of foodle i feel like there is enough food in this world but the more developed countries hoard it all and dont have a smart system to expand living in america would be a perfect place to solve and test this helping less-fortunate and developed countries get the food they should be able to obtain foodle: carolyn nguyen computer science senior nathan reddy computer science senior embibel amenu mechanical engineering senior samarth pahwa engineering freshman many thanks go out to the sponsors of this event chevron grass roots and designspark said boehm with industry support like these partnerships students can continue to benefit tremendously from impactful opportunities
2437,dr feng zhao associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is innovating ways we treat tissue damage in the body zhaos expertise is in cardiovascular tissue engineering and tissue vascularization (where a capillary network capable of delivering nutrients to the cells is formed within the tissue) applications range from cardiac patches and vascular grafts for bypass surgeries to wound healing to ensure an engineered tissue is accepted by the body a common strategy is to start the process of building the 3d structure of a material that mimics the natural tissue as much as possible including using tools to organize the cells into a tissue structure so that the engineered tissues can be better integrated into the body you want to mimic a natural process because the cells can better perform their function in an environment that they are familiar with zhao said it's not that easy to fully replicate the in vivo environment but we try to do that
2438,one tissue engineering challenge is ensuring the graft is vascularized and nourished similar to the natural tissue through vascular bioengineering zhao said researchers could work to ensure that engineered 3d tissues contain the vessels and capillaries necessary for vascularization when the structure or scaffold is placed in the patient one of her newer projects focuses on lymphatic tissue regeneration to limit the chance of lymphedema the build-up of fluid in soft body tissues when the lymph system is damaged or blocked after cancer surgeries lymphatic tissue vessels remove extra fluid but if the tissue is damaged after a trauma like surgery zhao said lymphedema could easily develop as the fluid cannot be removed we have developed some tools to engineer the lymphatic microvessels in vitro that highly mimic the in vivo process of the lymphatic microvascular formation zhao said however its still not enough to fully restore the function of lymphatic tissue unlike other tissues lymphatic tissue contains capillaries and vessels of varying sizes and larger vessels contain valves that ensure the unidirectional flow of collected fluids since zhaos model has shown success her team is now working on developing models for larger and valved vessels we are still striving to seek a perfect solution zhao said we are tissue engineers we use our unique way to recover the damaged tissue to its original shape and function
2439,two primary challenges that petroleum engineers face are finding oil in the earths subsurface and making it flow to enable production the subsurface contains a huge variety of materials and is underground and out of sight so the process is like finding a needle in a large haystack in the dark over the past few years oil and gas companies have deployed advanced sensor arrays in well sites to gather the information needed to shed light on these issues however the amount of data collected is too large to be handled by standard methods of effective analysis for the past several months graduate student researchers matteo caponi polina churilova and yusuf falola at texas a&m university have been using machine learning where computers are trained how to learn by programmers to effectively pare down the amount of data the sensors are producing the students were then able to teach modeling software the algorithms they created algorithms that knew what to look for what to ignore and how to depict the answers needed by companies to make informed decisions it is very exciting to work with real data and understand how different techniques can come together to predict reservoir properties said caponi the two ongoing projects are funded by upstream oil and gas companies conocophillips and berry petroleum and both will evaluate the results in august for future applications in the field the students work was overseen by dr siddharth misra the ted h smith jr 75 and max r vordenbaum ‘73 dvg associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m the projects are industry and academic partnerships engaged by the applied research group data-driven intelligent characterization and engineering (dice) led by misra he created dice to encourage oil and gas companies to use data machine learning and analytics to lower operation costs better assess risks and improve resource recovery todays sensing technology is easy to deploy relatively cheap and stores a lot of data which leads to these big dataset sizes said misra but you cannot decisively work with such big data unless you extract the most relevant and useful information sensors can take a broad range of measurements from soundwave reflections to pressure changes to temperature fluctuations and more but most of this information isnt needed to solve the problems of finding and recovering subsurface oil without some way of reducing the data down to the core values required to model oil production pathways feedback from the sensors remains overwhelming and useless
2440,misra said that machine learning is the best way to make sense of massive data because the created algorithms can be trained to rapidly sift the information according to the structure or parameters needed to solve specific problems spatial data in the form of images seismic volumes and geological models work best in the training process he says one challenge the students faced was the amount of time it took to train their algorithms which had to become capable of teaching themselves to find the right ‘needles in the reservoirs misra introduced the students to the most successful methods of robust feature extraction and deep learning which use neural network creation the students created the networks by treating each small step of data reduction as a simplified task the algorithms had to learn the algorithms neural networks grew level by level with each level representing a different task the algorithms mastered i learned so much in just a few months said falola these techniques can greatly reduce reservoir model running times improve production forecasts accurately predict formation water production and more as the work progressed and the students gained confidence they approached one of the biggest hurdles in this advanced work: overcoming the tendency of data-driven models to overfit the data overfit occurs when an algorithm mistakenly believes that a subsurface noise or data stream is important when it really isnt the students applied three methods to convince the algorithms to ignore the extra noise and find the correct answer first they used artificial simplified well-site data where the oil location and flow paths were already known and easily discovered then to see if the algorithms could distinguish the correct answer from the wrong ones they used loss training where the data contained a few possibilities for bad predictions finally to teach the algorithms more about the varieties of positive predictions the software should focus on the students introduced them to initial feature-extraction data from wells that were already producing oil once the algorithms could handle the basics they were tested on data that was either complex but incomplete or complex and full of unnecessary information when successfully prepared the algorithms could apply their knowledge to any type of similar data packets to uncover relevant answers i am fascinated to work at the intersection of deep learning and petroleum engineering said churilova i think the technologies that we develop have the potential to revolutionize the industry the students frequently interacted with engineers and geoscientists working with conocophillips and berry petroleum to find out what oil production problems the machine-learning algorithms needed to tackle this valuable interaction is why misra created the research group dice to engage his students in experience opportunities with industry however that isnt his only goal research like this improves the understanding and control of subsurface earth resources which could reduce the cost and carbon footprint of producing oil said misra it also improves industry confidence to reach out to academic institutions for solutions to their problems
2441,two seniors in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university drew dehaven and eduardo gracia rodriguez spent the fall semester working at the spacex starbase at the boca chica texas launch site they were among approximately 13 students from texas a&m who worked there through the co-op job experience program that allows students to enroll in school full time while still working gracia and dehaven were both on the power distribution team working as launch engineers on various projects pertaining to different aspects of the launchpad to get the sn20 ready for its upcoming orbital launch to mars the sn20 (serial no 20) is the latest development from spacex designed for deep-space missions with the goal of bringing astronauts to mars this steel starship is the worlds tallest rocket/booster combination towering 395 feet off the ground while the launch date has been pushed back due to testing due to regulatory issues the goal is to get this rocket into orbit by late march at the earliest it was incredibly cool to get to drive up every day and see the launch pad and the rockets its very surreal being out there on the beach and seeing everything thats been built dehaven said pretty much the whole site was built in less than a year so it just popped up out there and it only happened because people were so motivated by the overall mission one of the teams main focuses is producing and using electricity while helping assemble a rocket that can launch into orbit using a fraction of the power of a regular rocket this required making modifications daily to ensure the rocket was ready for its next test these goals required many cross-functional teams working at a breakneck pace to make sure the rocket and all of the support pieces were ready for the next test gracia worked on circuit design and powering motors and pumps and dehaven focused on automated controls all of the rockets components are designed to catch themselves upon landing something that has never been done on this scale with the support of a launch pad and launch tower designed specifically for this purpose the ship's booster has several grid fins allowing it to control itself upon landing to make sure the ship lands fully intact and it can be used in future missions the grid fins also have the ability to target the launch tower once the ship lands this is a big initiative by spacex to ensure the ship is fully reusable i was born in mexico and i moved to brownsville when i was in fourth grade i was living there when the site was just a nose cone the front tip of a rocket and a lot of grass there was nothing else so this is really interesting to see now gracia said it was also great to see some people that i knew and recognized including some of my friends that i went to high school with i was very proud to see other people like me working there at starbase i know another one of the electrical engineering interns there was also a local from the valley and she did amazing work my community is not the most recognized so it just proves that you can still make it out there and you can still do great things both gracia and dehaven enjoyed working with many high-producing like-minded teams being a big motivator behind keeping up with fast-paced processes and projects working with other engineers and electricians encouraged them to exchange information between classes and textbooks and some of the hands-on projects they were involved in i can remember on my last day we were doing a test where they fire the engines and you have to evacuate the launch pad which is normally filled with people since it was my last day i was expecting it to be kind of a chill day but there was some issue on the control side so i had to go down to the launch pad dehaven said i was the only one out there in the middle of evacuation going through security and getting all the approvals to fix the issue and come all the way back to get it working everything i had learned over the internship had come together at that moment to know how to solve that issue and get things working spending the semester out in the field as part of a multifaceted team working on projects and processes they said was a very rewarding experience and something they hope to continue in their careers one of my favorite memories is working with drew i could work with another intern and we got our hands dirty and this project is completely independent of anyone it was a lot of ownership and thats something i really enjoyed it was just the two of us working there late trying to get a pump to run it was a fun experience gracia said its a great motivator to wake up every day and come to work and be excited about it and i think thats what the majority of others at spacex also think
2442,kamal ariss 84 has established the nadia and kamel abdel rahman first-generation endowed scholarship in engineering distributions from this endowment will provide scholarships to first-generation students pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university ariss speaks fondly of his time at texas a&m as a first-generation aggie i was initially drawn to texas a&m for its renowned construction program however after getting to know the culture of aggieland i realized that texas a&ms core values resonated with me they have made me who i am today i always like to say that i am french canadian by birth lebanese by origin and twice an aggie by choice he explains while studying engineering technology ariss stayed involved on campus and became a founding member of the first chapter of texas a&m's beta theta pi fraternity he graduated in 1984 and went on to earn a masters degree in land development in 1987 now ariss is an area manager at vanir project management where he provides oversight of design and construction of projects over the course of his career he has managed the planning and construction of many large national projects while serving on various boards and staying involved in multiple texas a&m professional and personal networks this includes serving on the leadership council and the board of directors at the association of former students however ariss aggie legacy doesnt stop with his professional life his daughter maya is a freshman at texas a&m studying communication ariss chose first-generation students as the benefactors of this scholarship because he sees the value in investing in young people who have a similar story to his own i am a firm believer that giving first-generation aggies the chance to go to college is of paramount importance the stories of these students after they graduate and have successful careers speaks for itself he explains texas a&m has given me all the tools to be successful in my career selfless service and giving back are two of many values i cherish and learned while at texas a&m i encourage all former students who are passionate about their alma mater to step up and help the university there are many ways that you can help
2443,endowments supporting texas a&m college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2444,"dr pablo tarazaga is a newly elected fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) the honor recognizes recipients for their exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession there are just 3 388 fellows out of asme's active members which number more than 60 000 tarazaga serves as professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from virginia polytechnic institute and state university in 2009 his research interests include structural dynamics adaptive structures and smart infrastructure tarazaga said he is thankful for the work of those who helped to nominate him and hopes to use his opportunity as a fellow to help further the growth of others while continuing to contribute to society ""it is always exciting to be part of a bigger entity and it is consequently rewarding to see that one can contribute to its mission and vision with one's service "" tarazaga said ""i am honored and humbled by this recognition knowing that during my career i am helping others while advancing the field of engineering"""
2445,the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) announced the 2022 recipients of its most prestigious awards the aiaa premier awards among the recipients is dr terry alfriend university distinguished professor and holder of the jack e and frances brown chair ii in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university alfriend will receive the goddard astronautics award on april 27 at the aiaa awards gala at the ronald reagan building and international trade center in washington dc alfriend was given the award for extraordinary contributions and advancements in the fields of orbital mechanics and space situational awareness the award was endowed by esther goddard to commemorate her husband robert h goddard whose early liquid rocket engine launches set the stage for the development of astronautics it is the highest honor bestowed by aiaa for notable achievement in the field of astronautics my interest in space was piqued with the launch of sputnik and a high school physics class said alfriend physics was the first science class i had that i liked and it made science interesting that interest led him to 60 years of diverse experience in the aerospace field including research development and management in the private sector government and academia over those years he has garnered recognition for his contributions he is a member of the national academy of engineering and is an honorary fellow of the aiaa in 2016 he received the texas a&m association of former students research award and the aiaa guidance navigation and control award he has also received the aiaa mechanics and control of flight award the american astronautical society (aas) dirk brouwer award and the american association for the advancement of science international scientific cooperation award additionally he was the editor-in-chief of two prestigious journals in aerospace dynamics the aiaa journal of guidance control and dynamics and the aas journal of astronautical sciences after receiving his bachelors degree from virginia tech alfriend began his professional career at lockheed missiles and space company in sunnyvale california his initial assignments were in the dynamic analysis of satellite separation systems which cemented his desire to continue working in dynamical systems while working at lockheed he completed his masters at stanford and was transferred to lockheed in huntsville alabama after a hiatus from school for one year he returned to virginia tech to obtain a doctoral degree he then moved into academia as an assistant professor in the department of theoretical and applied mechanics at cornell university in 1974 alfriend took a position at the naval research laboratory (nrl) and made his first move into management with positions at the nrl cia and the general research corp he spent the next 20 years supporting the department of defense and the intelligence community in space however his itch for academia returned and in 1994 he took a visiting position at the naval postgraduate school as the navy tactical exploitation of national capabilities chair in 1997 he accepted the offer to be the head of the aerospace engineering department at texas a&m in 2002 after managing in the private sector government and academia he returned to his enthusiasm for research and teaching for the past 25 years his research has been focused on space domain awareness and the dynamics control and navigation of satellite formations the latter subject resulted in the book satellite formation flying: dynamics control and navigation of which he is a co-author
2446,"dr andreas polycarpou is now a senior member of the national academy of inventors (nai) senior members are recognized for their innovation in producing technologies that bring or intend to bring a positive benefit to society and successes in mentoring and educating the next generation of innovators polycarpou serves as james j cain '51 chair professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and was nominated for senior member by nai fellow dr m cynthia hipwell oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair ii professor in the department polycarpou said he is humbled to be among the newly elected group of senior members ""this is a recognition of translating some of my research ideas to technologies and products for the betterment of humanity "" polycarpou said ""for example one of the recent patents has been on a new advanced material that has been commercialized for industrial and space applications"" polycarpou and his newly elected peers will be inducted during the nai's 11th anniversary annual meeting set for june 2022"
2447,"time for a road trip you punch the destination into your gps and choose the suggested route but is this shortest route the safest not necessarily according to texas a&m university researchersdr dominique lord and dr soheil sohrabi with the help of funding from the ap and florence wiley faculty fellow at texas a&m designed a study to examine the safety of navigational tools comparing the safest and shortest routes between five metropolitan areas in texas dallas-fort worth waco austin houston and bryan-college station including more than 29 000 road segments they found that taking a route with an 8% reduction in travel time could increase the risk of being in a crash by 23% ""as route guidance systems aim to find the shortest path between a beginning and ending point they can misguide drivers to take routes that may minimize travel time but concurrently carry a greater risk of crashes "" said lord professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering the researchers collected and combined road and traffic characteristics including geometry design number of lanes lane width lighting and average daily traffic weather conditions and historical crash data to analyze and develop statistical models for predicting the risk of being involved in crashes"
2448,the study revealed inconsistencies in the shortest and safest routes in clear weather conditions taking the shortest route instead of the safest between dallas-fort worth and bryan-college station will reduce the travel time by 8% still the probability of a crash increases to 20% the analysis suggests that taking the longest route between austin and houston with an 11% increase in travel time results in a 1% decrease in the daily probability of crashesoverall local roads with a higher risk of crashes include poor geometric designs drainage problems lack of lighting and a higher risk of wildlife-vehicle collisions lord and sohrabi recent civil engineering doctoral graduate and postdoctoral research associate in roadway safety at the texas a&m transportation institute published their findings in a prominent transportation journal transportation research part c they also propose a new system architecture to find the safest route using navigation systems
2449,"our study revealed the potential of commonly used road navigation apps to misguide users toward using a road that carries a higher risk of crashes which implies the need for considering safety in route-finding sohrabi said developing such a system is however challenging we proposed a system architecture for safe route-finding and highlighted the requirements for and barriers in incorporating safety in navigation apps in the new system architecture for finding the safest route researchers said that after receiving the trip destination and time of day the algorithm would identify routes by using the road network data and possible incidents including road or lane closures due to flooding or crashes the system would also factor in road characteristics historical crash data traffic information and current weather conditions the route with the lowest accumulated risk would then be suggested as the safest routenavigation based on safety rather than travel time can result in preventing crashes and promoting overall safety on the road network and eventually save lives "" lord said"
2450,"while this proposed system is promising it is heavily dependent on the availability of data by local and federal government agencies responsible for road transportation the requirements for deploying safety in route-finding systems also include the availability of real-time traffic flow and incident reports and more accurate crash prediction models additionally including a safety consideration in navigation apps would introduce the issue of a trade-off between travel time and safety researchers said drivers who arent concerned with safety might take a route with a higher risk of crashes to reduce travel time but all road users are affected if a collision occurs ""given the fact that crashes can affect not only those involved but also other road users leaving the choice between safety and time to the users may result in unethical decisions and unfair consequences "" sohrabi saidadditional work is needed to address some of the limitations in the study such as distinguishing directional crash risk intersection crash risks and the severity of crashes along these routes"
2451,pattie and freddie wong '69 have established the pattie and freddie wong 69 endowed scholarship to benefit undergraduate students in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university specializing in energy and power freddie wong began his college career at tarleton state university (formerly tarleton state college) in 1965 before transferring to texas a&m initially this transfer provided challenges for wong his college career took an unexpected turn when he found out that he was behind an entire academic year in his engineering courses due to course restrictions at his previous institution however he was determined to catch up and overcome for the next four years wong took an average of 20 hours of classes per semester after graduation wong found a job in the petrochemical oil and gas industry where he ended up staying for his entire career i was lucky that my career allowed me to make a comfortable living wong said our family was able to flourish my two sons michael and darryl both graduated from texas a&m and now have very good careers were still waiting and hoping to see if well get a third-generation aggie out of our grandchildren but we know that their college educations are well-funded merely accepting success was not enough for wong after joining the houston a&m club he spent the last 15 years supporting and volunteering with a long-term mentoring program for disadvantaged minority children in the houston area the caring aggie mentoring program (camp) the mission of camp is to mentor children as they develop through school and inspire them to pursue higher education by reinforcing excellent academic standards; building confidence and leadership skills; providing fun life-enriching experiences; and role modeling qualities of success children in camp stay in our program between the third grade and 12th grade he said two of the children ive personally mentored have already graduated from texas a&m i was able to help them with the cost of attending university by endowing scholarships for them and after seeing the impact that those scholarships had on the students that i knew so well i realized i wanted to encourage event more future aggies to pursue degrees in power systems thus this scholarship was born wong believes in continuing the legacy of aggie engineers and is proud to provide opportunities for students who might otherwise not have the chance to study at texas a&m due to financial burdens
2452,endowments supporting texas a&m college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
2453,dr shuiwang ji professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been elected to the 2022 class of the american institute for medical and biological engineering (aimbe) college of fellows for his outstanding contributions to innovative machine learning methods for biomedical image and molecular graph analysis all fellows are nominated reviewed and elected by peers and members of the college of fellows this years class is comprised of 152 inductees with more than 2 000 members total aimbe fellows represent the top 2% of biological and medical engineers across industry academia and government in the country since 1991 the aimbes college of fellows has led the way for technological growth and advancement in biological and medical engineering helping to enhance and extend the lives of people worldwide ji directs the data integration visualization and exploration laboratory at texas a&m the lab conducts foundational research in artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve real-world problems in biology chemistry physics and material science in addition he is a distinguished member of the association for computing machinery a senior member of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers and a 2021 texas a&m presidential impact fellow ji and his colleagues will be formally inducted during the aimbe annual event on march 25
2454,"dr mladen kezunovic from the texas a&m university college of engineering is among 111 new members and 22 international members recently elected to the national academy of engineering (nae) this honor is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer kezunovic regents professor and eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering was elected for contributions to automated analysis of power system faults and leadership in education in protective relayingalso elected is dr vijay p singh distinguished professor regents professor and caroline & william n lehrer distinguished chair in the department of biological and agricultural engineering which is jointly administered by the college of agriculture and life sciences and the college of engineering singh is credited with contributions to wave modeling and development of entropy-based theories of hydrologic processes and hydroclimatic extremes academy membership honors those who have had an outstanding influence on ""engineering research practice or education including where appropriate significant contributions to the engineering literature"" and to ""the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education"" congratulations to mladen and vijay for achieving this recognition said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of engineering each researcher continues to add immeasurable scholarship to the field of engineering enabling us to attract outstanding students and faculty this level of excellence is what makes texas a&m engineering one of the top-ranked programs in the countrykezunovic is the site director of the power systems engineering research center and director of the power system control and protection lab his expertise is in protective relaying automated power system disturbance analysis computational intelligence and data analytics and smart grids before joining texas a&m in 1986 he worked for westinghouse electric corp and energoinvest in europeamong his many honors kezunovic was appointed by the us secretary of energy to serve two terms on the electricity advisory committee for the department of energy he has been named an institute of electrical and electronic engineers (ieee) life fellow and a council on large electric systems (cigre) fellow honorary member and distinguished member he has published more than 600 papers in journals and conference proceedings and has been invited to give more than 140 lectures worldwide he is also listed as a distinguished speaker of the ieee power engineering society while at texas a&m he has been the principal investigator on more than 120 research projects and supervised more than 60 graduate studentsthe new inductees bring the total us membership to 2 388 and the number of international members to 310 they will be formally inducted during the nae's annual meeting on oct 2"
2455,elizabeth mcdonald has established the elizabeth mcdonald '01 petroleum engineering endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students pursuing an undergraduate degree in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university a second-generation aggie mcdonald followed in the footsteps of her father and two older sisters who all received their degrees from texas a&m to mcdonald texas a&m always felt like home aside from her family ties to the university she was attracted to the quality of the engineering program specifically within the highly ranked and respected petroleum engineering department the program creates industry leaders and cultivates a spirit of innovation and change all while strengthening texas a&ms position as a leading university mcdonald said she was greatly influenced by her experiences which continues to shape her career today i believe that the skills and opportunities that texas a&m provided me have led to my successful career diploma in hand and classroom experiences in mind mcdonald set out on a career that has given her over 20 years of experience in the oil and gas industry mcdonald has worked at pioneer natural resources company for the last 16 years and has held a variety of titles while gaining expertise in many areas along her journey she is now the senior vice president for strategic planning field development and marketing as a woman of vision with a passion for solving complex problems and creating solutions to help fuel the world mcdonald was inspired to invest in the future leaders of the industry my hope is that there are many current students who see the challenges of energy demand and transition and desire to rise to the occasion mcdonald said mcdonald established the endowed scholarship to assist in removing the financial barrier that would otherwise prevent someone from pursuing their degree i believe that this gift can enable the students to be the leaders of tomorrow in our industry while helping to solve some of the most challenging problems in decades mcdonald said who better than aggies to lead that charge to reflect her experiences and inspire others mcdonald has made additional preferences that recipients be a member of the women in engineering program a member of the texas a&m student chapter of the society of petroleum engineers or a student who will be the first of their family to enter into the oil and gas industry i truly appreciate my experience at texas a&m and i want to continue to pass on that aggie spirit in the future just like someone did for me mcdonald said
2456,endowments supporting texas a&m college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
2457,dr houshang masudi 84 has established the dr houshang masudi 84 endowed graduate fellowship fund distributions from this endowment will be used to provide fellowships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a masters or doctoral degree in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university masudi is a familiar name to the mechanical engineering department he graduated with his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering back in 1984 masudi says texas a&ms reputation was what brought him to aggieland i chose texas a&m because of its high ranking among the well-known institutions in teaching and research he said i also respected the universitys high moral values as stated by aggie honor codes and i found i had a passion for the spirit of aggieland masudi formerly served as a senior professor of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university at qatar masudi has experience as a researcher educator and service provider at national and international levels he has worked extensively in the areas of mechanical systems and design energy composite materials computer-aided design and manufacturing biomechanics and failure analysis my time as a graduate student and later as a professor at texas a&m has made me who i am today a devoted member of the aggie family with respect for others masudi said a close relationship with the world of academia and his students is what led masudi to establish a graduate fellowship i have spent all of my life on university campuses as a student and then as a faculty member i was inspired by the respect and friendship that i received from colleagues staff and individuals whom i associated with daily he said i want to leave behind a legacy that will benefit young adults pursuing an education there is a significant need to help underprivileged well-qualified foreign students who otherwise would not have the opportunity to attend a university like texas a&m my hope is to attract well-qualified low-income students to attend a graduate program and make their dreams a reality he said it is my strong belief that these same students will return to their homes after graduation and inspire others to follow suit maybe one day they may even form an a&m club in their homelands dr guillermo aguilar head of the mechanical engineering department expressed his gratitude for masudis gift doctoral students are the engine of every research program in engineering and their financial support is key to their wellbeing and success he said traditional mechanisms of financial support from federal or state agencies industry or foundations tend to fluctuate from year to year and are increasingly competitive as a recipient of a robust graduate fellowship myself i can attest to the long-lasting impact and life-changing experience that this endowment will provide to our students we are thankful to dr masudi and his family for this extraordinary gift which will change the lives of engineering students in our department establishing this fellowship is the fulfillment of a lifetime vision for masudi this is a dream come true for me to leave a legacy behind and make a difference in the life of students to achieve their goals and become successful individuals he said there is no better place to accomplish this objective than at texas a&m
2458,endowments supporting texas a&m college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2459,"for andrea rivera a student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university landing her first nasa internship felt like the epitome of the american dream she had spent the first eight years of her life growing up in peru and speaking only spanish from the time she immigrated to the us at the age of 8 her family especially her dad instilled in her the value of hard work and knowledge when i was little my dad never helped with any homework said rivera he would challenge me and my brother to find the answer ourselves teaching us that knowledge is at our fingertips he has always built this curiosity in us and as cheesy as it is we love learning now she also remembers her dad putting on cosmos: a spacetime odyssey for them to watch during family time which first sparked her interest in aerospace kindling that spark her uncle often brought telescopes to their house and explained constellations entertaining her questions about the stars and planets by high school rivera had gravitated toward stem (science technology engineering and mathematics) and participated in robotics all four years ""i came here not knowing any english so i faced some struggles in school "" she said i think ive always loved math because even if i didnt know how to speak english it was the same in any language"" her love for stem led her to texas a&m and helped her find community with texas a&ms chapter of the society of hispanic professional engineers (shpe) during her sophomore year she won top lead engineer in a 24-hour engineering challenge at shpes annual national convention this title gave her the confidence boost she needed to put herself out there at the conventions career fair and apply for a nasa internship when i got my internship it was just the perfect full-circle moment of all my hard work said rivera im a hispanic woman in stem so there are some challenges to that now in my junior year ive finished two internships at nasa and worked on something thats going to launch into space during her first nasa internship rivera worked on surface operations for the mars 2020 mission testing the capabilities of the planetary instrument for x-ray lithochemistry (pixl) mounted on the perseverance rover ""the whole point of the mission is to help the human exploration astrobiology concept "" she said ""it's to see if we can find elements that indicate past life on mars that can then help us here on earth to figure out the beginnings of planets and if they're habitable"" specifically rivera's work at nasa has been in verification and validation which is the testing process to ensure that system requirements are met and that the system can fulfill its purpose fortunately much of this work can be done virtually ""i was doing different testing procedures with pixl but i was doing it in a virtual flight software environment that simulates the real flight software "" said rivera ""i tested different procedures for the instrument from the comfort of my own home making sure that it's answering correctly as it would on mars"" after her first internship concluded she was invited back to be a systems engineer intern on the psyche mission which is scheduled to launch in fall 2022 ""with psyche we're trying to analyze the early creations of planets "" said rivera ""psyche this asteroid is exposed to a nickel iron core and scientists believe that it could be the beginning of our solar system"" in addition to the work experience she gained in her internships the mentors she has found in the renowned nasa engineers and scientists shes worked with have been another invaluable part of her involvement with nasa ""i never saw people like me before and you want to have role models in the career you want to do "" said rivera ""now i found some at nasa and women in stem are on the come-up"" she aspires to be one of those leaders in the industry someday right now she's focused on helping other minority students reach their goals by tutoring being a role model in her organizations and helping her peers find internship opportunities ""i want everyone to succeed and i'm trying to pave the way not only for younger kids but for my siblings "" she said ""i'm going to be the first engineer in my family and that was something that i never thought i could do"" looking ahead she plans to pursue a master's degree to help drive her toward becoming a leader in the aerospace industry ""i truly love what i'm doing "" she said ""and i hope that i end up someplace like nasa creating and helping in these history-changing projects"""
2460,with every passing semester engineering textbooks are handed down from student to student as decades go by textbooks develop their own character the pages become a bit dingy the corners of the cover curve inward and if youre lucky maybe several highlighted marks give way to important information however as textbooks age so do the concepts within many scholars are still teaching and learning from the same textbooks available nearly 60 years ago despite monumental changes in research and technology course materials that consider these variables are needed to convey engineering in the new era dr costas kravaris professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university recently published a textbook that provides chemical engineering students with the tools necessary to navigate engineering in the 21st century more specifically his book presents information regarding process control systems and the integration of modern computational methods to process control the motivation for writing the book was very simple in that outdated textbooks have been the main educational resources available kravaris said they are in essence textbooks of the 1960s although some of their methods remain applicable control engineering has changed our new work reflects the modernization of control engineering curriculum in terms of both new concepts and new teaching styles taking advantage of modern computational tools his work understanding process dynamics and control is co-authored by dr ioannis k kookos professor of process and systems engineering in the department of chemical engineering at the university of patras greece the information within the book discusses how to operate a chemical engineering plant safely and efficiently using advanced methods of process control capable of improving dynamic performance of processes and systems for example a chemical reactor that produces an expensive product needs to be properly controlled to meet product quality specs kravaris said there may also be safety concerns such as overheating in a chemical reaction that might lead to explosions chemical engineers need to discern faults in their operational problems and design-appropriate control actions they are the engineers in the chemical plants and they need to be equipped with effective methods and solutions applications of the theories and ideas within the book include the production of advanced materials chemicals biochemical products and more the book outlines the basics of processes while also helping students understand how to dissect problems process evolution and process improvement in particular integrating computational tools separates this book from its predecessors there are software solutions that have powerfully shifted the way engineers solve problems this work discusses the various tools available that industry professionals use and that are essential to success in chemical engineering with such a long period teaching the same old content it was unclear how to properly modernize the curriculum said kravaris a change of style that puts the use of computer software together with the math was needed to display the power of computational tools the simplification of these complex concepts is critical to the undergraduate learning experience as the book passes from student to student kravaris hopes his work exhibits the basic principles of control engineering while showcasing the multitude of research and technology relevant to the industrys future modernization needs to be implemented to guarantee better-trained chemical engineers who will meet the challenges of the 21st century he said with the right theoretical and computational training we are able to accomplish more than we used to and impact the world on a greater scale
2461,according to a list published by elsevier a global leader in information and analytics 12 faculty members from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university were among the top 2% in their field for single-year impact in 2020elsevier created the publicly available database of top scientists that provides standardized information on citations these metrics measure productivity and citation impact co-authorship citations to papers in different authorship positions and a composite indicator separate data are shown for career-long and single-year impactsthe study august 2021 data-update for ‘updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators is based on a snapshot of career-long research productivity as of aug 1the civil and environmental engineering faculty that made the list include: dr jean-louis briauddr jean-louis briaud is a professor spencer j buchanan chair professor regents fellow director of the national geotechnical experiment site and past president of the american society of civil engineers his research interests include soil mechanics retaining walls slope stability pavements geoenvironmental engineering field testing bridge scour and expansive clays dr jeffrey bullarddr jeffrey bullard is a professor with research interests that include cement chemistry mineral dissolution and growth kinetics computational modeling of microstructure sintering and grain growth and granular media shape analysis dr shankar chellamdr shankar chellam is a professor and ap & florence wiley professor iii his research focus is drinking water purification membrane processes desalination electrocoagulation treatment of hydraulic fracturing wastewater virus removal and inactivation trace metals in the atmosphere and long-range transport of aerosols dr yong-rak kimdr yong-rak kim is a professor with a research focus on the engineering of infrastructure materials multiscale modeling and characterization constitutive modeling of materials viscoelasticity of solids and fracture damage and durability dr dallas littledr dallas little is a professor snead chair professor regents professor and university distinguished professor his research interests include material science and engineering asphalt technology pavement design soil stabilization fracture mechanics soil mechanics and foundation engineering dr dominque lorddr dominque lord is a professor and ap wiley faculty fellow his research focuses on fundamental work in traffic safety statistical modeling evaluation of countermeasures crash risk human factors transportation policy and crash data analysis dr robert lyttondr robert lytton recently retired as professor and benson chair professor his research interests include expansive clay theory and design soil mechanics and dynamics soil-structure interaction continuum mechanics fracture mechanics pavement analysis design and management and nondestructive testing dr xingmao ‘samuel madr xingmao samuel ma is an associate professor and his research focuses on environmental health and safety of engineered nanomaterials biogeochemistry of emerging contaminants phytoremediation ecosystem restoration and water reuse dr john manderdr john mander is a professor and zachry professor in design and construction integration i his research interests include reinforced pre-stressed and structural concrete earthquake engineering and structure dynamics blast resistant design bridge engineering hazard analysis and financial loss estimation and mitigation railroad engineering and construction and design integration dr ali mostafavidr ali mostafavi is the zachry career development associate professor his research focuses on urban resilience network and complex systems urban computing disaster informatics and applied artificial intelligence dr anand puppaladr anand puppala is a professor holder of the ap and florence wiley chair and interim director of the center for infrastructure renewal his research interests include expansive and unsaturated soils ground modification recycled waste materials sustainability in geotechnical engineering in situ and nondestructive soil testing and pavement geotechnics and site characterization dr qi yingdr qi ying is an associate professor with research focusing on atmospheric physics and chemistry urban and regional scale air quality modeling aerosol source apportionment emission control strategies and atmospheric radiative transfer
2462,natasha and jeffery townsend have established the natasha cecez townsend md and jeffery e townsend 95 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will provide one or more scholarships to students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university jeff was attracted to texas a&m by the quality of the education offered by the college of engineering he was also drawn to the schools culture values and the tight-knit community that can be found among the students and faculty that make up the aggie family texas a&m is a large school with a small-school feel due to the amazing students and traditions he said i feel at home every time i come back to campus jeff graduated in 1995 looking back he is greatly impressed by the curriculum and faculty that allowed him to achieve success during and after graduation getting my degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m provided the critical thinking and problem-solving mindset that has benefited my career first as a process engineer and now in corporate finance jeff said he credited his engineering advisor dr dan hanson as being influential during his time as a student he always looked out for myself and my fellow students jeff said coming to college station from new mexico jeff faced financial challenges paying for out-of-state tuition he was fortunate to be awarded scholarships that waived his out-of-state tuition fees which ultimately made his dream of studying at texas a&m a reality his wife natasha also faced financial struggles in college she overcame them through continued effort and diligence working multiple jobs while pursuing her chemical engineering degree from the university of alabama huntsville together jeff and natasha have established this scholarship in order to provide an opportunity to students who face similar situations they have made additional preferences that their endowed scholarship be awarded to a non-texas resident transfer student or someone who did not take the traditional path to texas a&m the financial support i received made it possible for me to attend an amazing school that i know has opened doors for me in my career jeff said we have been blessed and want to give back to support future students jeff is now a director of finance at bentley systems inc natasha is a radiation oncologist and is a partner of east tennessee radiation oncology providing services to the thompson cancer survival center at leconte medical center they live in sevierville tennessee with their two daughters who they hope will someday attend texas a&m
2463,endowments supporting texas a&m college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please email kelly corcoran senior director of development at kcorcoran@txamfoundationcom
2464,the national academy of inventors (nai) has named three engineering faculty from texas a&m university to its 2022 class of nai senior membersthe three new senior members from the college of engineering are:dr melissa grunlan charles h and bettye barclay professor in engineering in the department of biomedical engineeringdr andreas polycarpou james j cain chair in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineeringdr taylor ware associate professor in the departments of biomedical engineering and materials science and engineeringnai senior members are active faculty scientists and administrators from nai member institutions who have demonstrated remarkable innovation-producing technologies that have brought or aspire to bring real impact on the welfare of society they also have growing success in patents licensing and commercialization while educating and mentoring the next generation of inventorsi want to congratulate these outstanding engineering faculty members who are the newest senior members of nai said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of engineering this honor recognizes their drive to push the limits of engineering innovation and create technologies that will help improve the world around us this latest class of nai senior members hails from 41 research universities they are named inventors on over 1 093 issued us patents senior members are elected annually on national inventors day (feb 11) the 2022 new class will be inducted at the senior member ceremony at the 11th annual meeting of the national academy of inventors june 14-15 in phoenixthe title of nai senior member was established in 2019 the three new senior members bring the number of current texas a&m faculty to 15 in addition 17 current texas a&m faculty are nai fellowsnai is a member organization composed of us and international universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes with more than 4 000 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide
2465,patrick walgren and hannah stroud doctoral students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university traveled to alaska to spend a few days helping first- and second-graders learn about space growing up there walgren had one of his first introductions to aerospace at the challenger learning center of alaska now that hes preparing for a career as an aerospace engineer on a whim he reached out to the center about volunteering at the space academy their aerospace-themed camp he and stroud were invited to join the staff as flight directors and help facilitate activities for the students a lot of what we were doing was giving them an introduction to space and how space scientists think about space said stroud it was a lot of making introductory connections so that the students had something to reference with their own world one of the popular activities with the campers was a planet walk where together they made a scale model of the solar system they started with a beach ball that represented the sun and then walked as many steps away from it as a marble-sized mercury would be by the time they were out at neptune the students could barely see the beach ball sun giving them context to the vast size of space and our solar system the funniest thing about the planet walk was that we couldnt find mercury on the way back said walgren it was perfect its this little marble in the grass and it showed the kids how hard it is to find planets like this and to imagine how hard it is to land something on mars another activity that was a hit with the 7- and 8-year-olds was an aerospace version of the egg drop activity an egg-stronaut was attached to a wooden space shuttle model and the students job was to protect the egg on reentry which was a zip line off the roof of a building to a hard surface stroud said it was a well-contextualized activity and the staff did a good job of ensuring the kids understood the reason behind protecting the egg one of the things i tried to highlight when working with the kids is why they made the engineering decisions they did stroud said i asked them what materials they wanted where and why and what they thought it was going to do over the course of the camp it was inspiring to walgren and stroud to see how much the kids did know and understand there was a kid who was talking about turbulence and he wasnt totally right but he wasnt totally wrong either said walgren you just focus on the stuff that he was right about and encourage that for as long as you can ultimately their goal was to help facilitate a space for young students in alaska to be exposed to aerospace engineering but the experience turned out to be a valuable professional development opportunity for them too it was a great exercise in knowing your audience said stroud you can still explain really complex topics and theyll understand it; you just have to use words phrases and analogies that they have experience with it was a challenging exercise to make sure that i was communicating effectively with a group i dont normally communicate with walgren and stroud were excited to have had the opportunity to give the campers role models to look to as examples of what they can do when they grow up they also hope to return to future camps at the center this time with a few more texas a&m student volunteers
2466,dr arum han professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was named editor-in-chief of the journal biomedical microdevices alongside dr alessandro grattoni with the houston methodist research institute and houston methodist hospital biomedical microdevices is a leading journal that discusses micro/nanodevices used in biomedical applications the journal is published by the publisher platform springer and was founded as a scientific journal dedicated to the dissemination of new scientific discoveries and development in the field of micro- and nanotechnologies applied to medicine topics include the design characterization testing modeling and clinical validation of microfabricated systems as well as their integration on-chip and in larger functional units since its inaugural issue in 1998 biomedical microdevices has been a reference journal in the field of micro/nanodevices and has contributed to shaping this area of research to date 106 issues comprising more than 1800 articles have been published han is a chancellors enhancing development and generating excellence in scholarship fellow and the presidential impact fellow of texas a&m he also holds a joint appointment in the department of biomedical engineering and is a graduate faculty member of the texas a&m health science center faculty of the texas a&m institute for neuroscience and faculty of texas a&ms toxicology program hans research focuses on the development of microfluidic lab-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip systems that enable unique biological experiments at high throughput and high accuracy which can then be adopted by the broad bio/medical science community he has pioneered the area of high-throughput microfluidics for microbiology applications and has been applying these technologies to synthetic biology host-pathogen interactions infectious disease and microbial bioproduction applications his research has been funded by a variety of sources including government agencies such as the national institutes of health and philanthropic foundations such as the gates foundation one of his key accomplishments has been the development of technologies that enable complex multi-step biological assays involving mammalian cells microorganisms and viruses to be conducted in high-throughput microfluidics format he has also pioneered the area of organ-on-a-chip systems for feto-maternal interfaces and preterm birth research and is applying these micro-physiological system models to new therapeutic development against preterm birth
2467,"dr jeyavijayan ""jv"" rajendran assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2022 office of naval research (onr) young investigator award for his research proposal to develop the next generation of tools to bolster hardware security when designing software and hardware vulnerabilities can and do occur patching software vulnerabilities found once distributed into the field is much easier for companies who can easily send patches to fix any issues however when it comes to hardware it is much more difficult to patch after the design process has concluded rajendran has proposed a new methodology to find these vulnerabilities during the design process so that these faults can be fixed prior to the final distribution stage fuzzing techniques which are automated testing methods that insert invalid malformed or unexpected data into a system to reveal defects and security faults are shown to be highly effective in detecting software vulnerabilities but the current proposals aimed at fuzzing hardware suffer from various limitations these include a limited scope of applicability error proneness inadequate evaluations provided and limited prospects for future improvement through this three-year funded project rajendran will work to solve all these challenges and bring the state-of-the-art fuzzing-based vulnerability detection techniques to hardware through the novel hardware fuzzer called steelwool which does not require any modification to the target processor and utilizes existing hardware simulation tools and techniques so it is easily integrated with existing hardware design this award gives me the confidence that i can pick my own topic for which i have taken no course for during my phd or during grad school; and i can contribute a solution to a problem i aim to solve which is exciting rajendran said in addition to this award rajendrans research has received many other honors such as the national science foundation faculty early career development program award the association for computing machinery's special interest group on design automation outstanding young faculty award the institute of electrical and electronics engineers ceda ernest s kuh early career award and the texas a&m engineering experiment stations genesis award for multidisciplinary research the onr young investigator program provides support to academic scientists and engineers who are in their first or second full-time tenure-track academic appointment have received their doctoral degree in the past seven years and show exceptional promise for executing creative research"
2468,friends and family of jacob hardin have established a scholarship in memory of jacob hardin the jacob hardin memorial scholarship will be awarded to one or more full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in electronic systems engineering technology from texas a&m university after a long battle with brain cancer jacob towns hardin passed away in august of 2021 he had a passion for engineering technology and was dedicated to the college of engineering at texas a&m he was active on campus and participated in aggies for limbs aggies creating sustainable solutions and aggies invent outside of engineering jacob enjoyed traveling music and the outdoors he was a supportive friend to many and exuded positivity and joy to those around him jacob was honored in the silver taps ceremony on sept 7 2021 friends family and those impacted by jacob have established this endowment to memorialize jacobs life and his commitment to the college of engineering his family hopes this scholarship will inspire recipients to persevere in their education as engineers
2469,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah simonds assistant director of development
2470,dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named a 2021 american association for the advancement of science (aaas) fellow for founding the search-and-rescue robotics field pioneering the field of human-robot interaction and informing policy and practice in rescue robotics worldwide founded in 1848 the aaas is the worlds largest general multidisciplinary scientific society and is also the publisher of the science family of journals elected annually the aaas fellow is one of the most distinct honors bestowed in the scientific community the 2021 class of fellows spans 24 disciplines and includes 564 engineers scientists and innovators who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements in their respective fields murphy is one of the 26 new fellows honored in the information computing and communication section she has deployed ground aerial and marine robots to nearly 30 disasters in five countries starting with the 9/11 world trade center collapse and also including hurricanes katrina and harvey the fukushima daiichi nuclear accident and the kilauea volcanic eruption in more than 150 articles and an award-winning book disaster robotics murphy has documented the science behind the robots and the need for artificial intelligence and human-robot teaming additionally she has founded the institute of electrical and electronics engineers international symposium on safety security and rescue robotics the new class is featured in the aaas news and notes section of the january 2022 issue of science and they will be recognized for their achievements later this year during an in-person gathering view the complete list of 2021 fellows on the aaas website
2471,texas a&m universitys college of engineering was again ranked no 1 in the state of texas for its online graduate engineering programs the latest ranking from us news and world reports 2022 best online programs rates texas a&ms online masters engineering program ninth in the nation tied with the missouri university of science and technology and the university of wisconsin-madison we embrace our role as the sole land-grant institution of texas and focus on inclusive excellence in all of our online courses said dr sunay palsole assistant vice chancellor for engineering remote education this ranking reflects that philosophy and the commitment of the faculty and college to providing the highest caliber of online education to serve the citizens of texas and the worldaccording to the report us news assessed 1 733 programs and ranked 1 651 online programs the most in its 10-year history texas a&ms engineering online program ranked ninth out of 104 best programs schools are ranked based on a number of factors from online engagement to student excellence im not at all surprised that our online masters program ranked among the top 10 in the nation said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m this ranking reflects the hard work and dedication of our faculty in providing the best possible education for all our students including those who learn onlinein addition to online engineering programs overall ranking the college was also ranked in the top 20 in the nation for: 4th (tied): master of engineering in electrical engineering7th (tied): master of engineering in industrial engineering7th (tied): master of engineering in mechanical engineering16th: master of science in engineering management15th: best online masters in engineering programs for veteransto learn more about the online graduate degrees offered by the college of engineering visit the engineering online website
2472,rebecca and paul griffin have established the rebecca and paul griffin 95 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students pursuing an undergraduate degree in ocean engineering from texas a&m university in college station texas or texas a&m university at galveston in order to support students who are passionate about the future of ocean engineering the griffins have made an additional preference that this scholarship be awarded to students who are in a position of leadership in ocean engineering organizations paul graduated from texas a&m in 1995 and received a bachelor of science in ocean engineering he has enjoyed a career with chevron for over 20 years and is now the project manager for the jack and st malo stage 4 waterflood project paul and rebecca live in katy texas
2473,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment according to us news and world report endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown assistant director of development
2474,melissa and jeremy tyree have established the melissa c '99 and jeremy t tyree '97 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university jeremy tyree is from perryton texas he received his degree in computer science from texas a&m in 1997 he began working in software design specializing in application programming interface strategy design and development jeremy has been a successful leader and manager in various positions throughout his career currently he is the head of operations for dosh a rapidly growing internet marketing service in austin texas melissa tyree is from duncanville texas she graduated from texas a&m in 1999 and received her bachelors degree in civil engineering as a student she was highly involved in many engineering organizations she was the engineering senator on the student senate two-time president of the student engineering council and a member of the society of women engineers national association of engineering student councils and the civil engineering honor society melissa was the recipient of many awards and honors for her leadership and dedication to engineering she has a diverse background in the construction industry as a management consultant and currently utilizes her talents at champions real estate group in 2011 melissa and jeremy co-founded itography llc a virtual item collection game and advertising platform working synergistically jeremy designed and created the technological features of the app and melissa oversaw its strategic growth and customer interaction the tyrees now live in austin their establishment of the melissa c '99 and jeremy t tyree '97 endowed scholarship will enable and inspire computer science and engineering students at texas a&m
2475,the college of engineering is one of the leading engineering programs in the united states ranking first in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment according to us news & world report endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
2476,"texas a&m university's college of engineering and college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences teamed up to host the january aggies invent vetmed which challenged teams to create innovative solutions for veterinary care the teams with the most promising ideas have the opportunity to apply their product to a startup with the college of engineering's engineering inc program students spent 48 hours researching and developing a prototype with the help of mentors from the college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences ultimately the winning team radtech developed a solution using a machine learning artificial intelligence program to look at x-rays of dogs and determine if the heart size is large or normal ""to see them get a problem on friday night and have a solution on sunday is incredible "" said dr leslie easterwood clinical assistant professor of equine community practice at texas a&m and mentor for aggies invent ""it just shows them the possibilities of what can happen when you start putting the right team together and then thinking outside the box"" after intense preparation the teams presented their business pitch to a panel of judges composed of industry professionals ""i think it's fantastic it's a really great combination of two completely different ways of thinking "" said dr diane platts senior professional services veterinarian for boehringer ingelheim ""and so with such diverse thinking you come with a better team so the solutions are very unique it's really great"""
2477,the judges had a tough time selecting winners so much so that instead of the usual three places for winners they added a fourth parasite lost was awarded fourth place for their device that looks for anemia in goats this solution is imperative to let the examiner know the damage the parasites are doing to the animal
2478,"the third-place team autocorrect created a device to make bone fractures and injuries less painful for pets and with shorter recovery times like most teams working on an interdisciplinary project like vetmed not only tested their knowledge of their field but also broadened the scope of where their careers can lead ""it really opened my eyes to the multiple things that i could do after college and see all the fields i can go into "" said joshua wilson a freshman general engineering student"
2479,"second place went to ultrashield which created a reusable washable protective covering for an ultrasound probe a combination of research testing and help from the mentors allowed them to find their solution ""aggies invent when we work with the college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences is one of my favorites because it takes the technology and biomedical side of it and puts it together said rodney boehm director of entrepreneurship and associate professor of practice at texas a&m ""we come up with some incredibly creative solutions and i love seeing the diverse background of all the students coming together working together we hope that teams continue their project in the engineering incubator"""
2480,the college of engineering at texas a&m university is renowned for its ability to develop engineers who excel in industry positions as engineering continues to evolve it is essential to forge engineers who can transfer their work in the classroom to real-life scenarios dr joseph sang-ii kwon associate professor and holder of the kenneth r hall career development professorship in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering uses experimental kits to prepare students for careers in engineering industries in his classes students can put theoretical knowledge into practice through various activities designed to simulate experiences chemical engineers face in industry while many concepts are explained verbally at the undergraduate level the kits give students a chance to translate that knowledge into the context of a real-life application said kwon the programs purpose is for students to learn through hands-on experiences that will help them in their future careers the experimental kits focus on the interconnection of hardware and computers by providing do-it-yourself kits for experimental learning of process control students can utilize their knowledge from lectures and put it into practice this enables students to have a well-known and understood process that provides tactile output in addition to the visual output of real-time plotting through programming i disrupt the system that the controller (student) should recognize and react in such a way that they can reject the disturbance said kwon for instance in our kits there is a fan if the system starts to overheat students can decrease the temperature by increasing the fan speed if the fan suddenly stops the students will determine the error causing the fans disturbance the students are learning how to adapt and respond to different scenarios on a small scale many classes in undergraduate programs are strictly theoretical students like caleb lawson a senior in the chemical engineering department welcomed the opportunity to learn in a different environment and gain experience in process engineering the class represents a practical application of chemical engineering theories said lawson the highly theoretical classes that require a significant amount of mathematics can be applied in this class and visually represent everything weve learned which i think is very useful facing scenarios on a small scale that could occur in real life gives students the practical experience necessary to prepare themselves for jobs in the chemical engineering industry the class is demanding yet extremely rewarding said lawson whenever you find a solution such as getting your code working or cooling down the system you can firmly grasp the concepts our professors are teaching the experimental kits are provided by dr spyros svoronos professor in the department of chemical engineering at the university of florida kwon is hoping to grow the program and starting in the fall all chemical engineering students will have access to an experimental kit the students rely on a trial error and brute force approach that can be extremely difficult said kwon as we go on i gradually teach the students how to construct a model to help them achieve desired control objectives i plan to offer these opportunities to more students in the future
2481,two texas a&m university former students found a way to mine $4 million worth of bitcoin using flared gas a byproduct of oil and gas production a combination of two industries one wouldnt normally think to pair together in 2019 matt lohstroh 21 a finance major and brent whitehead 21 an industrial distribution major founded giga a natural gas bitcoin mining company headquartered in beaumont texas flared gas is a byproduct of natural gas associated with oil extraction if natural gas is not used it is brought into the atmosphere through two-inch piping to be burned off or flared the focal point of the company is using redirected flared gas from oil drilling operations as an alternative to powering bitcoin mining servers as a solution for the amount of natural gas projected into the atmosphere from oil drilling by tapping into the natural gas piping the unused natural gas gets redirected to a generator to create electricity to power the bitcoin mining servers the servers manufacture data centers up to 40 feet long that are situated in an inoperative shipping container that has been engineered with a custom electrical structure and waterproof infrastructure to withstand harsh conditions that can hit east texas drilling sites electricity then flows through the data center and gets broken down multiple times so it can be individually distributed to hundreds of mining computers
2482,before people didnt really have a solution for this flared gas but now they do and we want to make sure that our company also allows other people whether it be oil and gas operators or other investors and entrepreneurs in the space the ability to benefit from this opportunity as well whitehead said theres no reason to be flaring gas just because its stranded now there are solutions for it bitcoin mining is a solution their name giga came as the result of a cross between giga as a unit of power to mean one short-scale billion and gig em where gig is highlighted in the logo the two found out about a similar operation being done in an area of canada through twitter and knew it would be successful in the state of texas matt and i we bootstrapped this from the beginning we both had lawn care and landscaping businesses in high school and thats the money we used to start this business whitehead said it was about $50 000 and we put everything together and that was all the money we had so we were betting a lot that this was going to work whiteheads engineering and oil background and lohstrohs finance background and knowledge of bitcoin make for a complementary match to help spearhead a market composed of two historically distinct industries they cited shelly brenkman co-founder of startup aggieland a cross-collaboration initiative of the center for new ventures and entrepreneurship for student entrepreneurs and dr detlef hallerman clinical professor in the mays business school as critical influences on them from getting their business up off the ground all the way to meeting with investors the pair both said that their degree programs helped prepare them for the business world and that the value of the aggie network is unlike any other to further themselves in the business world
2483,lohstroh and whitehead built their first mining server in whiteheads parents backyard in his hometown of buna texas the two spent countless late nights welding and assembling the first of many mining centers with cranes in the perimeters of the yard ready to extract the mining center to its current home in east texas the truck that the first crane was on broke so we had to figure out a game plan to pick this thing up after that whitehead said i was a little concerned how this was going to go when initially plugging this in but now i cant even get this out of my house but we had another crane come out and pick it up and we shipped it to its home in east texas in addition to wastefulness flaring can be inefficient because of the amount of emissions and methane while more short-lived is considerably more potent than carbon dioxide the two echoed that the bitcoin-natural gas combination creates a solution for producers to lessen emissions as well as giving opportunities for operators and producers for employment that wasnt a traditional revenue stream before currently lohstroh and whitehead remanufacture their own natural gas generators at their machine facility in beaumont were actually able to manufacture a bitcoin mining data center in about four days usually that process takes about two weeks we have a 6000-sq ft manufacturing facility with these bitcoin mining data centers were doing full-scale manufacturing to be able to print 10s of millions of dollars worth of equipment in a matter of weeks lohstroh said weve got a full-time staff out in beaumont texas and were just out there mining bitcoin so were betting on the fact that natural gas bitcoin mining both for us and for the market is going to really break out and have a massive need for that
2484,reprinted by permission of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics inc from the february 2022 issue of aerospace america copyright c aiaa the original article can be found on the aerospace america website on the shores of lake holiday in crossville tennessee a former watersports resort has found an unlikely new role as an electric aviation innovation lab on any given day at the startup whisper aero one might find a bunch of aerospace engineers hunched over 3d laser scanners rapid prototyping software and computational fluid dynamics simulations im told by an executive its all part of an endeavor to solve one of the most pressing problems facing the advanced air mobility revolution: flying almost silently specifically the whisper team has developed an ultra-quiet type of electric thruster that it says can be scaled for use on electric aircraft of different sizes whether they are small delivery drones urban air taxis or all-electric light aircraft flying city-to-city routes this they believe will be key to earning public acceptance for the emerging market nasa dubs advanced air mobility aam typically consisting of evtols electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft will the device be a souped-up propeller thats digitally shaped sized and spun at a speed to disturb as little air as possible perhaps in a special hushed kind of ducted fan or will it be something entirely new and exotic here is all whisper ceo mark moore would tell me: its a unique propulsion technology one that lets us drive the noise down to such an ultra-low level that it will blend into the background noise of where drones or evtols are flying whatever form these mysterious ultra-quiet thrusters take whispers aim is to sell them to the makers of delivery drones and evtol passenger air taxis as well as to install the thrusters on an electric conventional takeoff and landing light aircraft that whisper is designing these planes that would fly fast quiet city-to-city hops are called whisper jets though the company hasnt said quite what it means by jet whispers aims are not unique a handful of evtol makers have their own proprietary technologies for quelling noise including archer aviation and joby aviation in the us lilium and volocopter in germany and vertical aerospace in britain in parallel research institutes elsewhere in the us and in europe are also attempting to craft a new generation of quiet thruster designs its a dynamic thats setting up a high-stakes low-noise propulsion competition in the much-vaunted aam market which in the us alone is predicted by market researcher deloitte of london to be worth $115 billion per annum by 2035 creating it says 280 000 jobs to hear one observer tell it this quest for quietness is not a pipe dream; whisper is succeeding in its aims i was one of the first to see a live demo of whispers tech says nikhil goel a new york technology investor and one of the companys earliest financial backers and i have never heard anything quite like it from where i was standing you could barely hear a faint whirring; it was reminiscent of a quiet ceiling fan he adds: having seen the plans for the whisper jet i am confident it will change the way cities interact with airplanes forever goel and half a dozen other venture capitalists including iron man actor robert downey jrs venture fund footprint coalition ventures have invested a total of $75 million to fund initial development of whispers technology the company has also benefited from us air force research lab funding for some of its early quiet thruster research progress has been quick: weve already developed our design tool suite and built our first propulsor and tested it and were very excited by the results says moore who is well known in aam circles because he pioneered the very concept of distributed electric propulsion during his 30-year career at nasa and after he left the agency he developed a number of aam business models at ubers short-lived but influential aerial ride-sharing division uber elevate acquired in late 2020 by joby aviation of california now moore believes his teams experience and whispers innovative design are a winning combination for creating the next generation of distributed electric propulsion technology with a focus on achieving ultra-low noise quieter per pound of thrust than any other company has ever achieved while still having very high efficiency low weight and high reliability those are bold aims for sure and theres no shortage of competition take harmony aeronautics for instance this spinout from the aerospace research department at texas a&m university in the us is attempting to engineer quiet-running coaxial propulsors for drones and evtols like whisper it has done so in part with $150 000 in small business technology transfer research funding from the us air force research lab which on the sttr website described harmonys coaxial rotor technology as revolutionary and in the uk the government-backed aerospace technology institute is funding a $38 million research program called inception in which the university of cambridges whittle lab and the university of salfords acoustics department are working with five aerospace firms including dowty propellers to develop quiet and safe zero-carbon electric jet engines in other words ducted-fan vectored thrust propulsors like those spread along the wings of some evtol designs including the lilium jet however those involved in this quest for quiet electric propulsors are under no illusions that they will be able to achieve anything approaching silent flight electric motors rotors propellers and ducted fans have to drive air forcefully to provide thrust so there will always be noise associated with that says antonio torija-martinez acoustics lead at the university of salford on the uk inception project harmony aeronautics founder moble benedict agrees: there is no shortcut to quieting a rotor thats moving through the air at speed so why take on such a tough challenge fear basically: whats driving this new battle against delivery drone and evtol noise is a concern that unless the sectors potential to create irritating community noise can be reduced to socially acceptable levels by the time some operators plan to start passenger flights in 2024 and 2025 aam services could be stillborn without a better understanding of electric aviation noise its characteristics and why it is different from traditional aviation the easy answer from the wider public will be to reject it says darrell swanson a uk consultant specializing in electric aviation issues and strategic adviser to nasa on evtol operations and without public support for electric aviation we will not get planning permission for landing infrastructure and the industry will never take off cutting the noise would result in a virtuous circle swanson believes: in a nutshell lower noise leads to a higher degree of social acceptance reducing resistance to the building of aam infrastructure more infrastructure leads to more demand leading to increased competition and lower fares for passengers increasing the social utility of aam however anyone watching the online postings of the early runners and riders in the evtol arena could be forgiven for thinking that the sectors noise issues are already a solved problem on youtube for instance joby has posted videos of its tiltrotor prototype variously taking off hovering and flying over a series of calibrated microphones showing what seemed a quiet performance on its website joby claims what was quiet in the hover would be near silent in the cruise thanks to the way the six tilting propellers located along the wing and tail operate this distributed electric propulsion allows evtols like jobys to have multiple large-diameter propellers rotating at slow tip speeds producing low-frequency pressure waves this would create more of a hum than the well-known wop-wop sounds from helicopters which have an even larger diameter rotor with higher tip speeds the question is: how loud will that hum be in an urban setting and with a great many evtols plying the airways as our future taxis on linkedin lilium of germany showed a flight demo of its evtol prototype taking off and flying a number of brief flight maneuvers so viewers can experience the inoffensive sound profile of its ducted-fan vectored engines however jobys flights were in rural locations and liliums at an empty airport rather than the built-up urban areas that aam companies are targeting for early passenger service there buildings could create concrete canyons where resonating electric rotor noise from multiple evtols might annoy people living near vertiports but until evtols are safety certified the operators wont be able to properly assess their noise in the urban environments they are destined to fly in says consultant swanson some evtol designers buoyed by encouraging lab and ground tests say they are confident their aircraft will fly quietly before they have flown vertical aerospace of the uk for instance says in an online video that it hopes to achieve near-silent flight with its in-development vx4 tiltrotor aided by a novel rotor design that lets vertical tune noise levels making it some 30 times quieter than a helicopter in a january blog post archer aviation of california says its maker evtol prototype flying at 2 000 feet in altitude should be 1 000 times quieter than a helicopter to a person on the ground as of press time archer had only conducted a low-altitude hover test with the maker design the problem for people trying to make sense of all these comparisons says the university of salford professor torija-martinez is that in this nascent aam market companies rarely compare like with like i would be very careful with [comparing] noise figures because there is a problem with nomenclature he says what do they mean by 30 times quieter in terms of acoustic energy in terms of decibels or what on top of that with companies jockeying for early market dominance commercial secrecy is very much the watchword none says benedict of harmony aeronautics are going into much detail about how their thruster quietening technology works but its not only the aam airframe makers who are keeping schtum; would-be quiet propulsor maker whisper aero too is saying absolutely nothing about how its quiet electric thrusters work our first drone product wont be operational until 2023 so we dont see any benefit in letting others know how the unique technology were developing works until we need to moore told me its natural that when others see what were doing they will want to do similarly this secrecy even applies to the five patent applications whisper has already filed on its thruster-hushing technology none of our patents will be made public for several years with many more patents actively being filed as we scout out this new frontier of electric propulsion says moore while a patent application is normally published 18 months after filing a us patent applicant can file a request for nonpublication which if granted will keep the invention secret until the inventor deems it commercially safe to publish the patent specification so how might it be possible for an electrically driven rotor or vectored-thrust ducted fan to be hushed what design features could be modified to make a difference thankfully for the curious harmony aeronautics and the inception team were willing to share at least some details with me harmony aeronautics was spun out in 2018 when benedict and his colleague david coleman a phd student who was then developing a robotic hummingbird-like uav decided to enter boeings gofly x-prize challenge the goal: to build a single-person vertical takeoff and landing aircraft measuring no more than 85 feet (26 meters) in any dimension which can carry a 200-pound (91-kilogram person) a distance of 20 miles (32 kilometers) and there was a further proviso the sound pressure level of the aircrafts noise had to be less than 87 dba a special version of decibels weighted for the human ears frequency response at a range of 50 feet (152 meters) from the aircraft that means the noise from the aircraft would only be like that from a truck or a lawnmower at that distance says benedict there were two issues with noise they had to deal with: its magnitude as measured by its sound pressure level in dba and its frequency range which is a strong measure of how psychologically annoying a noise tone is to the human ear our objective was to make it not only reduce the magnitude of the noise but also to reduce the frequency so humans would perceive the noise as quieter the harmony team settled on an electric rotorcraft design powered by a pair of contrarotating coaxial four-blade rotors and set about achieving that demanding specification knowing that on any rotorcraft the noise sound pressure level is proportional to the fourth (or higher) power of rotor tip speed coleman and benedict eschewed the small rotors popular on many drone and evtol designs which would have had to spin very fast creating quite a din instead we went with a big rotor with more blade area so we could move the blades at a much lower speed and produce the same thrust says benedict they also innovated with the blade shape to reduce the noise caused when contrarotating blades pass over each other (that is as a clockwise-moving one crosses a counterclockwise-moving one) during that blade crossover a sudden impulsive noise is produced because of interactions between the blades says benedict with regular straight-edged rotor blades the entire upper and lower blade will overlap at the same instant producing a strong impulse noise their answer was to bend the blade into a dog-leg shape sweeping half of it backward so the entire blade span never overlaps simultaneously this means that at any instant only two points on the blade are actually overlapping so were basically smearing out that interaction over a longer period of time simply by the virtue of the shape says benedict they have patented this noise-quashing idea he adds next they addressed the annoying frequency issue knowing says coleman the range to avoid is between 1 khz and 5 khz on a piano keyboard thats approximately the top two octaves imagine music only being played at that end of the keyboard and its easy to see how annoying it would be that is the reason we are irritated by the sound of a drone or a chainsaw or a baby crying says benedict all these noises or all these pressure fluctuations happen in this frequency range to avoid such audible angst they designed their coaxial rotors to run at speeds creating sound in the hundreds of hertz range cruising at just 200 hz and in tests of aria their remotely-piloted 250-kg helicopter the sound pressure level at 152 meters measured a mere 73 dba a feat benedict describes as phenomenal given the 87 dba gofly requirement unfortunately a systems failure caused aria to roll over and crash while taxiing in a slow hover so it was not entered in the gofly competition that was one of the saddest days says benedict however he says boeing undaunted by that crash is still interested in researching us defense department applications for the startups innovative coaxial rotor blade while harmony explores aam applications blade architectures are front and center for members of the uk inception project too as its members study electric ducted fans initially single rotor modules and perhaps dual-rotor contrarotating units in a follow-up project to see how best to design them for noise abatement and in a sign that alleviating aam community noise is starting to matter big time the inception researchers like harmony aeronautics are assessing sound quality metrics too the so-called psychoacoustics says torija-martinez the kind of design parameters that could be modified to improve the noise performance of a ducted-fan electric jet include rotor tip speed the number of rotor blades and how those rotors interact with features within the ducts roughly cylindrical architecture we are optimizing the tip speed of the blades the spacing between those blades and the other structures within the fan such as the [air] inlet guide vanes and outlet guide vanes says torija-martinez but not everything comes down to the aircraft itself: the acoustic environment a drone or evtol operates in known as its soundscape could also be used to mask noise for instance says torija-martinez operators might be able to fly delivery drones along busy roads so that traffic noise is hiding the sound produced by the uavs similar thinking he says could inform those seeking sites for vertiports using traffic routes to help define flight corridors whisper aero appears to have just such masking plans in mind in a statement about its quiet propulsor technology on its us air force sttr award webpage the company says the analysis of its technology indicates an acoustic signature below all current evtol development efforts with the potential to blend into ambient urban soundscapes its clear that moore and his colleagues at their lakeside innovation campus in deepest tennessee are certain that beating noise is the key to unlocking aam im convinced the future is electric that sustainability matters and that in the modern world were all closer and closer to each other he says so the winner is going to be whoevers the quietest and has the greenest set of technologies and i think thatll be us harmony aeronautics and the seven-strong inception consortium may beg to differ however and in any case harmonys benedict has some words of caution about the limitations of the aerodynamic noise-reducing tricks they all crave: you cant beat physics he warns
2485,"outstanding faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering received one of the highest honors in academia during the recent investiture ceremony this year faculty members who were named holders of endowed chairs and professorships between march 1 2021 and feb 28 2022 were recognized they were honored at a combined ceremony on march 29 which also recognized recipients of faculty awards and engineering genesis awardsthe faculty members who were awarded the designation of a chair or professorship will receive bronze medallions the medallions are engraved with the name of their chair or professorship and symbolize the honorees commitment to teaching research and service chairs i yucel akkutlu2021 j edgar holt '27 endowed chair in the harold vance department of petroleum engineeringrobert ambrose2021 j mike walker 66 chair in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineeringscott socolofsky2021 j walter ""deak"" porter '22 and james w ""bud"" porter '51 chair in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineeringding zhu2021 mccain engineering chair in the harold vance department of petroleum engineeringperla b balbuena2021 mike o'connor chair i in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineeringfaisal khan2021 mike o'connor chair ii in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineeringstefan hurlebaus2021 rp gregory 32 endowed chair in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering professorships marcelo sanchez2021 ap and florence wiley professorship ii in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineeringshankar chellam2021 ap and florence wiley professorship iii in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineeringivett leyva2021 college of engineering excellence professorship in the department of aerospace engineeringchoongho yu2021 g paul pepper 54 professorship in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineeringsrikanth saripalli2021 j mike walker 66 professorship in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineeringguillermo aguilar2021 james and ada forsyth endowed professorship in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineeringbryan rasmussen2021 leland t jordan professorship in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineeringeduardo gildin2021 lf peterson '36 endowed professorship in the harold vance department of petroleum engineeringyunlong zhang2021 peter c forster 61 professorship in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineeringroozbeh jafari2021 tim and amy leach professorship in the department of biomedical engineeringmary beth deisz hueste2021 truman r jones jr 43 professorship in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineeringmoo-hyun kim2021 wh bauer endowed professorship ii in the department of ocean engineering"
2486,the biomedical engineering design studio located on the first floor of the emerging technologies building has provided a space tailored to the specific needs for teaching medical device design having hands-on experience with all aspects of the device life cycle is crucial this studio allows students to immerse themselves in the design process and have tools and equipment that are not readily available other places on campus the first stage of renovation was an extensive overhaul comprised of tearing down a wall between two rooms and reconfiguring the space stage two of the renovation took place several months later and involved furnishing and adding electrical drop-downs the space now includes 20 workstations for student teams each of which accommodates five students and rolling storage for device prototypes
2487,thanks to former student and industry donations the space now houses a large 3d printer and virtual anatomy table which allows students to interact with virtual cadavers and disease models and even provides the opportunity for cad drawing implantations future projects include advanced av installation and expansion of both a prototyping wall and a historical medical device library
2488,james jim machek passed away on sept 10 2021 during his three years as a professor of practice in the department his teaching efforts focused on the design course sequence he was instrumental in advocating for and conceptualizing the design studio after his passing the department and students focused on finding a way to memorialize him via this space through former student contributions $17 628 was raised in macheks name in 2021 donations are still being accepted through the texas a&m foundation
2489,"the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university moved up to no 7 among public institutions for its graduate programs according to the recently released 2023 us news & world report america's best graduate schools rankings the department improved three places in the overall ranking to no 14 and two places among public mechanical engineering programs to no 7 jumping from its previous no 9 ranking additionally the college of engineering increased its rank by one to no 6 among public institutions we are proud to receive this recognition from our peers "" said dr guillermo aguilar james and ada forsyth professor and department head of the mechanical engineering department ""this significant increase in our ranking reflects the incredible work by our faculty in recent years both academically and through scientific and technological research and the premier graduates our department produces we look forward to continuing to share the groundbreaking work and achievements of our faculty and students more than 500 students were enrolled in the department's masters and doctoral programs combined as of the fall 2021 semester the mechanical engineering department boasts nearly 100 faculty members including seven national academy of engineering members with 11 endowed chair holders 14 endowed professorships and 12 faculty fellowships according to us news and world report the department ranks no 7 for its undergraduate program and no 6 for its online master of engineering program among public institutions it was also ranked no 3 overall internationally by shanghairankings for 2021"
2490,ahnsei shon doctoral student in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university placed first in the doctoral lightning talk competition of the 17th annual texas a&m university system pathways student research symposium for his research on sensory electrical stimulation (ses) of spinal cord injury rehabilitation ses can avoid the medical drawbacks such as rapid muscle fatigue stiffness and pain that occur with traditional functional electrical stimulation as part of shons research in this area he created a fully implantable closed-loop neural interface device that has been shown to successfully increase ankle joint movement the device increased the maximum ankle joint angle from 1494° (baseline without stimulation) to 1654° and 1616° with stimulation amplitude of 100 microamperes (unit of electric current) and 200 microamperes respectively the minimum ankle joint angle was decreased from 594° (baseline) to 531° with stimulation amplitude of 100 microamperes through this method sensory electrical stimulation will have a powerful impact on producing more natural movements for rehabilitation that involves spinal circuitry while avoiding some limitations of traditional functional electrical stimulation directly recruiting motor neurons shon said shon works in the integrated neuro-prosthesis laboratory at texas a&m with assistant professor dr hangue park from the department of electrical and computer engineering his work is based on a strong collaboration with dr michelle hook associate professor in the college of medicine at this time shon and the team have published two institute of electrical and electronics engineers journal papers on this subject
2491,"open to undergraduate and graduate students from all the texas a&m university system institutions the pathways student research symposium gives students an opportunity to network and present their research to faculty members judges and other students across the system ""this would not have been possible without the guidance of my advisor dr hangue park "" shon said ""i also appreciate our collaboration team (dr hook and her doctoral student alex stefanov) and all my lab mates especially electrical engineering doctoral students stefan manoharan and devon dollahon who were with me until the end of the competition"""
2492,the texas a&m university college of engineerings graduate program climbed one spot now ranking 10th overall nationally and sixth among public institutions in the latest us news & world report survey americas best graduate schools 2023 the graduate program is also ranked second in the state of texas and seven departments in the college of engineering were ranked among the top 10 public universities in the us in addition to the college six departments also climbed higher in the latest rankingsthe complete list of individual programs and their rankings are: aerospace engineering 8 (5 public); biological and agricultural engineering 7 (6); biomedical engineering 38 (20); chemical engineering 27 (16); civil engineering 15 (9); computer engineering 23 (12); computer science 38 (20); electrical engineering 25 (14); industrial and systems engineering 12 (8); materials science and engineering 26 (17); mechanical engineering 14 (7); nuclear engineering 3 (2); and petroleum engineering 2 (2)
2493,"dr luis san andrés is the recipient of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) 2022 aircraft engine technology award recognizing his sustained contributions to the field san andrés serves as the mast-childs chair professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and is a member of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) turbomachinery laboratory he is a fellow of asme the society of tribologists and lubrication engineers and the global power and propulsion society the award recognizes san andrés' years of contributions in researching and improving squeeze film dampers which stabilize gas turbines ""the award recognizes the turbo lab students and faculty for their long-standing dedication to address and solve industrial needs "" san andrés said ""using gas turbines for power and air transportation has changed the world our work has helped make gas turbines more stable efficient and safer"" san andrés has worked for more than 30 years in the turbo lab at texas a&m working alongside his students to produce squeeze film dampers applications for this research include dampers for aircraft engines hybrid bearings for cryogenic turbopumps nonlinear dynamics of turbochargers gas foil bearings for oil-free machinery lubricated bearings for high-performance turbomachinery and multiple-phase flow seals for wet gas compressors the award arrives as san andrés plans to retire later in 2022 a welcomed surprise he said his family is proud of the honor even as they expect the recognition will further fuel his passion in continuing to pursue his research ultimately he said this award is more of a reflection of the collective achievements and dedication of the turbo lab and all of its members ""i am walking on the clouds with a gift falling from an airplane to land in my lap "" san andrés said ""without a doubt the award recognizes our turbo lab and the many students working in the rotordynamics laboratory and presently serving with distinction toward improving the performance and reliability of turbomachinery small and large slow and fast"""
2494,stem cells can develop into many different types of cells in the body for instance when a person is injured stem cells come to the site of the injury and aid in healing damaged tissues new nanotechnology developed by a team of researchers from texas a&m university could leverage the bodys regenerative potential by directing stem cells to form bone tissue dr akhilesh k gaharwar associate professor and presidential impact fellow in the department of biomedical engineering and a fellow of the american institute for medical and biological engineering leads the team the researchers have developed water-stable 2d covalent organic framework (cof) nanoparticles that can direct the differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells into bone cells significant research attention has been given to 2d cofs porous organic polymers due to their crystallinity ordered and tunable porous structure and high specific surface area however the difficulty of processing cofs into nanosized materials along with their poor stability has limited their application in regenerative medicine and drug delivery there is a need for new approaches that provide these cofs with sufficient physiological stability while maintaining their biocompatibility gaharwars team has enhanced the hydrolytic (water) stability of cofs by integrating them with amphiphilic polymers which are macromolecules that contain both hydrophobic and hydrophilic components this approach which has not been reported previously gives water dispersibility to cofs enabling biomedical application of these nanoparticles to the best of our knowledge this is the first report demonstrating the ability of cofs to direct stem cells toward bone tissue gaharwar said this new technology has the potential to impact the treatment of bone regeneration the researchers found that 2d cofs do not affect a cells viability and proliferation even at higher concentrations they observed that these 2d cofs exhibit bioactivity and direct stem cells towards bone cells the preliminary study indicated that the shape and size of these nanoparticles can impart this bioactivity and additional in-depth studies need to be carried out for mechanistic insights these nanoparticles are highly porous and gaharwars team has leveraged this unique characteristic for drug delivery they were able to load an osteo-inducing drug called dexamethasone into the porous structure of the cof to further enhance bone formation these nanoparticles could prolong delivery of drugs to human mesenchymal stem cells which are commonly used in bone regeneration said dr sukanya bhunia senior author of the study and postdoc associate in the biomedical engineering department the sustained delivery of the drug resulted in enhanced stem cell differentiation toward bone lineage and this technique can be used for bone regeneration gaharwar noted that having provided a proof-of-concept the teams next step in its research will be to evaluate this nanotechnology in a diseased model these findings are important for the future design of biomaterials that can give directions for tissue regeneration and drug delivery applications the results were published in advanced healthcare materials journal other research contributors are dr manish jaiswal kanwar abhay singh and kaivalya deo from the biomedical engineering department at texas a&m the research was supported by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering of the national institutes of health
2495,dr yanling chang assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has been elected a scialog fellow for the research corporation for science advancement (rcsa) created in 2010 by rcsa the scialog (short for science and dialog) format brings together communities of early-career scientists from multiple disciplines and institutions across the us and canada participation in scialog is by invitation and is inclusive of researchers from groups underrepresented in science rcsa will bring together a multidisciplinary group including chang of early-career researchers to address the global threat to human health from animal-borne infectious diseases as part of its new scialog initiative mitigating zoonotic threats changs research focuses on dynamic decision-making under imperfect information with applications in military operations supply chain risk management the gig economy and human-machine interaction recently her paper misinformation and disinformation in modern warfare appeared in operations research the flagship journal in her field this work developed a game-theoretical model to analyze the implication of distorted information in the 2016-2017 battle of mosul she also applied her methodology to understand the root cause and dynamics of mental fatigue in extended cognitive demanding tasks (eg health care professionals) her article the effects of mental fatigue on effort allocation: modeling and estimation has been accepted by psychological review a top journal in theoretical psychology her other works on self-scheduling businesses and critical infrastructure protections have also been published in the leading journal iise transactions in the fall of 2021 chang received a national science foundation award for her dynamic discrete choice analysis work often a person driving on a busy highway also engages in secondary tasks that demand cognitive effort (eg attending to a business-related phone call listening to a podcast etc) this research aims to provide a novel estimation method to build a predictive model of a persons driving behavior to monitor the driver's activities and potentially to intervene or assist in improved driving performance and safety
2496,five faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering were selected to receive a 2022 distinguished achievement award from texas a&m and the association of former students they were among a group of 24 outstanding texas a&m faculty and staff members who were honoredfirst presented in 1955 the university-level distinguished achievement awards have been awarded to more than 1 000 professionals who have exhibited the highest standards of excellence at texas a&meach year the association of former students generously makes funds available to provide faculty and staff at texas a&m with a number of awards recognizing achievement in teaching research individual student relationships continuing education/extension graduate mentoring staff and administration receipt of an association of former students distinguished achievement award is one of the highest university honors that can be bestowed upon a faculty or staff member the 2022 distinguished achievement awards will be formally presented on april 25 during ceremonies in rudder theatrethe 2022 recipients from the college of engineering were:for teaching:dr daniel alge department of biomedical engineeringdr matt pharr j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineeringdr tracy hammond department of computer science and engineeringfor graduate mentoring:dr jn reddy j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineeringfor research:dr stratos pistikopoulos artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering
2497,throughout her life dr christie bergerson 11 15 knew she wanted to be a physician until she didnt the summer after her freshman year she shadowed a surgeon i hated it she said it was the same thing over and over and over again i found it much more interesting to think about the tools that were being used and how they figured out how to use a laser scalpel that only cuts right where it needs to cut or how we got the imaging modalities to work to where they're safe but still effective bergerson entered texas a&m university as a biomedical engineering major after some advice from her grandfather dr rodger koppa associate professor emeritus in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering that decision allowed her to easily shift her focus from medical school to industry after her bachelors degree she remained at texas a&m for her phd although her doctoral research was nontraditional instead of one project she completed a survey phd that involved several projects that added up to the knowledge requirement for graduation some of these projects involved her work on the development of a bone implant interface for total knee replacement and a bone cuff for fractures i found that my experience with this survey phd better reflected the needs and utilities that i now see in industry bergerson said i tend to gravitate toward opportunities that are diverse in subject matter after graduation she joined abbott laboratories as a verification and validation engineer to work in next generation in vitro diagnostics technology outside of the body bergersons role involved drafting test protocols to ensure the instrument and its components would function as intended and she also helped troubleshoot problems when the results of testing were different than expected once the technology was approved by various regulatory agencies and launched in the us and internationally bergerson was promoted to systems engineer the position is a single point of responsibility that sits in design review meetings and assures continuity across the system bergerson said when i'm talking about a medical device system particularly for these clinical lab in vitro diagnostics analyzers we're talking a system with over 300 parts it's very complex
2498,in 2019 bergerson was recruited by exponent to serve in a similar role but her new consultant position involves working on projects for multiple companies her areas of expertise are in vitro diagnostics orthopedic biomechanics and artificial intelligence/software in medical devices bergerson has not forgotten the people who impacted her as a student and she works to help guide future engineers she serves as an adjunct professor in biomedical engineering at johns hopkins university and has lectured at texas a&m drexel university and the university of maryland she enjoys acting as a mentor to students i hope they get perspective from someone who's currently going through it because the policies especially for artificial intelligence are being updated continuously she said i also hope they get some validation as to what aspects of their education are important versus which ones you don't use quite as often in industry bergersons advice to students is to stress less on subject matter many of the questions she receives relate to students exploring career paths with a narrow focus looking at which particular topic they want to commit to instead she encourages people to consider what parts of projects jobs or other experiences theyve enjoyed such as working in a team working in a lab working at home etc to better identify what kind of job theyd like if you can identify those fundamental elements that define your ideal job the background information you need for a specific job will come easily bergerson said when i switched from orthopedic biomechanics to in vitro diagnostics for my first job i thought it was going to be terrible i picked up the topic within a couple of months the hard part was making sure that i liked the research environment you'd be surprised; the flavor of engineering is so much less important than if you're happy day to day
2499,if a rock deep in the subsurface cracks and fails under pressure and temperature change can the sound it makes be heard and identified finding something that specific among all the other underground noises might seem impossible but researchers at texas a&m university proved otherwise dr siddharth misra the ted h smith jr 75 and max r vordenbaum 73 dvg associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering discovered a way to hear and validate that sound in a project funded by the basic energy sciences program of the department of energy (doe) the doe calls sounds of specific events the ‘signs of signature said misra in this case the signature identified the break or mechanical discontinuity of a rock in the earths subsurface especially as the breaks continued to grow or propagate into fractures misra and his doctoral candidate rui liu published their preliminary findings in the systems and signals processing journal why does basic energy sciences want this signature identified sounds are often important clues to environmental and security changes threatening noises such as underground explosions are hard to mistake but the small sounds of a high-rise building foundation cracking and failing are just as threatening so the fundamental sound of rock undergoing mechanical failure is a basic and critical clue worth finding this research goes to the heart of identifying something specific within a massive data set said misra an example is credit card transactions you cannot monitor the whole data set for fraud because the transactions are so varied you must find some indicative sign such as a credit card charge in one city to book an airline flight immediately after that same card pays for an uber in another city that discrepancy is a signature previous attempts to pinpoint underground mechanical failures never brought reliable success but misra found that an unusual combination of three research methods supervised machine learning causal discovery and rapid simulations could tackle the problem the supervised machine learning began with lab experiments in which a multipoint sensor system was placed on the surface of a rock and recorded sound wave-transmission measurements through the material as it cracked and finally failed computers monitored the information and were taught which data signatures meant initial intermediate and end-stage damage one tell-tale signature that repeatedly traveled up and down across the zero point between positive and negative measurements caught the computers attention once it knew what to look for i can only see the color or shape of something with my eyes said liu but machine learning can pick out so many more characteristics from the data it picked out those positive and negative turnings and we used that sign to get further results
2500,misra and liu searched for the causation of each of these turnings to confirm their source they couldnt rely on the computer to complete this step because machine learning is not the best interpreter during the heat of the summer ice cream sales increase and drowning deaths increase said misra if you use machine learning or simple statistical methods they might say people are drowning because people eat ice cream that's a correlation though they are both related to the summer heat they are not connected to each other they each have a different cause we are looking for causation for these turnings because that's when they become meaningful misra and liu created a workflow that could generate scenarios of various fracture propagations and measured waveforms then they increased the workflows speed to rapidly run up to 20 000 different simulations of possibilities for each event this allowed the researchers to discover the best cause-and-effect explanations we didnt control how the discontinuity propagated so there's a lot of randomness said misra yet as the fractures grew despite the differences in direction or length results showed a similar increase in amplifications or positive and negative turnings across the zero point in the waveforms so this is a definite signature of rock failure which to the best of my knowledge was not known prior to this research while the signature discovery is exciting the project still has several months to go misra intends to explore the limits of the data-driven simulations and causal discovery approach he will also test other methods to see if similar or different results occur what we need to do as scientists as engineers is to find causality find causation said misra we tried a lot of different techniques to discover this signature and its causal relationships a lot of approaches didn't work but one did now we need to find the limits of what it can do
2501,"wildfires have devastated communities globally in recent years urging researchers to continue their pursuit of finding new ways to help protect lives and property researchers led by a texas a&m university professor have created a coating treatment with the potential to mitigate the spread and damage of fire without many of the drawbacks typically associated with fire retardant solutions leading the team is principal investigator dr jaime grunlan leland t jordan '29 chair professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and his former graduate student dr thomas kolibaba who is currently a nuclear regulatory commission postdoctoral fellow at the national institute of standards and technology ""if the pandemic hadn't happened fire would have been a top story this past couple of years due to major fires in places like california and australia "" grunlan said according to the national fire protection association home fires result in billions of dollars in property damage each year and are the leading cause of fire deaths as a native of the pacific northwest kolibaba said he hopes to see this coating become accessible to the average person allowing those who live in high-risk areas to treat their own homes and property with the coating to protect against fire damage ""the solution could be sold put into a backpack sprayer like what many people use for staining wood siding or spraying herbicides on farms and then applied to structures of concern such as houses fences and barns during fire season to keep their homes safer "" kolibaba said the team shared their findings during the 2022 american chemical society spring meeting on march 22 the group's test showed that when exposed to flames wood treated with the coating saw less heat released during burning produced less smoke and developed a layer of char on the surface that helped to protect the wood underneath all features that could help to reduce fire damage and spread in addition to protecting structures and homes grunlan said this coating technology could also be applied to a variety of materials often found in furnishings including foam and fabric and vehicles like cars planes and trains the developed coating is also environmentally benign thanks to its water-based nature and adds very little weight to the material to which it is applied grunlan said their approach improves upon other coating technologies seeking to achieve similar results but include drawbacks like substantial added weight and toxic properties for people or the environment ""the ability to make wood or wood composites such as oriented strand board or plywood 'self-extinguishing' without changing any other beneficial properties will be a tremendous benefit to everyone "" grunlan said ""forests homes and buildings will be much safer"""
2502,bryton praslicka doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering and daniel zamarron master of business administration student in mays business school at texas a&m university received the first-place award at the 2022 aggie pitch competition on march 7 for their startup company fluxworks llc claiming the mcferrin cup and $7 500 toward their venture a total of 20 startups were selected as finalists for the competition which was separated into three divisions: full pitch for current students full pitch for former students and elevator pitch which was open to both fluxworks is a developer and manufacturer of magnetic gears and magnetic gear-integrated motors which it will be using for unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs) and future electric vertical takeoff and landing air taxi vehicles praslicka and zamarron both have experience building magnetic gears in the advanced electrical machines and power electronics lab at texas a&m unlike mechanical gears which create their torque effect through the meshing of teeth magnetic gears create torque through magnetic fields in the air providing contactless force transfer by using magnetic gears fluxworks can reduce acoustic sound and maintenance requirements and increase the lifetime of the aircraft significantly while keeping the size and weight the same by combining this technology with motors fluxworks can offer a competitive alternative for future delivery drones and air taxis that provides clean quiet and affordable electric aviation i believe in the technology zamarron said this is the future i feel it praslicka started fluxworks in october 2021 and zamarron joined a few months later in january 2022 one month after its inception praslicka won first place in the mcferrin centers raymond ideas challenge and then in february the duo competed in the regional energytech up challenge this collegiate competition challenges multidisciplinary student teams to develop and present a business plan that leverages lab-developed and other high-potential energy technologies it is sponsored by the office of technology transitions at the us department of energy praslicka and zamarron are set to virtually compete in the energytech up national pitch finals on march 24
2503,they have now completed their phase-one fundraising goal and are now moving into phase two which is product development currently they are continuing with competitions to help with funding in addition to pursuing government grants looking ahead they are aiming for a summer 2024 flight demonstration of their technology we'd like to see our magnetically geared motors on a uav so people can see the technology in action firsthand and express interest praslicka explained as a doctoral student working under electrical and computer engineering raytheon professor dr hamid toliyat praslicka has issued five patent applications related to magnetic gears and has designed and fabricated five magnetic gears and magnetically geared motors he has also written multiple successful phase i small business innovation research proposals and a phase ii small business technology transfer proposal zamarron received his bachelors degree in electrical engineering at texas a&m and previously served in the united states marine corps before pursuing his master of business administration he leveraged his past experiences as a mechanic and electrical engineer to help develop two magnetic gear prototypes and file a patent both praslicka and zamarron encourage other students to step into the entrepreneurial space and to not be afraid when people say they don't like their job i just don't get it praslicka said i do not have that in common you know i have a lot of fun also don't do it alone it has been incredibly important to take advantage of being here on campus there's not a book that you can read that's like ‘here's how to start a company because each company just looks so different so you need to be put in contact with people that can help you take advantage of the resources available at texas a&m
2504,thomas edison henry ford frances ligler all three are internationally recognized inventors two are long gone but the other is now on the biomedical engineering faculty at texas a&m university the department of biomedical engineering and the entire university community welcomed dr frances ligler as a chaired professor starting spring 2022 ligler will help faculty strengthen research programs facilitate new research partnerships and mentor aspiring leaders within biomedical engineering i am looking forward to working with talented faculty and students in biomedical engineering and to building collaborations across the university ligler said pioneer in the field liglers background is a fantastic fit for the departments current research efforts she has published research on biosensors microfluidics tissue-on-chip systems and regenerative medicine she has also performed research in biochemistry immunology and analytical chemistry most recognizably she is a leader in the optical biosensor industry ligler was the first to invent and develop a usable tactical biowarfare defense system for the united states at the us naval research laboratory her work was instrumental in producing tactical sensors for detecting botulinum toxin and anthrax during operation desert storm i like doing things with my hands and finding out about life in a hands-on way she said i got interested in biosensors from the molecular side a biosensor is a piece of hardware that incorporates a biological molecule to do detection so the biological molecule can be an antibody or a piece of dna or anything that can bind to a target that youre interested in
2505,in recognition of her invention of portable optical biosensors ligler was inducted into the national inventors hall of fame (nihf) in 2017 out of over 11 million inventors who are named on us patents only 608 of them have received this distinction ligler is one of only 20 living women to be honored and the only current member of the texas a&m faculty to be an inductee the biosensors she pioneered were developed for protection against exposure to hazardous agents providing rapid response in identifying and quantifying pathogens toxins pollutants drugs of abuse or explosives she has 37 issued us patents and 11 commercially produced biosensor products which have been critical pieces of security and health safety systems ligler is an elected member and former councilor (governing board member) of the national academy of engineering (nae) the most prestigious body in the united states recognizing the societal impact of engineering work she is also a fellow in the international society for optics and photonics the american institute for medical and biological engineering the american association of arts and sciences and the national academy of inventors liglers many other recognitions including two honorary doctorates are significant in quantity and quality including domestic and international awards of particular note are some rare honors: presidential rank of distinguished senior professional awarded by president george w bush and presidential rank of meritorious senior professional awarded by president barack obama christopher columbus foundations homeland security award (biological radiological nuclear field) naes simon ramo founders award dedication to service service is a priority in liglers life from encouraging other engineers to supporting the engineering and health care professions on a national and international scale since being elected to the nae in 2005 ligler has served on several academy committees to advise the nation working on projects related to topics such as how to keep the united states competitive in science and technology; science engineering and medicine public policy; and combating misinformation on the internet service in student training and mentorship has been an extensive part of her professional life ligler has mentored more than 200 undergraduates for research experiences and more than 150 undergraduates are included as co-authors on her papers the most important part of what i want to leave behind is people who are open to new ideas to continue learning throughout their entire lives and understanding what other science and engineering disciplines and people with different backgrounds knowledge and understanding can contribute to a project that benefits society she said
2506,researchers at texas a&m university have found a way to control the charge of nanoparticles on a two-fluid interface to create a more stable system in which its charge can also be switched and controlled the ability to change the charge of nanoparticles on a two-fluid interface specifically an oil-water interface would result in a surface that could acclimate itself to fit many diverse applications such as a more durable firefighting operation and even controlled release in certain medications based on this idea we proposed a concept that this will be a ph-responsive material if we change the ph value we can control the molecular diffusion said dr qingsheng wang associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and holder of the george armistead ‘23 faculty fellowship at texas a&m the teams research was published in the american chemical societys journal acs applied materials & interfaces emulsion is a mixture of two or more incompatible and unmixable liquids much like oil and water that can be stabilized by the interference of solid particles these solid particles tightly assemble at the fluid-fluid interface like swim lanes in a lap pool to prevent coalescence this process is known as pickering emulsion the success of this system is ultimately made possible by the use of graphene quantum dots (gqds) containing zwitterionic properties using several sheets of gqds stacked together the research team is able to not only stabilize emulsion but also control the molecular diffusion on the interface by adjusting its ph values much like flipping a light switch these sheets together measure less than 5 nanometers in thickness to put this into perspective the average human hair is anywhere from 80 000 to 100 000 nanometers wide the functionalized gqds are composed of nanocarbon materials containing zwitterionic structure which is formed from nanoparticles that contain an equal amount of both positive and negative charges while still remaining electronically neutral after the nanoparticles are added to the interface they separate the two fluids by making one side hydrophobic and the other side hydrophilic this electronic makeup also makes it possible to control the overall ph of the interface by adjusting the ph values these gqds can be finely tuned to both block and unblock an oil-water interface changing the nanoplatelets on the interface to the same charge means that they will be disassembled thus creating a more stable emulsion system this is going to help us design a good system in high-performance fire suppression in addition because we can control the release this could be promising for drug delivery and enhanced oil recovery wang said usually this is very difficult to do and sometimes if we can control the release but the system itself is not stable it may only be possible to do one or two cycles of this before the system collapses the research team consists of chemical engineering doctoral student rong ma and former chemical engineering doctoral students dr minxiang zeng now a research scientist at the university of notre dame and dr dali huang now a process engineer at formosa plastics corporation
2507,demand response a measure taken to reduce the energy load in response to supply constraints within the texas electric grid has been a topic of recent conversation as we continue to question the stability of the electric grid after the wake of winter storm uri just one year ago demand response can enhance the reliability of the grid through renewable energy penetration and also significantly reduce price volatility or fluctuation in the wholesale electricity market to reduce the energy load across the entirety of the states grid traditional demand response studies focus on reducing the energy load in high population centers such as houston and dallas however dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and his team found that focusing on a few strategic locations across the state outside of those high-population areas is much more cost-effective and can have a greater impact on the price volatility of the grid a machine learning algorithm is utilized to strategically select these demand response locations based on a synthetic texas grid model this research was published in the february issue of the journal iscience suppose todays electricity demand results in high prices and yesterdays electricity demand resulted in low prices said postdoctoral researcher ki-yeob lee who designed the algorithm used in the paper can we move todays electricity demand closer to yesterdays electricity demand so that this change can result in low prices if this is not successful can we move todays electricity demand closer to the day before yesterdays electricity demand based on this simple idea our machine-learning algorithm searches for the day where electricity results in low prices and the amount of demand response is minimal although previous studies have demonstrated the benefits of demand response in mitigating price volatility there is limited work considering the choice of locations for maximal impact we're taking a technology-agnostic approach xie said we're showing the current market design and the consequences of this design by pointing these things out we can hopefully reduce the price volatility of the grid which we believe would be best for society in addition to xie and lee contributors to the research include dr xinbo geng dr sivaranjani seetharaman and dr srinivas shakkottai from the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m; dr bainan xia from breakthrough energy; and dr hao ming from southeast university in china who received his doctorate from texas a&m
2508,dr theodora chaspari assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university received the montague-center for teaching excellence (cte) scholars award in recognition of her passion for teaching undergraduate students i am very honored to receive the montague teaching award chaspari said during the ceremony it was also very exciting to learn about the work of assistant professors from other colleges who received the award this high-quality work and dedication to student learning from my peers makes me proud to be part of texas a&m every year the award is given to only one tenure-track assistant professor from each college in addition to receiving the montague-cte scholars award each recipient also receives a $6 500 grant to develop new innovative teaching methods since its initiation in 1991 the award has been granted to 289 faculty members chaspari was inspired to pursue a career teaching in academia by her own academic mentors and advisors whose expertise spanned across many different domains she said that some of the most rewarding aspects of her position are conveying knowledge about computing interacting with her students and witnessing their success i believe that through this bi-directional and open exchange of information students can better understand the material of the class and we can also better adapt the class material as instructors said chaspari she plans to use the funds from the award to develop a research-inspired interdisciplinary university education program to shape future leaders in artificial intelligence (ai) data science and machine learning which also includes teaching them the social responsibility that comes with practicing computer science in an ethical and fair manner it has become increasingly evident that solving authentic problems in the world now requires cross-domain conversations and collaboration between engineering computing and the humanities chaspari said as learning about ai has become one of the most discussed topics in the field of education it is equally important to follow an education agenda that conveys the ethics and the social responsibility that comes with designing and deploying ai systems
2509,lithium-metal (li-metal) batteries show great potential for packing more significant amounts of energy than the current lithium-ion batteries for example a li-metal electric battery in a car could travel more miles and a li-metal phone battery could have longer battery life however the metal surface of li-metal batteries is highly reactive and there is limited understanding of the chemistry of these reactions dr perla balbuena professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is using quantum chemical methods to track specific reactions that occur on the surfaces inside li-metal batteries understanding li-metal battery reactions and predicting products will enhance usability by decreasing their reactivity this research was recently published in the american chemical societys acs applied materials & interfaces journal and was co-authored by graduate student dacheng kuai from the department of chemistry at texas a&m we need to understand what type of reactions happen how to slow down the reactions what the components are what the morphology of the evolving products is and how the ions and electrons move through the surface said balbuena understanding these critical issues will allow us to commercialize li-metal batteries in the near future when li-metal batteries are manufactured a thin film forms on the anode commonly referred to as solid-electrolyte interphase (sei) this film is made of multiple components and produced by electrolyte decomposition the chemical makeup of the sei is critical for ensuring peak performance from the battery and extending its lifespan through experimental efforts theoretical predictions can reveal the details in this phenomenon at the atomistic and electronic levels in this study the researchers targeted a polymer that develops due to electrolyte reactions on the batterys internal surfaces pinpointing this specific polymer reaction is challenging but necessary to optimize the sei the researchers simulated the interface at the atomistic level and solved accurate quantum chemical equations to map a time evolution of the polymer formation reaction what differentiates this research is starting from the microscopic-level description and letting the system evolve according to its electronic redistribution upon chemical reaction balbuena said there are many experimental techniques that can follow and monitor the reactions but theyre challenging with this simulation we can get new insights we isolate the part of the system that is responsible for important chemical events we follow that specific group of molecules and analyze the reactions spontaneously occurring at the surface of electrodes unique to this research the computational tools used can determine the minimum energy configurations and the arrangement of the molecules during the reaction thus charting the reaction from beginning to end the researchers found that the species polymerizing in the sei could be beneficial for li-metal batteries because they can aid in controlling the level of reactivity of the battery materials we are pleased about the results as they provide insight into what could happen when using real electrodes said balbuena these findings illustrate the use of computational tools that can contribute to creating batteries that are more friendly to the environment have longer lifespans and are cheaper to produce as better chemistries evolve balbuena hopes the methodologies found in her research will be helpful for years to come this research can be a driving force for batteries in a greener more efficient direction she said i know that this work will be helpful 10 years from now because 10 years ago we made our initial contributions on li-ion batteries and our findings helped on the development of todays successful technology it is a cycle of continuous improvement
2510,jean and mark froehlich have established the jean and mark froehlich 76 family endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university mark froehlich grew up in harris county texas and followed his cousins footsteps by attending texas a&m and studying engineering he admired his cousins success in his engineering career and he wanted to participate in the same educational and cultural experience my attending texas a&m and majoring in engineering had everything to do with my cousins successful career froehlich said a large number of froehlichs family attended and graduated from texas a&m including two of his children graduation class years in the family have ranged from 1955 to 2003 however in 1972 when froehlich stepped foot on texas a&ms campus as a freshman he was the first in his immediate family to attend college a variety of small scholarships helped froehlich receive his degree now after a fulfilling career in civil engineering he decided to give back weve been greatly blessed he said we feel it is important to pass this blessing on together with his wife jean froehlich established a scholarship specifically for first-generation students from harris county pursuing a degree in civil engineering my hope is that someone can benefit from my gift just as i was helped in my day by the generosity of others he said froehlich hopes that their gift will give students opportunities that could be pivotal to their future there were a number of mentors along the way that impacted me and the high quality of my education he said i want to provide the same thing for others
2511,endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
2512,"tanner hoke a senior in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university received the craig c brown outstanding senior engineer award the most prestigious award bestowed upon a graduating senior in the college of engineering at texas a&m the award recognizes a student who demonstrates outstanding academic and leadership achievements and whose character exceeds standards ""i'm extraordinarily grateful to mr brown and the brown foundation for the award "" hoke said ""mr brown gives to this university in so many ways and he's given me and countless others an example to follow in exemplifying the core values"" a lifelong aggie from boerne texas hoke first garnered interest in computer science after developing a few iphone apps in high school with growing interest in math theory and algorithms hoke decided to pursue degrees in computer science and applied math simultaneously ""i like that computer science involves thinking about and solving difficult problems "" hoke said ""of course this is also true of math more broadly but for me computer science is particularly exciting because often solving a problem means a new idea for an algorithm that you can implement and see the effect of immediately"" hoke is the founder and president of the aggie competitive programming club a student organization that provides a healthy environment to learn practice and teach competitive programming techniques and algorithmic problem-solving skills for students of all skill levels he is also a member of texas a&m's international collegiate programming contest (icpc) team the team recently qualified to compete in the 2022 icpc world finals in dhaka bangladesh they are the second texas a&m programming team to reach this stage of the contest in the last 20 years hoke is studying linear algebraic graph algorithms via sparse matrices and conducts research alongside dr tim davis professor in the computer science and engineering department ""my main focus is to implement a set of algorithms for quickly counting various types of subgraphs in a graph using suitesparse: graphblas which is an implementation that dr davis has created and which is widely used "" hoke said during the summers of 2020 and 2021 he worked as a trading intern with jane street while there he worked on trading strategies and models building trading intuition programming after graduating this may he will join the company as a full-time trader ""in the long run i hope to be someone who works hard cares deeply about others leads well and gives generously "" hoke said"
2513,the fifth annual lockheed martin ethics in engineering case competition took place on feb 28 and march 1 in this competition students are given a fictional case based primarily on ethical business and engineering dilemmas and must present their solutions in hopes of advancing to the next roundin this year's remote event 24 institutions participated with two students on each universitys team ritika bhattacharjee senior in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and laura smith senior in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering represented texas a&m university for this years dilemma about two competing satellite companies at risk of collisionit was a lot of fun working with laura to research the solution bhattacharjee said learning so much about a subject that is outside of my typical area of study was really gratifying and inspiring and i wish everyone had the freedom to pursue knowledge for the sole reason of growing intellect because of how much fun it can benot only did bhattacharjee and smith work together to find their solution but they also had the help of their faculty advisor dr shayla rivera director of engr[x] and faculty co-advisor dr magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships who both feel that participation in this event is a great educational and professional benefit to studentsproviding students an opportunity to immerse themselves in a challenging case that involves technical business and ethical issues where they have to develop a solution defend the company they represent and at the same time compromise and reach an agreement that benefits both companies is an amazing way to demonstrate to students the importance of all three in making good decisions as a leader said lagoudaslockheed martin stresses the importance of a students prior knowledge of and experience with ethics before they enter the workforce rivera believes this competition directly enhances the education of an engineering studentas members of the engineering profession these students will have a direct impact on the quality of life for people all over the globe rivera said this demands professionalism focused on the highest standards of honesty and integrity and participating in this competition brings these young to-be-engineers the awareness of the importance of their role in societystudents of all majors and backgrounds participate in this competition regardless of experience this kind of variety offers different perspectives in each casei have never had any debate experience before and while this was not exactly a debate it was similar smith said this competition has helped me develop my communication skills and i have practiced writing research papers but i have never had to pull facts to support my thesis on the fly beforesmith and bhattacharjee were unable to advance to the next round on the following day of the competition despite being eliminated early on both smith and bhattacharjee took away very valuable lessons and experiences from the competitionwe didnt win this year but we built new relationships and upheld relationships from previous years bhattacharjee said relationships are so much more important than victory and thats a value we aggies cherish i feel so grateful to represent a university that has such a strong team mentality and that i got the opportunity to represent our amazing college of engineeringsmith also said that even though she wishes they could have continued texas a&ms winning streak she loved working with bhattacharjee rivera lagoudas and everyone else who helped them the support from texas a&m and its faculty helped them throughout the entire processsmith is preparing for life after graduation and is currently in the middle of job interviews with different companies including lockheed martin bhattacharjee plans on moving to austin after graduation to start her career at a business consulting firm and to continue freelancing as a musicianstudents can complete this survey if interested in participating in the next lockheed martin ethics in engineering case competition
2514,the department of biomedical engineering is celebrating its 50th year as a program in 2022 in recognition of this milestone we interviewed current students to learn what drew them to biomedical engineering their favorite part of the major and what advice they have for prospective students
2515,"samuel briggs class: phd 22hometown: logan utah q: why did you choose biomedical engineering as your major and career path a: my decision to choose biomedical engineering came largely from two factors the first was my ap biology teacher in high school he did a great job of tying the lectures to everyday life and encouraged us to not only understand the material but also think about how we could use it to better our lives the second factor was the diagnosis of my father with congestive heart failure i remember being frustrated by not really understanding what was happening and when i learned about biomedical engineering i realized it would allow me not only to understand medical conditions but also to help find solutions for others q: what steps have you taken to make it where you are today a: i surround myself with people who support encourage and challenge me my high school ap biology teacher larry litizzetti started my love of biology my undergraduate research mentor fernando agarraberes gave me hands-on experience with the scientific method my mentor at ge healthcare joseph camire showed me how research happens in an industry setting and encouraged me to pursue a phd my current advisor dr duncan maitland has taught me how to perform novel research publish papers and network in the biotechnology industry however for my personal journey the support of my wife and kids day in and day out has been the critical ""step"" in making it to where i am today and for that i am thankful"
2516,melanie painter class: md/phd 25hometown: farragut tennessee q: what has been your favorite part about majoring in biomedical engineering so far a: the biomedical engineering department at texas a&m has excellent resources to guide students as we develop skills necessary to reach our potential as entrepreneurs inventors and engineers one of my favorite parts has been sling health (student organization) through sling health i've had the opportunity to further my knowledge of patent law the business side of medical technology and how to successfully pitch an idea to investors using the connections and skills i've gained i co-founded a medical technology startup with a surgeon and another texas a&m graduate student i am excited to continue to grow this startup during my time at texas a&m and beyond q: what advice would you give to prospective students a: intentionally seek out the opportunities that excite you and align with your interests and it is okay to turn down good opportunities that don't excite you there are so many great opportunities at texas a&m that you couldn't possibly take advantage of every single one prioritizing the classes projects and organizations at texas a&m that truly excite me and align with my goals has allowed me to more fully realize my potential (and enjoy it)
2517,rithika adavikolanu class: bs 22hometown: san francisco california q: why did you choose biomedical engineering as your major and career path a: i always knew that i wanted to go into a field that was very hands-on but there was something about the intersection of medicine and engineering that really drew me in what's amazing about biomedical engineering is that it is such a multifaceted field and brings together so many traditional engineering disciplines like electrical mechanical chemical and computer engineering as long as you have the passion to bridge gaps in health care through innovation there's so many different routes you can go with one degree q: what advice would you give to prospective students a: this is a field that can be involved with all sorts of disciplines if youre interested in research look into getting involved early on no one expects freshmen and sophomores to know everything so dont be nervous to put yourself out there i encourage everyone to give research a shot to see if its something that interests you but if not take some time to explore all the other ways to gain academic enrichment outside of the classroom (aggies invent hackathons biomedical engineering society (bmes) student ambassadors etc) theres a lot that can only be learned by doing were so lucky to have the resources that we have at texas a&m and the best thing you can do for yourself is to take advantage of them q: what steps have you taken to make it where you are today a: the most helpful thing throughout my college career has been learning to accept failure with an open mind instead of meeting it with discouragement i've learned so many new technical and soft skills just by learning from mistakes in terms of understanding what worked and what didn't work in addition treating every experience as a resource has been a huge step toward realizing what i take a liking to i've learned to think about bad experiences as a way to gain insight on what you are not interested in instead of a waste of time
2518,ruby ross class: bs 22hometown: bryan texas q: what advice would you give to prospective students a: to people interested in biomedical engineering i would say talk to as many people in the field as you can while it may seem intimidating to reach out to people you've never met most people love to talk about their passions there are so many aspects to the field that you may have never considered because you didn't know it existed building connections helps you gain soft skills grow your network and learn more about the career you're deciding to dedicate four years of your life to pursue q: where do you see yourself in 5-10 years a: in 5-10 years i see myself managing diverse teams of people to exceed their potential through the organizations i've joined in college i've learned that i am inspired by the potential for growth i love bringing together people with unique skills as they combine their talents to achieve more than they could on their own i've seen this during my internship at ibio in my senior design group and in engineers without borders as a project manager i hope to empower teams to develop novel vaccines therapeutics and devices that improve human health
2519,hamzah ahmed class: bs 22hometown: plano texas q: what has been your favorite part about majoring in biomedical engineering so far a: my favorite biomedical engineering course i've taken has to be the two-semester physiology sequence i had through the (department of veterinary physiology and pharmacology) in my sophomore year taught by dr jayanth ramadoss at the time the course did an excellent job of blending scientific knowledge with practical application and it really set the foundation for the rest of the major q: what steps have you taken to make it where you are today a: i engaged with research as early as i possibly could through the aggie research scholars program i also read industry news on a daily basis to develop familiarity with key players in the market my early research exposure and industry familiarity allowed me to seek out professional experiences earlier than i would have been otherwise able to my 15-month co-op with regeneron and my three-month internship with bristol myers squibb in addition to my summer research with the university of illinois urbana-champaign were all integral to getting me to where i am today
2520,"hunter syas class: bs 23hometown: beaumont texas q: what has been your favorite part about majoring in biomedical engineering so far a: biomedical engineering is a great major for learning medicine engineering-leveled math design anatomy and the components that operate medical devices i think its the greatest ""all-round"" engineering major that texas a&m has to offer plus i could not be prouder to be in one of the most diverse departments in engineering within the university there are so many opportunities for research team projects understanding your passion learning how to save lives and building a career q: where do you see yourself in 5-10 years a: i think that a person's path and/or career choice can shift constantly depending on experience and there does not have to be a set destination but there can be different rates at which people obtain their goals i ultimately want to pursue biomedical engineering within corporate health care interrelations; helping to reform systemic gaps within the medical industry and innovating medical devices that further support under-supported communities"
2521,michelle and eric edwards recently established the michelle l 93 and eric w edwards 92 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will provide one or more scholarships to students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university the edwards have set aside this scholarship to be awarded to industrial distribution students who are veterans reservists or active-duty service members i felt so much gratitude from the university as well as from many wonderful donors who recognized my military service with my scholarships being able to do the same for someone else is our way of saying ‘thank you said eric in the fall of 1990 only two months after meeting michelle at a texas a&m dorm social eric was one of many students activated and deployed to serve in operation desert shield and operation desert storm after a year of combat service he returned to school to finish his undergraduate education eric faced many difficulties upon his return including the cost of tuition thankfully he was supported by donors who awarded him scholarships in recognition of his military service i had to overcome many challenges so having my school paid for was a big relief eric said it allowed me to focus on my education and future eric obtained his master of business administration from the university of houston in 2010 but he still credits texas a&ms industrial distribution program for giving him the skills that he uses every day what i have always seen from those who are successful is a ‘can-do attitude that doesnt crush others but pushes others to succeed together he said it is a winning team attitude while the marine corps taught me discipline it was my experiences at texas a&m that taught me the way forward in establishing the michelle l 93 and eric w edwards 92 endowed scholarship michelle and eric hope to instill future students with the same core values that have carried them both through their careers we want the recipients of this scholarship to know it is their obligation to be the best they can be and someday they will answer the call to lend a helping hand for the next generation eric said the edwards have been married for over 27 years and live in sugar land texas their son harrison 22 is an industrial distribution major their daughter sophie ‘26 is a senior in high school and will be attending texas a&m this fall they own lone star recreation of texas where they create beautiful and safe play areas for communities throughout southeast texas with the support and dedication of their team which includes seven texas a&m graduates
2522,endowments supporting the students in the college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown assistant director of development
2523,smart manufacturing or the use of emerging advanced technologies to increase the efficiency of traditional manufacturing processes is creating a more agile and productive industrial base experts with the secureamerica institute (sai) and texas a&m university college of engineering explain why leveraging these innovations is crucial to advance the industry forward smart manufacturing is a national priority as detailed in the white house critical and emerging technologies report said rob gorham sai executive director the secureamerica institute continues to integrate these capabilities into manufacturing ecosystems across texas and the nation the term smart manufacturing arose in the mid-2000s prompted by the arrival of new technologies such as 3d printing (additive manufacturing) and artificial intelligence other concepts like digital manufacturing and cyber manufacturing converge under the smart manufacturing label at this time global standards are still being developed to further define smart manufacturing approaches smart manufacturing processes provide better connection and communication across manufacturing systems said dr alaa elwany associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at the texas a&m university college of engineering they help to streamline procedures so systems are not operating as silos asset management and quality assurance are two areas smart manufacturing processes can vitally enhance the manufacturing industry said dr satish bukkapatnam professor of industrial and systems engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station institute for manufacturing systems remote servicing of machines ensures plants can focus on producing parts instead of repairing them while the introduction of sensor technology assures product quality and production efficiency imagine standing inside a single large manufacturing plant with multiple machines and operators each system should be communicating to share resources trigger maintenance activities order spare parts and more all at one location this type of connectivity is also needed between multiple plants at different locations across the united states within an enterprise that demands all machines communicate effectively with one another smart manufacturing technologies aid in identifying problem areas so the overall network of connected manufacturing devices produces competent and profitable operations elwany said digital twins are a powerful smart manufacturing tool that support production a digital twin is the creation of an identical virtual product or system before a physical prototype is manufactured this virtual environment allows manufacturers to run simulations iterations and testing on the design of a product to ensure viability before extensive production costs are incurred the widespread industry adoption of smart manufacturing still faces barriers especially for small-to-medium manufacturing enterprises (smes) due to cost and lack of workforce training if small and medium companies dont adapt they will be at a great disadvantage bukkapatnam said there will be a digital divide between businesses who have advanced capabilities and others who dont smart manufacturing helps the industry create a level playing field where large companies can thrive and smes who are given digital resources are not left behind organizations like the secureamerica institute are integral to provide technical expertise needed for the wider digital transformation of manufacturing elwany said sai thought leadership is our strongest resource to develop more certificate programs continuing education programs and courses to train the future manufacturing workforce in emerging technologies
2524,the secureamerica institute and its network of partners are committed to leveraging technology solutions to address nationally impactful challenges please contact chief technology officer dr darrell wallace at dwallace@tamuedu to discuss how we can work together to develop integrate and deploy technology solutions to ensure the security and resilience of the domestic manufacturing base
2525,"saheli majumdar a doctoral candidate in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university was awarded a 2021 robert farvolden scholarship from the groundwater foundation for her presentation at the 2021 virtual groundwater summitmajumdar's presentation ""managed aquifer recharge using enhanced infiltration systems in houston texas "" focused on a study that could help mitigate the effects of groundwater depletion in heavily stressed aquifersthe robert farvolden scholarships are given every year at the summit in honor of former national ground water association (ngwa) senior science council member dr robert farvolden ngwa's primary goal is to advocate responsible management and use of groundwater students each chose a topic and were evaluated on their presentation and insight and on how their work contributed to groundwater science engineering management or policyi was elated to learn that i received such a prestigious national scholarship majumdar said dr farvolden was a distinguished hydrogeologist known for his pioneering work in siting landfills so i hope to live up to his reputationco-authors include dr gretchen r miller associate professor in the department and majumdars faculty advisor steve albert of binkley & barfield inc and dr zhuping sheng of the texas a&m agrilife research center at el pasomajumdar who specializes in water resources engineering research said the study is vital as more people move to more populous cities""population growth in cities is accompanied by higher demand for water which is generally met by groundwater abstraction "" she said ""this often leads to groundwater overdraft where the groundwater use exceeds the amount of recharge into the aquifer which leads to a decline in groundwater level"""
2526,"lower groundwater levels jeopardize future availability of water and result in the aquifer system becoming more compact which results in gradual settling of the earth's surface a phenomenon called land subsidence""it could disrupt the existing stormwater drainage system "" majumdar said ""in coastal areas land subsidence could lead to higher sea levels and increased risk of flooding this research aims to mitigate the consequences of groundwater overdraft by promoting recharge""according to the study engineered systems such as trenches backfilled with recycled aggregates and soil amendments help promote recharge throughout the year for small and big rain events which can be used to redevelop existing stormwater detention basins""this study opened my eyes to a whole new world of research where field techniques can be coupled with numerical analysis to better understand real-life systems "" majumdar said ""the fact that the results from this study could be directly implemented in stormwater management planning piqued my interest""for future study majumdar and miller are developing a numerical model that replicates the physical system based on data from the monitoring period""we plan to use the model to evaluate its performance under different rainfall scenarios depths of inundation and depths to groundwater "" majumdar said ""the results from this future study could be used to develop guidelines for design engineers to effectively design and operate stormwater detention basins with or without engineered systems"""
2527,logan kluis a doctoral student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university was selected for the 2022 class of the matthew isakowitz fellowship program he is the first student from texas a&m to receive this highly selective fellowship which offers students a paid summer internship at cutting-edge commercial space companies with one-on-one mentorship from leaders in the commercial spaceflight field the fellowship is a privilege and honor to receive and is an amazing opportunity to represent matthew isakowitz and his passion for commercial spaceflight said kluis as a fellow i will benefit from numerous opportunities for mentorship and real-world experience over the summer kluis will intern with the aerospace corporation in the extravehicular activity office at nasas johnson space center at the end of the summer the fellows will attend a summit hosted by the program to learn about startups network with top industry leaders and develop entrepreneurial skills the internship with aerospace corporation will be extremely educational and help kick-start my career in the aerospace industry said kluis more than 200 students from over 90 colleges applied for the fellowship program this year applicants are selected based on academic excellence relevant experience and demonstrated passion for innovation entrepreneurship and commercial space kluis research interests include human-spacesuit interaction and spacesuit technology development someday he hopes to travel to the moon and mars in the meantime he is involved in research with the bioastronautics and human performance laboratory at texas a&m
2528,"dr michael liu 21 never expected to start his own company but his research mentors and ambition led him down the entrepreneurial path by the time he earned his doctoral degree from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university in december 2021 liu had already established his startup company freefuse liu came to texas a&m in the fall of 2015 to pursue his masters degree and went on to obtain his doctoral degree in materials science and engineering under the guidance of dr mathew a kuttolamadom associate professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and affiliated faculty with the department of materials science and engineering liu learned how to use engineering principles to bring his creative and impactful ideas to fruition ""texas a&m provided the perfect balance of a supportive community and rigorous learning environment which allowed me to flourish as a student entrepreneur said liu ""the research experience i received from the materials science and engineering department coupled with the entrepreneurial experiences i received from the owlspark university accelerator program and the mcferrin center truly shaped my development as a person i cant express how grateful i am for the opportunities i was presented with here lius research focuses on compositionally graded metals built using laser-engineered net shaping (lens) an additive manufacturing device that primarily prints metals through his startup freefuse liu found an intersection between his own research and his desire to help others during the covid-19 pandemic texas a&m like many universities transitioned to remote and virtual learning students professors administrators and staff all had to quickly adjust the way information was being processed and presented many professors began recording lectures and placing them online; however these files were often long and hard to navigate in turn many students lost interest and focus without the in-person interactions present in traditional teaching liu recognized the need to address this issue and decided to use his experience with student teaching and helping students reach their learning objectives to develop a solution ""my experience as a teaching assistant provided great insights into the types of problems students and educators both face within universities said liu ""from this process we developed a solution that transforms how students experience lectures through a simple easy-to-use tool for educators freefuse uses an algorithm written by liu to quickly and accurately process video files and create interactive and visual link trees these link trees break the video down into smaller bites of information similar to a table of contents and allow users to directly click and interact with the content in a new and customizable way ""one of the most validating parts of this journey is the positive feedback weve received from students said liu ""a student mentioned that the segmenting of videos made it easier to jump from topic to topic and gave insight on how concepts are connected to one overarching idea i thought that was a really cool way to explain what were doing so ive kept that quote in my mind ever since since graduation liu has continued to grow his startup bringing on more employees and advisors he is currently in the funding phase and hopes to expand the services freefuse currently offers ""without my time at texas a&m i would not have felt comfortable enough to expand my goals beyond engineering and find a true passion for entrepreneurship and solving the problems of others said liu ""its the service mindset ingrained in the culture of the university that has really imprinted an eagerness to help people our company is built off those same principles of being bold and serving others we hope to change the landscape of education for the better throughout the rest of 2022 and beyond"
2529,dr gerard coté recently celebrated 30 years with the biomedical engineering program at texas a&m university and he expects to continue to make an impact for years to come coté joined what was then called the bioengineering department as an assistant professor in 1991 i didn't think i would be here that long because you never know if you're going to make tenure when you first start out coté said you try your best and see how the chips fall but i think that being with (texas) a&m has overall been fantastic when coté first started he had an entrepreneurial angle along with the academic one early on i decided to take a leave of absence and work for a small company in california coté said although back then some of the administration thought it might be counterproductive to tenure i was able to get that experience and still satisfy the research teaching mentoring and service required for making tenure based on that experience he also started several companies early in his career two of which are still running today and one has been bought out by a larger medical device company cotés research in the development of macro-scale to nano-scale biomedical systems and point-of-care devices has had a great impact in the biomedical field he founded the center for remote health technologies and systems and the national science foundation-funded precise advanced health technologies and systems for underserved populations engineering research center known as paths-up there interdisciplinary researchers aim to engage with patients and health care providers in these communities toward developing creative ways to combat diabetes and cardiovascular disease he and his team develop innovative ways to monitor patients through unique wearable and handheld diagnostic and monitoring devices and use modeling to understand the data that may be used for behavior modification beyond developing the devices his team innovates solutions for better health in these communities such as prescribing food like fresh vegetables as a drug and then assessing whether there is a positive outcome like reducing the hemoglobin a1c a known biomarker that when elevated is an indicator of poor control of diabetes a career in biomedical engineering has allowed coté to facilitate dialogues between doctors engineers computational experts behavioral psychologists and a variety of experts in biomaterials biomechanics and more if i can facilitate it and be a part of it and contribute my expertise thats ideal coté said i think everybody has strengths and weaknesses if i do not have the expertise then i go find somebody that has that expertise and collaborate coté has sought to fulfill his two passions in all parts of his career make an impact and be a mentor there's two ways to make an impact he said one is to advance the research field through publications i call that fundamental research and i've done that and i continue to do that but then i feel like i need to take a little step further and actually impact clinical medicine or clinical workflow through translational research advances you can only go so far in the translational process at the university then you either have to spin out a company or license the technical advancement to an existing company the thing i really believe may have the strongest legacy is the mentoring coté said as with most senior faculty you win a lot of awards as you progress in your career but probably the award i'm most proud of is the graduate mentoring award from the university to me where i love to spend a lot of time energy and effort is mentoring people across the board now with his share of academic children and grandchildren coté continues to help his students find their own strengths learn to work with others with varying backgrounds and disciplines and help them mitigate their weaknesses to make the greatest impact possible it's all about helping others and how can you do that in an effective way he said whether that's mentoring students that go on to do wonderful things or directly influencing the field by performing fundamental research that gets published or by performing translational research that ends up being licensed or spun out to a company to me whatever you do strive to positively impact the world
2530,messenger ribonucleic acid (mrna) vaccines have become more popular as they can help prevent viral infections ranging from zika to covid-19 but their thermal stability remains a drawback to store and transport mrna vaccines requires ultracold freezers and cold-chain assurance making it costly and challenging to provide vaccines to rural and developing communities the national institutes of health (nih) awarded dr qing sun assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university $18 million through the stephen i katz early stage investigator research project grant using deep learning sun aims to develop mrna vaccines that are thermally stable and relax the stringent conditions needed for mrna vaccine preparation storage and distribution it is important in the future to improve the thermal stability of mrna vaccines so that if there are other infectious diseases we can respond quickly and distribute vaccines more efficiently said sun using this grant we will focus on using artificial intelligence to develop a system for thermally stable mrna vaccine development messenger rna vaccines function by triggering an immune response within the body protecting us from infection when exposed to pathogens with the onset of the pandemic the importance of vaccinations has grown being able to transport vaccines at cheaper cost without the need for extremely cold temperatures is critical for fighting against covid-19 and other infections such as rabies and influenza to help with this issue sun proposed using a deep-learning platform that has shown success in natural language processing to nucleic acid feature prediction tasks this interpretable end-to-end model can predict mrna vaccine secondary structures directly from sequence information the model has been shown to reduce mrna degradation in solution and mammalian cells after transfection the central dogma of molecular biology states that dna makes rna makes proteins said sun by changing the codons in the mrna structure we can make the same proteins to trigger immunogenic effects but with a much more stable mrna secondary structure with the ability to screen over thousands of mrna vaccine sequences through the deep-learning platform she can predict mrna sequences that are more stable when exposed to higher temperatures she plans to validate the model performance by producing the predicted top-performance mrna vaccine sequences and testing their stability and efficacy in her lab in the future sun hopes her production process can serve as a framework for other mrna vaccine processing for rapid response to pandemics outside of covid-19 by improving the thermal stability of the covid-19 mrna vaccines we could redesign all other mrna vaccines for the better she said i hope to see our deep-learning method applied to predict rna secondary structure stabilities and to study biological functions of rna molecules including noncoding rna riboswitch and therapeutic rnas the method can potentially play critical roles in cellular and viral machinery to inspire novel antibacterial antitumor and antiviral functions
2531,sun is the principal investigator on the project she will conduct the research in her lab on the texas a&m campus with support from a team of graduate students postdoctoral researchers and lab technicians the stephen i katz early stage investigator research project grant is an r01 grant which funds creative early-stage investigators research ventures in which no preliminary data is needed
2532,tony and neera talbert have established the tony and neera bansal 87 talbert endowed scholarship ii distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university neera was drawn to texas a&m when she witnessed the strong ties between aggie former students and their university she graduated from texas a&m in 1987 with her degree in management information systems from the college of business which is now mays business school texas a&m started me on a path of continuous learning she said my sense of curiosity took root while i studied at texas a&m and it has served me well now working for microsoft corporation neera holds a strategic management position for a team that uses data and technology to provide sustainable solutions for the energy industry my education enabled me to leverage technology while understanding how to apply it to real-world problems which has been instrumental in shaping my career neera said her passion for engineering technology has been carried on in the family through the talberts daughter caitlyn she graduated from texas a&m with her degree in mechanical engineering aided by the help of an endowed scholarship through the texas a&m foundation the talbert family was grateful for this generous gift which inspired them to give back when the time was right in 2016 tony and neera established their first endowed scholarship which was created through matching funds contributed by the microsoft corporation two years later in partnership with the shell global match program caitlyn established the caitlyn talbert 16 scholarship in the department of mechanical engineering since then tony and neera have generously established their second endowed scholarship when we received our first thank-you note from the student we helped it was clear to us this was a great way to give to future generations neera said they hope the scholarship will alleviate financial burdens while encouraging texans as they made an additional preference that recipients of the scholarship be a graduate of a texas high school to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering tony and neera now live in houston texas neera gives back to the university as a member of the engineering advisory council for the college of engineering i had a great experience at texas a&m neera said i made lifelong friends received a great education and found a sense of community that endures no matter where i travel in the world
2533,endowments supporting the students in the college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or you would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
2534,"dr ying li is among the most recent class of fellows elected to the royal society of chemistry (rsc) in recognition of his significant contributions to the field at more than 180 years old rsc is the oldest chemical society in the world with more than 54 000 members worldwide the mission of the society is to support and celebrate new research in chemical sciences and to help teach and inspire new generations of scientists members are eligible to be considered for the rank of fellow once they have held a senior position for more than five years and have made a significant impact in the chemical sciences li serves as professor and pioneer natural resources faculty fellow iii in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he said his new status as a fellow of rsc will strengthen his leadership within the professional community and help inspire the younger generation to pursue excellence in science and engineering ""being both a mechanical engineer and a chemical scientist i strongly encourage engineering students to pursue interdisciplinary research that is needed to solve complex research problems focusing on societal needs "" li said throughout his career li has contributed significantly to the research community through the publication of nearly 100 peer-reviewed journal articles ""i have worked on interdisciplinary research in materials and catalysis for sustainable energy and environment for about 20 years tackling the grand challenges in climate change and energy security "" li said ""the most impactful research is the catalytic conversion of carbon dioxide the major greenhouse gas into fuels and value-added products through the design and synthesis of nanostructured catalysts and using sunlight as the energy source to power the reactions"" li said this research has the potential to not only mitigate greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere but also produce renewable fuels with low-to-zero carbon emissions opening a new venue for the next-generation energy technology"
2535,joni hennigan lora recently established the stephen 78 and barbara beales powe endowed scholarship for the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering this scholarship was created in honor of graduate student stephen powe 78 who studied under her late father dr james hennigan 54 distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in industrial and systems engineering from texas a&m university loras story with texas a&m began when she was young roller skating the halls of the zachry engineering building with other professors kids during long summer days (texas) a&m was all we knew and we loved it that way lora said my parents instilled a great pride in me deep down for texas a&m and all their contributions to support the aggie spirit she moved to college station as a child when her father returned to texas a&m for his masters and doctoral degrees in industrial engineering hennigan remained at the school as a professor hosting study nights and backyard barbecues for the students jeannette hennigan loras mother dedicated her time to the university as well she worked as an executive assistant for six former university presidents and was also an assistant to the editor for the texas aggie magazine she was skilled in the arts and as an honorary singing cadet she helped create the association of former singing cadets among her most notable contributions to the aggie legacy are her authorship of the poem silver taps at a&m and the sketch muster spiral candle which has been on the cover of multiple aggie muster programs inspired by her parents lora began her undergraduate education at texas a&m and enjoyed extensive involvement in campus organizations after two years she transferred to the university of north texas to finish her degree though lora left college station the aggie spirit followed her making a distinct appearance 40 years later through an email from the university powe who obtained his masters degree under loras father had kept a promise made decades ago sitting in loras inbox in late 2020 was a polished copy of powes final paper a lasting symbol of aggie commitment in 1978 powe was approved for graduation after presenting a report on his independent study however as he became busy with work and raising his family he was never able to turn in a clean copy of his final paper in 2020 with time finally on his side powe wanted to stick to the promise he made to his mentor that he would turn in his final paper he emailed his paper to texas a&m who then connected him with his professors daughter joni lora knowing he valued his promise to my dad enough for it to continue to be a bucket list item for him after 42 years just floored me lora said it struck deep to my core what texas a&m is really all about inspired by powes dedication to professionalism as an aggie engineer and mentee of hennigan lora decided to establish a scholarship in powes name she hopes that powe will be able to continue impacting other aggies by meeting the recipients of the scholarship i know my parents would want me to say ‘thank you in a bigger way than just words lora said i hope that he can share his story the students will be better engineers having met steve texas a&m remains a special place in loras heart it is her goal to one day return to texas a&m to obtain her masters degree in industrial distribution and earn her very own aggie ring i just have to hear the first few bars of the aggie war hymn and i am moved to tears from immense pride and memories of everything aggie lora said
2536,endowments supporting texas a&m university college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or you would like more information on how you can give please contact ryan nichols assistant director of development
2537,currently there is little research focused on understanding mechanisms and drug discovery of lymphatic vascular diseases however conditions such as lymphedema a buildup of fluid in the body when the lymph system is damaged impact more than 200 000 people every year in the united states alone dr abhishek jain assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has taken his expertise in organ-on-chip models and applied them to a field theyve never been used in before creating the first lymphangion-chip to engineer this new device jains team first developed a new technique to create microfluidic cylindrical blood or lymphatic vessels consisting of endothelial cells which line blood vessels it could then use this technique to create a co-cultured multicellular lymphangion the functional unit of a lymph vessel and successfully recreate a typical section of a lymphatic transport vessel in vitro or outside the body we can now better understand how mechanical forces regulate lymphatic physiology and pathophysiology jain said we can also understand what are the mechanisms that result in lymphedema and then we can find new targets for drug discovery with this platform the project is in collaboration with dr david zawieja from the texas a&m college of medicine their research was recently published in the journal lab on a chip collaborations with dr zawieja and others in the department played a crucial role jain said they introduced me to this topic and provide their longstanding expertise that has made it possible for us to create this new organ-on-chip platform and now advance it in these exciting directions using contemporary experimental models jain said the impact of this work is far-reaching because there is a new hope for patients with lymphatic diseases they can now learn about the biology of these diseases and reach a point where they can be treated the most exciting part of this research is that it is allowing us to now push the organ-on-chip in directions where finding cures for rare and orphan (understudied) diseases is possible with less effort and money jain said we can help the pharma industry to invest in this platform and find a cure for lymphedema that impacts millions of people
2538,omar maddouri a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is working with dr byung-jun yoon his faculty advisor and professor and dr edward dougherty robert m kennedy 26 chair professor to evaluate machine-learning models using transfer learning principles dr francis frank alexander with brookhaven national labs and dr xiaoning qian from the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university are also involved with the project in data-driven machine learning models are built to make predictions and estimations for whats to come in any given data set one important field within machine learning is classification which allows a data set to be assessed by an algorithm and then classified or broken down into classes or categories when the data sets provided are very small it can be very challenging to not only build a classification model based on this data but also to evaluate the performance of this model ensuring its accuracy this is where transfer learning comes into play in transfer learning we try to transfer knowledge or bring data from another domain to see whether we can enhance the task that we are doing in the domain of interest or target domain maddouri explained the target domain is where the models are built and their performance is evaluated the source domain is a separate domain that is still relevant to the target domain from which knowledge is transferred to make the analysis within the target domain easier maddouris project utilizes a joint prior density to model the relatedness between the source and target domains and offers a bayesian approach to apply the transfer learning principles to provide an overall error estimator of the models an error estimator will deliver an estimate of how accurate these machine-learning models are at classifying the data sets at hand what this means is that before any data is observed the team creates a model using their initial inferences about the model parameters in the target and source domains and then updates this model with enhanced accuracy as more evidence or information about the data sets becomes available this technique of transfer learning has been used to build models in previous works; however no one has ever before used this transfer learning technique to propose novel error estimators to evaluate the performance of these models for an efficient utilization the devised estimator has been implemented using advanced statistical methods that enabled a fast screening of source data sets which enhances the computational complexity of the transfer learning process by 10 to 20 times this technique can help serve as a benchmark for future research within academia to build upon in addition it can help with identifying or classifying different medical issues that would otherwise be very difficult for example maddouri utilized this technique to classify patients with schizophrenia using transcriptomic data from brain tissue samples originally acquired by invasive brain biopsies because of the nature and the location of the brain region that can be analyzed for this disorder the data collected is very limited however using a stringent feature selection procedure that comprises differential gene expression analysis and statistical testing for assumptions validity the research team identified transcriptomic profiles of three genes from an additional brain region found to be highly relevant to the desired brain tissue as reported by independent research studies from other literature this knowledge allowed them to utilize the transfer learning technique to leverage samples collected from the second brain region (source domain) to help with the analysis and significantly boost the accuracy of diagnosis within the original brain region (target domain) the data gathered from the source domain can be exploratory in the absence of information from the target domain allowing the research team to enhance the quality of their conclusion this research has been funded by the department of energy and the national science foundation and was published in the january issue of patterns a new open-access journal by cell press that publishes groundbreaking research findings in data science
2539,"in the 2020 invent for the planet (iftp) global competition team hya bioplastics from makerere university uganda placed third with their idea to overcome the challenge of single-use plastics through biodegradable alternatives made from water hyacinths iftp is a competition in which universities from all over the world participate the first round is a 48-hour competition where teams are judged at their local university the first-place winners from each institute are then selected to refine their pitch and compete in the second round finally the top five teams then compete in a final round ""my team initially had an idea in the area of plastics and this competition helped us refine what we were working on and build it into something that is more useful and applicable to solving current problems "" said team member dennis ssekimpi"
2540,"the team consisted of ssekimpi pike kwizera and musinguzi mark musiimenta who have started the company hya bioplastics based on their initial idea they are working with the halcyon incubator in washington dc which supports businesses that focus on sustainable solutions to global problems their innovation would eliminate single-use oil-derived plastics through a biodegradable alternative made from water hyacinths an invasive aquatic weed in the waterways of uganda by clearing the lakes of these invasive aquatic weeds to produce the packaging this design would address multiple local and global problems ""as an engineering student you get the opportunity to work through the entire design process from ideation to prototyping and this is good exposure since in the engineering profession this is part of the day-to-day task "" said ssekimpi currently hya bioplastics is setting up a pilot plant in uganda to increase production of the first product a compostable fruit and vegetable tray to replace styrofoam trays commonly used in grocery stores ""this was my first experience in a global and remote program i was able to learn a lot and meet people i learned collaboration in a remote environment and this has been an important skill in these times "" ssekimpi said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work in such a fast-paced global environment"
2541,"manufacturing limitations affect the development of products and technologies ranging from pharmaceuticals and health care to energy harvesting semiconductors and biotechnology stifling innovation with high costs small build areas and slow production times researchers at texas a&m university are seeking to implement a new method of manufacturing 3d nanostructured surfaces consisting of multiple materials by using a high-throughput high-precision technique dr dorrin jarrahbashi assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is part of a team recently awarded a three-year grant from the national science foundation to continue their pursuit of the advancement ""the created technology can be used in multiple applications and expedite the technological advances in sectors where cost or low-speed production inhibits manufacturing multifunctional nanostructured components "" said jarrahbashi jarrahbashi is working alongside co-principal investigator dr amir asadi assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution ""the results from this research will equip multiple us industries with a new scalable manufacturing technique and thus benefit the us economy and society with increased domestic job opportunities and more public access to smart technology "" said asadi"
2542,"jarrahbashi said that the team has established a new in-house spray-deposition manufacturing technique it uses supercritical carbon dioxide (co2) to assist with atomization and create very fine and uniform micron-size droplets containing nanoparticles by engineering the self-assembly of multiple materials inside the deposited droplets they can fabricate multifunctional nanostructured components all without the need for costly preparations or the use of hazardous solvents the new process will allow for large-scale reduced-cost fast manufacturing of 3d nanostructured surfaces with sizes ranging from a micrometer to a centimeter examples of functional coating applications include wearable electronics smart textiles and paints antennas and electronic devices the use of this new spray deposition technique along with the combination of multiple materials including polymer carbonaceous and ceramic nanomaterials and tailored patterns is also expected to enable new levels of multifunctionality ""nanostructured surfaces often fabricated by depositing and patterning nanomaterials on desired substrates are essential to provide functionalities such as structural electrical thermal magnetic optical and audio in many devices "" asadi said ""this project supports the development of a manufacturing process that enables scalable and high-precision manufacturing of multifunctional nanostructured surfaces with multiple materials without the need for costly preparations or use of hazardous solvents"" the team is seeking to overcome the challenges of current methods such as slow and costly treatments and a narrow selection of materials limited by compatibility and small build areas their proposed method focuses on the use of nontoxic water co2 and pristine nanomaterials that can be integrated into existing manufacturing lines or additive manufacturing stations to integrate large volumes of nanomaterials with high precision the team has filed a patent on this developed technology and expects to start a semi-industrial manufacturing line to start producing new sensors based on light filtering and functional coating solutions that address the needs of different industry sectors they also plan to enhance the current spray system by designing new nozzles for the supercritical co2-assisted atomization technique to prepare for scalable manufacturing of multifunctional surfaces"
2543,scholarships allow family to memorialize loved ones and their legacies the department of biomedical engineering is honored to help the families of jack and wanda mcmahan honor and remember them through the wanda and jack e mcmahan 43 scholarship jack had only texas a&m university in mind when choosing where to attend college but his family did not have the finances to send him immediately after high school instead jack attended junior college and worked to save enough money to transfer to texas a&m in 1940 jacks class of 1943 graduated early due to world war ii and jack promptly joined the us army he served in the 89th infantry division with general george pattons third army in europe which succeeded in liberating ohrdruf in april 1945 the first nazi concentration camp liberated by us troops the horrors of war left a lasting impact on jack though his family said that he rarely spoke of these experiences several soldiers in his unit were fellow aggies which impacted jack both positively with lasting friendships and negatively with the loss of companions in the war after the end of wwii in 1945 jack met his future wife wanda at a new years eve party at camp philip morris in france wanda was serving as a nurse having joined the us army nurse corps after graduating from nursing school in san antonio jack and wanda fell in love quickly and married six months later in july 1946 jack told his children that meeting and marrying wanda were the best things that ever happened to him
2544,when they arrived back in texas jack continued his military career and wanda took on the role of army wife relocating with jack to some assignments (including japan germany alaska kansas and virginia) but staying in texas with their children during jacks tour in vietnam in the late 1950s wanda also grew to love her husbands alma mater and throughout their lives the mcmahans kept a close connection with texas a&m they celebrated each time another family member joined texas a&m and were thrilled when their daughter married an aggie they had football season tickets for decades until jacks death in december 1998 and he would insist on arriving early to every home game to watch and honor the corps as they marched into the stadium after jack died and until her own passing in january 2019 wanda seldom missed a televised aggie football game often telling her children and friends during game week weve got a big game coming up in 2019 the mcmahan family funded the wanda and jack e mcmahan 43 scholarship in the biomedical engineering department to honor jack and wandas memory and provide financial support to biomedical engineering students with a particular focus on those in the corps of cadets ethan hasty is a senior at texas a&m and will be contracting with the navy after graduation he said receiving the scholarship alleviated financial pressure and enabled him to focus on developing his leadership skills and achieving his academic goals i am incredibly thankful for the generosity of the mcgee and mcmahan families for their financial support and i hope that the impact i will make in the military and in the medical field will honor the memories of jack and wanda hasty said
2545,dr miladin radovic professor in the department of materials science and engineering and director of the materials characterization facility at texas a&m university has helped curate an exhibit titled fire and earth: the story of ceramics at the brazos valley museum of natural history in bryan texas this is a unique opportunity to educate the general public about ceramics as the first man-made materials and tell an exciting story about their development from materials used in pottery and art pieces to materials used in jet engine parts and energy-conversion devices over the last 25 000 years said radovic ceramics are an essential part of our everyday lives and include everything from teacups to toilets and spark plugs to space shuttle tiles the exhibit highlights the origins of ceramics as well as their current uses and their future visitors will be able to explore traditional clay-based ceramics dating hundreds of years old the unique works of texas ceramic artists and advanced ceramic materials developed by radovic; drs jodie lutkenhaus and micah green professors in the department of chemical engineering at texas a&m; dr chao ma assistant professor in the department of engineerign technology and industrial distribution; dr zhijian pei professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m; and their research teams the exhibit will be on display until may 28
2546,jeanna and jay porter recently established the jeanna '87 and jay porter 86 endowed scholarship in the texas a&m university college of engineering which will provide one or more scholarships to undergraduate engineering students while jay and jeanna were deciding where to go to college they each had the opportunity to visit texas a&m they both loved the campus culture and traditions jay was the first of his family to attend texas a&m and jeanna was a first-generation college student the couple met in aggieland while they were pursuing their undergraduate degrees and they were married soon after graduation jay graduated with his bachelor of science in electrical engineering and jeanna graduated with her bachelor of science in education our lives were impacted by our education at texas a&m jay said it prepared us for rewarding careers and in many ways gave us some of the most influential opportunities that we have had in our lives jays interest and desire to study engineering at texas a&m did not end when he earned his undergraduate degree he remained to obtain his masters degree in physics and doctoral degree in electrical engineering he began his professional academic career at another institution but after several years an opportunity arose for him to return to texas a&m as faculty for the college of engineering the porters eagerly packed their bags and left for college station excited to raise their family in the place that meant so much to them jay has made many contributions to the engineering technology field has authored many publications throughout his career and has received numerous awards for teaching research and service in 2008 jay received one of twelve university professorships for undergraduate teaching excellence; was the recipient of the american society for engineering education (asee) robert g quinn award in 2009; was recognized with the 2014 asee frederick j berger award; and received the 2016 college of engineering eugene webb faculty fellow service award jay has a passion for supporting undergraduate students and has advised over fifty senior capstone design teams in 2014 he was the faculty advisor to a team awarded the 2014 asee gulf southwest 1st place student paper award jay has also contributed heavily to the development of the engineering programs offered at texas a&m he helped create the multidisciplinary engineering technology program within the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution which is now offered at texas a&m university at galveston he continues to dedicate his talents to improving the engineering programs at the galveston campus where he presently serves as associate dean for the college of engineering the porters have experienced firsthand the challenges that come with being students at texas a&m university they established the scholarship specifically for first-generation students who are pursuing a degree in electrical engineering electronic systems engineering technology or multidisciplinary engineering technology they also prefer that scholarship recipients demonstrate financial need we hope that students can have the same opportunities that my wife daughters and i have been blessed with jay said the porters hope their gift will enable students to reach their goals in the engineering field we know there are many students who can benefit from some financial support in order to pursue a college degree and their dream the porters live in galveston texas while jay spends his time at texas a&m jeanna dedicates her talents to the younger generation as a teacher at holy family catholic school their three daughters lauren 15 sarah 18 and jennifer 21 all followed in their parents footsteps and graduated from texas a&m
2547,endowments supporting texas a&m university college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president for development
2548,two senior capstone design project student teams from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university took the top spots in the engineering/mathematics category at the 2021 american medical student association (amsa) research symposium held virtually in november hosted by the local chapter of the amsa within the texas a&m college of medicine the symposium serves as a venue to showcase the impressive research projects being done by undergraduate students from all disciplines the event emphasizes that research is for everyone both teams were part of a capstone project class (csce 482-932) taught by dr tracy hammond professor and director of the institute for engineering education and innovation and sketch recognition lab the first-place team included kara capps lalit bauskar jayant singh ori yonay and alicia yong their project was titled teaching robots to see clearly and was sponsored by the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory (arl) the team worked with arl to improve the performance of their machine-learning model on all types of objects making future vehicles safer and contributing to the body of computer-vision research in computer vision scene segmentation involves taking an image or 3d representation of an environment and classifying each pixel of that environment as a type of object when used in 3d sensors for autonomous vehicles it locates objects such as trees bicycles pedestrians roads etc that appear in front of the car so that the vehicle knows what to avoid second place belonged to team members phi thauan au kaylie gonzalez suyesh prabhugaonkar and ruben uribe for their project keycuts: keyboard-based browser extension for boosting browser productivity inspired by features of the popular internet search engine duckduckgo the team developed a keyboard-based google chrome extension that would allow users to perform text-based shortcuts from the search bar on any browser with their extension users will be able to make the shortcuts themselves so that the websites that have these shortcuts will be personalized the team believes that the ability to personalize shortcuts will open up opportunities to increase productivity and time management in addition they added different functions such as workspaces that would enable users to open a custom group of multiple sites/applications at once with a single shortcut
2549,"within 48 hours students from over 31 universities worldwide competed with texas a&m university in the 2020 invent for the planet (iftp) competition to solve critical issues the planet is facing the competition was canceled in 2021 due to covid-19 teams from each institute were locally judged and the top three teams were recognized the first-place teams were then selected to perfect their business venture and compete against each other later the top five teams from each institute competed for a final round students also had the opportunity to apply their product to a startup with the college of engineering's engineering inc program ecotory the team from texas a&m placed second in the final round of the global competition the team's idea was to create a program that provides airlines with an accurate preflight assessment of customer preferences for food and other amenities this allowed airline passengers to exchange unwanted meals and amenities for airline miles it helped airlines gauge passenger needs drastically reducing in-flight waste while potentially saving airlines millions of dollars in fuel consumption due to lighter flights ""from all the ideas we discussed with the team we came to this conclusion considering what could be the fastest and easiest innovation to implement for airline companies "" said claire gregoire class of 2024 doctoral student in mechanical engineering ""the potential of this idea increased while covid-19 issues emerged"" the team consisted of students from across the college of engineering which allowed them to implement each person's strengths to create an impactful solution ""through iftp i further developed and positively tested many essential skills required to be a successful engineer and one of them was teamwork "" said noble gutierrez '23 a master's student in mechanical engineering ""our team leveraged our diversity to generate creative ideas navigated differing opinions and hurdles well through effective communication and formed a great team atmosphere that was conducive to developing a winning solution"" after the competition gutierrez continued working on the idea with sven lohse a senior mechanical engineer through engineering inc however they could not continue due to the constraints of their schedules ""participating in the iftp provided me with a higher level of confidence in my engineering abilities and an increased belief that i have what it takes to lead a successful engineering career "" gutierrez said find out more about invent for the planet!"
2550,during the 2020 school year over 26 universities from around the world joined texas a&m university to compete in invent for the planet (iftp) this 48-hour competition challenges students to solve the planet's most pressing issues each university held the competition at their respective schools during the beginning rounds where the top three teams would be recognized however the first-place winners were given the opportunity to perfect their business pitch and compete among each other to narrow down the top five teams the final rounds consisted of the last five teams competing at texas a&m in the final rounds team plasta from the american university of beirut worked on reducing the disposable plastic items in the fast-food industry they focused on using pasta as an alternative to plastic dishes and utensils in restaurants they were unable to continue working on their project due to severe lockdowns in march of 2020 due to covid-19 the pandemic also contributed to iftp being canceled in 2021
2551,among the team members tarek el khayat a master's student in civil engineering reflected on the competition q: what made you decide to compete in this competition a: the main motivation was that we would be working on resolving a major issue that could potentially make a positive impact q: how have you integrated what you have learned in the classroom into your project a: we had to learn by trial and error how to make pasta dough from scratch what is the optimum water-to-flour ratio (similar to water to cement ratio) the required temperature at which the pasta should dry without being brittle and the relative humidity needed as well we used our knowledge in materials engineering to reach the required pasta properties q: how did participating help you in your engineering career a: the participation in invent for the planet resulted in a lot of interest from my colleagues at work and it certainly showed how a group of dedicated people can achieve innovative solutions this experience allows you to apply the knowledge gained in engineering in new and unconventional ways problems can be tackled from an engineering perspective to reach a solution it was very enjoyable and i would recommend anyone to participate if they can find out more about invent for the planet!
2552,three students from the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university were each selected to receive the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) power and energy society (pes) scholarship as part of the pes scholarship plus initiative electrical engineering seniors heather chang and johanna hein and recent graduate reece moon were chosen to receive the selective scholarship in recognition of their academic accomplishments and professional aspirations to contribute to the innovation within the electric power and energy industry in addition to financial assistance through a $2 000 scholarship the pes scholarship plus initiative opens doors for students to gain real-world experience while completing their studies on top of being named an ieee pes scholar hein was also selected to receive the john w estey outstanding scholarship as she was the top student selected from ieee region 5 (southwest us) john w estey outstanding scholarship recipients are selected by industry and academic representatives based on academic preparation; extracurricular activities and leadership; interest in engineering in general and power and energy engineering in particular; technical quality of application; and overall assessment of the student's potential for a successful power and energy engineering career this was the second time a student from texas a&m received this honor when i was chosen as a john w estey scholarship recipient it was a complete surprise hein said i'm very thankful to have received both scholarships as the awards helped to pay my tuition for my last semester at texas a&m and give me more stability as i start my career receiving both scholarships and a letter from john w estey also helped to encourage me during my last semester at texas a&m and solidify my decision to pursue the career path in power systems system engineering hein has interned with the electric reliability council of texas (ercot) for two summers as an undergraduate and will start working with them as a full-time engineer development program engineer in july 2022 as an undergraduate chang has worked with dr thomas overbye electrical engineering professor and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center on projects related to the smart grid this scholarship opens the door to internships research and full-time careers chang said by getting involved in dr overbyes lab and research i have had so many more professional opportunities including this scholarship this summer chang will be completing an internship with exxonmobil as an electrical engineer studying power systems after graduation she plans to continue her education and obtain her phd so that she can conduct research in academia her career focus will center on the integrating of renewable generation into the power system and creating a new smart grid to change the landscape of this field of study moon is a recent graduate who completed his degree in fall 2021 he is currently working as an associate electrical engineer in houston texas with lyondellbasell there he works with the power distribution system and the associated high-voltage equipment throughout the site
2553,i specialized in energy and power systems because not only did i enjoy the material but i also grew up in the houston area and realized how large this industry is and how vast the opportunity is in the area moon said as the worlds population grows and becomes increasingly reliant on power i want to have an impact on the future power system design whether i am supporting the transmission across our texas grid or the distribution throughout the industry prior to graduation moon completed a co-op and internship received the ercot engineering development program scholarship and completed research with electrical and computer engineering assistant professor dr adam birchfield to develop time-series data for synthetic electric grid simulations since 2011 1 881 scholarships have been awarded to over 1 000 students at more than 200 institutions texas a&m has had 17 recipients since the programs start seven being female and had at least one recipient in 10 of the 11 years the texas a&m engineering program particularly the department of electrical and computer engineering had many outstanding students receiving this award over time which is not only an exceptional achievement of our students but also a recognition of our dedicated faculty that strive every day to guide our students to excel and achieve educational excellence said dr mladen kezunovic regents professor and contact for ieee scholarship awards distribution over the years since this ieee scholarship program was established i witnessed the continuous success of our students under the auspices of the ieee the most recognized professional organization for electrical and electronic engineers in the world with over 400 000 members worldwide this makes me proud and confident that our students heather johanna and reece and many ieee scholarship recipients before them will strive to grow into the national and world professional leaders
2554,helicobacter pylori (h pylori) have colonized the stomachs of billions of people worldwide once an h pylori infection occurs it is challenging to eradicate this is a significant biomedical problem as h pylori can promote stomach ulcers and gastric cancers how h pylori navigate and colonize specific niches in the stomach remains largely unknown but addressing this gap in fundamental knowledge is crucial for preventing infections moving forward dr pushkar lele associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university recently received an r01 research grant from the national institute of general medical sciences totaling over $13 million to investigate the mechanisms that enable h pylori to navigate with the aid of motility appendages called the flagella to do this work his group will combine experimental techniques such as optical trapping and förster resonance energy transfer (fret) with computational modeling inside a bacterium rapid signaling reactions constantly occur to control its movements measuring these reactions is the key to understanding h pyloris navigational strategies however such measurements are incredibly difficult inside a bacterium considering its minuscule size a couple of microns – and the speed at which it moves – almost 30 times its length per second leles group proposes to overcome the challenge by manipulating single bacterial cells through the power of light using what is known as an optical trap the researchers will catch hold of single h pylori cells and release them at distinct separations from their chemical targets to observe their navigational strategies they will develop fret assays to visualize signaling interactions in these cells bacteria rely on numerous signaling mechanisms to adapt their behavior to environmental conditions said lele the pathway we are interested in specifically helps them migrate from an unfavorable location to a favorable environment a process known as chemotaxis how do h pylori sense and respond to environmental cues despite appearing to lack key enzymes in their arsenal there has never been a more opportune time to tackle these important questions in collaboration with renowned research groups in the field the proposed work will build on the groups previous efforts funded by the cancer prevention and research institute of texas in a study published in elife last year researchers developed a novel method to quantify the effect of the environment by exploiting fluid drag on each bacterium their approach helped them characterize the properties of individual motors that operate the flagella the manner in which h pylori swim causes them to retrace their movements every other second nullifying the progress they might have made in the preceding second this complicates the understanding of chemotaxis said lele the group plans to tackle these questions by combining experiments with theory and computation their movements are erratic said lele nonetheless they can be computationally simulated with adequate inputs from experiments rigorous experimental tests of their mathematical models are expected to help unravel major mysteries and predict the probability of infections in the future the proposed research is timely as studies have shown an increased resistance in h pylori to standard treatments if the principles of navigation can be understood using these methods there is potential to discover better ways to eradicate or treat h pylori infections as h pylori continue to become resistant to antibiotics such mechanistic studies on the different facets of host invasion and colonization will address critical medical needs lele said chemotaxis strategies are well understood in only a few bacterial species and successful execution of our projects will provide insights into the diverse strategies employed by pathogens to evade our immune systems
2555,"roshawn bowers '03 '05 a former student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a northrop grumman fellow for vehicle management systems and flight control systems integration she is also co-sponsoring a new program at northrop grumman that focuses on recruiting and retaining women in senior technical roles bowers is currently an engineering manager who leads the development of advanced engineering systems for northrop grumman aeronautics systems in san diego california ""i am very fortunate to have had great teachers and mentors to help me along the way "" said bowers ""i feel like i got a first-class education at texas a&m and i don't believe any other university could have prepared me better for my career"" as an undergraduate and graduate student bowers conducted research in the vehicle systems & control laboratory with dr john valasek professor in the aerospace engineering department she researched relative navigation systems and assisted with flight testing of an unmanned powered parachute vehicle for nasa's x-38 project at the conclusion of her graduate degree she defended her master of science thesis titled ""estimation algorithm for autonomous aerial refueling utilizing a vision based relative navigation system"" in april 2005 and then joined northrop grumman previously bowers had done co-op tours at lockheed martin space operations in houston on the international space station extravehicular activity test team and the environmental control and life support systems team she also did a co-op on the f-16 block 60 program for lockheed martin aeronautics in fort worth texas while in school at texas a&m bowers researched the automatic carrier landing system as a member of the engineering scholars program and received the texas a&m graduate merit fellowship and the isadore roosth '33 engineering scholarship she was the chairman of sigma gamma tau the aerospace engineering honor society and a member of phi eta sigma the freshman honor society bowers participated in the texas a&m engineering high school conference help one student to succeed (hosts) and aggie replant"
2556,grace and jeff sober 05 have established the grace (ut 09) and jeff sober 05 graduate fellowship distributions from this endowment will provide one or more fellowships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a graduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university for jeff and grace sober majoring in civil and environmental engineering was a desire deeply rooted in their shared love for the outdoors both first-generation texans jeff and grace spend most of their time swimming kayaking hiking or biking all across the state with their one- and three-year-old daughters if its outside we love it jeff said that love for the outdoors is a big part of what inspired both grace and i to become engineers in the environmental field studying a subject they both enjoy allowed the sobers to spend their careers protecting and enhancing the waters of texas they hold so close to their hearts it is a passion that they hope to pass to their children watching our daughters fall in love with the waters of texas is a great reminder of the legacy we are responsible for passing down grace said it is one of our greatest honors to have the opportunity to give back to a university that inspires other students to go out and do the same jeff began his college education in 2001 not only did he choose texas a&m for the education that would bolster his career but also for the many traditions networking opportunities and life lessons he would learn along the way the community and traditions of texas a&m resonated with me and drew me to the university jeff said i knew that the aggie network would provide me with long-term benefits in faith business and friends after graduating in 2005 jeff decided to head straight into his masters degree in the civil and environmental engineering department while at first shocked by the cost of graduate school jeff was relieved to have some of the financial burden lifted with the gift of a fellowship it took the pressure off and allowed me to focus on school jeff said my graduate degree has now afforded me the opportunity to do the same for another aggie the sobers believe that being able to supply another student with a life-changing gift is about easing their financial strain and setting that student up to help shape the future of civil and environmental engineering my goal is to allow a future graduate student to focus on making the world better through their environmental engineering degree and focus their time on giving back to the community in lieu of worrying about finances jeff said while jeff and grace share a passion for helping the next generation of civil engineers their alma maters could not be any more different grace graduated from the university of texas in 2009 but holds the utmost respect for the values and traditions of texas a&m we love being a ‘house divided jeff said it makes us uniquely texan a pride we both rally around rivalries aside the sobers take their duty of enhancing the education of future civil and environmental engineers very seriously giving back to students whether they study in college station or austin has been an honor for the couple my wife and i couldn't be more excited to help continue the legacy of environmental engineering in texas jeff said whether your family says ‘howdy or ‘hook 'em we are excited to be a part of the next generation of engineers
2557,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
2558,"two mechanical engineering faculty members received a 2022 distinguished achievement award from texas a&m university and the association of former students dr jn reddy and dr matt pharr of the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering were among five college of engineering members honored at the april 25 ceremony the association of former students distinguished achievement award is one of the highest university honors recognizing faculty or staff achievements in teaching research individual student relationships continuing education/extension graduate mentoring staff and administration reddy received the distinguished achievement award for graduate mentoring in previous years he was also recognized with the associations awards for teaching as well as for research ""this award for graduate student mentoring is special to me because it is presented to me with the support from the toughest critics of our profession namely the students "" reddy said ""any meaningful compliment from the students especially after they are long gone gives a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction"" along with effective teaching reddy said mentoring students is one of the most important responsibilities of faculty members ""teaching students the art and skills of investigation communication technical writing proposal preparation interpersonal skills and so on is very important because such skills help the students in their next job and life in general "" reddy said pharr who joined the department in 2016 received the distinguished achievement award for teaching passionate about educating the next generation of engineers pharr said he tries to go beyond the academic content of his courses to inspire his students ""i try to show students that science and engineering are fun exciting and good career choices "" pharr said ""the students at texas a&m are so energetic and full of fresh ideas teaching gives me a chance to provide some guidance and insight along the way such that the students can fully harness their energy ideas and potential"" pharr added that he continues to be impressed by the community of students and alumni at texas a&m and he is appreciative of this recognition ""i am extremely honored to receive this award "" pharr said ""becoming a part of that community has been a lot of fun and i am proud to see that my former students have enjoyed my courses"""
2559,every species from bacteria to humans is capable of regeneration regeneration is mediated by the molecular processes that regulate gene expression to control tissue renewal restoration and growth a collaboration between researchers in the department of biomedical engineering and the college of medicine at texas a&m university identifies the crucial role of minerals in regulating gene expression thus controlling the number of proteins that a cell should make thereby encouraging tissue regeneration and redefining cellular identity this research paves the way for future studies to identify the role of specific minerals as well as how they can be assembled to design the next generation of mineral medicine to heal damaged tissue this study was recently published in science advances minerals are inorganic elements that play many vital roles working interactively with vitamins enzymes hormones and other nutrient cofactors to regulate thousands of the bodys biological functions although several minerals have been shown to regulate gene expression and cellular activity very little work has focused on understanding underlying molecular mechanisms
2560,this engineering research group is led by dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor of biomedical engineering and presidential impact fellow in collaboration with dr irtisha singh assistant professor in the department of molecular and cellular medicine at texas a&m and the co-corresponding author of the study where a new class of mineral-based nanoparticles has been introduced to direct human stem cells toward bone cells these nanoparticles are known specifically as nanosilicates and with them the team is able to determine the role of minerals in regulating gene expression profiles to direct stem cell differentiation these nanosilicates are disc-shaped mineral-nanoparticles 20-30 nanometers (nm) in diameter and 1-2 nm in thickness these nanoparticles are highly biocompatible and are readily eaten up by cells once inside the cell body these nanoparticles slowly dissolve into individual minerals such as silicon magnesium and lithium nanosilicates dissociate into individual minerals inside the cells and turn on a set of key genes that result in information flow throughout the cells known as signaling pathways these signaling pathways are responsible for instructing the cells to take on specific functions such as converting into another type of cells or starting the healing process by secreting tissue-specific proteins known as extracellular matrix these extracellular matrices are composed of various proteins including glycoproteins and proteoglycans that facilitate tissue healing and support tissue functions combining interdisciplinary techniques and biomedical engineering and genomics methods the lead authors of this study doctoral students anna brokesh and lauren cross identify and characterize significant genes that are turned on and activated by different signaling pathways due to treatment with minerals one of the major findings of this study is that minerals such as silicon magnesium and lithium are involved in inducing endochondral ossification a process by which stem cells are transformed into soft and hard tissues such as cartilage and bone in young humans the singh laboratory managed by singh leverages high-throughput functional assays and perturbations to dissect the functional regulatory programs in mammalian cells in this study they analyzed whole transcriptomic sequencing (rna-seq) data to evaluate the effect of nanosilicates and ionic dissolution products on the gene expression profiles of stem cells rna-seq a transcriptome-wide high throughput sequencing assay provides an unbiased and holistic overview of the gene expression profiles to identify pathways that are perturbed by specific treatments there are a lot of people who want to understand how minerals impact the human body but there is limited evidence to identify how they affect us on the cellular level brokesh said our study is one of the first studies to utilize unbiased transcriptome-wide sequencing to determine how mineral ions can direct stem cell fate the proposed approach addresses a long-standing challenge in current therapeutic approaches that utilize supraphysiological doses of growth factors to direct tissue research such a high dose of growth factors results in a range of complications including uncontrolled tissue formation inflammation and tumorigenesis the production or formation of tumor cells these adversely limit the usage of growth factors as a therapeutic agent in the field of regenerative medicine gaharwar said the impact of this work is far-reaching because understanding the effect of minerals to achieve desired regulation of cellular activity has a strong potential to open novel avenues for developing clinically-relevant therapeutics for regenerative medicine drug delivery and immunomodulation this study was funded by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering the national institute of neurological disorders and stroke and the texas a&m university presidents excellence fund other authors who contributed to this study are graduate researchers anna l kersey and aparna murali undergraduate researcher christopher richter and dr carl gregory associate professor of molecular and cellular medicine in the college of medicine
2561,"texas a&m university's college of engineering hosted the final aggies invent competition for the year in which teams were challenged to develop technology to keep law enforcement safe while they work within 48 hours students researched and designed a prototype with the help of mentors from the technology and law enforcement industries teams have the opportunity to expand their products into a business venture through the college of engineering's engineering inc program ""it's a great opportunity for those of us involved in public safety equipment technology testing to see how the thought processes work "" said mentor and judge dr jason moats director of the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) testing and information center ""as judges we get to see the result of the 48 hours of work the kids put in which is phenomenal"""
2562,team perilscope won first place for its members idea to create a device that maps out a clear vicinity near police officers and their vehicles this way police can see clear dangers while at a scene and can write more accurate reports with the ability to look back and see what was happening around them a judge for the competition deputy david wilcox with the brazos county sheriffs office shared the necessity for the teams invention law enforcement is on a path right now where were using an increasing amount of technology so having engineers who are able to innovate this stuff and make it applicable to us is very important we need to stay on that curb and make the best use of these technologies to keep us safe and serve the public
2563,team spike won second place for designing poison ivy a safer and more effective way to end high-speed pursuits the device deploys spike strips to immobilize the target vehicle remotely once it has deployed and penetrated the target's tires it can be retracted and reused
2564,third place was awarded to team icfire for creating a device for firefighters that detects major thermal changes in a fire scenario the teams device used a thermal camera-based system to alert the firefighters to extreme temperature changes detected each team had members from diverse engineering backgrounds who helped solve the safety issues and design their products they gathered incredible team-building skills by working together and playing to each other's strengths aggies invent is something that every engineering student should be encouraged to do said jim donnell professor of practice in the engineering entrepreneurship program they pick up wonderful teamworking problem-solving and presentation skills that will suit them well their entire careers no matter what industry they enter
2565,the student-run organization tamuhack hosted its eighth annual hackathon on campus earlier this year in collaboration with the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university it is one of the largest hackathons held in texas annually the two-day event serves as a space where students can connect and collaborate with other hackers network with the industry representatives in attendance and learn new skills in addition participants can also attend corporate-sponsored workshops and mini-events like this years paper airplane challenge hosted by american airlines and a capture-the-flag competition these events served as fun ways to help sharpen students' skills and boost overall morale this year 620 students from 24 schools across the united states participated according to tamuhack roughly 50% of the students were first-time attendees the current organization members were grateful to have been able to host so many students in person again and make their first hackathon experience a memorable one during the event the teams had the opportunity to work on various unique challenges presented by several company sponsors including ford which challenged the teams to build a hack that improves the way we travel the office of sustainability at texas a&m which served as a partner for the hackathon challenged students to develop an innovative solution to help disenfranchised communities manage food energy and water challenges during and after a natural disaster tamuhack would like to thank all its sponsors volunteers and mentors for helping it make this year's hackathon a success the students look forward to organizing more events for their fellow hackers
2566,the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university recently welcomed dr jason t george 12 to its faculty and celebrated a statewide award to support his cancer research george a new assistant professor in biomedical engineering has a joint appointment with the school of engineering medicine in houston he has research space in the institute for biosciences and technology at the texas medical center which will accelerate clinical and translational research collaborations this is a unique and exciting opportunity for me and my group to apply our engineering-based approach to solve challenging problems in medicine and computational cancer biology george said his group applies a hybrid theoretical and data-driven approach to understanding cancer evolution and treatment failure his data-driven research efforts focus on cancer classification and prognosis while current mathematical modeling projects focus on the role of the adaptive immune system in treating cancer and based on predictions which interactions or features may be particularly relevant to the disease for a leukemia patient in need of a new immune system our predictions could one day be used by a clinician to optimally select the donor with the best chance of eliminating the patients cancer george said george was awarded the recruitment of first-time tenure-track faculty members award from the cancer prevention and research institute of texas george said the award would help fund his groups research to study cancer evasion at a fundamental level with this award our group will develop and apply theoretical and computational models with the aim of understanding why current treatments fail in certain patients in addition to predicting improved therapeutic strategies george said as a new faculty member george said one place he will focus on is recruiting creative and motivated researchers at all levels who are passionate about solving challenging problems at the interface of engineering and medicine research topics include: computational cancer modeling immunology and cancer immunotherapy probabilistic modeling of biological systems systems biology and stochastic modeling of phenotypic transitions in oncology trainees will be primarily located in the texas medical center in houston they will have the opportunity to leverage collaborations and resources with the college of engineering at texas a&m while simultaneously collaborating with translational and clinical researchers in houston
2567,funded by the national science foundations designing materials to revolutionize our engineering future (dmref) program researchers from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university used an artificial intelligence materials selection framework (aims) to discover a new shape memory alloy the shape memory alloy showed the highest efficiency during operation achieved thus far for nickel-titanium-based materials in addition their data-driven framework offers proof of concept for future materials development this study was recently published in vol 228 of the acta materialia journal shape memory alloys are utilized in various fields where compact lightweight and solid-state actuations are needed replacing hydraulic or pneumatic actuators because they can deform when cold and then return to their original shape when heated this unique property is critical for applications such as airplane wings jet engines and automotive components that must withstand repeated recoverable large-shape changes there have been many advancements in shape memory alloys since their beginnings in the mid-1960s but at a cost understanding and discovering new shape memory alloys has required extensive research through experimentation and ad-hoc trial and error despite many of which have been documented to help further shape memory alloy applications new alloy discoveries have occurred in a decadal fashion about every 10 years a significant shape memory alloy composition or system has been discovered moreover even with advances in shape memory alloys they are hindered by their low energy efficiency caused by incompatibilities in their microstructure during the large shape change further they are notoriously difficult to design from scratch to address these shortcomings texas a&m researchers have combined experimental data to create an aims computational framework capable of determining optimal materials compositions and processing these materials which led to the discovery of a new shape memory alloy composition when designing materials sometimes you have multiple objectives or constraints that conflict which is very difficult to work around said dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and materials science and engineering department head using our machine-learning framework we can use experimental data to find hidden correlations between different materials features to see if we can design new materials the shape memory alloy found during the study using aims was predicted and proven to achieve the narrowest hysteresis ever recorded in other words the material showed the lowest energy loss when converting thermal energy to mechanical work the material showcased high efficiency when subject to thermal cycling due to its extremely small transformation temperature window the material also exhibited excellent cyclic stability under repeated actuation a nickel-titanium-copper composition is typical for shape memory alloys nickel-titanium-copper alloys typically have titanium equal to 50% and form a single-phase material using machine learning the researchers predicted a different composition with titanium equal to 47% and copper equal to 21% while this composition is in the two-phase region and forms particles they help enhance the materials properties explained william trehern doctoral student and graduate research assistant in the materials science and engineering department and the publications first author in particular this high-efficiency shape memory alloy lends itself to thermal energy harvesting which requires materials that can capture waste energy produced by machines and put it to use and thermal energy storage which is used for cooling electronic devices more notably the aims framework offers the opportunity to use machine-learning techniques in materials science the researchers see potential to discover more shape memory alloy chemistries with desired characteristics for various other applications it is a revelation to use machine learning to find connections that our brain or known physical principles may not be able to explain said karaman we can use data science and machine learning to accelerate the rate of materials discovery i also believe that we can potentially discover new physics or mechanisms behind materials behavior that we did not know before if we pay attention to the connections machine learning can find other contributors include dr raymundo arróyave and dr kadri can atli professors in the materials science and engineering department and materials science and engineering undergraduate student risheil ortiz-ayala while machine learning is now widely used in materials science most approaches to date focus on predicting the properties of a material without necessarily explaining how to process it to achieve target properties said arróyave here the framework looked not only at the chemical composition of candidate materials but also the processing necessary to attain the properties of interest
2568,messages like this item is unavailable due to quality recalls and supply chain disruptions are becoming a common occurrence for customers of many businesses in the united states to help solve this problem 5g technology is poised to offer manufacturers the ability to make rapid real-time decisions bridging existing gaps in the nations industrial base5g is a new global wireless network that is designed to virtually connect all people and all devices for manufacturers the increased bandwidth allows high-capacity information flow resulting in faster conversations between machines and fewer communication delaysincorporating 5g will provide much more timely actionable information decisions in the manufacturing enterprises can be made in real-time with little delays said dr satish bukkapatnam professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at the texas a&m university and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station institute for manufacturing systems the timely information greatly reduces the lag between inception of data and decisionsadditionally 5g will aid in what bukkapatnam calls the uber-zation of manufacturing much like a customer would order an uber to take them to their destination 5g tech will enable companies or industry segments to treat manufacturing like a custom service to receive needed productsthis is one area in which smart manufacturing will be heavily involved in the years to come bukkapatnam said5g could be highly valuable in the production of semiconductors (devices included in various kinds of electronics like diodes transistors and integrated circuits) where complex components are manufactured across multiple machinesin these high-quality and high-end manufacturing environments there will be hundreds of sensors helping monitor the process from beginning to end bukkapatnam said these sensors generate massive amounts of data each day more data than what current enterprise data handling solutions can actually handlemuch of this data is analyzed long after problems have already surfaced bukkapatnam continued with 5g faster decisions are communicated back to sources opening up new possibilities for more efficient decision making this level of automation is going to be a key facilitator for applying artificial intelligence methods in industrial environments as data can be processed locally or in the cloud and with different kinds of computers and controllers in different geographic locations5g will be an important asset for manufacturing conglomerates who are interested in leading the transformation of the industry with a large industry shift toward internet of things (physical objects with sensors processing ability software and other technologies that connect and exchange data) digitization and digitalized operations harnessing data and effective decision making will become increasingly significantclearly articulating the return on investment of a 5g system in a manufacturing environment is currently a major challenge as the industry has yet to fully embrace this technology bukkapatnam said its our job to establish clear context for implementing 5g and determining what types of data should be fused what decisions should be made and what kind of timeliness or delays are tolerable
2569,for dr francisco olivera traveling to peru during the holiday break meant going home however for the 22 engineering students who joined him in peru from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university it was a whole new world the study abroad trip gave them an experience in a different cultural frame while learning to use geographic information systemsthey explored and toured the city of lima peru and enjoyed local restaurants serving ceviche and gelato in paracas peru they felt the wind of the desert as their dune buggies glided through the sand and they watched the sunset over the dunes a few tried their hand at surfing in the pacific ocean or sandboarding a boat ride around the ballestas islands provided sweeping views of rock arches wild seabirds and sea lions clouds mist and rain lingered over the peruvian andes mountains as they stood in awe of one of the new seven wonders of the world machu picchu they visited cusco fed alpacas and toured the sacred valley of the incasthe study abroad program lasted three weeks but the students gained experiences that they would remember for the rest of their lives
2570,"new experiencessenior civil engineering major libby roberts had never traveled outside the united states before boarding the plane to peru however as she met up with other students at the airport her nerves dissipated and she began to realize that she was about to have one of the most significant and most fun experiences of her life""my experience definitely made me more outgoing and excited about trying new things i didn't know anyone before the trip but making friends wasn't hard at all because everyone was together all the time and bonding over a trip is one of the fastest ways to get close "" she said ""the experience also made me see different ways to do things and different values that i could incorporate into my own life the slower pace of life was very enjoyable and refreshing to me and has been something i brought back with me when i returned home""alex ramirez a senior civil engineering major is not new to traveling he was in the military but when he came to texas a&m he knew he wanted to study abroad""the class structure was well planned out to allow us to absorb the learning material through practical applications while giving us ample time to explore lima and its rich culture "" he said ""i had the opportunity to not only visit a beautiful country but made some new friends and created some amazing memories""elena feghali a senior civil engineering major was born in europe and grew up in the middle east it was not her first experience abroad but traveling and gaining new perspectives is an incredibly important aspect of her life ""the opportunities we have to study abroad at texas a&m are far more prevalent than those outside the college sphere "" she said ""it can be one of the most eye-opening and life-changing experiences if you let it be you have so much to learn if you put yourself out there"""
2571,"why study abroadstudying abroad allows learning outside the four walls of a classroom and creates unique learning experiences for studentsolivera associate professor in the department explained that when he goes home to peru for winter break he sees his nephews and nieces watch netflix but the movies are different from netflix in america the business is global but the culture is not""despite globalization people worldwide stick to their cultural values and manifestations "" he said ""this is a fundamental concept for young engineers to learn if they plan to join an industry becoming more and more global over time studying abroad exposes students to these types of similarities and differences and prepares them for the engineering challenges of the future""in times when engineering companies are looking for good people and good engineers with global experience participating in study abroad allows them to stand out with respect to others""for ramirez he said immersing himself in a different culture was a huge benefit""as a hispanic student i thought going to peru would be like my experience going to my homeland of mexico but although they share the same language there were vast differences between the two cultures "" he said ""be willing to try new things get out of your comfort zone step into local traditions and eat the local delicacy""roberts said studying abroad has been her favorite thing in college and she only regrets that she didn't do it more""all the food we ate in peru was very different and adventurous compared to what i normally eat but i never regretted trying something even when i didn't like it "" she said ""having an open mind and approaching everything new with an excited attitude can really shape the whole experience""feghali agreed that getting out of your comfort zone is important when studying abroad""you will thank yourself in the end "" she said ""the best way to grow in yourself and your connections to others is to learn from those with different perspectives from yourself if you feel comfortable you're not challenging yourself enough"""
2572,"lasting impactwhen traveling to his home country olivera sees firsthand the impact the experience has on his students ""i enjoy seeing their faces when they discover something they did not expect "" he said ""many people think peru is just machu picchu and llamas and do not know that lima is a 10-million-person metropolis ranked as one of the top gastronomic destinations in the world life can be good in peru and that is something the students learn in just three weeks in fact some of them wanted to stay""it is evident in how the students speak about their experiences that they connected with olivera on a different level once outside the classroom they agreed the experience left a lasting impact on them and created a community between them and olivera""i would like to thank dr olivera for showing us his home country of peru "" ramirez said ""this study abroad experience would not have been possible without his passion for teaching and his dedication to ensuring that we got the best of what peru has to offer""roberts said she would love to go back to peru and explore more of the culture history and nature""if dr olivera ever creates a teaching assistant position for the class i'm sure there will be a long line of my classmates all wanting to go with him "" she said"
2573,dr keshawa shukla from the college of engineering at texas a&m university published a proceedings paper a new transient model for predicting cooling temperature and cooldown time of a subsea pipe-in-pipe flowline system transporting waxy hydrocarbons following the american society of mechanical engineers 2021 international conference on offshore mechanics and arctic engineering a professor of the practice in the department of multidisciplinary engineering shuklas paper works to understand and predict cooling temperatures and cooldown times of subsea systems that transport hydrocarbons subsea production systems are wells found on the sea floor used to extract and transport petroleum consisting of waxy hydrocarbons from deep-water oil fields while subsea systems make it easier to extract from previously unreachable deep waters they are incredibly complex and require high maintenance its not uncommon for these systems to be shut down for several days or weeks due to emergencies while the well is shut-in and closed off so that it stops producing during a shutdown the subsea pipeline system which typically operates at temperatures as high as 100 degrees celsius will eventually cool down to match the surrounding ambient sea water however this change in temperature also means that the remaining materials inside the pipeline system will cool and harden quickly leading to a buildup of hydrocarbon wax and clogging the system this cooling temperature may lead to solid wax deposition that can clog the pipeline systems and thus cause a loss of hydrocarbon production said shukla in order to prevent the wax buildup the pipeline system should have adequate thermal insulation to help retain heat during the cooldown time then the operator can take active measures to shut down the system before the fluid temperature approaches the wax temperature to help combat this issue shukla developed an analytical transient thermal model to better determine the cooling temperature and cooldown time for emergency shut-ins in subsea systems the analytical model builds upon an inhomogeneous transient method incorporating an internal temperature gradient said shukla the intention of this work was to develop a simple model based on rigorous thermodynamics and heat transfer this approach takes care of the transition of heat to create stable and steady temperatures during shut-in operations this is the first time a method such as this one has been applied to the pipe-in-pipe flowline systems for deep water applications and the model can be applied to any subsea deep-water applications shuklas analytical model has the potential to optimize dry insulation and cooldown time requirements for pipe-in-pipe configurations which could lead to more efficient and economical subsea environments both for engineering and operator companies
2574,capturing and storing carbon dioxide (co2) deep underground can help combat climate change but long-term monitoring of the stored co2 within a geological storage site is difficult using current physics-based methods texas a&m university researchers proved that unsupervised machine-learning methods could analyze the sensor-gathered data from a geological carbon-storage site and rapidly depict the underground co2 plume locations and movements over time lowering the risk of an unregistered co2 escape project lead dr siddharth misra the ted h smith jr 75 and max r vordenbaum 73 dvg associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering used seed money from the texas a&m energy institute to begin the research the project was designed to facilitate long-term co2 storage at low risk said misra current physics-driven models are time consuming to produce and assume where the co2 is in a storage site we are letting the data tell us where the co2 actually is we are also providing rapid visualization because if you cannot see the co2 you cannot control it deep underground increasing levels of co2 in the atmosphere raise global temperatures because the gas absorbs heat radiating from the earth releases it back to the earth over a long time and stays in the atmosphere far longer than other greenhouse gases since more co2 exists than can be easily filtered out by earths natural processes its essential to keep it out of the air by other means sequestering the unwanted gas underground isnt new but monitoring its presence within a geological site is challenging because co2 is invisible quickly moves through cracks and escapes without detection current physics-driven models rely on statistics or numerical calculations that match known physical laws backed by research results however the latest geological sensors yield an enormous amount of data suggesting a lot of variety exists in subsurface compositions than was previously thought physics-driven models dont include the information because such variations arent fully understood but misra knew that data contained knowledge useful to the situation misra and keyla gonzalez his graduate researcher began by showing where the co2 was spatially since the entire subsurface data set had to be mined for clues they used unsupervised machine learning to locate the co2 unlike supervised machine learning where computer algorithms are taught which data will answer a specific question unsupervised learning uses algorithms to sift through data to find patterns that relate to the parameters of a problem when no definite answers to a question exist yet
2575,first the algorithms assessed the presence of co2 in the data using five broad or qualitative ranges from very high concentrations down to zero traces of it colors identified each range for a 2d visual representation with the brightest color for the highest content and black for no co2 these generalizations sped up pinpointing the plume's location how much area it covered and its approximate size shape and density the algorithms learned several workflow methods to read data and model the co2 misra and gonzalez couldnt rely on only one method to find the right answer because using unsupervised learning meant no real solution to the problem existed yet and any answer found would have to be confirmed rigorously so each answer was compared against the others similar results proved the solutions were unique to finding only the co2 no matter which methods were used
2576,more data was needed to track the movement of the co2 through time so the algorithms were taught to sift through and evaluate data in different formats such as crosswell seismic tomography because the algorithms were already geared to a purely data-driven approach and visualized on a general level the spatial-temporal maps were quickly generated no matter what information was used again similar results proved the researchers were on the right track misra and gonzalez published a paper on the research in the journal expert systems with applications gonzalez has graduated and took a position with tgs an international energy data and intelligence company that was impressed with the work the next step will be the combination of rapid prediction rapid visualization and real-time decision making something the us department of energy is interested in said misra even though the work was hard and required a lot of confirmation to validate i can see so much potential in research like this many more applications and breakthroughs are possible unsupervised learning takes more effort but gives so much insight
2577,for those diagnosed with colorectal cancer surgery has been the only option that offers a solution unfortunately surgery is frequently complicated by disease recurrence at the site of the original cancer when microscopic cancer cells are left behind at the time of surgery chemotherapy is a treatment option that is often given in conjunction with surgery although it can lead to toxic side effects dr sung ii park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and researcher in the center for remote health technologies and systems at texas a&m university and his team are working to develop a low cost minimally invasive wireless device that offers precise safe treatment options for cancers the researchers will utilize photodynamic therapy (pdt) during surgery by using a photosensitizer a drug activated by light to kill the cancer cells during this process surgeons will be able to remove the bulk of the tumor then fully irradiate the tumor bed when the photosensitizer is activated by the light this combination would result in a complete treatment in a safe and effective way with no toxic side effects the biocompatible miniaturized implantable led device will enable light dosing and pdt that is tailored to the individual tumor response park said in the long term the work will result in a platform that has the potential to provide clinical-quality health monitoring capabilities for continuous use beyond the confines of traditional hospital or laboratory facilities; it will also allow for treatment options to prevent the development of additional malignancy and therefore significantly improve the quality of life for people with cancer this type of platform would also reduce the huge economic burden on oncology resources which totaled $167 billion us dollars in 2020 alone in 2022 projected global oncology spending will reach $206 billion a 2335% increase
2578,further details about their device are published in the april issue of nature communications excluding skin cancers colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide according to the american institute for cancer research according to the american cancer society this year an estimated 149 500 adults in the united states will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer and it's expected to cause about 52 980 deaths although photodynamic therapy has been shown to be effective in many solid tumor cancers its clinical application has been limited by an incomplete understanding of the differing response of cancer and normal tissue and a lack of methods to monitor tumor response and adjust light dosage accordingly to address this gap park and his team have proposed a two-step procedure first the photosensitizer drug is administered which is preferentially taken up by the tumor cells and then the tumor is illuminated by non-thermal light at a wavelength that matches an absorption spectrum of the drug activation of the drug induces a photochemical reaction that triggers tumor cell death the intracavity device will provide a minimally invasive biocompatible platform for light detection of residual cancers and delivery to tumor cells located in any part of the body suggesting it could make an impact in the areas of breast kidney lung pancreatic prostate ovarian and rare cancers park said park explained that in the next decade he anticipates this wireless telemetry system to include an oxygen sensor which can lead to a deeper understanding of how low blood oxygen levels affect cancer therapy and the monitoring of such can lead to improved patient outcomes several current procedures such as mri and ultrasound scans address low cancer tumor hypoxia or low blood oxygen levels however there is not a single current method utilized in routine practice this tool would allow healthcare professionals routine insights into tumor health to better assess patient care other contributors to the research include several well-known researchers from the electrical and computer engineering department the university of leeds and sun moon university this work was supported by grants from the interdisciplinary x-grants program part of the presidents excellence fund at texas a&m the 2018 national alliance for research on schizophrenia and depression young investigator awards from the brain and behavior research foundation and the precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations engineering research center this work was also supported by a wellcome trust institutional strategic support fund fellowship a national institute for health research (nihr) research professorship and an nihr senior investigator award
2579,contrary to what was once popular belief microwaves dont cause cancer its a decades-old concern that may evoke a vague memory of nostalgia: a young child standing in front of a microwave peering through the dimly-lit door only to be told to take a few steps back or they could catch an inexplicable illness or worse radiation poisoning thanks to advancements in science engineering and technology we now know that microwaves are safe effective and efficient however recent research from texas a&m university reveals that exposure to certain extremely high-powered microwave and radio frequencies may result in high stresses within the brain dr justin wilkerson assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering in collaboration with researchers at the us army research laboratory and the air force research laboratory began investigating the effects of high-powered pulsed microwaves on the human body most commonly used for rapid cooking microwaves are a type of electromagnetic radiation that fall between radio and infrared light on the electromagnetic spectrum using computational modeling the teams two-simulation approach first calculates the specific absorption rate (sar) of planar electromagnetic waves on a 3d model of a human body the sar values are then used to calculate changes in temperature throughout the head and brain those temperature changes are then used to determine how the brain tissue physically alters in response to the high-intensity microwaves
2580,the microwave heating causes spatially varying rapid thermal expansion which then induces mechanical waves that propagate through the brain like ripples in a pond said wilkerson we found that if those waves interact in just the right way at the center of the brain the conditions are ideal to induce a traumatic brain injury published in science advances wilkersons research revealed that when applying a small temperature increase over a very short amount of time (microseconds) potentially injurious stress waves are created imagine all of the microwave energy needed to pop a bag of popcorn condensed into one-millionth of a second and then directed at the brain however theres no need to worry about every day exposure to microwaves or radiofrequency levels wilkersons study included magnitudes of power far greater than anything the average human will be exposed to although the required power densities at work here are orders of magnitude larger than most real-world exposure conditions they can be achieved with devices meant to emit high-power electromagnetic pulses in military and research applications said wilkerson wilkerson and the team used finite element simulations as part of their computational modeling the same models that have been used to predict traumatic brain injury in car crashes football impacts and even explosive blasts on the battlefield by applying it to a new energy deposition the microwave wilkerson has opened the door for more research to be conducted on the interactions between the biological body and electromagnetic fields and its applications
2581,a two-year $400 000 grant from the us department of energys (doe) nuclear energy university program (neup) is helping a texas a&m university nuclear engineering researcher create cost-effective methods for the development of physical protection systems (pps) for nuclear microreactors microreactors are compact nuclear reactors that can produce up to 10 megawatts of thermal power and can be transported to areas with energy challenges such as remote residential areas or military locations according to the doe dr karen kirkland professor and associate department head in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m is the principal investigator of the grants project she explains that a pps integrates people procedures and equipment to protect assets or facilities against theft sabotage or other malevolent intruder attacks however the current requirements for commercial nuclear reactor ppss lead to oversized microreactor ppss an oversized pps leads to inefficiencies in both up-front capital expenses to design and build the pps and ongoing operational security costs kirklands new design methods look to address this by creating ppss that are appropriately sized while keeping a high level of security a key to the technological contribution of the research is combining consequence modeling with security design and a safety-security framework this combination would set the groundwork for future justification in reactor pps design consequence modeling is planning and preparing for possible accidents from processes or hazardous materials and their effect on people the environment and the process security design uses buffers from trenches moats and fences to security personnel access control and electronic security to protect and secure the reactor site kirkland is not doing this alone the project collaborates with researchers at the georgia institute of technology and sandia national laboratories which kirkland says is enabling the new technology for the microreactor pps design my colleague at georgia tech is an expert on dose estimations and radiological safety and is gaining exposure in the areas of security and reactor safety the sandia collaborator is a security expert kirkland said as a team we are teaching each other and promoting a collaborative effort that the three of us could not conduct individually by 2023 in the grants second year the team will evaluate the success of the new methodology kirkland says if successful this new methodology will not only provide a means for cost reductions of future builds but it will also maintain or possibly increase the security of reactors and promote the nrcs efforts to credit safety features of advanced reactors through proposed amendments to current physical security regulations
2582,the texas a&m university college of engineering honored four former students during the 2022 outstanding alumni awards banquet which was held on april 7 the outstanding alumni award is the most prestigious honor given by the college and it recognizes the professional accomplishments of its awardeesrecipients of the outstanding alumni award were bill crane 83 holly e ridings 96 lindsley ruth 92 and ken washington 82 outstanding alumni awards bill crane ‘83computer science and engineeringchief executive officer red crown adventuresbill crane 83 is the chief executive officer of red crown ventures an engineering management and early-stage investment company his career as an engineer and businessman has been marked by his mastery of soft skills and his expertise in technology crane started as a software developer at ibm in the san francisco bay area and then worked for sun microsystems as an engineering manager since then he has been the vice president of engineering at network computing devices e-loan redline networks and proofpoint he also joined linkedin as vice president of engineering during its early high-growth period since 2011 crane has served as interim chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at red crown ventures and is an early-stage investor for a variety of startup companies in the silicon valley and europe additionally he is a founding board member of women who code an organization dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology with over 290 000 members located in 134 countriesover the years crane has been committed to bolstering fellow aggies educations having seen the rise of computer science educations importance in the workforce he supported the inclusion of computer programming courses in the college of engineerings general engineering curriculum in 2014 crane received the distinguished former student award from the department of computer science and engineering and in 2020 crane and his wife lynn 84 established the department head chair for the departmentholly e ridings ‘96mechanical engineeringchief flight director nasaholly e ridings 96 is nasas chief flight director responsible for safely and successfully leading human spaceflight missions to the international space station artemis missions to the moon and future missions to marsridings began her career at nasa at the start of international space station assembly working in the mission control center while the orbiting laboratory was being constructed she learned a vast array of technical systems and formed lasting relationships with the human spaceflight community prior to her selection as chief flight director ridings served many years as a flight director for expedition 16 in 2007-08 space shuttle program mission sts-127 in 2009 and the spacex dragon the first commercial vehicle to visit the international space station in 2012 ridings is the first female to hold the position of nasas chief flight director a position held by just over a dozen individuals this distinction has provided her with opportunities to serve as a role model for fellow female engineers share the excitement of human spaceflight and interact with the global leadership community she serves on the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering industry advisory council and was inducted into the departments academy of distinguished graduates in 2019 for her extraordinary professional accomplishmentslindsley ruth ‘92engineering technology and industrial distributionchief executive officer electrocomponents plcjohn lindsley ruth 92 is the chief executive officer of electrocomponents plc in london since being appointed ceo in 2015 ruth has been responsible for improving the financial performance of the group and instilling a renewed focus on putting the customer and supplier back at the heart of the business ruth began his distribution career in fort worth texas in 1994 at tti inc he served as regional manager and then general manager for northern california before returning to the fort worth headquarters to serve as the director of global accountsin 1999 ruth joined solectron a large contract manufacturer as vice president of materials in 2002 he joined the fourth largest global electronics distributor future electronics as vice president of sales and global accounts he was a vital member of the core leadership team which transformed the organizations performance and expanded its global reachthroughout his masters program he worked as a lecturer for the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution he often references his teaching experiences when voicing support for texas a&m and notes the importance of understanding students needs and the benefits that industry alliances can bring to aggies educationsken washington ‘82nuclear engineeringvice president consumer robotics software and product management teams amazonken washington 82 is amazon's vice president of the consumer robotics software and product management teams in this role he leads the development and scale up of the home robot astrowashington began his career at sandia national laboratories in a number of management and engineering positions and later became their chief information officer his accomplishments at sandia include leading the development of the world's first cluster-based supercomputer sponsoring the establishment of the distributed information systems lab at their california site and leading the nuclear regulatory commission's primary severe accident analysis code for containment buildingsin 2007 washington joined the lockheed martin space systems company advanced technology center where he served as vice president and led his team in developing first-of-a-kind payloads and technology solutions for space science and defense missions after working at lockheed washington went on to serve as chief technology officer at ford motor company where he oversaw the development and implementation of the automakers technology strategy washington received the 2012 black engineer of the year award in research leadership and was elected to the national academy of engineering in 2020
2583,lauren lugo a senior in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has been interested in space exploration since high school when she was first introduced to the space community by her uncle an aerospace engineer he inspired her to participate in the texas high school of aerospace scholars program to launch her into the field and though she has had a lasting enthusiasm for all things space she chose to pursue an education in electrical engineering because of her love for coding and circuits the funny thing is i just don't like the mechanical physics behind it lugo said i learned that that was not the path for me very early on in my classes i really just like the more electrical side behind it the circuits class was really exciting to me i knew that even if i chose to pursue electrical i could still be in the space industry or really in any industry that i wanted to lugo began working with nasa through the pathways internship program in spring 2021 where she completed two semester-long internships focusing on developing hardware code for the space launch system (sls) rocket for artemis 1 she is currently completing her third semester with the program working at the nasa marshall space flight center in huntsville alabama there she is working on nuclear thermal propulsion as well as building and designing circuits when i finally saw a hispanic woman that was an engineer at nasa that's what inspired me to go ahead and chase that lugo said at that point i was like ‘why should i not go for my dreams because for a while i was a little nervous i thought ‘nasa is too big there's no way that i could fit into that group with no previous internship experience but i did it anyway sometimes im like ‘wow this opportunity that i have is out of this world literally
2584,having dreamed of pursuing space in any form lugo also took part in undergraduate research in astronomy from her previous institution and at the texas a&m munnerlyn astronomical instrumentation lab before her involvement with nasa lugo found her place at texas a&m engineering as an ambassador for the women in engineering program when she transferred to texas a&m in fall 2019 in that group she found a strong community that has continued to help her during her times of transition lugo encourages other young women who have an interest in the field of engineering to follow their dreams and not let the what ifs or the not enoughs impede their progress keep pushing lugo said i had a lot of nos myself even if that means pushing back a semester it's worth it to get that experience if you can and even if you can't don't give up there are so many different paths to get to space or just to being an engineer in general if you have a dream don't be afraid i know it can be really scary to put yourself out there but the worst they can say is no and it may hurt for a little bit but eventually that no will be a yes
2585,invent for the planet (iftp) the annual global design competition hosted by texas a&m university returned for the fourth year seven teams representing five countries came together to present their final pitches to industry judges during the finals teams from greece thailand qatar and brazil competed alongside those from the us for the grand prize of $5 000 each of the seven finalist teams reported their plans to continue their work beyond this prototype competition the impact of this we dont know yet said rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship and the mind behind invent for the planet were planting seeds; were planting the opportunity for them to go out and design things were planting the opportunity for us and for them to change the world in significant ways that we cant even begin to imagine
2586,ultimately the team from texas a&m was awarded first place for their innovation aquabox which digitalizes the process of monitoring aquaculture by using sensors that provide real-time feedback on the health of a farm the three-person team was made up of two freshmen and one sophomore really the fact that some of us are freshmen never really played a role because we each have our own specialties and certain skillsets that are really vital for the products said engineering freshman rachel sims if anything it seems that were more open to different ideas because we might not have as much knowledge on the topic beforehand but we are willing to put in all the effort to figure it out we know that once we know exactly what we want to do we have the skillset to be able to do it
2587,second and third place went to new mexico state university (nmsu) and texas a&m university-corpus christi respectively the team from nmsu created small-scale renewable energy sources in the form of an interactive art installation ecoart kelly the teams cactus-shaped functioning prototype was designed to take hits hugs or tugs to conduct electricity and store it within a battery bank for later use kellys job is to utilize a triboelectric effect to create energy and store it said veronica gurrola nmsu student we really wanted to use an art design to be able to make it fun for users we chose interactive art because it is one of the easiest ways to show off how something is made and it makes it a lot simpler for people to understand what we really want to do is educate people on this triboelectric effect which is basically creating static friction and turning that into energy winning wasnt everything especially to this team their biggest takeaway besides the large check for second place was getting to meet and bond with the other teams particularly the international students we wanted to come and meet so many new people from all around the world which was an awesome experience said gurrola to be around people who kind of think the same way as you and especially people who speak different languages and come from different backgrounds to all be able to communicate and just have this common goal of helping the planet it just makes you feel like you are helping the world in a much bigger way than you could ever imagine
2588,third-place winners from a&m-corpus christi took on the challenge of making the world a little more accessible for the vision-impaired in third-world countries by using ultrasonic sensors to detect the proximity of objects the team's innovation hero 10 is an automated robot that uses line tracking to guide children along preset paths to get to specific locations it has a proximity sensor that tracks objects four feet in front of it and a pole for children to grasp as they are being guided for non-engineering student participants like doctoral student aurelia oneil iftp might be the first design challenge they participate in through this opportunity to see innovation in action working with engineers from a&m-corpus christi oneil was able to apply her observations and background in instructional design and education technologies to their winning product as i got the opportunity to work with this amazing team of engineers i discussed with them what i go through as a teacher and see in the school for our students that are visually impaired and blind said oneil in our elementary schools right now as students are learning assistive technology they have two options: they can either use a k9 or a cane as an educator oneil has observed blind students experiencing isolation due to their reliance on a k9 because the k9 is on duty o'neil has to intervene when excited peers want to pet it which can create an engagement barrier with that student the ultimate goal of iftp has always been to remove barriers either for international collaborations or access to resources so the extent of the innovative capacity is only limited by students imaginations and capabilities participants often choose the challenge theyll tackle based on personal experiences or interests for a&m-corpus christi this was the case now we are fostering inclusion and relationships finished oneil i just want to be able to tell the parents of my students who are visually impaired that their child made a friend or that they smiled today it means so much to me that we can make that impact although the event resulted in awards for first second and third place boehm was impressed with all the team presentations and prototypes one of the things that i hate about iftp is that we have to choose winners said boehm while we chose the top three teams and congratulations to the top three global winners because they really did a tremendous job there were four other teams that did just as well we wish we could have awarded all of them first prizes and in our hearts all of them took home first prize iftp was sponsored by chevron and rs components - designspark as well as the texas a&m college of engineering read more about invent for the planet on our website
2589,raiyan seede a doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university was selected for the 2022 association of former students distinguished graduate student award for excellence in research doctoral this award will be presented at a ceremony on april 25 at the rudder forum and recognizes graduate students from different disciplines across the university recipients will be presented with a certificate and a custom engraved gold watch from the association i am thrilled about being awarded and so grateful to dr (ibrahim) karaman who facilitated the research and guided me throughout my graduate studies said seede our research in metal additive manufacturing has been really gratifying and i am excited to continue to pursue research in this field at lawrence livermore seede has worked on several projects during his time in the department including research funded by the army research office in which he developed a basic understanding of how the process-structure performance relationships in additive manufacturing (am) change with alloying composition and phase diagram features he has also characterized the effects of am on several novel steel alloys including ultra-high strength steels and lightweight steels he is pursuing a doctoral degree under the guidance karaman department head and chevron professor i in the materials science and engineering department
2590,fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (ie thermoplastic composites) are emerging in industries as a replacement for metals due to their durability and lightweight composition however achieving high levels of both strength and toughness in thermoplastic composites is challenging hindering their ability to be manufactured at fast rates funded by the national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award dr amir asadi assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has developed a method using hybrid nanomaterials capable of creating high-performance thermoplastic composites with favorable mechanical properties within minutes
2591,fiber-reinforced thermoplastics are replacing metals at high rates because of their inherent properties they are light strong recyclable and malleable they can be used in various applications including manufacturing automobile and aerospace industries because they are both cost-effective and sustainable with the premise that a 10% reduction in vehicle weight leads to a 6%-8% increase in fuel efficiency and a 325-kilogram reduction in its annual carbon dioxide emission this project provides a scalable solution to compete with the manufacturing of metal parts in automotive industries said asadi in addition this project addresses the need for reduced weight and cost of manufacturing in aerospace economically justifying manufacturing small aerial vehicles for imaging radars surveillance and deliveries it also accelerates certification of fast-rate manufactured composites for commercial aircraft high-performance thermoplastic composites are usually semi-crystalline containing both crystalline and amorphous regions in polymers crystals are the regions that the polymer chains are in a specific order and amorphous regions are those with random structures however thermoplastic makeup presents a paradox: it will be brittle if strength is improved by increasing the number of crystals but if the brittleness is addressed by having more amorphous regions the strength decreases significantly a fast-rate manufacturing process would induce this paradox due to the quick heating and cooling process that does not allow enough time for crystals to form thus making it difficult to produce strong thermoplastics achieving structures with properties that act against each other is challenging said asadi however these structures exist in nature for example an elephant trunk is strong enough to lift hundreds of pounds is stiff in fights but also soft flexible and delicate enough to handle small vegetables simultaneously it serves versatile functionalities such as communication drinking and showering the key for these incredible functions is the intricate microstructure of the trunk which we can look to as an example of how we can achieve paradoxical properties in one structure to meet this challenge the researchers proposed engineering the crystalline-amorphous microstructure during manufacturing using hybrid nanomaterials these nanomaterials can tailor the crystals into the desired architecture by controlling nucleation growth orientation and the size distribution of crystals developing the microstructure during production produces a thermoplastic composite that is both strong and fracture resistant their new method could potentially produce fiber-reinforced thermoplastics at faster rates and lower costs in addition it could present a scalable solution capable of competing against metals in manufacturing this project accelerates the manufacturing platforms that could benefit the united states economy and national security by equipping automotive aerospace and marine industries with a fast-rate manufacturing technique said asadi in the future the researchers will look to provide physical evidence that their manufacturing process mirrors their molecular simulations to accomplish this task they are collaborating with the air force research laboratory to determine whether their research findings will be compatible with manufacturing processes the nsf career program supports early-career faculty who show potential in the academic community and strive to advance the goals of their department or organization
2592,its been 50 years since man walked on the moon in those 50 years astronauts have primarily explored low earth orbit now that nasa is preparing to return to the moon its time to reevaluate the practicality of the spacesuit dr ana diaz artiles assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and graduate student logan kluis have been working on developments for the smartsuit a new spacesuit architecture that would create a safer and better spacesuit environment for extravehicular activity (eva) on planetary surfaces the smartsuit is a spacesuit architecture proposed by diaz artiles that focuses on three key improvements to the current suit design; increased mobility enhanced safety and informed interaction between the environment and the astronaut most recently diaz artiles and kluis in collaboration with dr robert shepherd associate professor at cornell university have been developing prototypes of soft-robotics assistive actuators for the knee joints the current spacesuit has been designed for microgravity conditions; in these conditions astronauts dont need to walk or move around using their lower body they typically translate themselves using their upper body said diaz artiles now when you are on a planetary surface astronauts are going to need to walk bend kneel pick rocks and many other similar activities that require a better mobility in the lower body the soft-robotic knee prototypes they have developed work by using gas pressure to expand the internal chambers so that they push against each other as each one expands the actuator bends and by using a soft material the actuator forms to the human body creating a more comfortable fit and potentially reducing the risk of injury soft-robotics would allow the actuators to conform to the astronauts body greatly increasing their comfort compared to more rigid hard surface actuators said kluis
2593,being inside the current spacesuit is like being inside a pressurized balloon the astronaut has to fight against the suit which is not only difficult but expends energy that astronauts will want to conserve when conducting eva missions that energy spent moving against the suit contributes to the metabolic cost which the assistive robotic actuators would be able to reduce by 15% based on simulations specifically developed to investigate the effects of these actuators if youre out collecting samples and doing tests you spend a lot of energy said kluis so when we go to missions like the moon and mars were either going to have to bring all that food or were going to have to grow it so any sort of savings you can have on that energy would be very helpful their recent work focused on actuators for the knee joints but ultimately their objective is to integrate actuators into a full-body layer enhancing motion in several body joints that layer would press relatively hard against the astronaut providing extra mechanical counterpressure (mcp) which increases mobility pressure and mobility have an inverse relationship said diaz artiles the more pressure you have in the spacesuit the lower the mobility the less pressure you have the easier it is to move around this pressure refers to the gas pressure the spacesuit provides to protect the wearer the pressure of the atmosphere is about 147 pounds per square inch (psi) the current spacesuit provides about 43 psi which pushes against the astronauts body and contributes to the balloon effect but if a full-body soft-robotic layer could provide 10 psi for example that would lower the amount needed for the suit to only 33 psi: less pressure and more mobility imagine wearing a really tight under armour or really tight leggings that pressure pushing down on your body would be in replace of or in addition to gas pressure said kluis so the idea with the smartsuit is that it would use both mechanical pressure and gas pressure
2594,another benefit to using mcp is that it could also lower the risk of decompression sickness (dcs) dcs can happen when the gas pressure surrounding us decreases relatively fast so the nitrogen in our bodies emerge as bubbles inside our body tissues the current solution to avoiding dcs within the spacesuit consists of breathing pure oxygen for up to four hours before conducting an eva by implementing mcp astronauts can spend less time on prebreathe requirements and more time on the exploration without extra concern of dcs diaz artiles and her team continue to work on the smartsuit architecture and the actuator prototypes are a promising development in creating a more accommodating and resourceful spacesuit for future planetary missions their end goal would be for it to feel like the wearer is moving without the spacesuit on and without breaking too much of a sweat spacesuits are directly related to space travel which is exciting and theyre at the forefront of that said kluis so its always fun getting to work on new technologies that can be implemented or be part of that evolution into the next spacesuit the results of their research were published in npj microgravity aerospace medicine and human performance and at the 50th international conference of environmental systems
2595,"the college of engineering at texas a&m university recognized several mechanical engineering faculty members at its 2022 awards ceremony four faculty members from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering were among those recognized for their achievements in the college of engineering and texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) at the march 29 ceremony ""i am proud of this recognition of our incredible faculty members "" said dr guillermo aguilar head of the department of mechanical engineering ""our department strives for excellence and the honored faculty as well as the many like them in mechanical engineering are helping us to achieve that aspiration every day"" the faculty recognized at the ceremony include: · dr debjyoti banerjee professor and james j cain '51 faculty fellow i: excellence award service · dr david claridge professor: dean of engineering excellence awards professor level · dr dale cope associate professor of practice: instructional faculty teaching award · dr matt pharr assistant professor and j mike walker '66 faculty fellow i: tees young faculty fellow award additionally dr joanna tsenn instructional assistant professor was recognized for 10 years of service in the department holders of endowed chair and professorship investitures were also honored at the ceremony including dr robert ambrose j mike walker '66 chair; dr choongho yu g paul pepper '54 professor; dr srikanth saripalli j mike walker '66 professor; dr bryan rasmussen leland t jordan professor; and aguilar james and ada forsyth professor"
2596,dr jeffrey bullard professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering and the department of materials science and engineering received a 2019 le châtelier distinguished paper recognition from the journal cement and concrete research for a paper titled dissolution rate spectra of β-dicalcium silicate in water of varying activitythis recognition was announced in early 2022 these awards recognize the significant contributions in research regarding the chemical reactions and physical processes of cementitious materialsin his award-winning paper bullard and his co-authors reported the first-ever measurements of the dissolution rate in water of dicalcium silicate also called belite a component of portland cement the manufacturing of portland cement is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions across the globe and increasing the amount of belite in cement could potentially cut those emissions by up to 30% this is not currently done because belite reacts too slowly with water and prevents concrete from gaining strength rapidly enough to be used in construction understanding the rate and extent to which belite reacts with water is a significant step toward learning how to increase its reactivity and to use it in greater amounts making concrete a more eco-friendly material bullards research focuses on the thermodynamics and kinetics of materials processing using both computational materials science and experimental measurements his group is involved in cement chemistry mineral dissolution and growth computational modeling of microstructure sintering grain growth and granular media shape analysis
2597,"as an extra layer of security several online services have adopted push notification-based two-factor authentication systems whereby users must approve login attempts through a mobile device in current authentication systems especially the ""tap to approve"" approach there is no explicit link that indicates correspondence between the user's browser session and the notification they receive on their device this vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker to address this issue a team of researchers that includes dr nitesh saxena professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has designed new easy-to-use methods to counter the vulnerabilities in push notification-based two-factor authentication systems ""the mechanisms we designed have a similar usability to the original push notification-based authentication method but they improve security against concurrent login attacks "" said saxena ""if a user receives two notifications the notification that corresponds to the browser's session of the attacker will differ therefore the user should be able to detect that something is amiss and not accept the wrong notification"" the team's paper describing the research was published in the proceedings from the 2021 institute of electrical and electronics engineers' european symposium on security and privacy (euros&p) one of the premier venues presenting cutting-edge cybersecurity research push notifications are clickable pop-up messages sent directly to a user's mobile or desktop device via an installed application they can appear at any time and show various things such as the weather breaking news missed calls or text messages reminders etc they can also be utilized as second-factor authentication (or password-less authentication) which works as an additional layer of security to protect users' online accounts from attackers with push notification authentication a push notification is sent directly to a mobile device usually a smartphone registered to an online account alerting the user that a login attempt is taking place the user can then review the notification details and either approve or deny the request by tapping a button one of the main advantages of this method is that it's a simple way to authenticate login attempts that don't require the users to remember and manage complex passwords for their accounts over the past few years there's been a sharp increase in the adoption of push notification-based authentication systems like duo-push and authy they have also been commercially adopted by major software and service companies like google twitter and several academic entities"
2598,"while this method is fundamentally more user-friendly than the one-time password method it contains several security risks one of which is called a concurrency attack introduced in saxena's research during this type of attack a malicious actor will acquire a user's password and launch a login session simultaneously as the primary user gaining access to the user's login credentials if the attacker and user log in simultaneously the user's device will receive two ""push to approve"" notifications because there is no fundamental difference between the two notifications they could unknowingly accept the attacker's notification giving them access to sensitive information (banking school etc) an early solution the researchers developed which is mentioned in their european symposium on security and privacy paper consisted of using a random four-digit number the user would have to compare and match to accept the notification with this type of approach however there's a high chance that they will not look at it close enough and accept the attacker's notification ""there is a large amount of literature in the usability security community showing that people don't pay attention to these security notifications warnings and things of that nature "" said saxena ""they bypass them by pressing the ok button so that they can connect and pursue their main task they don't anticipate an attack so we didn't want to use this method"" to address this design flaw the researchers designed a new method called replicate with replicate users need to approve the login attempt by replicating a randomized interaction presented on the browser session over on the login notification explicitly binding the notification to the user's browser session for example the user would be instructed to drag a key icon in a particular direction in one interaction in another interaction the user would be shown colored buttons and press the correct one while the interactions are simple to perform they will prevent a concurrency attack from occurring because the interaction required to validate the user's session will differ from the interaction the attacker will be required to perform to approve their session to test the effectiveness of the interface the team conducted a usability study with 40-50 participants where they evaluated and compared its efficacy to the ""just tap"" method they found that the study participants could successfully carry out the simple tasks efficiently with little to no errors ""if the attacker were to log in at the same time to carry out an attack against this method they wouldn't succeed because the user is matching their browser session with the notification and wouldn't be able to accept the attacker notification "" said saxena in addition to studying replicate's effectiveness with a larger study group to better measure its usability and adaptability in practice the researchers want to increase the randomness of the process of matching the browser session with the notification ""for example when you look at the number of options for the key drag interaction the randomness involved in this process is very low if the user receives two notifications one saying 'drag it up' and the other 'drag it down ' the user could pick the attacker's notification perform that operation and accept it although we did not see it in the study there's still a small possibility that it could happen so that would be one thing we need to solve"" saxena also recently received a grant from the national science foundation to study the security and usability of push-based two-factor authentication systems and potential security vulnerabilities contributors to this line of research include mohammed jubur the university of alabama birmingham; prakash shrestha jay prakash clarice chua qing yuy silence laboratories singapore; tanvi ravindra thombre andrei bytes lucienne blessing jianying zhou tony quek singapore university of technology and design singapore"
2599,eight graduate students from the texas a&m university college of engineering were recently honored with the 2022 association of former students distinguished graduate student award presented by the graduate and professional school and the association of former students the award recognizes graduate students from across texas a&m who have excelled in either research or teaching and it is divided accordingly into those two categories this year eight research awards were given to engineering students listed below with their departments and faculty advisors: ali akbari biomedical engineeringfaculty advisor: roozbeh jafari hananeh alambeigi industrial and systems engineeringfaculty advisor: anthony mcdonald kaivalya deo biomedical engineeringfaculty advisor: akhilesh gaharwar swarn jha mechanical engineeringfaculty advisor: hong liang xiaoqiang (jack) kong civil and environmental engineeringfaculty advisor: yunlong zhang tanmay mathur biomedical engineeringfaculty advisor: abhishek jain sakina mohammed mota biomedical engineeringfaculty advisor: kristen maitland raiyan seede materials science and engineeringfaculty advisor: ibrahim karaman
2600,"autumn leveridge an associate professor of practice in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university was recently awarded the legion of merit from the united states army for her years of military servicebefore joining the department leveridge served in the army for 22 years achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel the legion of merit one of the most prestigious awards is bestowed to military personnel for highly meritorious service""i feel that it was a privilege to serve the united states as a military officer for 22 years representing our country with army soldiers other joint service members and interagency partners and multinational allied partners all working to preserve peace through strength "" she saidthe award recognizes leveridges significant contributions to improving army medical logistics at the operational and strategic levels by leading construction projects of multiple joint and deployed health care facilities as a medical logistics expert and health facilities planner""she is an accomplished thought leader knowledgeable in forward surgical and combat casualty care health facilities construction and women's health through global health engagements "" the award says ""this diversity expertise and knowledge combined with her extremely dedicated work ethic enabled her to excel in 2011 while serving as the deputy director of medical logistics in the us army europe's surgeon office (usareur) in this capacity she supported the deployment of a role 3 combat support hospital to kosovo she performed on-site engineering surveys and quality assessments for health care facilities and equipment in romania enabling usareur to use these facilities for combat-casualty care if needed during russian aggression contingency plans""from 2013 to 2014 leveridge served as the site director of the $350 million hospital construction project at the irwin army community hospital and the $50 million initial outfitting and transition contract at fort riley kansas under her leadership the team resolved conflict in design specifications and corrected three critical failures avoiding potentially catastrophic hazards to patient safety under her watch the project gained momentum and achieved vital milestones that allowed the army to deliver a world-class hospital for 50 000 soldiers families and beneficiaries in 2016"
2601,"from 2015 to 2018 leveridge returned to europe where she served on the geographic combatant command's joint surgeon staff for the us european command in stuttgart germany providing leadership for us forces and multinational partners she was selected to serve on a quick-response team for three years where she led the medical section for the combined coordination center of a bilateral joint task force that provided overwatch and coordination to the areas of interest she taught joint medical planning for north atlantic treaty organization (nato) officers and advised the command's joint deployment and distribution operations center joint personnel recovery agency liaisons and other interagency partners on medical logistics distribution and personnel recovery medical requirementsleveridge's culminating assignment was as the support operations officer at the 6th medical logistics management center where she positively influenced single integrated medical logistics management operations and planned efforts in direct support from all six geographic combatant commands she supported us army north and us northern command during covid-19 response operations and was instrumental in developing the covid-19 medical logistics concept of support for medical materiel and maintenance which supported the federal response for covid-19 treatment diagnostics and mass vaccination sites""i am grateful and honored to be recommended by the 6th medical logistics management center of fort detrick endorsed by the 44th medical brigade of fort bragg and approved for the legion of merit by the xviii airborne corps in us forces command also at fort bragg these are elite organizations that remain ready and vigilant to respond to our nation's needs "" leveridge said"
2602,dr aakash tyagi professor of practice in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was recently selected to receive the 2022 provost academic professional track faculty teaching excellence award he is one of 10 texas a&m faculty members selected to receive this years award established in 2019 the award encourages recognizes and rewards faculty who provide students with meaningful learning experiences embrace effective teaching approaches and value student-centered learning in addition each recipient receives a $5 000 bursary to support teaching innovations and teaching-related projects and activities tyagi joined texas a&m in 2014 as the departments first professor of practice after 20 years of service at intel he is known both for his passion for teaching and helping students achieve success both inside and outside of the classroom in 2020 he was appointed holder of the zachry teaching professorship i in the college of engineering he also received the association of former students distinguished achievement award in college-level teaching in 2019 and the association of former students university-level distinguished achievement award in teaching in 2021
2603,its been over 50 years since apollo 11 landed on the moon and we heard the famous words one small step for man one giant leap for mankind now in collaboration with international and commercial partners nasa is working to send the first woman and the first person of color to the moon and beyond the ongoing missions of the artemis program involve innovating and using new technologies to return to the moon and establish a long-term lunar presence with the ultimate goal of sending the first astronauts to mars the first step aptly named gateway is an outpost that will orbit the moon and provide long-term support for astronaut expeditions and scientific investigations gateway will also serve as a dock for deep-space transportation vessels such as landers or larger spacecraft preparing to make the trip to mars joe caram 86 89 is one of a handful of former students from the college of engineering at texas a&m university working on gateway caram who received both his degrees from the department of aerospace engineering is the gateway program lead for the systems engineering and integration office
2604,he leads a team in evaluating the performance and configuration requirements of the integrated spacecraft that form the gateway hub for future lunar surface missions and deeper space exploration this is complicated by the fact that the spacecraft is being designed by several international and us commercial partners and it is the responsibility of caram and his team to ensure that all the pieces of the vessel will work together efficiently and effectively some of the elements his team are working on include determining how the spacecraft will perform from a power and propulsion standpoint how it will reject heat energy how other visiting spacecraft will operate with it and how the crew will interact with it caram said that gateway will make it easier for crews to travel to and from the lunar surface thus expanding the ability to explore areas of the moon that humans have never visited like the lunar south pole region additionally testing things like innovative habitats for deep-space missions is safer and less expensive when conducted on and around the moon where travel time is a few days compared to mars when it could be months or more gateway is not just a machine; it's something that provides inspiration for others caram said its a continuation of the exploratory spirit and that's what inspires me i hope that others feel that too when they look up at gateway and see it orbiting the moon although he didnt know that systems engineering was where he would end up caram knew he wanted to be in aerospace since he watched the first astronauts set foot on the moon in 1969 as he described from that moment in time his passion was ignited his interest led him to pursue his aerospace engineering undergraduate degree at texas a&m where he was introduced to working in a team environment and encouraged by his professors to return for his graduate degree with the support of several faculty he obtained his masters a degree that ultimately led him to work for the very organization that he watched land on the moon all those years ago its a dream come true actually he said knowing that i have an opportunity to participate in the organization that enabled the first lunar landing and to provide that inspiration for others is part of why i got into this field i want to be part of what enables the next generation to come forward and advance us even further
2605,ceramic additive manufacturing has vast potential to transform numerous industries from health care to aerospace to national security and increase the economic competitiveness of the united states dr chao ma assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university will generate new insights necessary for binder jetting to produce dense ceramic parts ma recently received the faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) one of the most prestigious awards for up-and-coming researchers the grant provides funding to support promising integrated research and education projects ma will use the career award to create a new granulated powder and an innovative powder bed formation method that will work synergistically to strengthen the use of advanced ceramics advanced ceramic materials provide a combination of excellent properties including high stiffness high hardness and superior chemical wear and heat resistance because of these properties advanced ceramics play a vital role in diverse industries and applications such as joint prostheses aircraft engines ballistic armor chemical-resistant impellers and heat exchangers these products are created by traditional ceramic manufacturing with severe geometric constraints but ma says ceramic additive manufacturing can release these constraints and bring revolutionary impacts to the industry the implications are far-reaching with potentially positive effects on the environment for example without this geometric limitation producing dense ceramic parts could include chemical-resistant pumps and high-temperature heat exchangers to help chemical manufacturers and energy industries purify materials and generate clean energy more efficiently
2606,"""in terms of research i hope to increase the properties for ceramic parts from additive manufacturing and the approach involves powder development and machine-design innovations "" he said ""ceramics are interesting materials they have excellent properties and are resistant to heat and chemicals additive manufacturing can give us freedom in terms of geometry"" to date no powder allows binder jetting to produce dense ceramic parts the novel granulated powder consists of smartly tailored granules for density structure and strength ma and his research team will use these granules in an innovative powder bed compaction system to reach the desired density they will carry out single and multilayer compaction tests to study the compaction behavior and trace the movement of granules and nanoparticles under pressure through particle-scale numerical simulation ""it's exciting to me because ceramic additive manufacturing is much less developed and if this technology can enhance it then it will bring a lot of benefits to society "" ma said as part of the career award ma will also focus on education and outreach of this new technology to various audiences including primary educators and students undergraduate and graduate students researchers and the general public to strengthen and diversify the advanced manufacturing workforce"
2607,ma will host several primary educators in the lab to help them develop teaching materials for their students undergraduate and graduate students will work directly on the research and collaborate with industry partners and ma plans to create a youtube channel on ceramic additive manufacturing ma received his bachelor's degree from tsinghua university in 2010 his master's degree from the university of wisconsin–madison in 2012 and his doctoral degree from the university of california los angeles in 2015 all in mechanical engineering he was a senior mechanical engineer at cymer from 2015-16 before joining texas a&m
2608,"hypersonic weapons are a strategic part of us defense measures and countries worldwide are adopting this technology however hypersonic capabilities arent exclusive to national security efforts there are countless applications for hypersonics within the commercial and defense markets and businesses are rapidly investing in this emerging industry hypersonic weapons and aircraft travel at least five times the speed of sound (or around 3 500 miles per hour) which is roughly los angeles to new york city in less than 45 minutes researchers from texas a&m university and collaborators from across the country are working with the department of defense (dod) to lead the charge in developing innovations in hypersonics technology the joint hypersonic transition office (jhto) [within the dod] has been given the charge from congress to transition hypersonic technologies to systems more effectively and to assure the future workforce is prepared said dr gillian bussey inaugural director of the jhto in the office of the under secretary of defense research and engineering advanced capabilities the university consortium for applied hypersonics (ucah) is designed to help accomplish this both through applied research and activities targeting the development of this unique community ucah is a five-year $100-million program to unite numerous universities labs and industry partners in hypersonics applied research ucah was established at texas a&m in 2020 and is managed by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) under the direction of dr rodney bowersox associate dean for research and regents and ford i professor of aerospace engineering ucah is facilitating applied research from us universities for hypersonic projects sponsored by the dod which includes many industry partners as hypersonics research is complicated and costly these partnerships are key to applied research breakthroughs and equipping a workforce that is still underdeveloped establishing ucah at texas a&m leverages the seasoned program management expertise of tees and the extensive hypersonic research capabilities of our faculty said bowersox a field as broad and complex as hypersonics requires expertise from a variety of areas from materials scientists to aerospace and mechanical engineers to fabricators and mechanics hypersonics brings together different fields and technologies that are usually disparate said dr richard miles professor in the department of aerospace engineering and university distinguished chair at texas a&m and because everything is going so fast it is also interacting which poses challenges with things like heat flow of air and shock waves this incremental method of testing is used at the texas a&m aerospace laboratory for lasers and electromagnetics and optics (allemo) where simulations and computational models are created to predict outcomes in hypersonics conditions this testing pinpoints specific data and is more cost-effective than sending a fully constructed hypersonic craft through hypersonic conditions at texas a&m there is a rich tradition of cross-college collaboration for example the texas a&m university national aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory has been providing an interdisciplinary venue to improve knowledge and control of non-equilibrium gaseous flows and their surface interactions for almost 20 years in this laboratory researchers from aerospace engineering chemistry physics and mechanical engineering work side-by-side to solve challenging problems in hypersonics which provides unique research and educational experiences another texas a&m university system multidisciplinary testing facility currently under construction at the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) is the ballistic aero-optics and materials (bam) test range bam will be a large-scale fully enclosed multidisciplinary research and development facility capable of evaluating high-energy laser propagation hypersonic aerothermodynamics and hypervelocity impact response of materials and structures once completed the bam test range will be the largest and most fully instrumented facility of its kind in the united states this facility will provide unique realistic flight test and evaluation opportunities for faculty research scientists and students ""the dod and defense industry are highly interested in the unique capabilities the bam test range will provide for both hypersonic ground flight and directed energy testing "" said ret major general tim green bcdc director ""the bcdc team is proud and excited to have the opportunity to support the texas a&m systems commitment to national security innovation as the bam test range opens and takes its place among the nations critical experimentation and testing facilities"" as we develop the workforce essential for the realization of new hypersonic capabilities it is important to understand that this includes the current workforce moving into hypersonic programs the craft force that builds our systems and students who represent the future workforce said dr john schmisseur hap arnold chair and ucah workforce development committee lead from the university of tennessee space institute academia is well-equipped to train all three of these groups but we need to think about how to do it efficiently this motivates us to explore new nontraditional options such as certificate programs and short courses"
2609,since its inception in 2010 the hagler institute for advanced study at texas a&m university has contributed to an increase in texas a&m research funds enriched student experience and expanded visibility of the institution by fostering collaborations between texas a&ms innovative faculty and students with prestigious scholars from around the world these scholars deepen the intellectual climate and enhance texas a&ms multidisciplinary efforts to solve some of the most difficult problems faced by the world today the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m continues to benefit from collaborations with the hagler institute including partnerships with dr robert a calderbank director of the information initiative at duke university and professor of electrical engineering computer science and mathematics; and dr h vincent poor michael henry strater university professor at princeton university dr xi zhang professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m and his doctoral student jingqing wang co-authored a paper with poor that received a best paper award at the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) global communications conference (globecom) in december 2020 ieee globecom is one of the most prestigious ieee communications society flagship conferences dedicated to virtually all research fields of networking communications signal processing information theory etc only less than 037% papers are selected to receive the ieee globecom 2020 best paper award from all papers submitted at this conference this papers research was also supported by mine and dr vincent poors national science foundation (nsf) grants and its success in winning the ieee globecom 2020 best paper award not only represents the top-quality research accomplishments creating impactful technical breakthroughs but also plays crucial roles in significantly improving the qualities of our daily lives based on the imminent 6g and future-generation multimedia mobile wireless networking technologies zhang said zhang was also awarded an nsf grant for his research project which is closely relevant to the collaborative research projects with poor in total zhang has co-authored more than 40 top-notch quality ieee papers with poor since they began collaborating i have been greatly honored to be working with dr poor the world-class leader in mobile wireless networks wang said as a student its been really impactful to have a close-up view and contribute to cutting-edge research by cooperating with poor together we have had a number of research achievements calderbank participated as a hagler fellow from 2015-16 during his tenure he worked alongside several faculty and graduate students on interdisciplinary research in big data since 2010 the hagler institute has brought over 90 world-class scholars to texas a&m the result from this first decade is that more than 20% of fellows who have completed their time in the hagler institute have permanently joined as faculty of texas a&m the hagler institute is one of the only establishments of its kind in the country princeton university has a similar establishment the institute for advanced study that brought albert einstein as a collaborative faculty member these organizations allow universities to collaborate with national academy and nobel-prize caliber researchers that align with the existing strengths and ambitions of the university to enrich the educational experience of students and advance the research productivity of faculty a few prominent hagler fellows include dr ingrid daubechies who is among the worlds most cited mathematicians and is highly regarded for her study of wavelets; dr roy glauber a pioneering theoretical physicist who laid the foundation of quantum optics and received the 2005 nobel prize in physics for this work; dr donna t strickland who was awarded the 2018 nobel prize in physics for developing chirped-pulse amplification used in corrective eye surgery industrial machining and medical imaging; and dr robert kennicutt jr who is one of the most prominent astrophysicists in the world having co-led the team that measured the rate of expansion in the universe the continuing stream of outstanding researchers brought to texas a&m through the hagler institute is changing the cultural climate of the department bringing new joint research and other activities with faculty members and creating and maintaining professional networks within the field of electrical and computer engineering
2610,dr byul hur assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has received a 2022 outstanding young faculty award presented by the gulf-southwest section of the american society for engineering education i am honored to receive this outstanding young faculty award hur said it has strengthened my passion to become a better engineering educator hur joined the electronic systems engineering technology program at the engineering technology and industrial distribution department as a faculty member in 2016 he received doctoral degrees from the university of florida in electrical and computer engineering he has been teaching embedded system courses at the engineering technology and industrial distribution department and conducting research on hardware cybersecurity and custom internet of things embedded system projects
2611,ammonia is commonly used in fertilizer because it has the highest nitrogen content of commercial fertilizers making it essential for crop production however two carbon dioxide molecules are made for every molecule of ammonia produced contributing to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere a team from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university consisting of dr abdoulaye djire assistant professor and graduate student denis johnson has furthered a method to produce ammonia through electrochemical processes helping to reduce carbon emissions this research aims to replace the haber-bosch thermochemical process with an electrochemical process that is more sustainable and safer for the environment the researchers recently published their findings in nature scientific reports since the early 1900s the haber-bosch process has been used to produce ammonia this process works by reacting atmospheric nitrogen with hydrogen gas a downside of the haber-bosch process is that it requires high pressure and high temperature leaving a large energy footprint the method also requires hydrogen feedstock which is derived from nonrenewable resources it is not sustainable and has negative implications on the environment expediting the need for new and environmentally friendly processes the researchers have proposed using the electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (nrr) to produce ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and water the benefits of using an electrochemical method include using water to provide protons and the ability to produce ammonia at ambient temperature and pressure this process would potentially require lower amounts of energy and would be less costly and more environmentally friendly than the haber-bosch process the nrr works by using an electrocatalyst for this process to succeed nitrogen must bond to the surface and break apart to produce ammonia in this study the researchers used mxene a titanium nitride as the electrocatalyst what differentiates this catalyst from others is that nitrogen is already in its structure allowing for more efficient ammonia formulation its easier for ammonia to form because the protons can attach to the nitrogen in the structure form the ammonia and then the ammonia will leave out of the structure said johnson a hole is made in the structure that can pull the nitrogen gas in and separate the triple bond the researchers found that using titanium nitride induces a mars-van krevelen mechanism a popular mechanism for hydrocarbon oxidation this mechanism follows a lower energy pathway that would allow for higher ammonia production rates and selectivity because of the nitrogen from the titanium nitride catalyst without modifications to the materials the researchers reached a selectivity of 20% which is the ratio of the desired product formed compared to the undesired product formed their method could potentially reach a higher selectivity percentage with modifications forging a new pathway to ammonia production through electrochemical processes the department of energy has set a goal of a selectivity of 60% which is a challenging number to reach said johnson we were able to reach 20% using our material showcasing a method that we might be able to take advantage of moving forward if we upgrade our material can we reach 60% soon that is the question we will continue to work to answer this research could potentially reduce the carbon footprint and global energy usage on a larger scale in the future this could be a major scientific reform said djire about 2% of the worlds total energy is used for ammonia production reducing that huge number would drastically reduce our carbon footprint and energy consumption this study was funded by the startup research fund other contributors to the publication are eric kelley from the chemical engineering department at texas a&m brock hunter from auburn university and jevaun christie and cullan king from prairie view a&m university
2612,for much of his career texas a&m university nuclear engineer dr marvin l adams has been considered one of the nations foremost experts on nuclear security outside of the federal government now hes on the inside on april 6 congress confirmed adams appointment by president joe biden to serve as deputy administrator for defense programs within the department of energy adams will oversee federal programs that ensure the safety security and effectiveness of the us nuclear weapons stockpile he will help manage a $16 billion budget in the national nuclear security administration (nnsa) the agency oversees the design maintenance assessment manufacturing and dismantlement of all us nuclear warheads and related programs that develop and maintain all the associated science engineering technology supply chain and manufacturing capabilities adams position is one of four top jobs in the nnsa that requires senate approval i look forward to working with the outstanding nnsa team –– the federal workforce and the workforce at the laboratories plants and sites –– to deliver our unique essential contributions to us national security adams said adams has been the htri professor of nuclear engineering a regents fellow and the director of national laboratories mission support for the texas a&m university system after 30 years of research and teaching at texas a&m service as an advisor for the white house and now a key administrator in the department of energy dr adams remains as humble as the day i met him said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering his expertise and reasoned voice will be a tremendous asset to president bidens national security team our department is extremely grateful of dr adams impactful work and his contributions to our students our college and our society we are very proud of him and wish him well as he embarks to our nations capital to selflessly serve said dr michael nastasi nuclear engineering department head his research has advanced the nations ability to use complex computer algorithms to help assess weapons reliability while explosive nuclear testing is banned as an educator adams has taught generations of engineers including many who have gone on to careers at the three national nuclear security laboratories los alamos national laboratory lawrence livermore national laboratory and sandia national laboratories adams also has served for decades in advisory roles at the nations nuclear labs i am grateful to texas a&m for allowing me to pursue national service opportunities during my three decades here adams said before joining the texas a&m faculty adams was a physicist at lawrence livermore from 1986 to 1992 he received his masters and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering from the university of michigan and his bachelors degree in nuclear engineering from mississippi state university last fall biden named adams among 30 distinguished americans to serve on the presidents council of advisors on science and technology a group from outside the government that he has to resign from now read more about adams distinguished career
2613,the texas a&m university college of architecture conducted its debut station zero design competition an interdisciplinary competition that tasks students with designing a net-zero energy (nze) 3d-printed building to serve as a robotics research facility in college station texas carlos mendoza undergraduate student in the department of multidisciplinary engineering took home first place with team members bobby boone and logan rath from the department of architecture an nze building produces as much or more energy than its using this means that the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to or less than the amount of renewable energy created on-site considered one of the key solutions to reducing carbon dioxide emissions and eliminating fossil fuels nze buildings are powered by renewable systems such as solar wind or geothermal as part of the challenge stipulations the building needed to consist of 4 500 square feet and include space for a tabletop 3d-printing area a standard-sized conference room and a flexible activity space with enough room for students to collaborate and interact with mobile robotics most of the mechanical electrical and plumbing systems in commercial buildings run off of nonrenewable energy said mendoza they either have air conditioning chillers or a similar mechanical system with an nze building they encouraged us to veer toward a more environmentally sound route like natural ventilation natural ventilation is the process of pulling fresh air into a building from the outside to expel the stale dirty air from the inside this method of cooling creates airflow by taking advantage of the natural changes in air pressure temperature and density levels inside and outside of the building however south texas infamous humidity introduced an added layer of complexity college station natives know that no matter how much force is behind an afternoons breeze you wont cool down much if the air is heavy with water vapor
2614,my solution was to implement an energy recovery ventilator said mendoza paired with a packaged air conditioner system it will extract the heat and humidity from the building as well as control the humidity levels inside the building mendozas team also added a cistern for rainwater collection and a skylight positioned north to help scatter the daylight evenly across the building and minimize heat gain the teams final proposal drukfabrik is organized to print in six passes using the competitions designated 3d printer icons vulcan the shell of the building consists of a series of louvered openings and square pyramids capped with glulam timbers the dense foundation makes it easier for the 3d printer to build an elevated pass to print the second-story walls each formal component of the building was carefully constructed to all serve passive functions (such as natural ventilation and the stormwater cistern) that contribute to nze consumption mendoza and his team took home a cash prize of $3 000 for winning first place but he said the competition was also an invaluable experience being given a challenge like this with no restrictions whatsoever is really beneficial said mendoza just being able to apply my knowledge identify the constraints and criteria and create a solution is a great opportunity as a student in the department of multidisciplinary engineering mendoza is pursuing a bachelors degree in architectural engineering following the mechanical building systems track the bachelors in architectural engineering prepares students to effectively design building systems (mechanical electrical lighting fire protection and acoustics) and seamlessly integrate them providing creative solutions to modern and emerging challenges mendoza is able to hand-pick the courses he takes each semester and tailor his degree to suit his career goals of designing mechanical electrical and plumbing systems for commercial buildings the architectural engineering degree is great said mendoza essentially since all of the classes i take are geared towards this one end goal to work with buildings im really happy with the department and how it has been able to help me with design competitions as well as outside jobs
2615,three-dimensional (3d) printing technology has emerged as one of the most important tools in the ever-evolving space of tissue engineering but 3d printing living tissues referred to as bioprinting presents significant challenges which a team in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is working to address one challenge in bioprinting is the need for the bioink or the material being printed to solidify quickly after printing to hold the desired shape at the same time ideal bioinks should also be able to print under low shear force so as to not damage living cells that are dispersed within the material this requires very specific properties that are not easy to achieve with traditional bioinks said dr daniel alge one of the researchers on the project and an associate professor in the biomedical engineering department hydrogel microparticle (hmp) bioinks make it easier and significantly expand the toolkit of soft biomaterials that we can use in 3d bioprinting hmps can be used to print soft tissue-like structures because the microparticles can move past one another when pressure is applied but are also sticky enough to hold a 3d shape after being printed as an emerging bioink there are still unanswered questions about printing with hmps since they behave differently from other bioinks that is what the team researched and recently published in a paper about in the journal science advances the project includes several biomedical engineering faculty: alge dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor and dr abhishek jain assistant professor in their study the team sought to understand factors that affect how hmps are extruded from a syringe and nozzle during printing they specifically studied how the particles jam and then flow through a series of experimental and computational methods the team found the interplay between external resistance from the printing apparatus and the physical properties of the microparticles they also showed there is a tradeoff between factors that affect print fidelity and the viability of cells contained within the bioink bioprinting is an exciting field with enormous potential for meeting the need for transplantable organs and tissues alge said however in order to advance bioprinting from the realm of science fiction to reality we need innovative materials like hmp bioinks ultimately our findings can be used to improve the printability of hmps and facilitate their broader use in 3d bioprinting the team aims to apply their knowledge about how to engineer and bioprint with hmp bioinks to the production of functional tissues their target is a bio-artificial pancreas to treat diabetes a project that the team received an x-grant from the texas a&m president's excellence fund to pursue in type 1 diabetes the body does not produce insulin because pancreatic beta cells are attacked by the immune system the goal is to design a 3d-printed bio-artificial pancreas with a vascularized network to protect encapsulated islets that contain the beta cells
2616,karen and wayne klotz 74 have established the karen and d wayne klotz 74 environmental endowed fellowship distributions from this endowment will provide one or more fellowships to full-time students pursuing a graduate degree specializing in water resources engineering in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university for wayne klotz coming to texas a&m was not only about following in the footsteps of generations before him but it was also his way of ensuring he received the best engineering education possible attending texas a&m provided wayne with an education and experience that he would not have gotten anywhere else my attendance at texas a&m served as a great benefit to my career wayne said first i was rewarded with an excellent engineering education and i continue to believe that my aggie degree is second to none six months after graduating with his bachelors degree wayne decided to enter a masters program while retaining a full-time job starting in a new industry and simultaneously furthering ones education would be tough on anyone but wayne was awarded a fellowship that helped relieve some fiscal stress i was fortunate to receive a water resources fellowship from the american society of civil engineers he said my wife and i want to provide that same cushion to future generations the klotzes are huge proponents of civil and environmental engineering and its ability to improve the quality of life for all through not only infrastructure but also clean water clean water is the one infrastructure system that is essential for life wayne said the need for and limited availability of clean water is a growing challenge both domestically and globally our desire is to support students who will carry forward the innovation and sustainability that will be required to provide water to an ever-increasing population the klotzes want this fellowship to enhance the lives and educations of current and future aggies but they also want to pass on the generosity that was shown to them so many years before this fellowship will allow its recipients to embrace all of the experiences aggieland has to offer the foundation of my aggie experiences served me well in every arena wayne said we believe that supporting the next generation through education is a great way to pass on the legacy that i received
2617,endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
2618,"sixteen faculty members from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university were recently recognized by the college of engineering for their years of service endowed chairs and professorships and deans awards six faculty were recognized by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) for securing significant research grants of $1 million or morefaculty years of service 20 years dominique lord francisco olivera mark w burris richard s mercier30 years hamn-ching chen chairsstefan hurlebaus 2021 rp gregory 32 endowed chair scott socolofsky 2021 j walter ""deak"" porter '22 and james w ""bud"" porter '51 chairprofessorships shankar chellam 2021 ap and florence wiley professorship iii mary beth deisz hueste 2021 truman r jones jr 43 professorship marcelo sanchez 2021 ap and florence wiley professorship ii yunlong zhang 2021 peter c forster 61 professorship dean of engineering excellence awardhuilin gaocollege of engineering excellence award for teaching kuang-an changcollege of engineering excellence award for outstanding contributions zenon medina-cetina instructional faculty teaching award stacey lyleexcellence faculty award amy epps martin tees engineering genesis awards focused communities and people: fundamental research to inform holistic decision-making for historically underrepresented communities impacted by coastal hazards principal investigator: maria koliouco-pis: james kaihatu anand puppala petros sideris siyu yu michelle meyer building health bays and cells aging studyprincipal investigator: stefan hurlebausco-pis: joseph bracci and homero castaneda-lopez"
2619,dr vladislav yakovlev professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is on the verge of breakthrough results in changing how researchers and clinicians image cells yakovlevs current research focuses on advancing techniques and methods for noninvasive optical imaging his more recent work uses quantum imaging in biological systems to achieve a spatial resolution or sensitivity of detection beyond what is possible in classical optics quantum properties of light are being considered for the next generation of computers and communication however with a growing number of quantum applications quantum imaging hasnt been seriously considered in many biological applications yakovlev is demonstrating that quantum imaging could overcome the limitations of current technology this is a total breakthrough he said quantum light allows you to do imaging with less light or to use the same amount of light to substantially improve the signal-to-noise ratio yakovlevs team measures local viscoelastic properties of cells and subcellular structures in their lab using microscopy techniques yakovlev developed over the past years the team demonstrates how they can use quantum imaging to measure mechanical properties of cells and tissues in this case cancer cells without perturbing those cells to allow imaging over an extended period to watch cell development and migration in another application fluorescence lifetime imaging is being used to assess the metabolic rate and the differences in metabolic activities of the cancer cells knowing these factors can help direct treatment options however even with the state-of-the-art instrumentation it is barely feasible to gain this information without affecting cells if you shine too much light on those cancer cells they don't behave properly yakovlev said to get more information you need to send more light you send more light you ultimately damage cells we will be using this newly developed technique using quantum light to remove this limitation yakovlev said his research comes at the right time as the department of energy recently announced a new program to explore quantum effects for imaging plants while his project is still in the beginning stages yakovlev said he is excited to see the work unfold were coming into this at the right time and the right place yakovlev said its amazing that opens up so many possibilities that are yet to be explored
2620,texas a&m universitys college of engineering takes pride in hiring the highest quality of engineering professionals in academia and industry and with over 40 years of experience dr jn reddy represents the pinnacle of excellence in engineering named one of the worlds top 2% of scientists in a 2021 stanford university survey reddy is a testament to years of advancement in the vast field of engineering q: in your words what does it mean to have excellence in engineering how have you seen this demonstrated a: the quality of being outstanding in what we do is excellence in an academic institution this is measured in terms of the degree to which a teacher succeeds in explaining concepts equipping the student with problem-solving tools and creating and disseminating knowledge that has broader (societal) impact demonstration of excellence in engineering also comes in educating students to become inventors entrepreneurs and leaders; in publishing scientific articles that pave the way for others to extend and implement; and in providing intellectual leadership exemplifying excellence in my case was through education (passionate teaching and authoring textbooks that facilitate learning) and the publication of ideas that allowed other researchers to extend advance and use in the engineering work place q: the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering has strived to consistently deliver excellence in engineering education how has excellence in engineering mechanical engineering specifically evolved over the years a: the college of engineering at texas a&m has come a long way from primarily a teaching school to one of the top public engineering schools in the country we have hired many good faculty members who have their doctoral degrees from top engineering departments in the country in particular the mechanical engineering department at texas a&m is currently at its peak in terms of the reputation and stature the department has some of the most well-known and highly-cited researchers in the world mentoring the next generation of scientists it is hoped that our faculty with their significant educational research contributions with societal impact and professional service that advances the material wellbeing of the society (eg mentoring the first-generation students and underrepresented minorities) will take the department to newer heights q: what do you think the future holds for the mechanical engineering industry a: mechanical engineering is the mother of all engineering disciplines the future of mechanical engineering is bright and mechanical engineering at texas a&m continues to provide a large percentage of engineering graduates from the state to the workforce around the country in my opinion it will continue to be the discipline of choice because of the versatility and variety of jobs for which the graduates are qualified for a long time to come
2621,"dr thomas overbye professor and o'donnell foundation chair iii and dr adam birchfield assistant professor both in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university co-authored a new edition of the widely used book titled ""power system analysis and design the book which has been in print since 1987 introduces the basic concepts behind today's power systems and presents real-world application tools for students this new edition which was published in december 2021 covers fundamental theory and design techniques providing a blend of theory and practical results ""the seventh edition of this book is updated with the latest case studies fresh problems and examples and an entirely new chapter on power system economics and optimization birchfield said we hope these updates will help this book continue to be a great resource for those teaching and learning power engineering"" as a junior faculty member birchfield offers a unique perspective that is not often shared in books of this kind prior to his appointment as assistant professor birchfield was a research engineer at the electric power research institute he received his bachelors degree from auburn university in 2014 masters degree in electrical and computer engineering from the university of illinois at urbana-champaign in 2016 and doctoral degree in electrical engineering from texas a&m in 2018 birchfields research is in power system modeling large system transient dynamics applications of synthetic power grid datasets and the resilience of power systems to high-impact low-frequency events"
2622,prior to joining texas a&m in 2017 overbye was a professor at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign he received his bachelors masters and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the university of wisconsin-madison before starting his academic career he was employed with madison gas and electric company he is the original developer of powerworld simulator and a co-founder of powerworld corporation he was also the recipient of a university of wisconsin-madison college of engineering distinguished achievement award the institute of electrical and electronics engineers power and energy society outstanding power engineering educator award and is a member of the us national academy of engineering overbye has extensive experience in many aspects of electric power systems including participating in or leading numerous large-scale electric grid studies he is also the director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station smart grid center the book includes educational examples of the powerworld simulator and the use of interactive computer simulations to help students understand how engineering concepts are used in actual electric grid analysis and design were delighted to have adam join as an additional author with the seventh edition of the book overbye said he adds great new expertise in this rapidly changing field and i hope he can continue to share his insights with the book readers for many years to come
2623,in february nearly 500 innovative students from 24 universities around the world participated in the first part of texas a&m university's invent for the planet (iftp) competition a 48-hour design challenge to solve some of the worlds most pressing issues following the first round of the competition seven teams have advanced to the iftp finals where they will travel to college station texas to pitch their impactful designs during a livestream on april 7 at 10:30 am the first-place team will win $5 000 the second-place team will win $3 000 and the third-place team will win $2 000 finalists will also participate in an open showcase to the public on april 6 from 10 am to noon in the zachry engineering education complexs second-floor atrium near starbucks all are invited to visit with the teams learn more about their innovations and ultimately vote for a crowd-favorite team which will receive a $1 000 award
2624,"team aquabox from texas a&m has developed an easy-to-use and affordable solution to help increase food production for developing countries their digitized aquaculture monitoring system will also decrease the number of pesticides and fertilizers used to farm fish and crops tackling food waste team bad apple from texas a&m university at qatar has developed ""the good apple "" an app designed to track and inventory the user's food supply to minimize food waste it notes the amount of each product the user has provides recipes to use what is available and creates efficient shopping lists bio-thess from the aristotle university of thessaloniki in greece plans to use its adaptation of a circular bioeconomy model to improve quality of life by using organic food waste to create small-scale renewable energy sources like heat and fertilizer new mexico state university's team will also be creating small-scale renewable energy sources their team developed an interactive art installation ecoart to imitate a punching bag that can be hit hugged or pulled to conduct electricity and store it within a battery bank for later use island vision from texas a&m university-corpus christi will be helping visually impaired children with their affordable design hero 10 the prototype uses a line tracking system to guide children along paths to key locations in their environment a joint-university team from brazil made up of students from the universidade federal do rio de janeiro and centros federais de educação tecnológica developed a concept to promote repurposing unused and malfunctioning electronic devices through a system that creates a relationship between donors and recycling companies finally a team from mahidol university in thailand has created a survival capsule for use in multiple disaster scenarios that is equipped with disaster-resilient food energy and water infrastructure this capsule can accommodate up to five people providing safe shelter energy clean water and food packs that last up to three years the public is invited and encouraged to attend the finalist showcase on wednesday april 6 and help choose the crowd favorite the iftp finals will be streamed live on youtube on thursday april 7 from 10:30 am-noon for more information visit our invent for the planet webpage"
2625,faculty from the college of engineering were recently recognized for their achievements during an event on march 29 also recognized during the ceremony were the 2022 faculty investitures and recipients of the texas a&m engineering experiment station's (tees) engineering genesis awards dean of engineering excellence awards assistant professor level sara abedi petroleum engineering theodora chaspari computer science and engineering associate professor level moble benedict aerospace engineering huilin gao civil and environmental engineering professor level david claridge mechanical engineering svetlana sukhishvili materials science and engineering college of engineering excellence award for teaching i yucel akkutlu petroleum engineering gregory chamitoff aerospace engineering kuang-an chang civil and environmental engineering college of engineering excellence award for service debjyoti banerjee mechanical engineering hamid r parsaei industrial and systems engineering narasimha reddy electrical and computer engineering victor ugaz chemical engineering college of engineering excellence awards for outstanding contributions james caverlee computer science and engineering zenon medina-cetina civil and environmental engineering vladislav yakovlev biomedical engineering instructional faculty teaching award dale cope mechanical engineering rené d elms engineering academic and student affairs stacey lyle civil and environmental engineering excellence faculty awards amy epps martin civil and environmental engineering michael demkowicz materials science and engineering tees faculty fellow awards emily pentzer materials science and engineering jean c ragusa nuclear engineering shiren wang industrial and systems engineering tees young faculty fellow awards theodora chaspari computer science and engineering abhishek jain biomedical engineering matt pharr mechanical engineering kelvin xie materials science and engineering tees research impact award moble benedict aerospace engineering association of former students distinguished achievement award dilma da silva computer science and engineering angie hill price engineering technology and industrial distribution karen kirkland nuclear engineering scott miller electrical and computer engineering
2626,dr stratos pistikopoulos professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university comes from a long and decorated history in academia pistikopoulos received the 2022 distinguished achievement award for his research efforts the first award he has earned as an aggie the association of former students presents the award to provide funds and recognize outstanding efforts in teaching research individual student relationships continuing education/extension graduate mentoring staff and administration the award is one of the highest university honors bestowed upon a faculty or staff member and pistikopoulos was one of only 24 selected throughout the university my first award with texas a&m is special because it is from my colleagues and we are in a very competitive demanding environment said pistikopoulos the award signifies that i have helped shape young minds primarily by guiding our doctoral students and post-doctoral associates i am very grateful to receive this honor pistikopoulos pursued his undergraduate degree in greece before receiving his doctoral degree from carnegie melon university he later worked for shell chemical in amsterdam before becoming a professor at imperial college london he began working for texas a&m seven years ago and is currently the texas a&m energy institute director and holds the dow chemical chair in the chemical engineering department in addition he is an affiliate member of the department of multidisciplinary engineering pistikopoulos research focuses on optimizing chemical engineering through artificial intelligence computation and applied mathematics rather than through experimentation which can be costly the computational tools his team developed can solve complex problems through analysis and simulations their software can be used in various fields from oil and gas to energy and manufacturing supply chains a key component of our research is focused on developing computer-based tools for risk management and analysis of energy transition scenarios he said companies need to determine an optimal mix of energy solutions for the future our modeling environment presents alternatives that we analyze systematically to help companies make informed energy business decisions pistikopoulos hopes to use his research ventures and career in academia to lead the way toward cleaner energy solutions i think we have an opportunity through various entities at texas a&m to be a protagonist in the energy sector as it transitions in the future he said texas controls almost over 40% of the united states energy space which provides the university a chance to shape the future of energy in the state and nationwide pistikopoulos has produced over 350 journal publications and over 250 referred conference publications he has also co-authored 15 books these resources have been cited more than 24 000 times according to google scholar his extensive work with doctoral and post-doctoral students significantly contributed to earning this award he has helped 64 doctoral students graduate throughout his career 14 of whom are from texas a&m as well as 20 post-doctorate associates six of whom are from texas a&m in addition 16 former doctoral students and nine former post-doctorates became professors including three from texas a&m they now teach at the university of wisconsin-madison the university of connecticut and west virginia university the award was formally presented to pistikopoulos on april 25
2627,dr jiang hu professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is working to revitalize electronic design automation (eda) technology with machine-learning techniques to keep pace with the ever-growing chip design complexity eda is a category of software tools used to design electronic systems such as integrated circuits nowadays chip complexity is extremely high and is continuing to advance at a very fast rate current techniques used for eda are limited in that they don't offer the capability of knowledge reuse another limitation is that chip design has many complicated steps and conventional electronic design automation techniques are centered on point solutions that aim to address a single task at a time alternatively machine learning incorporates past designs and allows for updates and modifications based on those known experiences rather than starting from point-a each time much like the human brain machine learning can build upon experiences and integrate what is learned or gathered to make progress machine learning is quite different from the conventional techniques in the sense that the conventional techniques do everything from scratch while machine learning has the capability to extract knowledge from prior designs and reuse the knowledge which is much more efficient hu said hu is leading a collaborative team of four faculty members from two universities with individual expertise and experience that equips them to address the changing landscape and needs of eda technology this project which is funded by a $12 million national science foundation grant aims to customize existing machine-learning techniques for the most efficient use in chip designs to help design faster and more power-efficient chips with a quicker turnaround than is currently possible
2628,collaborators include dr yiran chen professor from duke university michael quinn associate professor of practice and dr aakash tyagi professor of practice both from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m chen is an expert in machine learning while quinn and tyagi have a collective five decades of industry experience in chip design and verification hu began studying the integration of machine learning into eda four years ago and was drawn to the field due to its impact across many disciplines and industries if you look at the progress of chip design technology and electronic design automation in the past several decades there have been mostly small steps you know but this is something big; it is fundamental hu said machine learning can cover the areas that conventional electronic design automation is simply not able to handle as part of this project hu and his team are also bringing in students including women and under-represented minorities with interdisciplinary skills to learn and gain valuable experience in this area of study
2629,charlie stegemoeller 85 has participated in significant change in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and the space industry throughout his career both professionally and academically his success has stemmed from his time spent in the department at texas a&m university stegemoeller first chose to pursue electrical engineering but switched to industrial engineering in his sophomore year i understood business and became interested in industrial engineering as the curriculum enabled me to learn the business of engineering stegemoeller said the spectrum of coursework provided me insights into the different skills required to create successful systems across a diverse range of scale and impact after graduation he took a job with nasas johnson space center where he started as a technical analyst performing program performance assessments of the space shuttle program he credits his success in this role to the range of subjects he studied in industrial engineering from business to engineering and systems performance i built upon this core knowledge with each of my successive roles space station space shuttle human research advanced technology research and development and developing mission systems for human exploration of the moon and mars stegemoeller said another highlight for him was leading a team to integrate us research hardware and payloads on board the russian mir orbital space station this effort was key to the us diplomatic efforts to engage the former soviet union adversaries into a peaceful alliance of engagement in space flight stegemoeller said the efforts with the mir laid the groundwork for the successful development deployment and operations of the international space station continuously crewed since october 2000 stegemoeller now works as senior director for business development at the science applications international corporation in houston like many aggies stegemoeller soon sought ways to give back to the department that helped jumpstart his career he joined the departments advisory council in 2008 and said he has seen significant growth and development across the department in the last 14 years to the credit of the department leadership they have sought out a spectrum of insights and perspectives to evaluate and adjust the plans in motion to make this department of great value to the students the university and to the industries that need these skills he said stegemoeller also offered this advice to students: lean forward toward your future by learning as much as you can in every dimension during your college experience you cannot predict which experience along your journey may become a key to your next step
2630,i grew up using my hands a lot restoring tractors small engines everything like that so i dont mind getting dirty i understand hard work said blake ropers 23 while he might sound like a mechanic in the making ropers will graduate in december 2023 as a petroleum engineer he fully admits that he pigeonholed himself by only applying to texas a&m university and only thinking of petroleum engineering when choosing a major however this young man had a plan in mind even if coming to college station texas was a challenge you come from high school being at the very top and then you come into college as a freshman and youre right at the bottom again said ropers as a freshman the first thing he did was join the texas a&m student chapter of the society of petroleum engineers (tamu-spe) a family member from the class of 86 told him about the organization and ropers decided he should learn from students while he learned from faculty at first it was intimidating dealing with upperclassmen ropers said but as soon as i joined i started as a co-chair for the tailgating committee ive been involved in tamu-spe ever since co-chairing a committee was a great way to learn the ropes and make friends the position also allowed him to meet chapter officers and make mentor connections ropers work ethic impressed them as did his belief that its worth talking to and learning from everyone one of his mentors who had just interned with a drilling company recommended ropers for an internship position the company agreed but covid-19 restrictions put the plans on hold ropers worked the summer after his first year in college restoring machinery instead but he didnt forget the kindness of that recommendation i think petroleum attracts a certain person ropers said and maybe thats the difference between what petroleum engineering encompasses and what i feel most other majors are ropers explained that petroleum is not like other engineering disciplines which are right in front of you in terms of being able to see something instead a petroleum engineering student must fully understand math science and physics because the field involves extremely thorough guesswork working with out-of-sight situations deep underground means all petroleum engineers share the challenge of getting good results through intangible means that shared challenge forges soft critical skills in problem-solving communication and teamwork everyone understands networking and handing out business cards but you build relationships through being kind to someone said ropers from there you can express your technical knowledge and be successful through that the summer after his sophomore year ropers worked for the drilling company that promised to hire him as an intern yet he made a successful but unintended connection before that summer which landed him a double internship at a tamu-spe lunch-and-learn event he thanked the speaker who came to teach students more about the oilfield service industry the representative was impressed with ropers questions and kindness and asked for a resume later he made a job offer ropers explained he had a prior commitment to working two weeks on and two weeks off on an oil rig since the rig was only two hours down the road the service company had ropers work his free weeks with them currently im a mentor for a sophomore and i can happily say i was able to recommend him for an internship through that experience and hes happily accepted said ropers that means a lot to me both my jobs came through tamu-spe and i was able to help someone else ropers said his field of choice would be a drilling engineer despite doing an internship where he worked over 12 hours a day on a rig for 14 days at a time the tough experience helped him understand the hard labor needed in drilling and the skills used by teams of people succeeding together a drilling engineer is the one covered in oil-based mud at the end of the day roper explained theyre out there and they want to be a part of the team i can connect very well with people out there i respect them and i feel i could do a good job keeping everyone safe and be extremely productive while being out there ropers increased his personal productivity this spring semester by working many of his weekends as a pumper for fields in north bryan texas he was responsible for up to 18 wells at a time and the duties ranged from gaging oil and water tanks to maintaining pump jacks to adjusting wellheads he said his education in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering has been fantastic and he takes advantage of every opportunity to ask questions especially from the professors of practice ropers counts the times they share practical advice from working offshore drilling rigs starting or managing companies and relating with others in a global industry as the most valuable of his lessons this is the knowledge he knows he needs to work better and smarter with people no matter where he ends up i come from tomball which does have different cultures but you dont get exposed to much ropers said other languages other cultures other people theyre fantastic seeing different things is so exciting this kind of engineering will let me see the world while im young branch out and learn as much as possible
2631,twelve members of the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering were honored at the department's 2022 awards and recognition banquet the recipients included four staff members six faculty one graduate student and one post-doctoral research associate in addition to the award recipients the department also celebrated the induction of three former students to its academy of distinguished graduates melbern glasscock '59 af (tony) pelletier '75 and steve brauer jr '02 were all in attendance to accept the honor award recipients the awards and their recipients are as follows: james j cain '51 graduate student teaching award abheek chatterjee graduate teaching assistant j mike walker '66 research staff/postdoctoral award dr jing yang tees senior research engineer peggy l & charles brittan '65 outstanding undergraduate teaching award dr joanna tsenn instructional assistant professor james j cain '51 faculty graduate teaching award dr waruna kulatilaka professor and morris e foster faculty fellow i american society of mechanical engineers best teacher award dr ploy charoenphol instructional assistant professor mechanical engineering industry advisory council outstanding undergraduate teaching award dr shoufeng lan assistant professor mechanical engineering industry advisory council faculty contributions award dr sivakumar rathinam professor mechanical engineering industry advisory council faculty mentoring award dr daniel a mcadams professor and robert h fletcher professor james j cain '51 staff excellence award regina muir academic advisor ii megan simison program specialist ii j mike walker '66 staff excellence award sandra havens senior academic advisor sharli nucker administrator i
2632,current methods of defending critical energy infrastructure from multi-stage cyber-physical threats remain largely dependent upon human intervention and compartmentalized monitoring with an emphasis on prevention but how can electric power utilities quickly and effectively respond to anomalous cyber and physical events as early as possible dr katherine davis assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and her research team are utilizing cyber and physical information alongside models with artificial intelligence to provide a solution that helps energy management systems protect themselves with semi-automated real-time data analysis as part of a new project funded through the office of cybersecurity energy security and emergency response in the us department of energy (doe) davis will lead the team in developing a scalable physics-informed and artificial intelligence-enabled cyber-physical intrusion response solution for electric power utilities the project will focus on identifying techniques and scalable working prototypes with the goal of achieving coordinated cyber-physical response of both cyber and physical controls together through hybrid model-based and data-based visibility of events in a secure and reliable testing environment the connections between cyber and physical assets are growing bringing greater risk to both network and physical infrastructure security with expertise in power systems machine learning software development and cybersecurity the multidisciplinary team will develop test and pilot a solution grounded in the real-world utility environment to provide a practical solution for utility companies in response to cyber-physical intrusions one of the key focus areas of this doe-funded project is scalability which emphasizes the importance of translating the algorithms into viable practice and supporting sustainability of the new technology through strategic workforce training and outreach efforts prior to joining texas a&m davis worked for a private entity within the power system industry she values the opportunity to develop a solution that positions energy delivery system providers with trusted capabilities in supporting resiliency through a multi-stage response strategy our research is driven by real industry needs and practice based on the expressed needs of utility service providers in texas and across the nation said davis using our research facilities to create models to serve these providers is the launching pad for developing a solution that offers preventive and reactive measures against cyber-physical intrusion this research builds upon another federally funded project led by davis already underway cyber physical resilient energy systems (cypres) which focuses on the integrated principles of a secure end-to-end system to provide a modeling foundation at the core of next-generation energy management the intrusion response project takes the data and findings from power systems analyzed through cypres to develop an algorithm that can be tested verified and trusted by utility providers as a safeguard to provide and maintain reliable energy distribution to their customer base in its simplest form it is about keeping the lights on powering homes and protecting the cyber-physical infrastructure that enables that process most areas of research place emphasis on protecting and maintaining a power grid system from the perspective of prevention said davis our hope is that these preventive measures are successful but we recognize that sometimes they are not this project leads the development of a multi-stage cyber-physical response mechanism as a critical component of protecting the power system from adversaries at any stage of an incident the importance of this research was recently demonstrated with the colonial pipeline ransomware incident that occurred in may 2021 from just one compromised password the multi-stage intrusion successfully breached the pipelines it system encrypting data and ultimately disrupting the entire us east coasts access to refined oil used primarily for gasoline jet fuel and home heating oil the ramifications of this successful breach were far-reaching and caused a forced proactive shutdown of the pipeline delayed and canceled flights financial investment in external cybersecurity experts and six days of uncertainty for consumers using the resilient energy systems lab a testbed that her group designed and developed within the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center researchers can replicate past scenarios while deploying new technology at different stages of the intrusion this offers an important tool for developing training courses simultaneously curriculum for short courses workshops and continuing education with structured learning outcomes will be developed through the texas a&m engineering extension services cyber readiness center dr ana goulart associate professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m serves as the co-principal investigator for the three-year $27 million project additional academic and industry collaborators include dr saman zonouz associate professor in electrical and computer engineering at rutgers university; drs rakesh bobba and sibin mohan associate professors in electrical engineering and computer science at oregon state university; dr robin berthier network perception; john camilleri psc consulting; tim simmons tdi; and hala ballouz electric power engineers utility stakeholders include seattle city light bryan texas utilities and the public utilities commission of texas
2633,julie and david hart 82 recently established the julie and david hart 82 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to first-generation students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in architectural engineering in the texas a&m university college of engineering david grew up in college station texas while both of his parents worked for texas a&m his father royce hart 60 worked in the agriculture field and his mother jeanne hart worked extensively for the texas a&m foundation she would often share stories of successful former students coming into the development office to give generously to texas a&m david said texas a&m was davids dream university from a young age he was proud of the aggie roots that had woven their way deep into his heart through family friends and colleagues who sported maroon as an aspiring engineer it only made sense for him to earn his civil engineering degree right in his hometown david began his professional career as a structural engineer hired by former student lawrence white 47 his mentorship was influential at an early time in his career lawrence and his wife were big supporters of texas a&m and there is a president's endowed scholarship in their name david said throughout his career he continued to work alongside many more aggies including three of his current business partners david also had the opportunity to interview and hire many texas a&m graduates when recruiting college graduates over the years for our company i was aware of the architectural engineering programs at other schools and often wished a&m had one he said in the fall of 2019 texas a&m introduced a bachelor of science in architectural engineering david was thrilled with the news and established the endowed scholarship to be set aside specifically for students pursuing their degree in architectural engineering i am hoping it will be an encouragement for more young people choosing engineering as a profession david said the university has given me a lot over the years and i have been blessed it has always been my dream to give back in some way the scholarship that david and julie have generously created has also been established with selection preferences for first-generation students i have become aware of first-generation students unique challenges and wanted to do my part to support these young people david said david is a principle at hart gaugler + associates a structural and civil engineering consulting firm in dallas for over 20 years they have partnered with clients across the united states and puerto rico as a vital member of the leadership team david embodies texas a&ms core values by ensuring that the company maintains a culture of accountability creativity integrity and trust
2634,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
2635,dr chanan singh was recently honored by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) power and energy society (pes) with the 2022 lifetime achievement award for his contributions to the education research and industrial adoption of reliability theory and practice in large power systems this award recognizes exceptional power engineers for outstanding career-long contributions to the art and science of electric power engineering singh regents professor irma runyon chair professor and university distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university will be formally presented with this award at the ieee pes general meeting awards gala dinner and ceremony in july i find this a moment to reflect and appreciate all those who have contributed to whatever i have achieved my students my colleagues the institution and our alumni and my family singh said for me work has been my play and i have enjoyed it all along singhs research interests lie in the areas of reliability and security of electric power systems theory and applications of system reliability integration of renewable energy sources and the reliability of cyberphysical systems he was named a 2020 foreign fellow of the indian national academy of engineering a 2020 foreign fellow of the chinese society for electrical engineering and is a member of the national academy of engineering and the academy of medicine engineering and science of texas
2636,david rice recently established the david n rice '92 first-generation endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time first-generation college students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university graduating with a computer science and engineering degree from texas a&m did not come easy for rice as a first-generation college student he was the first in his family to navigate the challenges of secondary education and he wasnt aware of the financial assistance resources available to him he often worked as many as three jobs at a time to afford living and tuition expenses though the curriculum required extensive effort rice was motivated by his parents work ethic and their encouragement for him to pursue his dreams at the collegiate level with this support system and internal drive rice graduated with a degree in computer science and stepped into a successful career that has brought him around the globe when rice received his degree computer science was a relatively new field but his educational background prepared him for success texas a&m was ahead of the technology curve at the time rice said it has been repetitively beneficial that texas a&m has been recognized across the world as a venerable institution i have in large part my career because of this school for that i am grateful rice has established this scholarship to promote the success of first-generation students it is my hope that future aggies will be better able to enjoy the aggie experience without undue economic stress overshadowing their journey rice said i would like to help provide the unique and valuable opportunity for future aggies to attend a world-recognized institution
2637,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown senior director of development
2638,"a team of undergraduate students from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university won first place for the best project video one of the five award categories in the steel founders society of america (sfsa) annual cast in steel 2022 competition held in columbus ohio the students also earned second place in the best technical report and third place in the grand prize categories this years competition featured over 40 teams from universities across north america according to the sfsas website the competition challenged the students to creatively design and produce a functioning version of a celtic leaf sword using modern casting tools apart from creating the actual sword the competition required a technical report and a project video documenting the design and manufacturing processthe team included kenna ashen (team lead) esteban nava bryce miller hadyn kroen and james gonzales together they created a unique design based on archeological finds and their own hand-drawn celtic imagery with a lord of the rings theme the sword was modeled in solidworks allowing team members to collaborate with their sponsors to fine-tune the design and prepare the model for casting the swords were then 3d-printed in a polymethyl methacrylate polymer and attached to wax molds for investment casting a method in which a wax mold is coated in a hard ceramic shell and then burned out so that molten metal can be poured in its place finally the students burned the finished sword onto an oak handle and added a decorative glass jewel for the eye of sauron in the center of the pommelwe really enjoyed the entire process from designing the sword prepping the wax molds watching the metal-pouring process to grinding and sandblasting said ashen filming the project video was a blast we dressed up in medieval garb and filmed a variety of tests for the sword all as if filming an infomercial we actually had a few people drive past and stop to watch us we then added technical information and some cool videos of us actually making the swordthe team worked with texas precision metalcraft pyrology foundry and studio and voxeljet it also received partial financial support from nucor steels dr ankit srivastava associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering advised the team ""it is always exhilarating to see students put their passion and classroom knowledge to work and succeed "" said srivastava"
2639,"dr edwin l thomas professor in the department of materials science and engineering a team of researchers from texas a&m university and yonsei university recently discovered a helicoidal-shaped defect in layered polymers uncovering how solvents can rapidly diffuse through layers and produce color changes this research was recently published in science advances in some human-interactive electronics such as temperature gauges or health sensors polymers are used that are capable of changing color depending on stimuli this phenomenon is referred to as stimuli-interactive structural colors because the material reacts and changes color due to environmental changes such as temperature the presence of a solvent or solution a material that has a one-dimensional periodic structure comprised of two (a and b) layers acts like a photonic crystal and can reflect light of a given wavelength (color) depending on the thickness of each layer stimuli-interactive structural color works by altering photonic crystals using external stimuli or forces the thickness of each polymer layer affects the color of the light reflected: if all the layers in a material are of the same thickness a single color will be reflected if different parts of the material are composed of stacks of layers each having a different thickness each layer will reflect a different color and the material will appear like a normal metal material reflecting all colors in some cases a preferential solvent is used to swell one of the particular polymer layers purposefully causing color changes the researchers noticed that the expected layers were swelling in these materials however it was unclear how the solvent was seeping/crossing through layers that did not swell to those that were supposed to swell lets say we put a solvent over multiple polymer a and b layers said thomas the first a layer swells the b layer doesnt swell but the next layer a will how does the solvent get through the second b layer we realized there must be something in the overall polymer structure that allows the passage of solvent to the other layers"" to understand what was occurring within the polymers the researchers used an electron beam imaging to develop a tomogram a reconstruction technique that takes very thin two-dimensional images of sections of 3d objects to uncover what is inside suppose you had a loaf of bread and you wanted to know if there was a hole somewhere within the loaf said thomas if you sliced it thin youd eventually hit the hole you keep slicing and then the hole would disappear if you looked at all the slices you could understand exactly where the holes are this process is similar to the idea of a tomograph using this method the researchers found that within the polymer photonic crystal material helicoidal screw dislocations (defects) were present allowing the solvent to easily and rapidly cross through to different layers causing the swelling and producing the stimuli-interactive structural color changes typically defects are associated with high energy and are singular (abruptly disrupting the periodicity occurring in one location) in contrast the helicoidal defects are nonsingular and spontaneously formed an advantage for the materials this is a good kind of defect that helps properties and allows swift and efficient penetration into the material with solvent and rapid swelling if these things didnt exist the only way the layers could sweat would be from the edges said thomas because stimuli-interactive structural color presents an excellent potential for devices such as health sensors and human-interactive electronics controlling the lateral spacing or amount of helicoidal defects could be a critical factor in future applications these defects currently produce a favorable effect but it depends on the application he said our next challenge is deciphering how to control the spacing and amount of these defects and in turn having more control over the time it takes for the fluid to move through the layers understanding these defects is key for increasing the number of applications this technology can be used in the hagler institute fellowship supported the research completed on this project at texas a&m"
2640,texas a&m university and tarrant county college have launched the texas a&m engineering academy at tarrant county college and will enroll the first cohort of students in fall 2022 the program will accept applications for the fall through july 31 the innovative co-enrollment partnership was developed to address the states growing need for engineers qualified students will be admitted to the texas a&m college of engineering complete the first two years of coursework at tarrant county college and finish their engineering degrees in college station texas we are pleased to offer students in fort worth a unique pathway toward a first-rate degree from an engineering college ranked among the top 10 in the world said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp our goal is to attract the very best students to texas a&m engineering even if circumstances require them to stay close to home for the first part of their college career the texas a&m engineering academy at tarrant county college allows students to pursue one of 22 majors within the college of engineering at texas a&m the engineering academy program is the first engineering transition program of its kind in the country said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m students benefit by saving money while still receiving a world-class education that prepares them for a high-demand career we welcome these students as proud aggies from day one by offering opportunities like the engineering academies texas a&m is able to better serve texans students will save an estimated $4 200 in tuition and fees each semester they are enrolled in an engineering academy before transitioning to the texas a&m campus this partnership is an innovative solution to addressing the need for more high-quality engineers in texas said tarrant county college acting chancellor elva leblanc under this partnership students in tarrant county will have an affordable pathway to a four-year engineering degree at texas a&m university tarrant county college is committed to providing pathways for students that help them to achieve their educational goals in texas the projected need for engineers in the workforce is 51 000 by 2028 to meet this need universities and two-year colleges must work together to bridge the gap and attract and retain students who are interested in stem fields students in the engineering academy enroll in math science and core curriculum courses through tarrant county college and have the unique opportunity to enroll in engineering courses taught by texas a&m faculty on the tarrant county college campus this newest engineering academy in tarrant county is part of a broader vision of the texas a&m university systems board of regents and chancellor john sharp a&m system leaders have been working with north texas elected officials to create aggieland north which will help strengthen the areas employment base and bring a top-tier research university to the area the members of the board of regents are expected to take a major step in the creation of aggieland north at the upcoming board meeting they will consider adding two facilities – the texas a&m system research and innovation center and education alliance building – to the systems capital plan visit our engineering academy program webpage for more information including how to apply
2641,phillips 66 ceo and texas a&m university former student greg garland 80 returned to aggieland on april 13 to speak about his journey from first-generation aggie engineer to becoming the ceo of a multinational energy company garland had the student audience chuckling multiple times during the evening remarks he shared his struggles triumphs and humorous situations each story ended with an impactful lesson that shaped his successful career i think both of my parents instilled in me the requirement to go to college garland said theyd say ‘i cant tell you what to do or who to be but i can tell you it is really important that you go to a good school garland was not sure what to major in or what he would be when he was older but he decided to begin his college career as a zoology major that was until he and his friend had a conversation in texas a&ms aston hall while studying for a test he looked at me and said ‘what are you going to do with that i told him ‘just get a degree said garland the next morning i went and changed my major to chemical engineering this was only the beginning of his engineering career and with very little knowledge of where he would end up garland only ever continued to work hard despite the adversities he faced and uncertainties he felt from the unexpected opportunities that came his way one thing i encourage you to do when you move from texas a&m is to look for things that will open your aperture because it will cause you to consider things that you may have not known existed said garland mid-career he was offered the opportunity to go to qatar to run a billion-dollar project he said he never had the desire to live internationally but after being told he would not have a job if he didnt go garland and his wife made their way to qatar i got off the plane it was 110 degrees and the culture hits you in the face says garland it was an absolutely awesome and incredible experience because i worked with the energy minister moved sand dunes built a billion-dollar facility and borrowed all the money to do it which had never been done before in the history of the chemicals business garland said it was an incredible opportunity and if he had not done it he wouldnt have been there that night talking to the students as the ceo of phillips 66 one of the things i want you to understand is that there are going to be points and times in your career where people are going to ask you to do things that are outside of your comfort zone but do them said garland because thats where you learn most of the jobs i had including this one i was not prepared for but i figured it out the stories of the highs and lows throughout his career that garland told the audience only proved that overcoming adversity makes one stronger in the long run opportunities are going to come your way and you are not always going to feel like you are totally prepared for them says garland take those opportunities and do the best that you can because i have got good news for you you only fail if you quit garland will be stepping down during the summer after being the ceo of phillips 66 for 10 years and will become executive chairman until his retirement in 2024
2642,a team from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university led by associate professor dr zachary gagnon and graduate student md nazibul islam has developed a novel way to fabricate diagnostic devices using paper-based microfluidics that can be rapidly prototyped and scaled for manufacturing their research was recently featured on the cover of analyst the field of microfluidics details the movement of liquids through minuscule channels and how this movement can be controlled for use in technological applications examples of these microfluidic systems include diagnostic devices such as tests for pregnancy and covid-19 these systems contain both a pump and a chip where the pump moves liquid into tiny channels on the chip where liquid flows eventually encountering the diagnostic reagent a substance that chemically reacts with antibodies or agents that initiate an identifiable chemical reaction for example a saliva or mucus sample is provided when taking a covid-19 polymerase chain reaction (pcr) test the liquid is carried through channels on the chip to microwells where viral ribonucleic acid (rna) is first converted to dna then amplified in the presence of the sars-covid-2 virus pcr reagents initiate the above steps to detect covid-19 despite being used for various applications research and development for microfluidic devices combined with their use of plastics makes prototyping and scaling these devices extremely costly a single run of a prototype pregnancy test on a small scale can be a six-figure investment making it nearly impossible for consumer-based microfluidics products to enter the market said gagnon academic labs and researchers are publishing papers but cannot commercialize our motivation is finding a way to democratize rapid prototyping platforms so that researchers can commercialize their microfluidic product to address this problem the researchers turned to paper-based microfluidics paper-based microfluidics is not a new idea its previous uses in diagnostic devices are powered by liquid wicking a process where a liquid can flow due to specific geometries of the chambers without external forces common examples of wicking-based paper devices are pregnancy tests and at-home covid antibody/antigen tests while passive fluid handling has helped develop several diagnostic tests the lack of active fluid control and the resulting variability in capillary transport due to surface evaporation is a major technical limitation for paper-based microfluidic devices in contrast the researchers paper microfluidic devices function similarly to traditional plastic microfluidic devices their method allows the researchers to fabricate diagnostic devices using laminated paper to guide porous microfluidic continuous flows using external pressure sources such as pumps in other words laminated paper can direct fluid through porous paper structures with high accuracy and precision and can be used in complex fluid handling systems such as pcr and dna sequencing machines our study showed that we could create diagnostic devices that would normally require precise cleanroom fabrication out of paper that we laminated in our lab and essentially see the same type of flow behavior said gagnon their paper-based diagnostic devices require minimal equipment can be quickly prototyped and are scaled for manufacturing purposes at a fraction of the cost of traditional microfluidic devices making an accessible and inexpensive pathway for microfluidic operations the porous nature of paper offers several advantages because it allows for continuous fluid flow broadening the span of applications for paper microfluidic devices for example islam used this fabrication technique to investigate different applications of paper microfluidics such as studying the elasticity of red blood cells or concentrating dna another graduate student from the chemical engineering department jarad yost has used this technology to perform dna amplification using a paper microfluidic device eliminating the need for large and bulky lab equipment the research offers a potential substitute for traditional microfluidic devices said gagnon we have shown theres enough overlap between paper-based microfluidic designs and traditional designs providing the opportunity for others in microfluidics to commercialize their products this research was funded by nasas early career faculty award and the national science foundations i-corps grant
2643,"the advent of blockchains has ignited much excitement not only for their realization of novel financial instruments but also for offering alternative solutions to classical problems in fault-tolerant distributed computing and cryptographic protocols blockchains are managed and built by miners and are used in various settings the best known being a distributed ledger that keeps a record of all transactions between users in cryptocurrency systems such as bitcoin underlying many such protocols is a primitive known as a ""proof of work"" (pow) which for over 20 years has been liberally applied in cryptography and security literature to a variety of settings including spam mitigation sybil attacks and denial-of-service protection its role in the design of blockchain protocols however is arguably its most impactful application as miners receive new transactions the data are entered into a new block but a pow must be solved to add new blocks to the chain pow is an algorithm used to validate bitcoin transactions it is generated by bitcoin miners competing to create new bitcoin by being the first to solve a complex mathematical puzzle which requires very expensive computers and a lot of electricity once a miner finds a solution to a puzzle they broadcast the block to the network so that other miners can verify that it's correct miners who succeed are then given a fixed amount of bitcoin as a reward however despite the evolution of our understanding of the pow primitive pinning down the exact properties sufficient to prove the security of bitcoin and related protocols has been elusive in fact all existing instances of the primitive have relied on idealized assumptions a team led by dr juan garay has identified and proven the concrete properties either number-theoretic or pertaining to hash functions they were then used to construct blockchain protocols that are secure and safe to use with their new algorithms the researchers demonstrated that such pows can thwart adversaries and environments collectively owning less than half of the computational power in the network garay's early work on cryptography in blockchain was first published in the proceedings of eurocrypt 2015 a top venue for the dissemination of cryptography research the techniques underlying pows transcend the blockchain context they can in fact be applied to other important problems in the area of cryptographic protocols thus circumventing well-known impossibility results a new paradigm that garay calls ""resource-restricted cryptography"" ""it's a new way of thinking about cryptography in the sense that things do not have to be extremely difficult only moderately difficult "" said garay ""and then you can still do meaningful things like blockchains cryptocurrencies are just one example my work in general is understanding this landscape and coming up with the mathematics that explain it and make it work"""
2644,texas a&m university researchers dr sam noynaert and fred dupriest recently presented results from a geothermal project that drastically reduced well-completion times and drill bit changeouts to an audience of mostly petroleum drillers the department of energy (doe) funded the project which improves geothermal drilling practices with physics-based instruction and oil and gas techniques to lower the high cost of drilling geothermal wells the time and equipment saved suggests the oil industry should take note how you use a technology is usually more important than what technology you use said dupriest it's not just the geothermal industry that benefits from this the petroleum industry could have an enormous opportunity here dupriest and noynaert professors of practice in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering presented their results in march during the international association of drilling contractors and the society of petroleum engineers conference and exhibition both geothermal and oil industry drillers have access to the same equipment and face similar challenges the difference is that petroleum wells are drilled in vast numbers compared to geothermal wells so those companies have more experience cutting costs and drilling times yet oil companies often lack time to question unusual bit wear or understand all the fundamentals behind drilling processes so problems are usually met with quick fixes based on guesswork the doe project proves that basic knowledge of physical principles when coupled with communication and teamwork to document drilling issues or limiters reduces costs and improves the ability to address and fix problems with information not guesses
2645,over the course of three geothermal wells completed by different teams over the last two years noynaert and dupriest trained the managers and workers on two of the wells before field operations began the training created a fundamental physics-based understanding of exactly what happens downhole in both the rock cutting process and how the equipment functions after training the researchers continued to help the teams identify and redesign performance limiters and dysfunctions each day as well as implement a more effective workflow to support real-time practices all three teams drilled at the doe frontier observatory for research in geothermal energy (forge) which features a nearly mile-deep formation of hard granite similar to kitchen countertops previous wells drilled through that rock at a rate of 15-20 feet per hour but these three teams started at 250 feet per hour and maintained 100 feet-per-hour speeds while drilling through the stubborn material the first well with a trained team was a highly angled directional well it was finished in about half the time expected and under budget the second team was not trained but copied what they could from the first teams efforts while maintaining the same speeds their well completion time was less than the first well mostly because it was vertical rather than directional the third team was trained and also drilled vertically this team cut the untrained teams completion time in half by drilling much faster and cut costs further by using bits for far longer we had a huge gain with the first well said dupriest but directional drilling aside we've cut everything in half again with the third well plus we made advances to fundamental drilling science the trained teams changed their work methods to include scientifically documenting equipment changes as drilling progressed this required taking specific pictures of bit wear from standard angles the types of damage noted identified the causes of dysfunction and drilling parameters were quickly adjusted to prevent the same damage on the next run the photos were immediately shared with the bit vendor who could improve bit designs based on the evidence since the training instilled better physical knowledge of drilling vertically in hard rock the third team tested the equipment to its limits during operations they safely increased the amount of weight they put on the bit far beyond normal expectations because they understood how to identify and reduce the dysfunction that previously prevented this the additional weight improved drilling times and surprisingly extended bit longevity the third team also used dysfunction evidence to come up with a novel solution to a common but little-understood problem: ductile strengthening of the rock when the bit didnt respond to increased weight and failed to move forward even with tremendous energy use they reasoned that the drilling mud created the limitation and came up with a simple experiment to prove it a 100-gallon water pill was circulated down through the bit to alter the rock-progress situation the bits energy consumption was reduced by half and the drill rate doubled water would not have been used before said noynaert it would have been a 'that's just the way granite works so better change the bit' moment by understanding the physics they could get the solution to the problem right the first time geothermal companies initially thought the training was a petroleum thing but the first team quickly realized its value after seeing the results the second team asked for the training but scheduling conflicts prevented this the third team fully embraced the project goals and made great strides in improving performance dupriest and noynaert now say they must prove the education and processes work in all drilling applications to dispel a growing petroleum belief that the successes are a geothermal thing or only work in granite the future goal of the project will involve finding geothermal drilling teams to learn and test the methods in a variety of geologic regions ideally common to both energy industries
2646,the engineering staff advisory council recently recognized 13 staff members with awards for their exceptional commitment to serving the texas a&m engineering experiment station and college of engineering at texas a&m university recipients were honored at a ceremony on may 10 at the zachry engineering education complex where they each received a commemorative and monetary award new employee award: kerra clement industrial and systems engineering key contributor award: maria lyons biomedical engineering engineering team award: tricia speed taylor george jarrett david shauna lewis web team engineering communications staff excellence awards: edwin aguilar engineering academic and student affairs shannon caldwell industrial and systems engineering chris cantrell office of the vice chancellor and dean of engineering kourtney gruner engineering technology and industrial distribution gabrielle gunnels donor and alumni relations and events megan meyer engineering technology and industrial distribution griselda vazquez fiscal office
2647,"jessica zamarripa ‘20 a graduate student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has received two prestigious awards the 2022 national defense science and engineering graduate (ndseg) fellowship and the national gem consortium phd engineering and science fellowship zamarripa a masters student received her bachelors degree in electrical engineering from texas a&m university her current research focuses on the development of a multiphysics topology optimization tool used to evaluate and analyze alternating current circuit designs for the deployment of novel electronics and flexible circuits created from liquid metal-based inks she collaborates weekly with the researchers at the air force research laboratory and has also spent summers on site at the wright-patterson air force base the department of defense ndseg fellowship is awarded annually to students in recognition of their academic excellence and stem (science technology engineering and math) achievements awardees receive full tuition and coverage for all mandatory fees for up to three years at any accredited us college or university that provides advanced degrees in science and engineering as well as a monthly stipend of $3 400the national gem consortium is a distinguished external fellowship that connects leading corporations laboratories universities and research institutions to support and enable qualified students from underrepresented communities to pursue graduate education in applied science and engineering as part of her gem fellowship zamarripa was selected by nasa headquarters to become a gem employer fellow fellows are provided a paid graduate-level summer work experience for at least one summer zamarripa will utilize both fellowships next year as she begins her doctorate under the guidance of dr darren hartl associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering with a courtesy appointment in the department of materials science and engineering hartl is also the director of the m2aestro laboratoryjessica is one of the hardest-working students i know said hartl ""she is a testament to the potential of all first-generation engineering students who surround themselves with a strong team as they face academic and research challenges head on"
2648,the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university presented its 2022 distinguished former student award to martha bellens-martin 85 a technical account management program director at vmware a global leader in cloud computing and virtualization software and services gratitude is how i feel about my time at a&m and my time ever since then throughout my career bellens-martin said during her acceptance speech i want to express gratitude to the mentors the professors all the student leaders and my lifelong aggie friends of course a special level of gratitude to the industrial engineering program it is such an incredible foundation that encompasses effectiveness efficiencies and processes bellens-martin received both her bachelors and masters degrees in industrial engineering from texas a&m after graduating she started her career designing plant layout and then began selling software to automate plant design she now manages and leads a team of technical account managers for vmware when you go and look for your career whether it's at the very beginning or you're ready to make a change finding the company that embodies your cultures and your values is critical she said we spend about 25% of our waking hours working so let's make sure that when you choose a career when you choose a path when you choose a company that that piece of your life is meaningful throughout her life bellens-martin has found many ways to give back to the department she actively works with the women in engineering program and has given financially through the establishment of the martha bellens-martin 85 scholarship to support undergraduate students in the department martha has shown exceptional commitment to her academic work in her career said dr lewis ntaimo department head her involvement by volunteering at events and support through scholarship have made a noteworthy impact on our students and establishes her as one of the most significant contributors to this program bellens-martin was presented with the award during the departments spring gala the distinguished former student award is given annually to former industrial and systems engineering students who have gone on to do great things and have an interest in impacting the department
2649,kristina and steve robertson 89 have recently established the kristina s and steve k robertson '89 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to corps of cadets students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in engineering technology in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university steve robertsons life has been markedly influenced by aggies the corps of cadets and the traditions of texas a&m from his great uncle edwin beck beckcom jr 38 to his oldest son steven p robertson 11 many of steves family members have earned their aggie rings following a high school visit with his second cousin lt col ed beckcom 65 at carswell air force base steve knew college station was the place for him to experience the military traditions that are embodied by the aggie spirit from the moment he stepped onto campus aggies began to shape steves future during his new student conference steve saw a friend (maj bryn a russell 89 us air force ret) he met the summer before at texas boys state and the two began talking about their intentions to join the corps of cadets this coincidental meeting led him to join the e-1 jocks outfit in the corps which would establish lifelong relationships between him and his buddies this was a decision that would shape my adult life robertson said there are 13 of us who made it through all four years together and we are still close to this day steve earned his degree in mechanical engineering technology which provided him a solid foundation of the skills that he would need to start his professional career though his classroom experience was critical it was the dedication and work ethic of his mentors and advisors that proved to be pivotal to his success dr tim coppinger 65 was my academic advisor professor and mentor robertson recalled he made a strong impact on me by encouraging the ‘art of creative ingenuity and persistence in working through a problem aggies continued to rally alongside steve and guide his steps from john heartsill 40 and noel bryant offering him a spring break job in 1987 to pay for his senior ring to david sahm 82 generously helping him and kristina obtain married student housing during their senior year john sodolak 70 mitch beasley 84 and sam weise mentored him in his student maintenance technician job at married student housing after steves graduation dick piner 50 hired him for his first full-time engineering job at total engineering services team incorporated (test inc) in new orleans the opportunity that mr piner gave me with progressive experience in the domestic and international upstream oil and gas industry was invaluable robertson said the exposure he gained at this job and the help of an ‘old ag contact led him to his next career opportunity at halliburton completion products in carrollton texas with what steve recalls as the biggest aggie family outside of an a&m club don perkins 77 rick welch 78 cindy tuckness 80 and numerous others were invaluable in his professional development his journey alongside fellow aggies brought him to chevron in 2007 he is now nearing 15 years of working at the company and currently holds the title of senior subsea controls engineer steve credits the comradery he has found among texas a&m alumni for allowing him to contribute to his industry the way he does today i am eternally grateful for the opportunities that my texas a&m education helped provide and the successes we have achieved together he said texas a&ms culture and traditions are what inspired steve and kristina to give back to the school that has given so much to them i may have walked across the stage alone in august 1989 to collect my diploma but in no way was it a solitary effort he said there are so many people who helped make that possible steve hopes to help others the same way he and kristina were helped we have a very strong desire to pay it back by paying it forward he said this endowment is one of those mechanisms for us to achieve our desire to help someone fulfill their goal of graduating from texas a&m the scholarship will be awarded to a student who is a member of the corps of cadets the strong military backgrounds in both steves and kristinas families led them to texas a&m and the corps of cadets so the desire to continue those traditions was a given we hope to reduce some of the financial strain on the recipient so that they can focus on their academics while still actively participating in the corps of cadets and the university robertson said by financially walking alongside aggie students the robertsons are able to fulfill a goal of generosity that they have had since his graduation it has always been our desire to give back to a&m with more than just our annual century club membership in a manner that directly benefits a student he said this endowment has provided that opportunity on a bigger scale
2650,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah simonds assistant director of development
2651,the world has been undergoing a digital transformation over the past few decades as technology has advanced the rise of digital platforms such as cloud computing blockchains and machine-learning services is leading to numerous new applications and transforming daily life however users often dont know the others they are dealing with and it is challenging to establish trust on these platforms texas a&m university researchers are working to improve this trust dr yupeng zhang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering recently received the national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award for his research project towards efficient and scalable zero-knowledge proofs the focus of his research is on developing efficient and scalable zero-knowledge proof schemes an important cryptographic primitive (well-established low-level cryptographic algorithms used to build cryptographic protocols) to ensure data privacy and computation integrity simultaneously in cryptography a zero-knowledge proof is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true while the prover avoids conveying any additional information apart from the fact that the statement is indeed true the essence of zero-knowledge proof is that it is trivial to prove that one possesses knowledge of certain information by simply revealing it; the challenge is to prove such possession without revealing the information itself or any additional information my research is to enhance the security privacy and integrity of data and computations in the digital world through schemes in the area of cryptography he said in this award ‘zero-knowledge proof is a powerful tool to establish trust between people without knowing each other ahead of time it allows one to convince others that their secret data has some properties without revealing the secret data itself because of this powerful functionality zero-knowledge proofs have found great applications in cutting-edge technologies to provide privacy scalability and integrity
2652,zhangs project advances three aspects of the zero-knowledge proof schemes: theory application and systems on the theory side new practical schemes with linear running time in the size of the computation are constructed based on error-correcting codes and expander graphs on the application side the project investigates machine-learning algorithms and graph algorithms and develops efficient zero-knowledge proofs tailored for these applications on the system side the project initiates the study of memory-efficient and distributed algorithms for zero-knowledge proofs zhang will bring the efficiency and scalability of zero-knowledge proofs to the next level his results will enable new applications of privacy-preserving and verifiable data mining on digital platforms to protect users data privacy he will also develop new course materials for undergraduate and graduate cybersecurity education and for broadening the participation in computing of underrepresented groups and k-12 students there are many such powerful schemes in the literature of cryptography but they were usually first proposed for theoretical interests zhang said my research is trying to bring them to practice by developing new schemes with good efficiency and scalability this usually involves new ideas from all aspects of theory algorithms applications and systems the research will make the schemes applicable for real-world products and accessible to developers and engineers in the industry to protect the security and privacy of data and computations zhang said there is a rising awareness of the importance of data security and privacy now and governments and companies are developing new regulations to protect user data under these new regulations companies have become open to using a new generation of cryptographic schemes in real-world products beyond the traditional encryption and digital signature scheme all without compromising the privacy and integrity of the data and computations in the long-term my research will make these new powerful schemes ready for wide deployment in practices he said overseen by the faculty early career development program career awards are one of the nsfs most prestigious form of recognition and support for up-and-coming researchers who exemplify the role of teachers/scholars through outstanding research excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations zhang was pleased to receive the prestigious award to help with his research the award is a great honor and a recognition for my research he said it is exciting to see that the research area is important and the new ideas are appealing to people in the community the award provides great support for me to advance the research in these directions i have also learned a lot from the mentors collaborators and reviewers during the process of the career award which improved my understanding of the challenges and the ways to move forward in several research topics
2653,student organizations across the college of engineering are doing amazing work to support their fellow students they are addressing mental health tackling environmental issues amplifying marginalized voices and more but they cant always do as much as they would like due to lack of funding this notion spurred the student engineers council (sec) to establish the engineering organization fund there are so many ambitious things that people want to do and their biggest inhibitor is resources said kyle beck sec president we want to utilize our resources to amplify the impact of these great opportunities and programs that exist in the college of engineerings student organizations established in 1939 by the dean of engineering the sec has been providing resources and opportunities to engineering students for 83 years its mission has remained the same to be a representative voice of all engineering students to increase engineering awareness and to promote professional advancement for all students in the college of engineering were here to serve the students and the organizations we represent them and their concerns to the faculty and administration working to benefit everyone the best we can beck said the sec currently has 140 members who serve on 15 committees to fulfill this mission the students also seek to use their talents to meet the needs of the surrounding community in addition to service projects with the big event and angel tree they host stem camps and workshops for local school children who may be interested in engineering the group also has a partnership with the reach project and are in the process of developing a digital graduation preparedness course among the many events hosted by the sec is the engineering career fair which serves to provide not only countless doors of opportunity for graduates and employers but also resources that the sec can use to give back to the students they serve after analyzing student survey responses and speaking with student leaders deans and advisors the sec determined that they could best utilize these resources by providing financial support for the 90 plus student organizations in the college of engineering our vision is to ensure that we can provide a platform for other societies and organizations in the college of engineering to connect collaborate and have the avenues to get to know other engineering students outside of a classroom setting beck saidthe sec has been continually impressed with the initiatives that have been accomplished by engineering student organizations its members hope this fund will allow those organizations to have an even greater impact within their community and industry while furthering engineering excellence the goal is for engineering organizations to have the capacity to do so much more beck said hopefully we can remove the financial burden see some creative new ideas and see people do more of what they are already doing really well the sec has also taken action to meet the needs of first-generation students through the establishment of the first-generation engineering students mentoring program fund half of this gift will be used to provide scholarships for first-generation students and the other half will be used at the discretion of the fgen program in conversations leading up to the establishment of this fund sec committee members met with several leaders on campus who outlined the impact fgen has on first-generation students within the college of engineering who make up more than 20% of the colleges undergraduate population among those they met with was dr john hurtado interim dean and vice chancellor for engineering and a first-generation college graduate dr hurtado and others helped bring light to some of the struggles that first-generation students face if you dont have the right resources and support that can be a really challenging transition beck said students across the college of engineering will experience the impact of the secs effort to continually bring the college to a new level of excellence like many previous and current members beck has seen what can be accomplished when aggie engineers stand beside each other in collaboration and innovation at the end of the day its a volunteer organization you are there because you want to serve all of the things we do happen because our members sacrifice their time and effort for other students here at the college of engineering or in the community around us
2654,endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
2655,the 2022 texas aimbots spring showdown competition a battle robot event will be hosted at texas a&m university by the robotics organization texas aimbots the event will take place on saturday may 21 at noon in the memorial student center room 2400 the competition is open to the public and all ages are encouraged to attend the spring showdown is a combat robotics competition focused on the creation of robots and is much like the battlebots competition these robots will go head to head in a small arena to try to destroy the opponent's robot with different weapons and geometries that the students have designed some robots even use internal combustion engines and flamethrowers there are three weight classes for this event: 150 grams for fairy 1 pound for ant and 3 pounds for beetle based on different criteria in the match that are judged using the standardized procedures for the advancement of robotic combat (sparc) set of rules the robots will gain points for stopping stalling destroying or knocking down the other robot many of the competitors participating this year are individual builders around texas traveling to college station to compete for top awards each match will be two minutes long and the 1-pound and 3-pound arena will be large enough to sustain sufficient ventilation for the use of potentially hazardous weapons while the 150-gram arena will be smaller protected by low walls the competition will be streamed on youtube for those unable to attend and all are welcomed to see the head-to-head showdown between these combat robots in person for more information about texas a&ms premier robotics team texas aimbots visit their website
2656,finding the right weight and strength are essential to success when attempting to make concrete float in early april the texas a&m university concrete canoe team struck the perfect balance and took home first place in the american society of civil engineers (asce) region 6 concrete canoe competition this is the texas a&m team's first victory since 2015with the regional win the team of 24 students including seven officers advanced to the national concrete canoe competition there they will compete against 23 other teams from around the globe on june 3-5 at louisiana tech university in ruston louisiana
2657,"""the win this year was especially rewarding coming off the virtual covid-19 year "" said hilaire garza a senior civil engineering major and co-captain ""the team was made up of almost an entirely new group of people who managed to get close during our weekly meetings everyone worked so hard putting in time and effort whenever they could""after a virtual year of concrete canoe competitions in 2021 the team was excited to get back on the water garza and co-captain ethan harris a senior civil engineering major began planning in august they started recruiting team members during the first month of the fall semester and then began planning and budgeting in mid-september when they received the competition rules"
2658,"""generally speaking the lighter the concrete is the weaker it becomes "" harris said ""this creates a balancing act where we try to make our boat as light as possible while also making sure it doesn't break during racing""it's also essential to make sure it doesn't break during transportation to the competition the team uses a 25-foot trailer to haul the canoe stands and display table the canoe is cradled by soft memory foam and styrofoam it takes eight to 10 members to lift the boat by handlast year they chose a viking theme but didn't get to build a canoe or themed display they made up for that this year""the viking regard for tradition makes it a fitting theme for a group of aggie engineers "" garza said ""the stands (for the canoe) are a sea serpent which is significant to norse mythology"" another challenge was using the decorative concrete embellishments in the canoe which they used to create the gold designs inside the canoe"
2659,"""we used 2 mm craft foam cut into various shapes and glued them to our mold before placing the concrete over it this left behind small inlays that could be later filled with different colors of concrete "" garza said ""it was against the rules to use any paints or stains so we had to get creative we included the texas a&m block lettering the viking tree of life and miss reveille in the canoe""another focus for the team was paddling the concrete canoe program is designed to test each team's knowledge creativity and stamina and includes several different races on the water""our team won first place in all of the races for our regional competition and we want to keep that streak going "" harris said ""races at competitions are rigorous but i'm confident our paddling team can get the job done we are slightly nervous because we know how good the competition is at the national level but we are also really confident in what we have accomplished this year"""
2660,as the future of the automotive industry heads toward the path of autonomous technology the vehicles themselves aren't the only component with changes on the horizon a recently graduated team of students in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university used their senior capstone design project to create a scaled-down mechatronic system capable of identifying a mock electric vehicle charging port and connecting itself unlike many capstone projects the electric vehicle autonomous assistant (evaa) team did not have a traditional sponsor instead the student-led project topic was proposed by team member sharon pearlnath and funded by the department as a walker entrepreneurship project it was guided by dr joanna tsenn instructional assistant professor and senior capstone design projects coordinator and dr james hubbard jr oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair i professor in addition to pearlnath the evaa team included mechanical engineering students shaelyn stacy eric tseng aaron hoyt ethan russell skyler roberts and andrew miskell their objective was to develop a mechanism that would locate the charging port of any electric vehicle autonomously a valuable skill for autonomous vehicles of the future
2661,"""as more vehicles can park themselves the demand for an autonomous electric vehicle charging system will allow cars to park charge and drive back to their owners without any further human interaction "" said stacy ""the focus of our design is to develop a system capable of connecting a charger to an electric vehicle autonomously"" the team's design won the overall showcase capstone award at the fall 2021 texas a&m engineering project showcase ""the team was impressive from the start with their enthusiasm motivation and ambitious plans "" tsenn said ""they worked hard and independently and learned many new skills to develop and prototype a system that integrates mechanical electrical and software design the team's win at the 2021 fall engineering project showcase was well deserved"" pearlnath said she was astounded by the team's final product when reflecting on her original proposal although it was far from an easy project thanks mainly to the complexity of the subsystems and various electrical mechanical and software challenges the team was well prepared by their education from the mechanical engineering department ""as a freshman i could have never imagined working on something so complex "" pearlnath said ""as mechanical engineering students we were equipped to design and manufacture a working product to full conception"""
2662,"as the team worked through challenges in integrating all the separate components needed for a successful final design tseng said it was a good lesson in the value of simplicity at conception the team initially planned to build a mobile autonomous robot to complete the task at hand however given the time and financial limitations they ultimately opted for a less complex design tseng said he learned the value of starting with a simple approach and growing into increasing complexity when working to solve a problem ""even after drastically reducing the scope of the project the project was still a huge challenge to implement simply due to the implementation and integration of mechanical electrical and software systems "" he said ""instead of starting out with an extremely complex problem a better approach would be to start with a simpler solution and iterate and improve upon it over time"" the team is excited to see how major automotive companies implement their own versions of their project in the years to come ""as things become more autonomous electronic vehicle charging will follow "" said russell ""companies such as tesla and volkswagen are already working on autonomous chargers to assist with the increasing need for public charging stations we predict that in the next 20 years cars and chargers will be fully autonomous and hope that other teams can pick up where we left off"""
2663,donna and lynn broyles have recently established the james h averett 68 memorial scholarship endowed by donna and lynn broyles distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students who are pursuing a degree in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university lynn broyles and jim averett first became friends as members of the texas a&m corps of cadets they were both in squadron animal eight and broyles has many fond memories of the two of them during their time at texas a&m aside from their shared experiences in the corps of cadets and accompanying antics around the quad broyles and averett were also mechanical engineering classmates lynn recalled that during their freshman year they were chemistry lab partners in a class that would sometimes continue deep into friday afternoons the two were often eager to get on the road to see madeline averetts girlfriend who he later married and donna broyless girlfriend at the time to both of their advantage averett was incredibly academically inclined thankfully i had jim as a lab partner he could zip through those labs in less than an hour and we would be on our way broyles said the comradery between the two friends continued to strengthen after they graduated from texas a&m together they completed united states air force pilot training at vance air force base and pilot instruction training at tyndall air force base they both became instructors in the t-38a talon a supersonic jet trainer
2664,after his service in the us air force averett continued his career as a pilot and flew for grand canyon airlines martin aviation and delta airlines in his retirement he became well known throughout the flying formation community known by the call sign flagman he owned and flew both a beechcraft bonanza and an rv-8 unfortunately on nov 6 2020 while practicing for a veterans day performance averett lost his life in a mid-air collision in fredericksburg texas his death was mourned by the flying formation community and all those who knew him jim always had a quick smile and terrific sense of humor broyles said i never knew anyone that did not like him donna and lynn broyles were both significantly impacted by the life and death of their dear friend they established the scholarship within the mechanical engineering department to encourage and enable students to achieve their mechanical engineering degree in honor of averett and the inspiring influence he had he was a true and loyal aggie husband father grandfather and friend broyles saidbecause of averetts experiences at texas a&m the scholarship was established with selection preferences that the recipient be a member of the corps of cadets and a junior or senioraveretts legacy lives on through the loyalty and comradery of the aggie spirit the squadron animal eight class of '68 has gathered for aggie muster for the last 30 years last year we mustered with the gillespie county a&m club which was jim's hometown club broyles said the aggie tradition holds a deeper meaning following averetts passing this year we held a muster in seguin texas and we honored jim gig' em jimmy
2665,endowments supporting the students in the college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
2666,dr joseph sang-ii kwon associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university alongside dr arul jayaraman executive associate dean of the college of engineering received the 2021 premium award for best paper for the institution of engineering and technology (iet) in systems biology their study was published in vol 13 issue 4 of iet systems biology for any biological system there are signaling pathways a series of chemical reactions that allow the cell to perform functions such as cell divisions or cell death within these reactions several proteins and catalysts are involved that contribute to the difficulty of developing mathematical models that accurately describe these pathways in addition the cost of obtaining an accurate model can be high and labor-intensive and there is often limited information about the pathway the researchers took a systems biology approach to combat this issue which uses data clustering to combine different iterations of pathways creating a time-varying model based on nominal models available in literature if you were to use this one simple model for the entirety of systems that change frequently the models accuracy could be damaged said kwon if you make small adjustments to a model depending on the time domain you can expect much better accuracy using the researchers intracellular signaling model starts with a global sensitivity analysis that helps give value to the importance of the model and the way inputs will impact outputs as well as the most critical parameters second measurement data is clustered to determine temporal subdomains where the parameters take different values finally a least-squares problem is solved which helps identify the best options for a data set the proposed methodology is a semi-data-driven approach where the model construction is guided by both the available experimental data and the mechanistic model specifically based on the experimental data the temporal profiles of the model parameters are inferred to complement the model mismatch due to the use of a nominal model the resultant model can provide relatively accurate predictions in spite of the incomplete knowledge of the underlying system at the same time the use of the mechanistic model allows the resultant model to be used in the detailed analysis of the underlying mechanisms which is difficult to perform through a data-driven model a better understanding of the nuclear factor kappa b (nf-κb) pathway would enable the design of more specific and effective therapeutic approaches for treating inflammatory diseases the researchers hope to use this pathway in broader capacities as it shows potential to be used when mathematical models are not sufficient for the design of experiments
2667,tanaya mandal doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university was one of 15 recipients from the us to be awarded the 2020 society for the advancement of material and process engineering (sampe) international university leader experience awardthis award gives winners the opportunity to network with peers and industry professionals by sending them to the sampe north america conference and exhibition however due to the covid-19 pandemic the 2020 event was canceled recipients missed out on the opportunity to make the journey to network and increase their knowledge of the materials and processing communityto make up for this lost opportunity 2020 winners have been invited to attend the sampe 2022 conference and exhibition in charlotte north carolina may 22-26mandal will be attending the conference and will also receive her award at the in-person eventi am very thrilled to be receiving this award and finally being able to attend this conference in may said mandal i will not only be gaining valuable networking opportunities and enhance my leadership skillset in addition to this award but also represent the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&mher research focuses on composites with high-heat shielding applicationsaccording to their website sampe is a global professional member society that provides enhanced educational opportunities by delivering information on new and advanced materials and processing technology
2668,erin ingram a junior in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university found an enthusiasm for renewable energy and is pursuing a path toward a more sustainable future to begin this endeavor she established her place within the engineers for a sustainable world program during her freshman year as a team lead for the solar charging station team for the past two years the team has been working to implement a solar charging station outside of the zachry engineering education complex to charge students' phones using the sun the team is comprised of 10 engineering students from different disciplines including electrical engineering and mechanical engineering this multidisciplinary project is currently funded by the aggie green fund and is in the development stage i noticed that there wasn't any renewable energy to be seen on campus and thats something im really passionate about ingram said i wanted to create something that would allow engineering students to interact with sustainable energy see that its reliable and maybe become inspired to pursue it in their career she is also currently pursuing undergraduate research in the stored ion and bio optics research laboratory under dr hans schuessler professor in the department of physics and astronomy at texas a&m there ingram is working on an atmospheric spectroscopy system aimed at detecting dangerous hydrofluoric acid leaks in industrial production plants for batteries microelectronics dna-sequencing reagents and more this semester i've developed from scratch a handheld device similar to a gaming controller that controls the movement of our telescopes motor which is a pivotal part of reading data this technology has applications outside of hydrofluoric acid leaks such as measuring greenhouse gas levels or other pollutants in the atmosphere she said though ingram is excited to now contribute to the role of electrical engineers in the future of climate change mitigation and sustainability she started out in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering it wasnt until her second internship with freese and nichols an engineering design firm specializing in water resources infrastructure that she realized electrical engineering was the path for her
2669,ingram has completed three internships thus far and will also be interning with exxonmobil this summer where she will gain hands-on experience with power systems she hopes to become involved in their growing carbon capture and storage initiatives looking ahead ingram hopes to pursue a career in renewable energy research and development but she is also interested in furthering her education in electrical engineering before she dives into the field full time
2670,nearly 1 200 engineering seniors presented their capstone design projects all over the zachry engineering education complex at the 2022 engineering project showcase on april 29 after two years of being held virtually due to the covid-19 pandemic over 240 projects dedicated to solving engineering industry challenges were on display for the public to see and for industry judges to present with top awards some projects had industry sponsorships who directly gave the teams problems to solve that their companies face in the end 25 teams were awarded prize money totaling $15 000 showcase judge craig brown founder and ceo of bray international inc said it was amazing to see students trying to solve real-world problems proving that they learn more than just academics at texas a&m university
2671,i love coming back to texas a&ms engineering project showcase; i get invigorated by the energy and the passion of all the young aggie students and the innovations that they come up with said brown it gives a lot of promise for what our engineers from texas a&m are going to do in the future the showcase not only celebrated students for their hard work and accomplishments during their time at texas a&m but it also allowed students to network with industry students who were not yet employed were able to indicate their interest in employment opportunities allowing judges to also recruit for their companies it is almost like a reversed career fair said magda lagoudas executive director of the industry and nonprofit partnerships program in the college instead of the students going around company booths the companies come to the students
2672,lagoudas emphasized the importance of the showcase as capstone design projects prepare students before they enter the workforce and give them the ability to apply the skills they have learned during their undergraduate years for the public and industry to see the overall showcase capstone design award for $1 500 sponsored by emerson was given to reliable instrument counter a team tasked with finding an efficient and accurate way to count surgical instruments their solution was a table with built-in technology that quickly and accurately counts the number of instruments before and after surgery to avoid any of them being left inside bodies the top three teams from each department are listed below
2673,engineering project showcase 2022 winners: biological and agricultural engineering award first place ($500)team: anheuser-busch vibration monitoring for predictive maintenance - mamu vibration solutions members: matthew atkins michael unterman second place ($350)team: nicaraqua: la fortuna water conveyance and distribution system members: alexandria werner bailey graham john keener mason fiedler mitchell mcdonald third place ($250)team: camera imaging for plastic detection in cotton gins members: john womack samuel pyka biomedical engineering awards first place ($750)team: endotrack members: amanda trevino kassidy porche nathan bliss rachel greve srichakrika nunna xiao ling second place ($500)team: electronic quadroscopemembers: allison stephens carla bassil carley stafford haley edwards madison turpin skylar gallegos third place ($250)team: hystero-heromembers: coby mcnichols hannah chamberlain maddie jordan megan rodgers nadean zahra rachel rice computer science and engineering awards first place tie ($1 000) sponsored by caterpillarteam: walmart anonymization pipeline members: andrew han hoa nguyen mary faith mitchell rosendo narvaez taylor wilson team: tias tias is a scheduler members: benjamin beauchamp dante barbieri evelyn crowe jeremy spotts shane mcgookey second place ($500)team: altidormembers: julie herrick mason medrano reid neason saul diosdado zachary handshoe electrical and computer engineering awards first place ($1 000) sponsored by baker hughesteam: app-controlled plant watering members: barrett gaertner oren shed sean cooley second place ($750)team: hydrogen line telescopemembers: johanna hein warren herrington third place ($500) team: private information retrieval with side information and message popularitymembers: alejandro gomez-leos engineering technology and industrial distribution awards first place ($1 000) sponsored by kiewitteam: sub orbital astromaterial research (soar) members: kevin leonard michael townsend ryan labarbera sean kersch-hama second place ($750)team: mobile asset transportation system (mats)members: ethan mccall nicolas stockton pedro guillen robert cullen shilow bower third place ($500) team: whoop ai vex roboticsmembers: aaron quigg britton corbett david saunders gabriel rodriguez jonathan ghering lucas seran montana barker ryan vaughan industrial and systems engineering awards first place ($1 000) sponsored by h4 architects + engineersteam: baylor scott & white (rock prairie)members: dylan choate lacey hawthorne michael whittaker rafael ramos second place ($750)team: part degreasing solutionsmembers: bryana moya joaquin cieri lukas featherston morgan roberts third place ($500) team: aggieland coffee: financial and process analysis of roasting operationsmembers: dhakshin subbaiah james chung lissete sillas melanie beattie material science and engineering awards first place ($500)team: modular mannequin leak test developmentmembers: gualberto de la garza nhu vu will bryan second place ($350)team: mitigating corrosion and degradation of metallic fixtures used in the galvanizing process members: bethel oluwole charles shoalmire peyton usoff ritai su third place ($250)team: instrumented tool holder for quick indication of machining performance members: aaron george claire swank david skillern joseph duran mechanical engineering awards first place ($1 000) sponsored by andersen windows & doorsteam: multiplanetary agricultural sustainmentmembers: connor castans holden campbell ian suarez jacob schababerle katherine plaza peter simmons second place ($750)team: lunar container members: jason bondi matthew plummer nathaniel bass tara brown tyler haygood third place ($500) team: sunny the visormembers: alex araujo jacob chaparro kasey dearing lorraine fernando tanner thornton tessa carreno
2674,laser powder bed fusion a 3d-printing technique offers potential in the manufacturing industry particularly when fabricating nickel-titanium shape memory alloys with complex geometries although this manufacturing technique is attractive for applications in the biomedical and aerospace fields it has rarely showcased the superelasticity required for specific applications using nickel-titanium shape memory alloys defects generated and changes imposed onto the material during the 3d-printing process prevented the superelasticity from appearing in 3d-printed nickel-titanium researchers from texas a&m university recently showcased superior tensile superelasticity by fabricating a shape memory alloy through laser powder bed fusion nearly doubling the maximum superelasticity reported in literature for 3d printing this study was recently published in vol 229 of the acta materialia journal nickel-titanium shape memory alloys have various applications due to their ability to return to their original shape upon heating or upon removal of the applied stress therefore they can be used in biomedical and aerospace fields for stents implants surgical devices and aircraft wings however developing and properly fabricating these materials requires extensive research to characterize functional properties and examine the microstructure shape memory alloys are smart materials that can remember their high-temperature shapes said dr lei xue a former doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering and the first author of the publication although they can be utilized in many ways fabricating shape memory alloys into complex shapes requires fine-tuning to ensure the material exhibits the desired properties laser powder bed fusion is an additive manufacturing technique that presents a way to produce nickel-titanium shape memory alloys effectively and efficiently offering a pathway to quick manufacturing or prototyping this technique similar to polymer 3d printing uses a laser to fuse metal or alloy powders layer by layer the layer-by-layer process is beneficial because it can create parts with complex geometries that would be impossible in traditional manufacturing using a 3d printer we spread the alloy powder over a substrate and then use the laser to melt the powder forming one full layer said xue we repeat this layering scanning the same or different patterns until the desired structure is formed unfortunately most nickel-titanium materials cannot withstand the current laser powder bed fusion process often resulting in printing defects such as porosity warping or delamination caused by large thermal gradient and brittleness from oxidation in addition the laser can change the composition of the material due to evaporation during printing to combat this issue the researchers used an optimization framework they created in a previous study which can determine optimal process parameters to achieve defect-free structure and specific material properties with this framework as well as the change in composition and refined process parameters the researchers fabricated nickel-titanium parts that consistently exhibited a room temperature tensile superelasticity of 6% in the as-printed condition (without post-fabrication heat treatment) this level of superelasticity is nearly double the amount previously seen in literature for 3d printing the ability to produce shape memory alloys through 3d printing with increased superelasticity means the materials are more capable of handling applied deformation using 3d printing to develop these superior materials will reduce the cost and time of the manufacturing process in the future the researchers hope their discoveries will lead to increased use of printed nickel-titanium shape memory alloys in biomedical and aerospace applications this study can serve as a guide on how to print nickel-titanium shape memory alloys with desired mechanical and functional characteristics said xue if we can tailor the crystallographic texture and microstructure there are far more applications these shape memory alloys can be used in this research was funded by the us army research laboratory the national priorities research program grant the qatar national research fund and the us national science foundation grant other contributors to the publication include materials science and engineering department head dr ibrahim karaman; materials science and engineering professors dr kadri can atli and dr raymundo arroyave; former materials science and engineering student dr abhinav srivastava and current student nathan hite; wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial systems and engineering professor dr alaa elwany; industrial systems and engineering student chen zhang; and us army research laboratory researchers dr asher c leff dr adam a wilson and dr darin j sharar
2675,texas a&m university researchers have received a grant from the national science foundation's (nsf) resilient & intelligent nextg systems (rings) program the three-year $1 million project aims to advance the resiliency of next-generation wireless and mobile communication networking sensing and computing systems dr krishna narayanan the eric d rubin 06 professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m will serve as the lead principal investigator of the project narayanan will be working alongside co-principal investigators professor dr jean-francois chamberland and associate professor dr sebastian hoyos from electrical and computer engineering and dr sunay palsole assistant vice chancellor for engineering remote education in the college of engineering currently a primary focus for cellular providers is the peak data rate on the downlink or the fastest data transfer rate available from the internet to a cellular device this means that depending on a persons location and accessibility to a base station or cell tower they may occasionally have an excellent connection and high-speed access to the network apps for example will perform well at that moment but not at times when accessibility to a cell tower is limited for this project narayanan and his team are looking at ways to expand the resiliency of the network and build an infrastructure to allow for consistently reliable access to the network regardless of location or other factors that impact current connectivity rates many applications need a more resilient reliable connection to a base station this project not only aims to advance the resiliency of devices such as cell phones but it also looks to open new doors for many types of systems such as machines surveillance cameras autonomous vehicles remote sensors etc that connect to base stations to execute this the team will pursue the idea of using cell-free systems where a device may be connected to multiple base stations at the same time to improve resiliency every device encodes the data in exactly the same way without the base station telling them how to pick the parameters for how to encode their data the team has been at the forefront of research in designing these unsourced random access schemes while narayanan chamberland and hoyos are focused primarily on the research palsole will lead an educational outreach aspect of the project this effort will include the creation of educational modules and their dissemination for broad use by students at other universities and by engineers in the industry a distinct facet of this project is that in addition to government funding the rings program also features industry partners who provide an opportunity for researchers to receive pertinent feedback and information on their perspectives and challenges related to current wireless systems this collaboration ensures the rapid transition of ideas from academia to industry the opportunity to actually get feedback from companies and learn about problems that are of actual interest to them is one of the most exciting things for me in this project narayanan said the nsf rings program is partnered with the office of the under secretary of defense for research and engineering the national institute of standards and technology and a number of industry partners the project was also endorsed by the united nations decade of ocean science for sustainable development
2676,the texas chapter of american traffic safety services association (tx-atssa) recently established the texas chapter/american traffic safety services association scholarship distributions from this endowment will provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university atssa represents the roadway safety infrastructure industry with effective legislative advocacy traffic control safety training and a far-reaching member partnership atssa helps shift the focus of transportation toward saving lives and reducing injuries tx-attsa is largely comprised of well-respected transportation professionals from all over the state of texas each year the chapter hosts several fundraising events that enable it to give charitably in its field this year texas a&m was its top-choice recipient of the funds shelley williams tx-atssa president said that over half of the organizations members graduated from texas a&m our aggie members are all productive contributing members of the transportation community she said other members experience with aggie professionals and friends was highly influential on their decision to financially support students at texas a&m the companys representatives are hopeful that their gift will help eliminate the financial hurdles engineering students face they have made additional selection preferences that recipients of this scholarship be a sophomore junior or senior a graduate of a texas high school and pursuing a career in construction management texas a&ms reputation brings a lot to the table in the professional world williams said it is our hope to inspire aspiring traffic or construction engineers to continue their education and to use it in a transportation role in texas
2677,endowments supporting the students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please email ryan nichols assistant director of development
2678,shauna noonan recently established the shauna noonan petroleum engineering endowed scholarship - honoring women in the petroleum engineering industry distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university noonan is a petroleum engineering graduate from the university of alberta in canada during her time there she was fortunate to receive scholarships similar to the one she endowed to help alleviate the financial burden of attending college she was proud to know she was able to help pay her way through her college journey and has always dreamed of paying it forward once she became established in her own career why did she choose texas a&m unfortunately the university of albertas petroleum program has changed considerably since noonan was a student and no longer has its own petroleum engineering department many universities around the world have begun reshaping their programs away from the petroleum industry noonan wanted to present her endowment to a school that would have a strong petroleum department for decades to come ive been in a bit of a quandary for probably the last five years as to where i even want to (endow) the scholarship noonan said after researching and weighing her options for scholarship recipient locations noonan made her final decision after attending a texas a&m petroleum engineering department former student event noonan spoke to many former students and learned more about the culture of texas a&m engineering but the one person that solidified her decision was department head dr jeff spath (spath) ended his talk by saying that as long as he is around texas a&ms petroleum department will be the last one standing noonan said that was when i had the epiphany that i now know the home of where i want to establish my scholarship noonan intends for this scholarship to not only alleviate the financial burden students may endure but also to promote champions of gender diversity in the petroleum industry thus noonan has designated this scholarship for those involved in the society of women engineers (swe) program whether youre male or female being involved as a student in swe makes you aware of several things if youre female how to best set yourself up on a great career trajectory if youre male how to not only be a better collaborator but understand some of the unique issues that women in this industry have noonan said noonan did not have many women role models in her early career due to this some of her biggest supporters and most influential mentors have been men that understand working women she believes that the increased inclusion of women in oil and gas will be more beneficial for future generations and will encourage women to step outside of stereotypically female roles i had few female role models available to me i had to create my own doors of opportunity noonan said even after her role as the 2020 spe president of the society of petroleum engineers noonan still travels globally with work and speaking at industry events through the years she has become confident in her position in the petroleum industry and has developed traits needed to succeed in her career inspiring fellow women engineers to do the same a lot of that is realizing those traits in myself which has motivated me to seek opportunities noonan said i try to instill these traits into my two daughters allowing them to enter the workforce more self-aware than i was
2679,endowments supporting students in the college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact kelly corcoran senior director of development
2680,mars is a yearly conference hosted by amazon founder jeff bezos that brings together innovative minds in machine learning automation robotics and space to share new ideas across these rapidly advancing domains dr kiju lee associate professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university attended the 5th annual event to present her adaptive wheel-and-leg transformable robot (α-waltr) with an on-stage live demonstration in ojai california lee was one of 14 invited presenters this year α-waltr can efficiently traverse varying surfaces including staircases using wheels or legs depending on its immediate need with or without human intervention
2681,lee designed α-waltr with the goal of advancing ground mobility in robots she presented the design-driven innovation as well as her teams rapid and intensive development journey during the covid-19 pandemic toward the end of her talk lee invited α-waltr onstage while her demonstration team controlled the robot to climb over the stairs and come up to the stage demonstrating the robots signature stair-traversing capability
2682,i was very humbled to be there with so many brilliant and innovative minds said lee it was such an inspiring and fun experience lees demonstration team included three mechanical engineering graduate students: kangneoung lee yuan wei and annalisa tostenson the development of α-waltr was supported by the defense advanced research projects agency under the offensive swarm-enabled tactics sprint-5 effort
2683,brent vela ‘20 a graduate student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has received the prestigious national science foundations (nsf) graduate research fellowship (grfp) vela received his bachelors degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m and is currently a doctoral student under the direction of materials science and engineering professor dr raymundo arróyave velas exposure to bayesian statistics in a safety engineering course led him to arróyaves lab where researchers use bayesian inference in materials science and design velas current research focuses on the development of artificial intelligence-enabled frameworks capable of optimally designing experiments based on all information currently known including experiment simulation and expert opinion the framework is being deployed on a project where they are designing high-entropy alloys for jet turbine blade applications it is like searching for a needle in a multidimensional haystack said vela vela works with arróyave to realize the computational aspects of the framework as well as with dr ibrahim karaman department head and his students to incorporate expert opinion and experimental measurements into the framework vela said he was pleased to get the award for his research no man is an island i am thankful to all my mentors past and present he said i am grateful to the people who gave me a strong foundation and the opportunity to even pursue higher educationbrent is a brilliant student who is an essential member of our team as we try to solve an extremely hard problem said arróyave i am really lucky to have him as my student and i am sure he will achieve great things in the future as he pioneers these new methods to accelerate the discovery of materials the nsf grfp recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in nsf-supported stem disciplines who are pursuing research-based masters and doctoral degrees at accredited us institutions the five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support including an annual stipend of $34 000 and a cost of education allowance of $12 000 to the institution
2684,"the association of former students at texas a&m university featured dr chibueze amanchukwu 12 in its latest 12 under 12 young alumni spotlight the award recognizes the contributions of young alumni who have graduated within the last 12 years and are leading the way in innovation and service amanchukwu is a graduate of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering but his interest in engineering began in high school his elective engineering course was taught by a former student who frequently spoke of and used texas a&m resources in her lessons i think i was indoctrinated into being an aggie without even knowing said amanchukwu i knew i wanted to pursue engineering; i had heard about texas a&m from class and read it was one of the countrys top chemical engineering programs all these factors encouraged me to attend texas a&m after receiving his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering he obtained his doctorate from the massachusetts institute of technology he then completed his postdoctoral training at stanford university now an assistant professor at the pritzker school of molecular engineering at the university of chicago he also has a joint appointment at argonne national laboratory his research focuses on developing materials for next-generation batteries and carbon dioxide conversion he has published more than 20 research papers on the subject many of which are in top-tier journals a significant part of his career focuses on mentorship to date he has mentored over 20 undergraduate and graduate students in addition he strives to introduce minority students and underrepresented groups to science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) it is rewarding to see how the impact of mentorship can spread into industry and academic spaces said amanchukwu i remain invested in bringing minority and underrepresented students into stem my motivation as a professor is to ensure that i open doors for students interested in revolutionizing sustainable and renewable energies minority populations must have opportunities to participate in this process"" amanchukwu fondly remembers his time at texas a&m playing intramural sports with his friends being part of the american institute of chemical engineers participating in related cultural events hosted by the african student association and studying in the jack e brown engineering building the training and mentorship i received from texas a&m alongside the support system and leadership experiences i gained set me up to succeed in my future endeavors said amanchukwu i learned the importance of service community and academic excellence which provided opportunities for me after graduation amanchukwu continues his studies hoping to solve some of the challenges of next-generation battery chemistries so that batteries can last longer and be more efficient a key component of his research is making lower-cost and higher-performance products additionally he plans to continue developing programs for minority students ive always felt supported by texas a&m throughout my career he said i hope this highlight brings awareness to the things my research group and i are doing and showcases the opportunities available in stem another graduate of the chemical engineering department dr lance brockway 09 earned a spot in the 12 under 12 young alumni spotlight a technologist and entrepreneur brockway is the founder chief technology officer and vice president of business development at nelumbo an advanced materials startup"
2685,dr emily pentzer associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering and department of chemistry at texas a&m university was named a national finalist for the 2022 blavatnik national award for young scientists in physical sciences & engineering presented by the new york academy of sciences and the blavatnik family foundation the award recognizes faculty under the age of 42 who are making significant contributions to life sciences chemistry and/or physical sciences and engineering i dont even know what emotion i could say i felt when i found out that i was a finalist for the blavatnik award said pentzer i felt a sense of gratefulness and excitement to tell my students the hard work theyve contributed the time the energy and the effort are paying off while i am a finalist i think (the award) really speaks to what my research group has accomplished pentzer has an established history in materials science engineering and chemistry additionally highlighted by her affiliate position in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m after starting her research group at case western reserve university in 2013 she and her team moved to texas a&m in the summer of 2019 her research focuses on applied science inspired by societal problems this includes research areas such as thermal energy harvesting carbon capture energy storage and materials development in particular her group uses additive manufacturing and 3d printing to design and develop materials that can help regulate temperatures in buildings we input a significant amount of energy into controlling the temperature inside buildings from air conditioning to turning on a furnace she said if we can create materials and structures capable of passively controlling temperature within buildings this could reduce energy input we can architect these materials into different structures and test them for specific properties that aid in temperature control in addition to her research pentzer has served as a mentor to students many of whom have pursued careers in stem (science technology engineering and medicine) im most proud of the students who have graduated from my group who have not only developed as researchers but in their laboratory techniques and how to discuss and convey their research results she said this has prepared them for positions in stem fields and many are part of the stem workforce in the united states moving forward she hopes to use this accomplishment as a catalyst to support the various research ventures her group is pursuing being a finalist for the blavatnik award sets our group up for prolonged contributions to materials science and engineering pentzer said i hope this honor aids in continually attracting top students and postdoctoral students to texas a&m i also hope this honor enables us to start collaborations with researchers across the university and nation on a larger scale pentzer is using this achievement to help build a more inclusive collaborative and integrated scientific community im proud of the scientific community as we continue developing an environment where we can support people from all different backgrounds said pentzer the support of honors like this helps us become more innovative more creative and provides the opportunity for us to really pursue solutions that arent possible within standard ways of thinking the blavatnik national awards will be presented at the american museum of natural history in new york city on tuesday september 19
2686,"a team of students from texas a&m university placed third in the mitre corporations 2022 embedded capture the flag (ectf) competition this year 32 high school and university teams from across the united states singapore england and india competed ""i am really pleased to see texas a&m students consistently excelling in this competition keeping pace with competitors from top schools like mit and carnegie mellon said dr martin carlisle professor of practice in the department of computer science and engineering and the teams faculty advisor this is our third year competing and each year we have been one of the top teams"" the ectf is a semester-long two-phase competition where participants are challenged to create a secure system for an embedded device and learn from their mistakes its focus on securing embedded systems like mobile devices and gps systems and inclusion of a design-and-build phase set it apart from traditional capture the flag competitions this year the teams were challenged to design a secure bootloader for an avionic device system which refers to electronic systems used on aircraft satellites and spacecraft the system had to be able to protect aircraft mission secrets and intellectual property while in untrusted environments as an additional challenge it also had to have the ability to counter supply chain threats such as hardware trojans a bootloader is a small program that verifies and loads all relevant operating system data when a computer/device is turned on its responsible for ensuring that malicious operating systems do not run and providing a secure mechanism through which the operating system can be updated using the programming language rust the team verified that a trusted machine had signed the operating system in their bootloader they also used encryption to make sure that attackers with the ability to see when an update is delivered to the device could not gain access to proprietary secrets their use of rust and secure design principles led them to earn a fortress award which is given to the team whose defenses last the longest ""mitre ectf is something i never thought id be a part of but im so glad to have been said computer science student emily murphy i learned a ton about what embedded systems are how to design a secure one and how we can attack others it was a real application of how the security of these systems can have a huge impact"" the teams were recognized in a virtual awards ceremony on april 27 the members of this years team included: abhishek bhattacharyya (general engineering) justin block (electronic systems engineering technology) ryan brasseaux (computer engineering) cormac cupples (computer engineering) liam haber (computer science) danny hernandez (technology management) luke loera (computer science) nathan nguyen (computer science and applied mathematical sciences) mark poveda (general engineering) bode raymond (computing) lane simmons (general engineering) anna slater (computer engineering) derek viet (computer engineering) and rohan viswanathan (computer science)"
2687,accurately monitoring the flow of fluids injected downhole to enhance oil recovery is critical for improving the efficiency of reservoir production methods current software uses streamline calculations to visualize the flow digitally but streamline math assumes a consistent fluid velocity texas a&m university researcher dr hongquan chen is spearheading a two-year project to upgrade the software with pathline calculation visualizations which can show how changing conditions underground affect the speed and direction of fluids the advanced work is funded by a $328 000 saudi aramco grant since no cameras exist underground to show detailed reservoir activity tracking injected fluid movement is a matter of math based on data and the laws of physics to render or visually create flow simulations streamline software is fast enough to render an instant flow field like a snapshot still it cant keep up with flow alterations especially when reservoir pressures drop or increase with startups or shutdowns in adjacent wells pathline calculations consider fluid to be made of individual particles and all instances of each fluid particles movements are traced and combined into a tracking flow like a video think of buildings on the texas a&m campus as the geologic structure underground and the students moving between them as the individual fluid particles chen explained streamlines would be the timed snapshots from security cameras that track students leaving or entering the buildings pathlines would be tracking every students phone by gps location as they traveled their entire routes to class so streamlines assume a steady walk between buildings and pathlines show if they ran walked or stopped to talk
2688,chen graduated with a doctoral degree from texas a&m and his research topic involved advanced streamline tracing techniques geologic model calibration and rate optimization in fact he developed the currently used streamline software as part of his doctoral project so providing the upgrade seemed logical upgrading the software means chen is enhancing the software architecture to accommodate a robust parallel calculation process while developing algorithms to trace the fluid particle positions or pathline segments across time steps in the end all the pathline segments will be chain-linked into a flow-over-time video like a computer-animated movie because the particle locations are captured frame by frame any flow field changes that disturb the particles movement will show up in the video the upgrade is a huge undertaking thankfully chen made a hobby of learning computer science and parallel computing during his graduate school years noting that these tools are extremely useful in engineering solutions to problems he is putting that education to good use while designing the software architecture and algorithms to be efficient and practical enough for field application however the software must handle models with billions of cells within minutes and show a video of movement in almost real time to be helpful on site according to chen several aspects of the project are ready the high-performance computing strategy the functional module hierarchy and the data structures to be used as critical designs in the software the project is progressing smoothly but chen did mention caveats more challenges await us in the testing and debugging stage chen said most software engineers say to allow 20% of your time for implementation and 80% for testing and debugging we face the challenge of large-scale models and time-consuming computations making debugging even more difficult the project currently focuses on fluid flow in conventional oil and gas reservoirs but chen said pathlines could also reflect fluid migration in more complicated reservoirs the calculations could also work with gas injections easily tracking and displaying whether carbon dioxide or hydrogen penetrates deeply into a storage reservoir or migrates to a place of high leakage risk we could even extend this to geothermal problems said chen like fluids thermal energy can also be traced though heat flow is more intangible this could visualize any subsurface flow whether fluid or heat the potential is there
2689,six faculty members from the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering received recognition from the institute of industrial and systems engineers (iise) during its annual conference in may i am proud of our faculty and how they are representing industrial engineering at the national level said department head dr lewis ntaimo two professors were named 2022 fellows the highest classification of iise membership it is a great honor to be elected as a fellow dr amarnath banerjee said i would like to thank my department colleagues for nominating me for the award and our peers in iise who selected me for the award dr zhijian zj pei said he was grateful to be named a fellow industrial and systems engineering is one of the best engineering disciplines pei said we find better ways to make products and provide services both my children have degrees in industrial engineering dr hamid parsaei professor received two awards: the albert g holzman distinguished educator award and the joint publishers book-of-the-year award i extend my heartfelt thanks to many colleagues who took a chance on me over the past 38 years by granting me the opportunity to work with them and benefit from their wisdom experience and guidance parsaei said dr alaa elwany associate professor received the george l smith international award for excellence in promotion of industrial engineering award elwany promotes industrial engineering at the eindhoven university of technology in the netherlands by organizing workshops that involve prominent participants from three continents to promote stochastic operations research and its applications he has also contributed to training students to solve core industrial engineering problems at leading organizations such as philips healthcare and asml and organized study abroad opportunities for students through the arab academy for science and technology in egypt engineering is a discipline with no borders and i have been particularly fortunate for having gotten the opportunity to engage with some of the finest members of the international industrial engineering community elwany said dr ranjana mehta associate professor received the award for technical innovation in industrial engineering which honors an innovative technical contribution to the industrial engineering profession that may be recognized through either theory design application implementation or leadership research and development efforts in my lab translate the fundamental science of neuroergonomics into meaningful industrial engineering tools practices and workplace safety standards mehta said dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor received the dr hamed k eldin outstanding early career ie in academia award which recognizes individuals in academia who have demonstrated outstanding characteristics in education leadership professionalism and potential in industrial engineering i am grateful for the recognition i have received for my early career research teaching service and my overall scholarly and practical contributions sasangohar said winning this award would not have been possible without the inspiration i have received from my mentors colleagues and students all six were recognized in a ceremony in seattle washington
2690,in january 2021 texas a&m universitys formula sae a student organization that builds different formula cars for competitions debuted a new team formula electric (formula e) which focuses on building formula-style cars with pure electric engines the team will be competing with their first-ever formula electric car on june 15 2022 in detroit at the international speedway luis garcia graduate student and project manager for formula e described the team as an opportunity for young engineering students to gain experience in the complete engineering design process in our classes we only learn so much said garcia we are taught the fundamentals of the theories we are supposed to know but formula e is a place where students can apply them not only physically but throughout the entire process from scratch to the final product during the complete engineering process students research past designs similar to what they are trying to create design components such as parts and materials that they will need based on what they have learned and construct and manufacture them when finished students validate their work by making sure that the analysis they made in the beginning was correct and that the vehicle works this provides students with a lot of skills for the automotive industry and can be applied to any engineering field because of that common process said garcia garcia serves as a point of contact for the team and when there is a problem the students go to him for guidance and work together to create solutions he oversees the entire team and makes sure they continue on the right path to success this is a first-year team and there is no blueprint we can follow since no one else has done it before said garcia we are truly learning from scratch and i just try my best to help out the team dr srikanth saripalli professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and director of center for autonomous vehicles and sensor emphasized that the team is filled with engineering students of all disciplines he said there is a high demand for manufacturing electric vehicles there has been a push toward electric-based transportation said saripalli every major manufacturer of passenger vehicles has decided they will focus on electric vehicles over the next decade primarily because of emissions saripalli said major companies such as tesla and toyota have moved to texas to begin manufacturing so as an important venue for electrical and mechanical engineers it was important for texas a&m to get into the electric business throughout this one-year process formula e not only helps students apply their fundamental knowledge from courses to the building of the cars but also helps them build teamwork communication and leadership skills while also acknowledging that everyone has different skillsets communication is key and there are many moments that could have gone better if there was communication garcia said it is impossible to know everything and there will always be someone else that is a subject-matter expert but this is motivation to always keep learning
2691,texas a&ms formula e team will be competing with their first-ever formula electric car on june 15 in detroit at the international speedway stay up to date with the team during this competition by downloading the formula sae app and searching the team number 244
2692,nuclear forensics involves the analysis of nuclear materials to determine their origin and history in support of investigations into nuclear security events dr sunil chirayath is conducting research to develop new methods for nuclear detection as a member of the consortium for monitoring technology and verification (mtv) led by the university of michigan
2693,chirayath is an associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering director of the texas a&m center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives and the projects principal investigator at texas a&m university he is focusing on nuclear forensics methodology development and testing and verification ­ including neutronics simulations radiochemical experimental efforts and nondestructive and destructive assay of irradiated uranium and plutonium samples the nuclear forensics methodology development involves machine learning and maximum likelihood statistical techniques this methodology will provide demonstratable proof for us government agencies to identify the origins of plutonium produced in foreign nuclear fuel cycles if such material is subjected to experimental analysis the consortium is funded by a five-year $25-million award from the us department of energys national nuclear security administration with the focus on developing new methods to detect and deter nuclear proliferation activities and to educate the next generation of nuclear security professionals under the direction of dr sara pozzi of the university of michigan the consortium is composed of 14 universities and 13 national laboratories the overarching goal of the mtv is to significantly advance the national capability to detect and characterize foreign nuclear weapons development programs and detect activities not in compliance with current treaty obligations the mtv plans to meet this goal by conducting research focused on three technical thrust areas: fundamentals of nuclear particle physics; signals and source terms for nuclear nonproliferation; and nuclear explosion monitoring cross-cutting areas of mtv include modeling and simulation nuclear policy and education and outreach chirayaths research team mainly contributes to the mtv thrust area of signals and source terms for nuclear nonproliferation in addition to the cross-cutting areas of modeling and simulation and education and outreach the consortium project at texas a&m supports three nuclear engineering doctoral students and engages four nuclear engineering undergraduate students in research and collaborates with lawrence livermore national laboratory and sandia national laboratories in this research endeavor students are also offered internship opportunities to expand training and research activities at national laboratories through their close collaboration with the national laboratories the activities at texas a&m are supporting the us governments need to grow the nuclear forensics workforce in the us through training job-ready experts in the field along with the university of michigan and texas a&m the consortium includes columbia university; the georgia institute of technology; the massachusetts institute of technology; penn state university; princeton university; the university of california berkeley; the university of florida; the university of hawaii; the university of new mexico; the university of tennessee knoxville; the university of wisconsin; and virginia polytechnic institute and state university
2694,with an increase in commercial space flight and further exploration of our solar system on the horizon there is a growing need for more robust integrated circuits or chips capable of weathering the harsh and damaging effects of radiation to which satellites and spacecraft are exposed david dolt a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is working alongside his faculty advisor and professor dr sam palermo to design self-healing radiation-hardened integrated circuits these integrated circuits or chips are designed for the space environment with special circuit techniques that allow them to heal after experiencing damage from radiation to accomplish this dolt incorporates sensor circuits that monitor the different parts of the chip to ensure that everything is operating as it should if something changes these sensor circuits are able to vary things in the main circuit to restore the chip to a nominal working condition and compensate for the radiation-induced performance degradation we are looking at developing a healing methodology that utilizes a micro-heating system that will restore devices with radiation-induced defects to a nominal state dolt said dolt measures the effects of radiation on these chips using two types of testing techniques first he performs a total ionizing dose test which exposes the chip to an equivalent long-term term dose of radiation that degrades the circuits nominal performance as it would in a space environment over many years he also performs single-event effect testing which is when high-energy particles penetrate the silicon chip and cause instantaneous current pulses or glitches in the circuit dolt measures the sensitivity of a circuit to single-event effects at the texas a&m cyclotron institute
2695,we use the texas a&m cyclotron institutes particle accelerator to irradiate the chips and then measure how many upsets occur while we're irradiating it to test the sensitivity of the chip dolt said long-term effects of radiation include disruptions in circuit operation degradation and a limited lifetime dolts ultimate goal is to design chips for space applications such as satellites space vehicles or spacecraft that are more impervious to radiation and subsequently have extended lifetimes to accomplish this in the past chips were manufactured using technology nodes that are inherently robust to radiation the downside is that these chips are expensive to manufacture and have slow performance and high power many companies are still using these old parts in their systems because of their inherent robustness but now with commercial spaceflight and other contemporary needs companies are looking for faster smaller and less expensive chips that can withstand the harsh environment of space the impact is figuring out hardened-by-design techniques to make our constantly evolving technology nodes as robust to radiation as some of these older radiation-hardened technology nodes dolt said you can then have state-of-the-art performance and manufacture chips with lower power and area as well as competitive radiation performance dolts research is supported by the air force research laboratory there are still a lot of unknowns about this testing and designing these circuits he said its a good area where you can come up with new things and discover new things without being suffocated by all that has already been accomplished theres a lot to learn and understand in the area and there's a lot of innovation that im excited to continue exploring
2696,dr dilma da silva professor and holder of the ford motor company design professorship ii in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was recently named director of the national science foundations (nsf) division of computing and communication foundations (ccf) for a three-year term effective july 11 2022 i am thrilled to have this opportunity to serve the nsf while remaining a faculty member at texas a&m said da silva it is such an exciting time in computing and engineering the research and education funded by ccf have had a tremendous impact on the evolution of computing and this is just the beginning computer technology is now embedded in virtually all aspects of our society amplifying the need for foundational research and the urgency in enabling emerging technologies that advance our well-being the ccf administers research and education activities that seek advances in computing and communication theory computer and computational science algorithms and architecture and design of hardware and software in addition projects supported by the ccf investigate revolutionary computing paradigms based on emerging scientific ideas and integrate research and education activities to prepare future generations of computer scientists and engineers as division director da silva will also serve as a member of the nsfs directorate for computer information science and engineering leadership team during her term she will remain a full-time employee at texas a&m da silva holds a doctorate and masters degree in computer science from the georgia institute of technology and the university of são paulo respectively her research interests include operating systems distributed computing cloud computing and high-end computing
2697,fluxworks a developer and manufacturer of magnetic gears and magnetic gear-integrated motors took the grand prize and more at the eighth annual texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) the annual event hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m university innovation partners recognizes some of the most innovative startups in texas bryton praslicka president and ceo of fluxworks competed with other startups throughout texas at tnvc to win the $35 000 first-place prize and several other sponsored prizes for its magnetic gear technology which has improved reliability and reduced maintenance costs compared to its counterpart the mechanical gear magnetic gears are like mechanical gears they change high-speed low-torque rotation to high-torque low-speed rotation gears are useful because they help reduce the size weight and capital expense of many motor-generator systems but magnetic gears are contactless so they don't need lubrication which has the potential to eliminate the major issues associated with mechanical gears such as frequent maintenance and reliability issues they may also significantly reduce the risk of failure in the event of an overload praslicka said they the company has already received interest in its magnetic gears from commercial and military delivery drone manufacturers air taxi startups wind turbine manufacturers space robotics companies and nasa as well as surgical robotic actuator companies all interested in the benefits of magnetic gears so the impact of their new technology could be huge the prize pool for this years competition was more than $475 000 in cash and in-kind services in all $2 860 000 in prizes have been given out during the eight years of the competition and praslicka was excited to be the latest grand prize winner additionally the startup won the aggieland business park/brazos valley economic development corporation launch prize the knobbe martens prize the versa business partners prize and the stibbs & co prize but the competition is important for startup companies like fluxworks well beyond the cash prizes having incorporated just six months ago being at the competition and experiencing this momentum is incredible praslicka said in fact the team wants to keep the growth organic and sustainable so while at the competition we were focusing on seeking more business leadership and building our advisory board to be sure we make the right steps at the right pace winning the competition felt like it validated the hard work we have put in so far and gives us the energy to keep going even when times are hard this has already led to so many connections which is helping us build our business team the funds and partnership are helping stimulate our organic sustainable growth aimed at promoting the commercialization of emerging technology tnvc recognizes companies with high-growth potential like fluxworks and helps them effectively execute their ideas and advance product development tnvc provides a great return for its stakeholders here at texas a&m as well as its participants said chris scotti tnvc chair and director of new ventures texas a&m university innovation partners sure science- and engineering-based companies from across the state of texas get an opportunity to compete for high-value prizes but even more importantly they get exposure to resources and make connections that act as a springboard for their technologies journey to market for texas a&m specifically he said tnvc also is a friendly opportunity for spinout and alumni-led companies to test their mettle against their peers and for the entire texas a&m university system to showcase its offerings such as tees- and texas a&m health-sponsored research this couldnt be more evident with this years winner being a texas a&m engineering spinout scotti said one of the things about fluxworks that stood out to the judges this year was doctoral candidate bryton praslickas charismatic yet humble approach demonstrating that he had the technical chops while asking the well-connected audience to help him in his search for business-savvy leadership they are now at the top of an already elite group of texas businesses with groundbreaking technologies we look forward to watching fluxworks and all the tnvc 2022 competitors progress over the coming years visit here for more information on fluxworks and a full list of the tnvc winners
2698,"dr robert ambrose received the 2022 thomas a edison patent award bestowed by the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) recognizing his role in creating safer robots for use in outer space established in 1997 the award highlights the creativity of a patented device or process that has the potential of significantly enhancing some aspect of mechanical engineering according to the asme ambrose serves as the j mike walker '66 chair professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he also serves as director for space and robotics initiatives for the texas a&m engineering experiment station and is a member of the national academy of engineering ambrose came to texas a&m from nasa where he served as chief of the software robotics and simulation division at the johnson space center with the support of his previous team at nasa ambrose developed robots that are safe to operate around people he implemented concepts utilized elsewhere in linear actuators to create a simpler approach for a rotary actuator ""it is great to celebrate invention and it is an honor to be associated with an inventor like thomas edison "" ambrose said ""my goal for the invention was to be able to measure the torque of a rotary actuator with a single and low-cost part the approach enabled us to build the first robot in space to work next to astronauts without people needing to monitor its safety"" ambrose brings decades of experience to his research focusing on robotic manipulation and mobility specifically in relation to space robotics"
2699,gripping the handlebars and planting his feet on the pedals three-year-old brad worsham launched his tricycle down the road to his grandmothers house he had watched previous apollo launches on her color tv and was about to watch humans land on the moon worsham 88 is an associate professor of practice in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and a recent donor of $500 000 to the aerospace engineering excellence fund he considers himself a product of the space program having grown up in a world racing to the moon and he loved it so much that when his mother let him choose the wallpaper for his new bedroom he went with a red white and blue apollo theme the wallpaper on one big wall in my room had astronauts moons saturn v rockets and all of that said worsham having astronaut wallpaper was really cool for the first five years but when i was 18 it was really stretching its coolness by that time he was leaving his childhood bedroom for college it meant a lot for worsham when he received a presidents endowed scholarship to attend texas a&m and could follow in his brothers footsteps without that scholarship i wouldnt have come to texas a&m said worsham not necessarily because we couldnt afford it but because i had opportunities elsewhere so im very sincere when i say that my donors changed the course of my life he entered texas a&m as a mechanical engineering major but during his new student conference (nsc) two aerospace faculty members at the time stan lowey and retired lt col thomas mcelmurry asked him if he had considered majoring in aerospace engineering for worsham it felt like one of those chance encounters that puts everything into place when they asked me about my major the memories of the astronaut wallpaper and going to my grandmothers house to watch the launches flashed in the front of my mind said worsham that next morning i changed my major and thats how i got to be an aerospace engineer paying it forward during his sophomore year of college worsham started working part-time with the cia once he graduated he joined them full time as an analyst that position eventually took him to australia where he met his wife liz worsham since then hes lived in the united states from the east coast to the west coast and raised two daughters he has worked as a systems engineer for lockheed martin was a consultant for the national reconnaissance office and started a company in 2009 his company was acquired by a private equity fund and he made his first gift to texas a&m establishing a presidents endowed scholarship was the first thing on my to-do list after we sold the company because it changed my lifes trajectory said worsham it felt like a debt of gratitude to the university and my donors and it was just the first obvious thing that i felt like i had to do when i had the opportunity
2700,from there investing in the student experience became a priority for worsham he has since given to the zachry engineering education complex renovation and established other scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students across the university these have included the aerospace engineering department the hagler institute for advanced study and a volleyball scholarship through the 12th man foundation his most recent gift will support the department as it expands both in students and opportunities under the new leadership of dr ivett a leyva the aerospace engineering department head if there was one phrase or word that dr leyva used that really resonated with me it was community said worsham whether that is the sense of community in the facilities that we have and provide to the students or the sense of community in the types of instructors professors and advisors that were able to hire worsham hopes his gift will help kickstart the next phase of the aerospace engineering department as it evolves this gift is my way of leading by example to take the department to the next level as it ironically faces the challenges of its success said worsham im always looking for win-wins so its very gratifying for me to see that perhaps my gift would make a difference and i trust dr leyvas direction for our aerospace community practice makes perfect since 2019 worsham has also given his time to this community as a professor of practice in the department for him it goes back to that chance encounter with mcelmurry during his nsc after worsham took a few of his classes mcelmurry went on to become his mentor and even taught him how to fly during his last semester i got my pilots license right out of college with professor mcelmurrys help and having that hands-on experience helped me build a better picture of an airplane in my mind in terms of the natural physics and physiology of how it flies said worsham that prepared me to talk to students about cause and effect and get them to look at an airplane as an entity as opposed to a collection of equations worsham is an instructor for aero 401 and 402 which are design courses where the students build and fly an aircraft he always had an interest in teaching since both of his parents and some of his grandparents were educators but mcelmurry was his inspiration to come back and teach in the department now worsham is making his own impact on the students and investing in the resources the department is able to provide them looking back at my career i strongly recommend that students keep an open mind and just never stop being a student of engineering said worsham theres any number of things you could have asked me as a freshman that i would have told you were certainties but in the end i worked in software not hardware i worked with satellites not aircraft i worked in virginia not texas so keeping an open mind allows you to accept and seize opportunities that you might not otherwise recognize he may have traded in his tricycle but his excitement for aerospace is still leading him to new opportunities right now thats helping to create a learning environment for the next generation of engineers
2701,a gift to the aerospace engineering excellence fund has an immeasurable impact on students and a lasting impact on the department if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact anna norville senior director of development
2702,"during the first week of may the we vex-u robotics team from texas a&m university supported by the women in engineering (we) program was awarded the science division's design award in the vex-u world championship the most distinguished award the competition itself had 3 000 teams from 36 nations competing this year ""it's important that our students gain a well-rounded experience by both working toward a goal and competing where they can learn from other teams "" said dr shawna fletcher director of the we program this is the second time the team has qualified for the world championship but it is the first time they have been able to go due to the covid-19 pandemic ""it's been really great as a senior to see everything we've worked for over four years and all the work that i've put into the team be visible and acknowledged "" said the captain of we vex-u maddie foster from the department of computer science and engineering"
2703,"this year's challenge tipping point required the robots to put pringle chip-shaped rings onto the base of a mobile goal move portable goals and elevate on platforms this was similar to a game of horseshoe but instead of throwing the rings the robots carried them to the goal and the goal was moving we vex-u had two robots one big and one small the goal for each robot was to hold at least one mobile goal and be able to pick up the rings ""the design award is specifically for building a good program; it's something that's going to last "" said foster ""having that quality of design that we've come up with together it was really great to see our team come together and be recognized for all the work that we've done"" the team consisted mostly of first- and second-year students with little coding experience but foster implemented a developmental method she had learned in her computer science classes: teach implement and test throughout the year peer mentors first taught the new members how to operate the programs used to design the robots how the robots are manufactured and how to use the c++ coding language next they implemented what they had learned into different projects finally they tested each component to see what worked and what needed to be worked on ""when students participate you see the learning curve "" fletcher said ""they quickly learn and grow as team members and leaders"" the we program thanks its industry sponsors chevron l3harris bp lockheed martin and others for making project teams possible visit here for more information on supporting we or project teams"
2704,"dr jn reddy will receive the 2022 international association of computational mechanics congress medal also known as the gauss-newton medal later this year it is the highest award bestowed by the organization the honor recognizes individuals who have made outstanding and sustained contributions to the computational mechanics field among reddy's many contributions include serving as a prominent member and contributor to the computational and applied mechanics community his authoring of the classic and highly popular textbook ""introduction to the finite element method "" and developing a number of novel mathematical models and computational approaches that others have followed applied and advanced for more than 40 years reddy serves as the odonnell foundation chair iv professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he is also a university distinguished professor a regents professor director of the center of innovation in mechanics for design and manufacturing and a member of the national academy of engineering ""significant honors and awards are important to a person and the institution the person serves because they signify the esteem in which the honoree is held by the members of his or her scientific community "" reddy said ""this is another of the highest international honors i have received in my professional life for the works i have done with this award i am being recognized as one of the most accomplished people in the field of computational mechanics around the world"" the medal itself features the images of isaac newton and johann car friedrich gauss recognizing the connection between mathematics numerical analysis and mathematical modeling of physical events all of which are deeply rooted in the broad field of computational mechanics reddy will be honored at the 15th world congress on computational mechanics set to be held in yokohama japan on aug1"
2705,funded by the exxonmobil chemical company researchers at texas a&m university and exxonmobil are developing a method to reprocess petroleum coke a byproduct of refining crude oil into a sustainable high-value alternative using a chemical process called electrochemical exfoliation they have converted petroleum coke into graphene a nanomaterial with applications in electronics medicine and energy storage this study was published in npj 2d materials and applications crude oil is a mixture of many different hydrocarbons with light portions going to natural gas while the heaviest portions form viscous or even solid materials one of the many products that comes from refining crude oil is solid petroleum coke although there are many ways to utilize petroleum coke such as electrodes for steel and aluminum production this process releases harmful carbon emissions for this reason the industry is looking for low-emissions high-value materials that can be derived from crude oil a possible solution is repurposing the carbon-rich petroleum coke to generate graphene a versatile sheet-like material composed of a single layer of carbon atoms conventionally graphene is exfoliated from graphite the researchers investigated whether any chemical processes would facilitate graphene production from fossil fuel-derived materials we know that petroleum coke contains graphene-like materials said dr micah green professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m our challenge was to isolate the graphene from the starting material to accomplish this task the researchers turned to electrochemistry they placed coke into an electrolyte solution with a working electrode and a counter electrode when they applied voltage to the working electrode the ionic species or negative ions from the electrolyte migrated in between the graphene sheets in a process called intercalation think of the coke as a book and the graphene as each individual sheet of paper said green when the book is laid flat on its spine the pages fan out and have more gaps between them the process of electrochemical exfoliation is similar when the coke is expanded the graphene separates negative ions are created and move into the spaces between the graphene sheets completing the coke byproduct and graphene separation many graphene applications require high conductivity but whether the graphene from petroleum coke could achieve such performance was unknown the graphene created from the coke had a conductivity of 50 siemens per meter compared to a typical lithium-ion battery whose electrical conductivity is about 150-160 siemens per meter with a heat treatment called annealing the researchers could boost the conductivity even higher making it comparable to electrodes in lithium-ion batteries with these findings graphene applications that have been in development for years could come to fruition the future of nanomaterial scaleup is directly tied to existing streams in the petrochemical industry and i anticipate many more cases where petroleum-derived chemicals are converted to high-value carbon materials like graphene said green other contributors to the research include postdoctoral researcher dr sanjit saha; doctoral students pritishma lakhe kailash arole and xiaofei zhao; undergraduate students matthew j mason and bryan j coleman; and exxonmobil researchers sergey yakovlev sundararajan uppili and rohan a hule
2706,lyn and jeffrey vogt 94 have recently established the vogt family endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university following his grandfather harry vogt 36 and his father harry lee vogt 66 jeffrey was among many in his family to attend texas a&m he always appreciated the tradition and culture found in aggieland and was especially drawn to the quality of the engineering program texas a&m offered jeffrey graduated with his bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and began working as a project manager for dynamic systems inc a national mechanical and process construction firm since then he has continued to demonstrate excellence in his work and has assumed various leadership positions within the company he now leads the company as its president though lyn graduated from baylor university family roots at texas a&m have inspired the vogts to give back to the future generations of students who will walk the campus i've always wanted to help future-generation aggies to be a little less burdened by the cost of getting a degree from a&m jeffrey said texas a&m university is a special place and an easy choice to give back to the vogt family endowed scholarship mirrors the familys love for the university hannah vogt 20 and madison vogt who will transfer in as a sophomore this summer carry on the family legacy as fourth-generation aggies
2707,endowments supporting texas a&m university college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact steve labrutta director of development
2708,many former students give back to the departments from which they received their degrees however for trisha and doug sheffield encountering texas a&m university as parents is what inspired them to establish the trisha 91 and doug 92 sheffield endowed scholarship in biomedical engineering the couple found their way to texas a&m for different reasons while they pursued separate passions trisha was not considering coming to aggieland until she made a campus visit then she decided it was the only school she would apply to meanwhile doug attended texas a&m for graduate school while trisha obtained a bachelors degree in marketing doug received his masters degree in industrial engineering it was their shared experience as parents of aggie students however that left a lasting impact on the sheffieldsdoug and i both have fond memories of our time at texas a&m but seeing and experiencing it as parents deepened our love of the university so much more trisha said the experiences opportunities and even challenges developed both of our kids in meaningful waysboth of the sheffields children attended and graduated from texas a&m lauren sheffield 19 studied communication and mason sheffield 20 studied biomedical engineering when masons senior design professor james jim machek passed away suddenly he asked trisha and doug to consider donating to the design space created in macheks honorhaving seen firsthand the deep and positive impact of masons senior design project in biomedical engineering we decided to make a memorial gift but also wanted to learn more about the design space trisha saidcommitted to learning more about the initiatives of the biomedical engineering program trisha and doug set up a meeting with department head dr mike mcshane to tour the design space confident in and inspired by the vision and leadership for biomedical engineering at texas a&m they decided to establish an endowed scholarship for students in the departmentdistributions from their endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students pursuing an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at texas a&m the scholarship will be given to students of sophomore classification or higher who have demonstrated financial need and graduated from a public high school in texasthe expense of a college education can create financial stress for many families trisha said we simply hope that it lifts a small portion of that burden and helps encourage students as they pursue their academic dreams furthering and enabling the achievements of other aggies is important to trisha and doug as they have been impacted so greatly by texas a&m themselves it's a great privilege to play even a small role in student success trisha said we are so proud to be part of the aggie network and that our kids also are aggies so it was a natural fit for giving backsupport from friends and former students of the department is critical to our success and is deeply appreciated said mcshane we are particularly grateful to doug and trisha sheffield for their support of our students in multiple ways and are excited to mark their endowed scholarship as the first contribution in this campaign for 50 biomedical engineering scholarships
2709,scholarship endowments reward high-performing students with recognition of their individual accomplishments and provide valuable financial support that allows them to focus on their studies as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the program we will simultaneously launch a campaign to establish 50 new scholarships for biomedical engineering students this will scale our scholarships more appropriately to the size of the student body and allow us to recognize more of our outstanding students with scholarships if you are interested in supporting the departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact ryan nichols assistant director of development
2710,"although widely used polymers bring with them challenges often determined by the processing conditions in which they are made with the ability to understand the factors of how these materials are influenced in their creation researchers at texas a&m university could unlock great control and customization of polymer performance dr anastasia muliana professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is working with her team to discover how these processes impact the performance of polymers polymers are materials consisting of very large molecules also known as macromolecules and are composed of many repeating patterns they are used in daily life and have wide-ranging applications from the automotive industry aerospace and infrastructure to packaging agriculture and biomedicine however a major challenge is that often the same types of polymers can show significant variations in the properties they exhibit an effect caused by differing processing conditions that can alter the chemical and physical properties of cured polymers ""in these applications various types of polymers and processing conditions are considered and the processed polymers are often exposed to a multitude of external stimuli "" muliana said ""investigating the link between processing structure property and stimuli on the time-dependent responses of polymers is necessary to design and process polymers with the desired performance for their applications and also to provide a long-term solution for recyclability or biodegradation"" the team's focus has centered on better understanding the time-dependent mechanical responses of polymers when exposed to various environmental conditions and processing conditions their new approach links the processing structure property and stimuli information to the time-dependent responses of the polymers allowing the researchers to further consider physical mechanisms and relevant macromolecular information ""polymer processing and characterization of polymer properties are usually done separately and independently where investigations on short- and long-term responses of polymers are often performed without incorporating knowledge of processing histories nor information on basic chemical properties "" muliana said ""for the same type of polymers large variations in the properties are often found in literature which makes it challenging to use this information for designing with polymers it is often necessary to experimentally characterize the properties of a polymer after each processing condition"" the benefits of muliana's approach to discovering the influence of processing conditions on the properties of polymers could be three-fold: to permit the design of polymers with desired life performance to reduce the number of experimental characterizations required to determine the polymer properties to support future digital twin concepts in polymer processing predicting life performance of polymers during their service and designing the afterlife of polymers ultimately thanks to these potential results muliana and her team hope their research will lead to highly customizable polymer devices or structures with tighter controls over their performance and durability the team is now looking ahead to collaborations with polymer chemists and experimentalists ""we expect to have more robust models and simulation tools to incorporate a wider range of processing conditions including 3d printing more detailed information about the polymers' macromolecular networks and more complex mechanical loading histories "" muliana said"
2711,automation uses various technologies that minimize human intervention in processes and control systems including factory production lines chemical processes and self-driving vehicles human interaction within these systems is reduced by using the outcomes of mathematical models to program systems to be more efficient and precise dr aldo j munoz-vazquez instructional assistant professor in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university alongside an international team of researchers is using sophisticated mathematics to predict the behavior of a larger class of dynamic systems more accurately and efficiently this study was published in the journal of computational and applied mathematics the researchers analyzed generalized control structures or control-loop mechanisms utilizing feedback by relying on the recently proposed integrodifferential operators in future studies they will consider the accuracy of these models by analyzing the response of complex dynamical systems including robot motion or even rehabilitation tasks where the case of a human-in-the-loop is considered modern systems and industrial applications demand more stringent operating conditions like more varied requirements on the task and system specifications in turn more flexible tools are needed to reflect the dynamic model characteristics in the real-system response the researchers found new methodologies to extend the fundamental theorems of calculus to novel and generalized integrodifferential operators and establish interesting inequalities that allow the stability analysis and the synthesis of newer control methodologies volterra integral equations of the second kind allow the mathematical modeling of a larger class of dynamic systems said munoz-vazquez given that the systems under study are more general these equations are expected to obtain more accurate models and control strategies that can aid in precise motion control of robotic systems the stabilization of electrical networks that have energy storage devices with low and ultra-slow responses or the regulation of chemical processes involving viscoelastic fluids this research is in a very early stage in the future it will be possible to develop general dynamic models of real-world systems and control algorithms which can be employed in either the understanding of nature or in the synthesis of novel technologies such as robotics rehabilitation chemical processes and other applications i hope these new tools will increase potential interest in the research and industrial communities said munoz-vazquez other contributors to the research include dr oscar martinez-fuentes and dr guillermo fernandez-anaya
2712,mack cleveland an undergraduate student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university is a crew member of the 2022 astronaut scholar class as one of the students selected he was awarded the prestigious astronaut scholarship for use in future research endeavors the astronaut scholarship foundation (asf) provides the scholarship to a handpicked group of students each year who are pursuing advances in science technology engineering or mathematics asfs mission is to continue the united states legacy in innovation by developing world-class researchers the scholarship will help me with the last year of undergraduate studies and offers me an amazing opportunity to network with other students who are passionate about research said cleveland now a senior in the department cleveland chose to study materials science and engineering because of the overlap between physics and chemistry that gives rise to materials critical to solving outstanding engineering problems his research uses atomistic simulations to study the formation energies of point defects in amorphous silicon which can be used in solar cells and liquid crystal displays he conducted this research under dr michael j demkowicz associate professor in the department for several semesters and they recently published their findings on amorphous silicon in physical review materials in addition to his research cleveland is the editor-in-chief of explorations: the texas a&m undergraduate journal through this medium he promotes outstanding and creative undergraduate research publications while cultivating a diverse community of young scholars i am interested in research because i enjoy the thrill of discovering the beautiful way nature works he said i am driven to research because i hope that the knowledge my research creates can help safeguard our national security and prevent disastrous engineering failures by providing more resilient materials cleveland is also a university scholar and vice election commissioner for the student government association as a recipient of the scholarship he will receive an expense-paid trip to orlando florida for the innovators week and gala featuring the neil armstrong award of excellence an opportunity to present and represent texas a&m at the scholar technical conference extensive access to renowned mentors membership in the astronaut scholar honor society and several other benefits as cleveland commences takeoff from his undergraduate studies he plans to work toward a doctoral degree in materials studies while continuing his research on developing new materials for harsh environments and improving degradation prediction he would like to eventually pursue a career in materials science and engineering i am looking forward to graduate school where i can get experience tackling more challenging scientific problems and paving the way for technologies that will shape the future he said the astronaut scholarship is a key step along that path enabling me to continue my current research and connecting me with a community of scholars who are inventing game-changers in the materials science and engineering field
2713,a team made up of a texas a&m university professor and students in the college of engineering teamed up to address vision loss due to diabetes by creating an ocular camera and artificial intelligence (ai)-powered imaging system to assist primary care physicians in diagnosing diabetic retinopathy the organization ai-ris was founded by biomedical engineering doctoral students daniel kermany and tj falohun civil engineering graduate student uthej vattipalli and biomedical engineering research assistant professor dr amir zavareh the ai-ris journey officially began in 2017 with kermany when he started accumulating more skills and knowledge surrounding ai-based disease diagnoses ai-ris became a reality after winning a national competition presented by sling health a student-run biotechnology incubator providing solutions resources and mentorship to student teams tackling clinical problems the team spun out from a medical entrepreneurship student organization called sling health in the fall of 2019 zavareh said we started as an interdisciplinary group of individuals with backgrounds in engineering business and medicine from there ai-ris was officially incorporated in july 2020 ai-ris is utilizing a particular machine-learning algorithm to help physicians detect retinopathy with 99% accuracy and sensitivity this ai system powers their retinal imaging device and assists primary care providers with accurately screening patients for diabetic retinopathy without a specialist present this clarifier can also detect signs of pathologies from five different conditions including age-related macular degeneration diabetic retinopathy retinal vein occlusion glaucoma and high myopia a rare form of high-degree nearsightedness
2714,vision loss due to diabetes known as diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the us the condition affects up to 80% of adults who live with diabetes for longer than 15 years which puts approximately 34 million american adults at immediate risk zavareh said to prevent blindness diabetic retinopathy must be caught early the team presented a solution consisting of a portable ocular camera and a machine-learning algorithm while the camera captures images of the patients retina without dilating the pupil the algorithm classifies images of the patients retina through the identification of diabetic retinopathy indications like microaneurysms small dot hemorrhages and exudates due to the lack of access to eye care in underserved communities individuals living in rural areas often go undiagnosed and eventually suffer from vision loss and blindness currently these individuals must visit ophthalmologists to conduct their eye exams however improvements on software and hardware technology that is currently available will eventually allow all individuals suffering from diabetes to get eye exams at their primary care providers office while underserved patient populations in the united states provide the strongest use-case for our device diabetics of all socioeconomic classes need to regularly check their vision to monitor early signs of diabetic retinopathy zavareh said this will increase access to retinal exams by tenfold and the impact of our technology will be revolutionary
2715,a plan from texas a&m university researchers to 3d print new resilient buildings using hempcrete has the potential to lower the environmental impact of traditional construction methods and make housing more affordable and availablethe project will be funded by a $374 million grant from the us department of energy advanced research projects agency-energy (arpa-e) harnessing emissions into structures taking inputs from the atmosphere (hestia) programdr petros sideris assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering will lead the project as principal investigator to develop residential and potential commercial construction designs his team consists of assistant professor dr maria koliou department head and professor dr zachary grasley and professor dr anand puppala from the department and associate professor dr manish dixit and professor dr wei yan from the texas a&m college of architecturehempcrete is made by mixing hemp powder fibers or shives with lime and water creating a lightweight green building material
2716,"""while production of conventional construction materials such as concrete requires large amounts of energy and releases large amounts of co2 (carbon dioxide) hempcrete is a net carbon-negative material which can provide major environmental benefits "" sideris saidsustainability will be further promoted by designing hempcrete structures more resilient to natural hazards than commonly used lightweight wood frame construction""resilience to natural hazards is intertwined with environmental sustainability because building damage and subsequent repairs due to extreme events such as hurricanes result in major environmental impacts "" sideris said"
2717,"hempcrete has already been used globally in residential construction and prefabricated modular construction""hempcrete has excellent fire resistance and thermal insulating properties that can reduce heating and cooling energy demands "" he said ""it is water-resistant and offers good acoustic properties""as part of the project building designs will be printable and created to achieve structural and energy performance that will comply with modern design codes sideris said digital designs of printable hempcrete buildings will facilitate adoption by the construction industry ""the advancements of this project will contribute to the us maintaining its worldwide leadership in advanced construction methods and infrastructure sustainability and resilient technologies "" he saidthe funding is part of hestia which prioritizes overcoming barriers associated with carbon-storing buildings including scarce expensive and geographically limited building materials the hestia program aims to increase the total amount of carbon stored in buildings to create carbon sinks which absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than released during construction"
2718,texas a&m university will be hosting robomaster north america a strategic robotics competition founded by da-jiang innovations (dji) from june 25-27 2022 robomaster is a seven-versus-seven robotics competition that features a university students ability to design robots and meet different criteria to engage with the opposing teams robots the criteria requires that robots are able to launch 17-millimeter projectiles and golf ball projectiles and can pick up field elements there will also be robots created by students such as a drone that is able to shoot projectiles while in the air as well as an autonomous robot that uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to track different robots and shoot at them as well
2719,texas a&ms robotics organization tamu robomasters will be competing in this competition with their premier robotics team the texas aimbots the team consists of many engineering students across multiple departments such as mechanical engineering computer science and engineering aerospace engineering and more eighteen universities will be making their way to aggieland in hopes of taking home first place six of the 18 teams are from international universities in italy and canada the university of texas at austin will also be attending continuing the friendly rivalry with texas a&m
2720,the robomaster competition will be streamed online is open to the public and can be attended in person at the memorial student center in room 2300 it will begin with two full days of competition on june 25 and 26 from 9 am to 7 pm the final matches for the top four teams and the award ceremony will be held on june 27 from 10 am to noon for more details visit robomaster north americas website
2721,millions of shipments of nuclear and other radiological materials are moved in the us every year for good reasons including health care power generation research and manufacturing but there remains the threat that bad actors in possession of stolen or illegally produced nuclear materials or weapons will try to smuggle them across borders for nefarious purposes texas a&m university researchers are making it harder for them to succeed if border agents intercept illicit nuclear materials investigators need to know who produced them and where they came from fortunately nuclear materials carry certain forensic markers that can reveal valuable information much like fingerprints can identify criminals for instance when scientists examine the concentration of certain key contaminant isotopes in separated plutonium samples they can determine three different attributes of the samples history: the type of nuclear reactor that produced it how long the plutonium or uranium was contained in the reactor and how long ago it was produced with current statistical methodologies they can determine these three attributes utilizing a generated database that stores the required information as a mathematical variation of these attributes for various nuclear reactor types and emerge with a good idea of who made the material but what if investigators are presented with a mixed plutonium sample said dr sunil chirayath author of a new study on nuclear forensics recently published in the journal nuclear science and engineering suppose the adversary is mixing materials from two nuclear reactors at two different times and that material is cooled for different times a bad actor might do this intentionally to disguise it mixed samples of nuclear material are significantly more challenging to identify with traditional methodologies in a real-world situation the extra time required could have a catastrophic impact on the global community to improve the process chirayath associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives along with his research team has developed a methodology using machine learning a type of artificial intelligence he can produce identifying markers through simulations and then store that data in a 3d database each attribute is one level of the database and a standard computer can quickly process the data and lead investigators to the reactor type that produced the plutonium sample and potentially the suspects by joining other pieces of the puzzle gathered through traditional forensics three experiments of irradiating uranium using three different reactor types and post-irradiation examinations have been conducted at texas a&m to date without knowing the samples origins doctoral student researcher patrick oneal successfully identified where each of the plutonium samples was produced by using machine learning the work is being done through a consortium of national labs and universities funded by the us department of energys national nuclear security administration the consortium focuses on development of new methods of detecting and deterring nuclear proliferation and to educating the next generation of nuclear security professionals chirayaths team will soon run one more irradiation and the corresponding post-irradiation examination with funding already in place the next step is to take this machine-learning methodology to high-level government labs where researchers can work with much larger samples of nuclear materials university labs are constrained by more restrictive irradiation safety limits chirayath is confident efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation are working the international treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons arose from concern about atomic weaponry and all but four countries india israel pakistan and south sudan signed it north korea signed it but walked away from it later chirayath also notes that with the rise in nuclear energy production comes an increased risk that the technology will be used to make weapons capable of mass destruction we have to make sure materials are not diverted from peaceful use he said we need to double-up our tools and methodologies but its not just technical tools we also have to double-up on policies and agreements to prevent proliferation from happening
2722,millions of shipments of nuclear and other radiological materials are moved in the us every year for good reasons including health care power generation research and manufacturing but there remains the threat that bad actors in possession of stolen or illegally produced nuclear materials or weapons will try to smuggle them across borders for nefarious purposes texas a&m university researchers are making it harder for them to succeed if border agents intercept illicit nuclear materials investigators need to know who produced them and where they came from fortunately nuclear materials carry certain forensic markers that can reveal valuable information much like fingerprints can identify criminals for instance when scientists examine the concentration of certain key contaminant isotopes in separated plutonium samples they can determine three different attributes of the samples history: the type of nuclear reactor that produced it how long the plutonium or uranium was contained in the reactor and how long ago it was produced with current statistical methodologies they can determine these three attributes utilizing a generated database that stores the required information as a mathematical variation of these attributes for various nuclear reactor types and emerge with a good idea of who made the material but what if investigators are presented with a mixed plutonium sample said dr sunil chirayath author of a new study on nuclear forensics recently published in the journal nuclear science and engineering suppose the adversary is mixing materials from two nuclear reactors at two different times and that material is cooled for different times a bad actor might do this intentionally to disguise it mixed samples of nuclear material are significantly more challenging to identify with traditional methodologies in a real-world situation the extra time required could have a catastrophic impact on the global community to improve the process chirayath associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives along with his research team has developed a methodology using machine learning a type of artificial intelligence he can produce identifying markers through simulations and then store that data in a 3d database each attribute is one level of the database and a standard computer can quickly process the data and lead investigators to the reactor type that produced the plutonium sample and potentially the suspects by joining other pieces of the puzzle gathered through traditional forensics three experiments of irradiating uranium using three different reactor types and post-irradiation examinations have been conducted at texas a&m to date without knowing the samples origins doctoral student researcher patrick oneal successfully identified where each of the plutonium samples was produced by using machine learning the work is being done through a consortium of national labs and universities funded by the us department of energys national nuclear security administration the consortium focuses on development of new methods of detecting and deterring nuclear proliferation and to educating the next generation of nuclear security professionals chirayaths team will soon run one more irradiation and the corresponding post-irradiation examination with funding already in place the next step is to take this machine-learning methodology to high-level government labs where researchers can work with much larger samples of nuclear materials university labs are constrained by more restrictive irradiation safety limits chirayath is confident efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation are working the international treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons arose from concern about atomic weaponry and all but four countries india israel pakistan and south sudan signed it north korea signed it but walked away from it later chirayath also notes that with the rise in nuclear energy production comes an increased risk that the technology will be used to make weapons capable of mass destruction we have to make sure materials are not diverted from peaceful use he said we need to double-up our tools and methodologies but its not just technical tools we also have to double-up on policies and agreements to prevent proliferation from happening
2723,dr xuejun zhu assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was awarded a welch foundation grant to help uncover and characterize enzymes involved in modifications that lead to pharmaceutical ineffectiveness in turn this could help medical professionals prescribe medications based on an individuals gut characteristics in the futurecertain bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract can decrease the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals potentially causing treatment delays and adverse impacts on individuals physical and mental health despite research that suggests bacterial enzymes are responsible for modifying the structures and properties of small-molecule pharmaceuticals these enzymes remain poorly understoodthere are many pharmaceuticals that are becoming increasingly ineffective said zhu they can even have side effects partly due to certain modifications of the pharmaceuticals by some gut bacteria the key player in these modifications are enzymes a kind of protein found in bacteria our goal is to determine which enzymes are involved in these changes however there are hundreds of enzymes making it difficult to decipher which enzymes are responsible for causing modifications to help determine these specific enzymes zhu and her team will expose substrate specificities the feature of an enzyme to select the kind of substrate to allow a chemical reaction once they uncover which enzymes are responsible for modifying pharmaceuticals they will use the information to help predict the enzymes unique sequence fingerprints which determine the substrate specificity and will ease future enzyme discovery moving forward this research could potentially change the way medicines are prescribed to enhance the effectiveness of medications based on the enzymes in an individuals gutfor example if we have a fecal sample we can sequence the dna or rna to see which enzymes could be abundant said zhu based on that information we will be able to determine whether an enzyme will degrade the medication or will likely be more effective this will hopefully help ensure that what is being prescribed is the most effective treatment for an individual the welch foundation is one of the largest private funding resources for chemical research in texas the grant supports researchers within the state of texas who are making significant contributions to chemistry
2724,"blood pressure is one of the most important indicators of heart health but it's tough to measure outside of a clinical setting frequently and reliably for decades cuff-based devices that constrict around the arm to give a reading have been the gold standard researchers at texas a&m university and the university of texas at austin are working to change that enabling continuous monitoring that can provide a more comprehensive look at blood pressure than the single snapshot that comes with the cuffs the researchers developed an electronic tattoo that can be worn comfortably on the wrist for hours and deliver continuous blood pressure measurements at an accuracy level exceeding nearly all available options on the market today this research has received $5 million in awards and funding from the national institutes of health (nih) ""taking infrequent blood pressure measurements has many limitations and it does not provide insight into exactly how our bodies are functioning "" said dr roozbeh jafari professor of biomedical engineering computer science and electrical engineering at texas a&m and the co-leader of the project blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of arteries as blood flows to the arteries they expand to let it through hypertension or high blood pressure happens when the force is too great or the arteries don't expand enough high blood pressure can lead to serious heart conditions if left untreated it can be hard to capture with a traditional blood pressure check because it only measures that exact moment in time a single data point ""blood pressure is the most important vital sign you can measure but the methods to do it outside of the clinic passively without a cuff are very limited "" said dr deji akinwande a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at ut austin and one of the co-leaders of the project which is documented in a new paper published on june 20 2022 in nature nanotechnology the continuous monitoring of the e-tattoo allows for blood pressure measurements in all kinds of situations: at times of high stress while sleeping exercising etc it can deliver hundreds and thousands of measurements more than any device thus far mobile health monitoring has taken major leaps in recent years primarily due to technology like smartwatches these devices use metallic sensors that get readings based on led light sources shined through the skin ""all this data can help create a digital twin to model the human body to predict and show how it might react and respond to treatments over time "" akinwande said however leading smartwatches aren't yet ready for blood pressure monitoring that's because the watches slide around on the wrist and may be far from arteries making it hard to deliver accurate readings and the light-based measurements can falter in people with darker skin tones and/or larger wrists the e-tattoo makes sense as a vehicle for mobile blood pressure monitoring because it resides in a sticky stretchy material that is comfortable to wear and doesnt slide around the is a very thin layer of carbon named graphene similar to what we see in graphite or pencils but the atoms are precisely placed next to each other to form one to a few atomic layers ""the sensor for the tattoo is weightless and unobtrusive; you place it there you don't even see it and it doesn't move you need the sensor to stay in the same place because if you happen to move it around the measurements are going to be different "" jafari said the device takes its measurements by shooting an electrical current into the skin and then analyzing the body's response which is known as bioimpedance there is a correlation between bioimpedance and changes in blood pressure that has to do with blood volume changes however the correlation is not particularly obvious so the team had to create a machine-learning model to analyze the connection to get accurate blood pressure readings in medicine cuff-less blood pressure monitoring is the ""holy grail "" jafari said but there isn't a viable solution on the market yet it's part of a larger push in medicine to use technology to untether patients from machines while collecting more data wherever they are allowing them to go from room to room clinic to clinic and still get personalized care the term that we often use is called ‘medicine in the wild which was coined by dr david paydarfar professor of medicine at dell medical school jafari said the fundamental science on medical e-tattoos has advanced rapidly in the last few years but the next step toward fda-approved monitoring devices that people can use will take a lot of technological integration that means working to integrate these sensors with smartphones smart watches and other mobile devices that people can use to get routine continuous readouts of data other team members on the project are dr dmitry kireev and neelotpala kumar from electrical and computer engineering at ut austin; kaan sel and bassem ibrahim from electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m; and dr ali akbari from biomedical engineering at texas a&m the research was supported by grants from the office of naval research the national science foundation and nih realizing unobtrusive and passive technologies for the frequent recording of blood pressure to address the worldwide problem of hypertension is among the most important global challenges in health care i am pleased to see the progression of technology development following the initiation of the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering (nibib)/nih-india collaboration for the development of such technologies a decade ago said dr roderic pettigrew first director of nibib chief executive officer of engineering health and inaugural dean for engineering medicine at texas a&m"
2725,according to the national spinal cord injury statistical center approximately 18 000 new spinal cord injuries occur each year in the united states spinal cord injuries often lead to serious constipation or incontinence which can lead to decreased quality of life and may even be life-threatening after a spinal cord injury 41% of patients rated bowel dysfunction as a severe life-limiting problem to address these challenges dr hangue park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is looking into the utilization of closed-loop electrical stimulation on the colon to promote the natural rhythm of the digestive system this would ultimately negate the adverse effects caused by spinal cord injury and promote functional recovery although the effect of electrical stimulation on promoting effective colon movement has been previously investigated no previous study has yet investigated the result of closed-loop electrical stimulation on promoting colon movement park said traditional open-loop electrical stimulation has been previously proven successful in triggering colonic peristalsis which is the natural constriction and relaxation of the muscles in the digestive tract however park is looking into closed-loop e-stim because of its unique offering to regulate stimulation closed-loop stimulation occurs at a strategic time that allows researchers to work with the colon at a specific time during the digestive process and is regulated whereas open-loop stimulation occurs at random times and is not regulated leading to inconsistent benefit closed-loop stimulation allows park and his team to work with the intrinsic movement of the colon and augment the naturally occurring processes just at a decreased rate due to the patients injury
2726,park and his team are still researching that strategic timing they are investigating when the colons sensory or motor signal is ready for augmented stimulation which can be a very complex answer as the colon is still a mystery to researchers in many ways
2727,the motivation of this work is to offer spinal cord injury patients as well as their caregivers a higher quality of life park said park is a member of the texas a&m spinal cord initiative which fosters collaborative research to discover new treatments that promote recovery after spinal cord injury this work funded by the craig h neilsen foundation provides significant insight into the analysis of neural manipulation of the colon and improved quality of life for those affected by spinal cord injury it also shows great promise for largely impacting future research collaborators for this project include dr cedric geoffroy from the texas a&m college of medicine and dr byung-jun yoon from the texas a&m electrical and computer engineering department
2728,"dr james hubbard jr is the 2022 recipient of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) adaptive structures and materials systems award the recognition highlights a lifetime of achievement and sustained impact of significant contributions to the sciences and technologies associated with adaptive structures or materials systems according to the asme hubbard said the award further validates his research's positive impact and value on the engineering field over the last 40 years he views this award as further motivation to use his skills in engineering to improve the world through his work hubbard has made valuable contributions across a broad spectrum of engineering thus far in his career he particularly takes pride in having mentored young engineers and faculty across the country built patented new technology for practical applications and started several commercial ventures based on adaptive structures technology ""i have really enjoyed my journey in this field and am very grateful to all those who have encouraged and believed in me "" said hubbard who serves as oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair i professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering ""i have tried hard to give back to my field and have been rewarded beyond my hopes i am grateful"" he is a member of the national academy of engineering and a fellow of several organizations including the asme the national academy of inventors the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics and the international society for optics and photonics"
2729,dr miroslav begovic was honored by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) power and energy society (pes) with the organizations top energy award the 2022 ramakumar family renewable energy excellence award this award recognizes researchers with outstanding contributions in the field of developing utilizing and integrating renewable energy resources in the national and global energy scenarios begovic the moore professor and department head in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was presented with this prestigious award for his leadership in the education and development of tools and protection techniques for the integration of renewable generation in electric power systems he was the project director for the design and construction of the photovoltaic (pv) system at the georgia institute of technology aquatic center built for the 1996 olympic games which was the largest roof-mounted pv system in the world at the time of its commissioning he was also one of the founding members of the brook byers institute for sustainable systems at georgia tech currently he is involved in the us-india collaborative for smart distribution system with storage (ui-assist) program which is a $75 million five-year project sponsored by the department of energy to advance the development of the power grid the ui-assist program includes us universities such as washington state university and the massachusetts institute of technology among the participating indian universities are the indian institute of technology (iit) kanpur iit delhi and iit bhubaneswar his work has resulted in about 50 projects for government and industrial sponsors and over 250 publications he is a life fellow of ieee and recipient of the 2019 ieee pes meritorious service award he has also previously served as a member and chair of the ieee pes governing board as well as president of ieee pes
2730,"throughout the spring semester 39 student teams in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering worked with government industry and individual sponsors to address their project needs the teams recently presented their work at the engineering project showcase at texas a&m university where several teams were recognized dr michael do professor of practice and director of the capstone program said the program enables students to apply everything they've learned from their undergraduate academic program to projects ""i strongly believe our capstone course gives students a true understanding and appreciation for what it takes to engineer a system from a design process perspective which will be important as they graduate and begin their professional careers do said first place in the department was awarded to dylan choate lacey hawthorne michael whittaker and rafael ramos who worked with sponsor baylor scott and white health to address lab wait times at the rock prairie clinic location the team developed several diagrams and designed solutions to make the lab services more efficient and reduce wait times theyre seeing an average wait time of up to about 30 minutes whittaker said with the pandemic it's just an increase in sick patients a large increase of people coming in with or without covid they want to reduce that down to about 10 to 15 minutes based on what it used to be prior to covid-19 and also increase patient satisfaction ratings"
2731,the team was able to make many trips to the clinic location to observe firsthand and traced paths that nurses must make for each patient which can include unnecessary trips to the front window of the labs to explain to lost patients that they have to check in at a different desk choate said the team calculated that there was approximately six minutes of non-value-added time for each patient after reviewing historical data provided by the clinic the team found that mondays were the busiest days at the lab and the longest wait times occurred between 10 am and noon hawthorne said another technique students used was a lean audit which is used in industry to identify different problem areas within a current system and translate those audits back to identifying waste areas including excess motion over processing and transport the team presented 10 solution options to baylor scott and white the primary concept involved hiring a patient service specialist at the lab to reduce the amount of time nurses get redirected from their main duties another proposed option was to add a tv and text alert system that would allow patients to see their expected wait time and be notified when they can enter the lab our solutions reduce the average wait time to about 11 minutes for each patient ramos said overall the top five solutions we presented would help decrease the waiting time and increase patient satisfaction second place was awarded to morgan roberts bryana moya joaquin cieri and lukas featherstone who worked with sponsor rochester gauges third place was awarded to james chung melanie beattie dhakshin subbaiah and lissete sillas who worked with sponsor aggieland coffee dr mike graul associate professor of practice said the students arent just given a problem and then left to figure things out on their own engineering design is performed systematically and emphasis is placed on the definition of the requirements and viable solutions driven by those requirements the teams are responsible for a formal technical argument that spans the entire design process covering: problem definition needs analysis requirements definition development of alternative solution concepts analysis of these alternatives selection and the final design itself said graul who also served as associate department head for undergraduate affairs in industrial and systems engineering until summer 2022 the final designs are analyzed with respect to the risk performance and cost for more information on the departments capstone program visit the design website
2732,extrusion-based 3d printing/bioprinting is a promising approach to generating patient-specific tissue-engineered grafts however a major challenge in extrusion-based 3d printing and bioprinting is that most currently used materials lack the versatility to be used in a wide range of applications new nanotechnology has been developed by a team of researchers from texas a&m university that leverages colloidal interactions of nanoparticles to print complex geometries that can mimic tissue and organ structure the team led by dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor and presidential impact fellow in the department of biomedical engineering has introduced colloidal solutions of 2d nanosilicates as a platform technology to print complex structures 2d nanosilicates are disc-shaped inorganic nanoparticles 20 to 50 nanometers in diameter and 1 to 2 nanometers in thickness these nanosilicates form a house-of-cards structure above a certain concentration in water known as a colloidal solution these colloidal solutions have appealing properties when studying the deformation of a material such as increased viscosity and yield stress as well as shear thinning where viscosity reduces under strain and thixotropic behavior where a material deforms in response to applied forces the gaharwar laboratory leverages the rheological properties of these nanosilicates for extrusion-based 3d printing the results of the teams research were published in the journal bioprinting the research was supported by the national institute of biomedical imaging bioengineering of the national institutes of health and the president's excellence fund (x-grants and t3) some major challenges in extrusion-based 3d printing are the inability to print tall and complex structures as soft materials flow under gravity and cannot form self-supporting structures to overcome these challenges researchers used colloidal nanosilicates and demonstrated them as a platform technology for bioprinting using three different approaches in the first approach satyam rajput a biomedical engineering graduate student in the gaharwar laboratory and the lead author of the paper designed a shear-thinning ink composed of nanosilicates and water-soluble polymers such as agarose alginate kappa-carrageenan gelatin gelatin methacryloyl polyethylene glycol and n-isopropyl acrylamide the printable ink formulation showed good shape fidelity in the second approach the team demonstrated the use of nanosilicates as a sacrificial ink an instrument designed to fail and be removed to design microfluidic devices for in vitro disease modeling these perfusable devices can be used for various applications to emulate and study vascular physiology and fluid mechanics disease models tissue organization and function therapeutic tissue engineering and 3d-cell culture models and screen drugs in the third approach the researchers utilized a colloidal nanosilicate gel as a support bath for 3d printing by nullifying the surface tension and gravitational forces a range of complex structures such as a bifurcated vessel femur meniscus dna double helix heart and trileaflet valve were printed inside the support bath the versatility of nanosilicates could be widely adopted in the fields of additive manufacturing tissue engineering drug delivery and medical devices gaharwar said other authors who contributed to this study are biomedical engineering graduate students kaivalya deo tanmay mathur giriraj lokhande and kanwar abhay singh; dr yuxiang sun associate professor in the department of nutrition; dr daniel alge associate professor in biomedical engineering; dr abhishek jain assistant professor in biomedical engineering; and dr tapasree roy sarkar assistant professor in the department of biology
2733,three generations of petroleum engineers in the family have inspired the establishment of the lovingfoss family – classes of 52 87 18 23 petroleum ventures program endowed scholarship at texas a&m university the lovingfoss aggie legacy started with the late warren j lovingfoss 52 who received a bachelors degree in petroleum engineering in 1980 after obtaining over 25 years of experience in the oil and gas industry he founded and was president of lovingfoss & bowman petroleum consultants in ventura california warrens son donald p don lovingfoss 87 was the next family member to receive his degree in petroleum engineering from texas a&m after graduation he was a petroleum engineer for plains exploration & production and seneca resources corporation and then was vice president of petroleum engineering for union bank following in his fathers footsteps donald established his own company lovingfoss energy consultants inc the most recent lovingfoss family graduate in petroleum engineering is connor lovingfoss 18 who graduated with a bachelors degree and a petroleum ventures certificate the certificate sets aggie petroleum engineers apart by giving them unparalleled exposure to business concepts entrepreneurship industry leaders and case-based learning opportunities through the graham petroleum ventures program where they work together with mays business school students to solve problems and study real-world energy companies distributions from the lovingfoss family – classes of 52 87 18 23 petroleum ventures program endowed scholarship will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering and participating in the petroleum ventures program at texas a&m this scholarship will both honor the lovingfoss familys ongoing contribution to the petroleum industry and promote the further success of students who like the lovingfoss family have proven their dedication to solving problems in the energy field
2734,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact alex moreno director of development
2735,a white mineral ring as tall as the statue of liberty creeps up the steep shoreline of lake mead a colorado river reservoir just east of las vegas on the nevada-arizona border it is the countrys largest reservoir and its draining rapidlywith much of the country experiencing above-normal temperatures below-average rainfall and a changing climate it is vital that water management decision-makers have accurate informationled by dr huilin gao associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university researchers created the global lake evaporation volume (glev) dataset it leverages modeling and remote sensing to provide the first long-term monthly time series for 142 million individual natural lakes and artificial reservoirs worldwidethe researchers published their findings in nature communicationsabout 87% of fresh surface water in liquid form is stored in natural and artificial lakes (ie reservoirs) while the evaporation volume from these global lakes is substantial little is known about its spatial distribution and its long-term trend
2736,from 1985 to 2018 researchers discovered that long-term average lake evaporation volume has increased at a rate of 312 cubic kilometers per year the trend attributions include an increased evaporation rate of 58% decreased lake ice coverage of 23% and increased lake surface area of 19%the results from the study underline the importance of using evaporation volume (rather than evaporation rate) as the primary index for assessing climatic impacts on lake systems we found that the long-term lake evaporation is 1500 plus or minus 150 cubic kilometers per year which is 154% larger than previous estimates said first author dr gang zhao a texas a&m former student who is now a postdoctoral fellow in the department of global ecology at the carnegie institute for science this suggests that lake evaporation plays a larger role in the hydrological cycle than previously thought
2737,"according to glev 6 715 reservoirs only account for 5% of the water storage capacity and 10% of the surface area of all lakes (both natural and artificial) however reservoirs contribute 16% to the evaporation volume this quantity of reservoir evaporative loss is equivalent to 20% of the global annual consumption of water use in the last 33 years evaporative water loss from reservoirs has been increasing at a rate of 54% per year outpacing the global trend of 21% for all lakes""with regard to evaporation loss this study will be an invaluable venue to serve water resources researchers and decision-makers "" gao said ""our findings have significant environmental societal and economic implications as the global evaporative loss will be accelerated and further exacerbated in the future under global warming""from a global perspective the total reservoir evaporation can be larger than the combined use of domestic and industrial water however even in the united states very few lakes/reservoirs have reliable evaporation data"""
2738,"without accurately quantifying the magnitude and trend of volumetric evaporation loss individually for the millions of global lakes researchers say reliable water and energy resources projections can't be made this freely available dataset can benefit decision-makers and the wider science community""with results for individual water bodies glev can really help improve reservoir management decision-making all over the world especially under increasing drought events and population growth "" gao said ""this dataset helps the science community better understand the role that these water bodies play in earth systems from global weather forecasting flood and drought modeling to earth system modeling under climate change""for future work texas a&m researchers the desert research institute and the us bureau of reclamation recently started a nearly $1 million nasa applied science project that focuses on developing satellite-assisted operational daily reservoir evaporation monitoring and forecasts for the western united states the team will also expand an ongoing daily reservoir monitoring project for texasother contributors to this research are dr yao li a postdoctoral research associate in the civil and environmental engineering department at texas a&m and dr liming zhou a professor in the atmospheric and environmental sciences department at the state university of new york at albanythis research is funded by nasa the department of energy and the national science foundation"
2739,kenneth w pecot 85 and kristin l pecot have recently established the ken and kristin pecot endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university additional selection preferences will be given to students who are pursuing a degree in electrical engineering who graduated from a texas high school and who have demonstrated academic dedication and success through a gpa of 35 or greater kenneth graduated from texas a&m with his bachelors degree in electrical engineering now he gives back as a trusted member of the departments external advisory and development council he is currently the chief operating officer for the 20 msp group a business development group for the it industry based in plano texas kenneth and kristin pecot reside in southlake texas their sons jake 12 benjamin 14 and john 21 both followed in kenneths footsteps and received their degrees from texas a&m now the ken and kristin pecot endowed scholarship will continue to build on the familys legacy at texas a&m by enabling electrical or computer engineering students to pursue their educations and careers
2740,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
2741,despite more than a century of studies the origin and effects of mental fatigue are still under debate in the research community mental fatigue is associated with reduced effort on demanding tasks causing performance and efficiency to decline researchers in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university in collaboration with the department of psychological and brain sciences and the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution are working to develop a mathematical way to investigate the impact of mental fatigue on effort exertion and decision-making industrial and systems professor dr alfredo garcia directs this research and works with doctoral student zhide wang wang said one obstacle in researching mental fatigue is its subjectivity its effects and symptoms can vary widely across different people he said a better understanding of mental fatigues influence could have both academic and economic impacts as a building block of psychological research insights about mental fatigue may help explain why people sometimes get bored or distracted in a short time but in other cases people can maintain a state of high efficiency without feeling tired wang said on the economic side understanding the mechanism of mental fatigue may help improve the overall efficiency of a system wangs model is unique from existing ones because it adopts a framework that relates mental fatigue to the value of decision-making the perceived value of deciding to complete a task the researchers hypothesized that mental fatigue discounts the value of a task making that task not as attractive which explains why people tend to quit when tired we proposed a method to determine the value of the task from the subjects behaviors and decisions wang said our model embraced the nature of mental fatigue treating objective measurements as an indicator of subjective fatigue rather than treating the measurement as mental fatigue itself one unexpected observation during the research was a phenomenon wang called a learning effect when subjects faced a difficult task their ability to master it through multiple rounds of practice gradually helped increase the task performance regardless of the subjects mental fatigue over time these observations urged wangs team to revise and refresh their approach for a better and more comprehensive understanding of mental fatigue we can peek into the difficulties faced by mental fatigue researchers wang said in addition to mental fatigue many hidden unobservable factors may be responsible for human decision-making and those factors may be highly heterogeneous among people and hard to control the team published their findings recently in the american psychological associations journal psychological review wang said the next goal is to apply the theory and methods by conducting a series of experiments to examine the validity of the proposed model this work results from a close collaboration between engineering experts and psychologists wang said i appreciate my team members for being open to new ideas from different domains and contributing in their own unique ways the willingness of different communities to talk to each other pushed the project forward and made courageous exploration in the study of mental fatigue
2742,"dr tillie mcvay wants every one of her students to walk away from her classroom confident in knowing they can become successful engineers even when the material is challenging and it takes work to achieve that goal ""even if something looks difficult at first they can approach problems in different ways and figure it out "" said mcvay instructional associate professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university ""it's a way of thinking about technical problems in the world"" mcvay who has been with the department for more than 16 years teaches statics and dynamics mechanical measurements and numerical methods primarily for sophomore mechanical engineering students she said one of her favorite parts of teaching is working through challenging concepts and seeing the moment when students begin to understand ""teaching is my passion "" mcvay said ""you can tell by someone's eyes and their reactions if they truly understood what you said"" mcvay said she is thankful to be a part of nurturing successful college careers watching students knowledge and confidence grow with each subsequent course until graduation this journey to successful graduation faced new hurtles with the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic and the necessity of online learning both for teachers and students the new challenges made adaptation necessary as students had to work harder to engage with their courses and complete assignments while dealing with new distractions from being at home on the other hand instructors pivoted their teaching styles to help encourage interactions and engaged attendance through methods like using in-class polls break-out rooms requiring students to have their cameras turned on and implementing classwork due at the end of the period ""i had to change the way i taught in zoom to engage more students and to make sure they attended class "" mcvay said ""this academic year i am so grateful to be back in front of the students in person i think the students are grateful to attend in person as well the teaching experience is so much better for all of us"""
2743,"texas a&m university is leading the second stage of a widely collaborative science mission to better understand elements of hypersonic flight bolt ii a suborbital sounding rocket was designed to provide information about boundary layer turbulence (bolt ii) during hypersonic flight the flight experiment managed by the air force research laboratory (afrl)/air force office of scientific research (afosr) launched on march 21 from the nasa wallops flight facility in virginia the successful 10-minute flight brings in new scientific data to further our understanding of drag and heating at hypersonic conditions dr rodney bowersox professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m served as the lead principal investigator (pi) for this effort drs helen reed and edward white professors in the aerospace engineering department were co-pis on the projects aerospace engineering graduate students heather kostak bryan morreale john wirth daniel mullen and eric swinny all played integral roles in the three phases of the experiment this project provided a great opportunity for the students and faculty to better understand the steps teaming and attention to detail required for a successful flight experiment said bowersox this team interacted on a weekly basis with the air force calspan-university of buffalo research center (cubrc) nasa and nasa sounding rocket operations contact the result was a successful hypersonic flight experiment and i am incredibly proud of the entire team mapping out dynamics one of the most important questions that needed to be answered before launch day was will the rocket fly straight according to bryan morreale a doctoral student in the aerospace engineering department that's a harder question to answer than one might think especially because of the unique geometry of bolt ii ""my main contribution was looking at the external aerodynamics of the whole flight system "" said morreale ""myself and another graduate student eric swinny generated aerodynamic databases to determine the flight performance of the rocket"" morreale and swinny worked closely with experts from nasa wallops and the johns hopkins university applied physics laboratory (jhuapl) to determine the flight stability for bolt ii ""one of the most important things about bolt ii is that it's an unclassified problem for the community to all work on together "" said morreale ""i came into this with limited knowledge but i left knowing unbelievable amounts more from having access to the nation's best and brightest engineers working on these problems"" morreale was also a key player in helping to determine where to place the more than 400 sensors and instruments on the vehicle ""we have the rocket and at the end of the rocket we have the bolt ii payload which has these swept leading edges "" he said ""the edges cause the air to rush in and create a very complicated flow pattern so what the instrument designers want is to get a rough idea of what the air will do at a specific moment in flight"""
2744,"to help them determine the best way to capture information during the flight he developed higher fidelity fluid dynamics simulations that could explain what the flow over the vehicle's surface would look like laying the groundwork the placement of those 400-plus sensors was critical to the success of the flight mission to create a wealth of data from this experiment the vehicle had two different instrument layouts one side of the vehicle was designed to capture the natural breakdown to turbulence during flight the other side served as a trip side that captured data from forced transition and turbulence during hypersonic flight heather kostak 16 20 22 a former student from the aerospace engineering department was in charge of instrumenting the natural side which would be equipped with the majority of the sensors she looked at ground test data and simulations to inform the instrumentation layout ""we first tested in the wind tunnels at texas a&m and on just a rough 3d-printed model we saw breakdown "" said kostak ""this breakdown informed us that we need to place instruments in that region to see what modal growth and instabilities are present"" she also relied on the data from morreale and mullens simulations for laminar and turbulent flow along with results from jhuapl and her knowledge from previously working on bolt after instrumenting the entire vehicle kostak and their team traveled to new york to test the full-scale vehicle at cubrc ""we tested the entire flight vehicle with all of the instrumentation which has not been done before so that was a really unique opportunity to be a part of "" said kostak because of their ability to replicate expected bolt ii flight conditions in cubrc's facilities researchers now have the opportunity to compare more precise data between the flight experiment and ground tests ""that's the whole picture all together "" said kostak ""how did the flight data compare to our simulations and ground test work are we predicting what actually caused transition to turbulence on the flight vehicle that's what i'm curious about because that will impact the aerospace industry"""
2745,"drumming up the data the successful launch of bolt ii brings in unprecedented data for the teams to begin processing and breaking down air force 1st lt john wirth a doctoral student in the aerospace engineering department is one of the first to look at this information ""we have some excellent data and i'm really excited to see how it all lines up "" said wirth ""you have this complicated 3d geometry with a lot going on so step number one is just to look at the flight trajectory"" wirth's role is to take the exponential amount of data from the flight test and reduce it to usable information he is working with partners at afrl nasa and cubrc to determine the angle of attack mach and altitude his role is to put the flight data through the 3d heat flux analysis he developed as part of his doctoral research ""if we can validate our theories and actually understand what's happening with the physics then we can make better engineering decisions and enable the next generation of hypersonics "" he said the data from bolt ii gives the hypersonics community real-world information that provides long-awaited answers and opens the door for new discoveries for wirth the opportunity to work directly with the flight experiment data alongside a collaborative team has been a uniquely rewarding experience ""it feels good being a part of a nationwide team doing something that's important for our whole country "" said wirth ""that definitely gives you a lot of satisfaction at the end of the day"" texas a&m is the first university to lead a flight test key collaborators on the science mission included cubrc nasa university of minnesota united states air force academy university of maryland university of arizona and jhuapl ""it is amazing to watch the students rise to the occasion and take the lead on critical elements of the bolt ii flight experiment said sarah popkin who oversees the project as afosrs program officer for high-speed aerodynamics the computational fluid dynamic simulations sensor placement to chase the science and data post-processing have all proven to be so important to our success these students and this project are a prime example of how afosr contributes to workforce development capacity building and creating the next generation of scientists and engineers"""
2746,managed by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) under the leadership of bowersox the university consortium for applied hypersonics (ucah) is a five-year $20 million-per-year us department of defense initiative for modernizing hypersonic flight capabilities for more information about texas a&ms hypersonic research and events visit the ucah website
2747,high-frequency wireless communication systems such as 5g millimeter wave (mmwave) and beyond are of particular interest to consumers as they can deliver data with extremely high speed and provide an upgraded experience to existing wireless communication systems despite the many advantages of mmwave communication there are several basic challenges associated with using it santosh ganji a computer engineering doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is working with his faculty advisor dr pr kumar to design novel beam management practices for 5g wireless technology to address these issues and provide a reliable solution for mmwave communication current mmwave communication devices use narrow directional beams to maintain connection which means that the transmitter and the receiver must continuously adapt their beam direction to maintain alignment as the user moves or walks around additionally the human body blocks the mmwave communication link from the cell tower to the wireless device to combat this both the transmitter and receiver must maintain a backup non-line of sight beam reflected off any ambient surfaces to preserve link during blockage beam management which encompasses this beam adaptation and blockage recovery is vital to keep high-frequency communication systems working efficiently
2748,ganji has developed two separate protocols for mmwave beam management his first beamsurfer continuously aligns the beams used by the cell tower and wireless device so that they point at each other with minimal overhead and without requiring any special sensors it also circumvents pedestrian blockage by maintaining a backup non-line of sight beam that reflects off of interior walls to preserve a link during blockage terra his other developed tool does the same but is specifically designed for outdoor environments instead of maintaining a non-line of sight beam that reflects off of interior walls ganji utilizes the ground as a reflective surface if a user moves far away from a cell tower or is permanently blocked from it then terra also seamlessly does handover ie switches the user through a different cell tower current research to address this problem utilizes cameras or sensors to monitor a users location which then allows the beams to be pointed toward each other but ganjis technology is able to take measurements within the signal without any additional equipment these protocols are designed to be usable in current 5g and future cellular technologies he said we anticipate our work can be utilized in any future directional communication system architecture ganji has a pending invention disclosure for this work in addition this project is funded by the us department of homeland security the us office of naval research the us army research office and the us army research lab
2749,rebecca and paul griffin 95 have established the rebecca and paul griffin 95 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students involved in student organizations and pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university in college station or galveston texas paul griffin began his college career at texas a&m in 1991 as a first-generation aggie the first time paul stepped on campus; he immediately knew there was something special about the culture i was positively impacted by the students on campus when i was walking around paul said i remember specifically many people stopping and asking us if we needed any help which was a very welcoming environment along with an exceptional campus culture the reputation of the engineering program at texas a&m made pauls decision to attend an easy one his experience in the ocean engineering department was highlighted by the many professors and mentors who helped him start his career these experiences not only influenced his career but inspired him to give back i had a tremendous experience as a student at texas a&m paul said i wanted to give back to the department that helped form my technical base which has helped me have a successful career while in school paul was fortunate to be involved in various student organizations including the marine technology society and society of naval architects and marine engineers the omega epsilon chapter and the ocean engineering honor society paul gives credit to his involvement in these organizations for his successful career student organizations play a huge role in helping students develop their leadership capabilities and also provide a connection with the professional folks in the industry which ultimately helps students find jobs and successful careers paul said paul understands firsthand the amount of time effort and dedication it takes to participate in these organizations and wants to reward those who choose to be involved there is so much for students to gain through organizations but committing to them sometimes does not come easily i want to recognize the extra effort involved in volunteering for these student organizations paul said the ability to help shape the future of inspiring ocean engineers is very important to paul he understands the legacy he is responsible for leaving behind to help students who are in the same position he once was i am excited to create a legacy of support that will enhance the educational experience of ocean engineering student leaders he said paul currently works for chevron as an offshore engineer and resides with his wife rebecca and their two boys jacob and patrick in katy texas
2750,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown director of development at mbrown@txamfoundationcom
2751,"dr ali erdemir was elected to the 2022 class of the european academy of sciences and arts (easa) members academy members are elected for their outstanding achievements in science arts and governance and hold exceptional standing in society as a result of their scientific work publications or leadership erdemir noted the 35 years he has focused on enhancing the efficiency reliability and environmental sustainability of mechanical systems as key to his recognition by easa ""being elected to the european academy of sciences and arts is a great honor "" said erdemir ""it reflects my achievements in science and engineering through advancing the frontiers of surface engineering tribology materials and mechanical engineering fields aimed at reducing the energy and carbon footprints of all moving mechanical systems thus helping with global sustainability"" erdemir serves as the halliburton chair in engineering professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he is a member of the national academy of engineering the world academy of ceramics and the science academy of turkey he is a fellow of numerous organizations including the american society of mechanical engineers the american association for the advancement of science the society of tribologists and lubrication engineers the american vacuum society and asm international ""i am very grateful to my friends peers and leadership at texas a&m and in our department for their unwavering help and support and for providing me the great opportunities to further excel in my field "" erdemir said founded in 1990 easa has greater than 2 000 members including more than 30 nobel prize laureates erdemir was officially inducted as a member on july 2 at the organization's annual inauguration ceremony in salzburg austria"
2752,"dr tracy hammond professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university received the 2022 distinguished achievement award for teaching from texas a&m and the association of former students since 1995 the award has been presented to recognize faculty and staff achievements in research individual student relationships continuing education/extension graduate mentoring staff and administration and is one of the highest university honors hammond was one of five faculty members in the college of engineering to be honored this year i am incredibly honored to receive this award and am grateful for my exceptional students who have been active collaborators in creating an inclusive classroom "" said hammond through her innovative work she has made significant contributions to improving engineering education at texas a&m her engineering education research has been implemented at high schools and universities including texas a&m georgia tech texas state university san jose state university and letourneau university hammond is an international leader in artificial intelligence data science activity recognition (focusing on eye body and sketch motions) machine learning haptics intelligent fabrics smartphone development and computer-human interaction research her publications on these subjects have been widely cited hammond also serves as director of the institute for engineering education and innovation and the sketch recognition lab at texas a&m"
2753,dr guofei gu professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is the lead principal investigator of a research team that has received a $1 million grant from the national science foundation's (nsf) resilient and intelligent next-generation systems (rings) program to enhance the security of future wireless and mobile network systems the rings program seeks to ensure the security and resiliency of next-generation (nextg) wireless and mobile communication sensing computing and networking systems that will support essential services nextg systems are expected to connect billions of internet of things devices and users and provide personalized computational and storage resources for highly critical data in real time with little delay in order to host so many application services nextg will use edge computing which refers to computing services that are physically located near the user or source of the data instead of miles away at the core of a traditional cloud data system this way the corresponding device can provide quick responses for example future autonomous vehicles may require nextg to support application services to perform computations store and process critical data from their various sensors manage vehicle-to-vehicle communications and run their deep-learning algorithms to ensure that the billions of nextg-supported services remain scalable and reliable it will feature microservice architecture which is composed of a single application or service divided into smaller independent processes (microservices) that each has a specific purpose they are reusable and can be made quickly to meet demand in addition if a single microservice fails it will not cause the entire application or service to crash however existing microservice architecture is not typically developed and deployed with built-in security measures while basic security patches are available on demand to add after the fact they are not enough to support the large volumes of critical services that nextg hosts to address these issues the team has proposed to develop a new framework nextsec to transform the microservices into self-protecting entities that can do security enhancement protection on their own using the concept of security transformation in addition to security transformation nextsec also provides new primitives for supporting a software-defined way of enforcing user-to-edge-to-cloud security and offers efficient scalable verification of complex security properties across microservices nextsec is an ambitious attempt to build revolutionary capabilities for securing critical services in nextg as well as generic edge and cloud computing said gu this project will provide a solid foundation and collaborative community for future system and network security research the co-principal investigators on the project include associate professor dr jeff huang and assistant professor dr chia-che tsai from the computer science and engineering department and dr walter magnussen director of the texas a&m internet2 technology evaluation center for the rings program the nsf partners with the us department of defenses office of the under secretary of defense for research and engineering the national institute of standards and technology and several industry partners such as apple ericsson google ibm intel microsoft nokia qualcomm and vmware
2754,like many aggies carter burke 90 was drawn to texas a&m university by its strong alumni network outstanding education and of course its time-honored traditions as a student carters favorite tradition was standing with the 12th man in kyle field where he witnessed the beginning of college football hall of famer rc slocums head coaching career with the aggies carters experience as a student in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution has been foundational in developing his career the department provided him with an excellent education with real-world training that coupled with a network of passionate former students has given him a leg up in his professional pursuits the department does an outstanding job of preparing students for life and work after texas a&m making sure that they get in front of as many prospective employers as possible carter said my degree did a great job of preparing me to have an immediate positive impact in my first job out of college more than 30 years into his career carter and his wife chris have decided to establish the burke 90 industrial distribution endowed scholarship to give back to the university and department he graduated from distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the industrial distribution program in the engineering technology and industrial distribution department at texas a&m carter and chris hope their support will help other aggies achieve their dreams to support their community specifically the burkes have specified that this scholarship be awarded to a student from the san antonio or austin area where they are from and now live i feel fortunate to have been relatively successful in my career this has much to do with texas a&m and the benefits of being an aggie carter said no one can discount the power of the aggie network i see it all the time aggies help aggies
2755,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah simonds assistant director of development
2756,texas a&m universitys society of automotive engineers (sae) aero design team has won first place for the third consecutive year in the regular class at the sae aero design east competition they also took a second team to compete in the micro class bringing home fourth place this is the first time since the 2010s that texas a&m has competed in two classes sae aero design is a competition that challenges students to design build and fly a radio-controlled airplane optimized to meet specific configurations and mission requirements the experience exposes students to real-world engineering situations and builds on their classroom knowledge better preparing them for their future careers the competition also allows students to practice their communication skills with a design report and technical presentation farmers flight this year the objective for the regular class was to design an aircraft that could take off within 100 feet while carrying a payload of steel and soccer balls knowing that the soccer balls had a higher point value texas a&ms team farmers flight began experimenting with a design to place them in the wing of their aircraft each team takes a completely different approach to maximizing their flight score said isabel short an aerospace engineering student and team member we were one of two or three teams that had the idea to put a soccer ball in a wing and our plane had the capability to hold 26
2757,it was an ambitious design and their 14-foot-long aircraft with a 7-foot wingspan raised eyebrows at the competition once they hit the runway though farmers flight cemented their first-place win by carrying a total of 120 soccer balls over three flights with the second-place team carrying a total of 24 we were writing on the back of napkins at last years competition already messing around with designs said josue corleto an aerospace engineering student and team director we had a lot of historical knowledge to play off of we understood the rule set well and we were confident that we had the skills and the ability to create such a different design a total of 22 teams from around the world competed in the regular class and farmers flight pulled away with first place overall and first place in mission performance farmers flight lite interest in texas a&ms sae aero design team has grown with their success over the last few years which has created more opportunities for students to be involved this year they formed a second team farmers flight lite to compete in the micro class the objective for the micro class was to take off from an 8-foot table and travel 300 feet while carrying as much payload as possible in steel and pizza boxes in the past teams at the competition have struggled to take off from the table so farmers flight lite put emphasis on a lightweight wing area and chose to go with a biplane design we were a first-year team so the fact that we were able to get off the table multiple times successfully at competition is an achievement in and of itself said jeremy ringwood a mechanical engineering student and team member even being a young team and experiencing build and competition for the first time they found success in their design and pushed for the podium to the very end only being short by about five points in flight theres almost a sense that no matter what happens youre proud because you harken back to the idea that youve done all this work and that work isnt for nothing said ewan gill an aerospace engineering student and team director farmers flight lite competed against 19 other teams from around the world and placed fourth overall and fourth in mission performance beyond competition while the competition itself is a rewarding opportunity for the students its the trial-and-error and coming together as a team that has had the biggest impact
2758,ive never seen a team come together in the way that we did and other teams were coming up to us at competition and talking about how our team seems so close said short just seeing everything that we had done throughout the year come together was special sae gives students a unique introduction to the real world as theyre able to take the theoretical knowledge they learn in the classroom and apply it to the whole design process of prototyping testing validation and verification youre never going to get anything as close to putting a plane that you designed on the flightline and trusting that its going to work said ringwood and the experience gives you great things to talk about in interviews and put on your resume preparing students for their future when they leave sae and texas a&m is the reason the teams advisors commit so much of their time to support them throughout the year brad worsham and scott mcharg both from the aerospace engineering department have advised texas a&ms team for the last few years and the students have found an invaluable resource in them theyre just great people theyre awesome to work with and our team as a whole would not be where it is without them said gill brad has been teaching at texas a&m because thats what he wanted to do he wanted to teach and see people go through this process of becoming better engineers the advisors invested many weekends and hours after work helping the students test their designs and learn from practice flights scott our pilot puts in hours with us behind the scenes at rellis before competition said corleto as soon as it takes off you know that its in good hands even with some of the worst planes that weve thrown at him he figures them out which still allows us to get feedback and information from our designs the students plan to compete in both the regular and micro classes again at next years competition with short directing the regular class and ringwood directing the micro class learn more about texas a&ms sae aero design team and the annual sae aero design competition
2759,what started as a small company outside of chicago has transformed into a global industry leader dedicated to bolstering the education of future ocean engineers by establishing the fund for dredging and coastal studies great lakes dredge and dock company llc (gldd) will continue to revolutionize the education of aggie engineers for years to come this fund will be used for renovating and renaming the great lakes dredge and dock laboratory for dredging and coastal studies in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university gldd is the largest dredging company in the united states with a 132-year-old-history both domestically and internationally first founded in 1890 gldd started its legacy in oak brook illinois working with the chicagos shore infrastructure and lock system since then the company has expanded its reach globally taking on dredging projects in bahrain qatar and brazil in recent years gldd moved its headquarters to houston to be closer to new markets and customers near the gulf coast and mississippi river since moving to houston gldd has been able to have a closer relationship with the texas a&m department of ocean engineering we have had a long-term relationship with texas a&m particularly with the ocean engineering department gldd ceo lasse petterson said by establishing the great lakes dredge and dock laboratory for dredging and coastal studies we hope to grow the relationship for further research and introduction of the dredging and coastal industry to students originally from norway petterson lived in houston for over 20 years and has been involved with the oil and gas industry before joining gldd in 2017 as a result he has been able to see firsthand the type of students the ocean engineering department at texas a&m produces we hire a lot of texas a&m engineers and are very familiar with the school petterson said when we moved our corporate headquarters to houston from illinois two years ago we noted more active participation with texas a&m as one of the benefits of being based in houston in addition to their gift gldd has also been deeply involved in the departments industry advisory council the texas a&m engineering experiment stations advisory board and the annual dredging short course offered by texas a&m engineering both as students and teachers gldd has shown its commitment to not only the department but to the students of ocean engineering as well we intend for our donation to be just part of the future relationship as we expect active engagement with researchers students and professors at both ocean engineering campuses in college station and galveston and the maritime academy in galveston petterson said gldd also values texas a&ms role in helping them stay competitive in an ever-growing market they are among the first companies to make major investments in the united states offshore wind market the relationship between gldd and the department of ocean engineering will not only help them grow in global markets but bolster the education of all aggie ocean engineers the ocean engineering department is very pleased to partner with great lakes in seeking novel solutions for a variety of coastal issues including dredging offshore wind and marshland/wetland resiliency said dr sharath girimaji ocean engineering department head together great lakes and texas a&m can elevate the ocean and coastal engineering professions to new heights
2760,endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown director of development at mbrown@txamfoundationcom
2761,the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is home to renowned faculty who impact society through research several faculty received prestigious awards and honors this year many of which are highlighted below dr jodie lutkenhaus professor received the 2022 edith and peter odonnell award in engineering in addition she was honored with the arthur k doolittle award for her outstanding talk on flexible mxene coatings dr stratos pistikopoulos professor received the 2021 sustainable engineering forum research award the distinguished achievement award presented by texas a&m and had three members of his research group accept faculty positions dr xuejun zhu assistant professor was awarded a welch foundation grant to help uncover and characterize enzymes that can decrease the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals she also recently received a national institutes of health maximizing investigators research award dr faruque hasan associate professor was named division director of the american institute of chemical engineers computing and systems technology division dr qing sun assistant professor was awarded the stephen i katz early stage investigator research project grant to develop thermally stable vaccines and relax the stringent conditions needed for vaccine preparation storage and distribution dr pushkar lele associate professor received a national institute of general medical sciences r01 grant totaling over $13 million to research how h pylori invade and cause infections dr joseph sang-ii kwon associate professor received the 2021 premium award for best paper from the institution of engineering and technology in systems biology dr jeetain mittal professor received a welch foundation grant that will be used to develop computational methods for generating new knowledge on the material properties of biomolecular condensates and how these relate to their assembly and function dr emily pentzer an affiliate faculty of the chemical engineering department was selected as a finalist for the 2022 blavatnik national award for young scientists in physical sciences & engineering these award highlights are among many others the department has received within the past year as our faculty continue to strive for excellence in chemical engineering
2762,the texas aimbots texas a&m universitys premier robotics team from the tamu robomaster organization won second place in the three-versus-three main category at the annual robomaster north america competition texas a&m hosted this years robotics competition at the memorial student center from june 25-27 2022 robomaster is a university-level robotics competition powered by dji a technology company that features a students ability to design robots based on an extensive set of game rules while completing the engineering task of designing the robot for combat for robots to compete effectively they must be able to launch both paintball-sized and golf-ball-sized projectiles at enemy robots at the same time they also must coordinate with their teammates and manipulate field elements to gain advantages over the enemy team before the competition students go through a long process of designing manufacturing and testing their robots for competition
2763,sophomore engineering student elizabeth crumrin a driver for texas a&ms robot the standard at the competition said everything before the competition required engineering while everything after was like an ea sports challenge the drivers are not allowed to physically see the robots while they control them and are only allowed to see the competition from a first-person point-of-view through a webcam on the robot like a video game the texas aimbots has a team dedicated to those interested in learning how to drive the robot known as the stratcom drive team crumrin reflected on the anxious feeling she had when the team was not able to test drive the robot until weeks before the competition not allowing as much practice time as other teams may have had despite the late arrival of the robot the texas aimbots remained undefeated until the finals where they placed second and the advanced robotics at the university of washington placed first
2764,it was a really cool experience said crumrin the entire competition leading all the way up to the field is a complete engineering competition it is design-focused and we go through the entire engineering process from conceptualization to adding up our ideas to prototyping and even manufacturing there is also the entire software side which looks so difficult and they did so much just to get the robots to move that itself is a hard design challenge we experienced to see all of that come together in the last month leading up to the competition was super exciting due to multiple stages of preparation for this competition tamu robomasters is filled with engineering students across all departments dillan gay junior in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering said his biggest takeaway from participating in robomaster north america was that implementing and executing ideas well is best accomplished with a team of people who are not afraid to rebuild and test as much as possible for crumrin the teamwork and communication required to succeed in this organization and competitions have created a community of lifelong friends
2765,dr pr kumar regents professor distinguished professor and o'donnell foundation chair i in computer engineering and dr srinivas shakkottai professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university are working on a collaborative project on resilient information networks in this demonstration the research team utilized multiple sensors that track a moving target in this case a vehicle though multiple cameras and sensors were tracking the moving vehicle only one image was streamed or transmitted over the air at any time preventing the team from clogging up the bandwidth using multiple streams the network itself utilizing machine-learning techniques seamlessly switched the video through the cell tower to the end target so that the stakeholder could view the moving target at any time this was done with zero human interference this demonstration falls in the general scheme of microservices architectures where you divide your job into individual elements or services and then these services are attached together over a network to get your output shakkottai said the goal of this project is to not only enable a smart network that can transmit the necessary information to the consumer over a 5g network but also to make it resilient to disruptions in communication computation sensing and other challenges that arise in any situation the microservices architecture can leverage all available resources to place and migrate the services to ensure such resilience the research team will now continue their efforts at the new texas a&m rellis campus 5g testbed facility other collaborators for this project include dr woo-hyun ko and doctoral student jaewon kim
2766,how is golf equipment made what is it made of and why does it matter you can head to engineering student katie calderon's viral tiktok page to find answers to these questions whether you watch her unveil the insides of golf balls compete in long-drive tournaments or follow her journey to develop a 3d-printed putter calderon's page continually showcases the overlap between golf and engineering
2767,"now a junior in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and a national champion long-drive competitor calderon started golfing at age four when she received a free lesson offered at a hotel since that moment golf has remained a constant in her life at age 16 she began working at a golf course where she fell in love with golf club repairs and fittings although she always imagined playing golf in college she was also interested in working in the research and development of golf clubs she then reached out to the callaway golf company for direction ""i asked someone i followed on instagram who worked at callaway if they could put me in contact with the team who builds golf clubs "" calderon said ""when i was able to speak with a person on the development team they immediately told me engineering was the way to go"""
2768,"at the same time that she decided to pursue engineering she began her tiktok page after gaining hundreds of followers from a video of her attempting to make a table out of golf balls she discovered she could use the platform to showcase how golf clubs are engineered making use of the 3d printers at texas a&m calderon began developing and testing a 3d-printed putter the first ever to be produced ""i wanted to start exploring more within golf engineering and my professors encouraged me that i needed to try designs out myself "" she said ""i created my first 3d-printed putter and it blew up on tiktok i started posting more videos of my design process engineers in the industry began commenting giving me bits of information to improve my putters professional golfers have asked to try it out this help and encouragement from experts inspired me to keep working"" through her practical 3d printing experience and her previous jobs in golf she understood how golf clubs were made from a mechanical aspect but what were her golf clubs made of and how does the clubs material makeup affect its abilities these questions inspired her to pursue materials science and engineering ""with a degree in this field i actually have a cooler angle on how to produce golf clubs "" she said ""i can learn the material aspects of wedges or putters and understand how different metals come into play when creating a club"" the summer of her freshman year calderon began an internship with ctrl an aggie-founded engineering company that uses sensors to help improve golfers swings calderon said she gained many valuable tools from the internship that have helped her in school on the green and in gaining a social media following"
2769,"when she's not making putters from scratch or cutting video clips she's using a driver to crush balls down the fairway as a professional long-drive competitor calderon is among the country's top five best women in the sport her success is partially due to her ability to understand the makeup of a golf club and how this can affect her power speed and distance her knowledge was showcased when she partnered with a company to create her driver for the national long-drive competition as she conveyed her interest in golf club design the company asked calderon if she'd like to participate in the development process when she received the first model of the club and put it to use she noticed a problem with her spin she hypothesized it was likely caused by a steel weight on the club's top ""they had used 303 steel in the weight the same steel used in putters "" she said ""i knew from repairs fittings and materials classes that tungsten would be a better option it's lighter so the head will move faster and the tungsten will provide a better balance factor when i would hit the ball it would theoretically come off faster when i put the tungsten in it fixed all the issues i had with spin"" after two years of making putters posting tiktok videos and keeping up with her studies calderon landed a summer internship at callaway she is currently in san diego california at the callaway headquarters where she tests and reviews putters for the design team once she is back on the college station campus she plans to advance her 3d printing putter technology using what she has learned throughout her internship after graduation she hopes to continue her career in golf club development while growing her tiktok page which has over 175 000 followers and over 101 million likes ""throughout my time at texas a&m i have never been afraid to take a chance and ask questions "" she said ""i realized that what i wanted to do was something i could achieve if i just kept trying i've played golf competitively my whole life so it's amazing to be a part of the sport in a different way"""
2770,brannon veal 11 a former student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university enjoyed a busy and successful college career his time at texas a&m helped prepare him for his dream job of serving others by working for icon a company that builds 3d-printed houses for underprivileged groups middle class families and space exploration veal grew up in cedar hill texas just south of the dallas/fort worth metroplex he had always heard about texas a&m from his great uncle dr ed childs 89 a former professor at the texas a&m health science center and graduate of the college of medicine once veal saw aggieland for himself he was struck by the sense of family that existed on campus and knew that texas a&m was the place for him while attending school veal was involved in century singers the texas a&m jazz band and other on-campus christian organizations he also worked at the space engineering institute a work-study program led by dr magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships in the college of engineering and dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering he also spent time working on the dark energy camera calibration system at texas a&ms astronomical instrumentation laboratory and spent two summers interning with nasas ames research center as a part of the nasa motivating undergraduates in science and technology program veal also met his wife dr raven (cunningham) veal 10 while at texas a&m learning about the challenges faced by underprivileged and minority populations around the globe the pair felt the need to help for veal it was addressing homelessness using his engineering degree
2771,"veal later met evan loomis 03 alex le roux and jason ballard 05 founders of icon a start-up with the mission to re-imagine the approach to homebuilding and construction to make affordable dignified housing available to everyone throughout the world they explained to him that over 1 billion people in the world do not have adequate shelter and they intended to help solve the inefficient and unsustainable process of homebuilding by 3d-printing homes that the average person could afford immediately veal knew he was on board and joined icon full time in 2019 as an senior electrical control engineer veal works with a next-generation robotic 3d printer that is capable of producing homes and structures the technology cuts down on the cost time and materials needed to create homes built to the international building code these homes are expected to last longer than standard concrete masonry-built homes and consist of ""lavacrete "" a proprietary cementitious material which makes the structure resilient and energy efficient"
2772,in 2018 icon completed the first permitted 3d-printed home in the us since then theyve collaborated to create 3d-printed home communities benefiting underprivileged groups in tabasco mexico and austin texas in 2022 icon will break ground on a community of 100 3d-printed homes near austin in partnership with lennar the largest neighborhood of its kind in the world veal is excited by what theyve accomplished at icon which has even led to work with both the department of defense and nasa to research and develop autonomous additive construction systems for future exploration of the moon and long-duration human habitats on mars his proudest accomplishment is serving underprivileged communities and doing his part to help solve the housing crisis experienced by people in his own backyard and around the world veal and his wife reside in austin
2773,the college of engineering is proud of the work that our former students do to ignite change and pursue excellence in the service of others if you know an engineering former student who is changing their industry for the better contact the office of alumni relations
2774,"dr manish shetty assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is the recipient of the oak ridge associated universities (orau) ralph e powe junior faculty enhancement award ""when i look at previous years' awardees and their career trajectory it gives me promise "" said shetty ""i thank everyone associated with my work for the confidence in my abilities background and potential to participate in groundbreaking science"" the orau awards are presented to young faculty members furthering the advancement of science and engineering-related fields as a competitive research award the orau will provide a $5 000 grant that the university will match shetty will use the grant to progress his research ventures which focus on using catalysts in sustainable applications and green energy solutions he is currently developing a novel catalyst inside microporous materials capable of converting carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels this process could potentially limit the number of necessary chemical reactions and limit separations ""i will use this award to further my vision of a greener world in the energy transition industry "" he said ""i hope to positively influence my research group here and texas a&m as a whole"""
2775,kristina and billy classen recently established the kristina 91 and billy classen 93 civil engineering endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineering in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university additional selection preferences have been made to award this scholarship to students from kendall comal guadalupe wilson atascosa medina or bandera counties in texas kristina received her bachelor of business administration in accounting from texas a&m she continued her education and received her master of business administration from the university of texas at san antonio kristina remained in san antonio and worked for harland clarke for 23 years holding various positions within the financial services company billy graduated from texas a&m with his bachelors in civil engineering after working as a project manager for several engineering firms he joined kfw engineers & surveying in 2013 where he now serves as a partner his leadership ensures that the firm accomplishes its mission of maintaining a client-first attitude and providing the best services to public and private clients across south texas the classens can now give back to the next generation of civil engineers through their generosity in establishing the kristina 91 and billy classen 93 civil engineering endowed scholarship their investment in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering will help to alleviate financial barriers and open doors of opportunity for current and future scholarship recipients
2776,endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
2777,with the record-breaking heat and drought weather conditions texas is currently facing finding a solution to the growing need for reliable power from the electric grid is at an equally all-time high dr thomas overbye professor and odonnell foundation chair iii in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center is investigating a novel way that historical weather can play a crucial role in benefiting the grid today in particular he is researching the outlier weather conditions such as the extreme heat texas is currently experiencing or very low temperatures such as those experienced in february 2021 during winter storm uri according to the world meteorological organization the number of recorded disasters in north america central america and the caribbean has increased from a disaster occurring every 30 days on average in the 1970s to every seven days for the three decades between 1990 and 2019 while these extreme weather events used to be relatively infrequent their incidence is growing making it vital to include this historical data in the power flow to better safeguard the grid of tomorrow
2778,weather information has been used in electric grid planning and operations since the 1880s however no one has yet introduced the idea of incorporating this information into the power flow or load flow of the grid which is a system used to determine how the power flows from the generators through the transmission system to the distribution system (which is then used by consumers) this project funded by the power systems engineering research center introduces the inclusion of historical weather data in the power flow which will provide more context for power engineers and grid operators to effectively manage the electric grid during these extreme weather events and a chance for more informed decisions the power flow is one of the most common tools used to study and design large-scale high-voltage electric grids and includes several algorithms models data and the associated human-machine interface used by power engineers in order to include weather information in a power flow model there is a need for adequate weather data and models of how the weather impacts the grid components as well as the ability to map the weather information to relevant electric grid components overbyes approach to including weather data in the power flow is demonstrated on several electric grids ranging in size from 7 000 to 82 000 buses or nodes that connect several lines and components using weather data over several different years his findings conclude that with little changes to existing models the weather can be easily incorporated into the power flow algorithms to provide vast benefits to the power industry and energy consumers it is widely recognized that weather impacts human activity and subsequent power usage and operations further wind and solar generation continue to grow currently providing more than 14% of the united states electric energy in turn increasing the grids dependence on these sources overbye has been pursuing research related to the power flow for over 40 years but his interest in the integration of weather information began as a result of winter storm uri in order to prevent situations like what was experienced during winter storm uri you have to get a good feel for how likely these weather events are and if you know how likely they are then you can take that into account in your planning said overbye
2779,"the graduate program in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university is ranked fifth among public institutions by us news & world report several of the students who make up this program received awards and recognitions this academic year many of which are highlighted below renee abbott received the nasa space technology graduate research opportunities award this award recognizes graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to nasa's goal of creating innovative new space technologies for the nation's science exploration and economic future students receive a grant to support their research are matched with a nasa subject matter expert to serve as a collaborator and have the opportunity to perform their research at nasa facilities among leading engineers and scientists pawan chaugule received the best oral presentation award for his paper titled ""coupling between phase-transformation and viscoplasticity in high-temperature shape memory alloys"" the award is presented at the international conference on martensitic transformation maison clouatre received the department of defense national defense science and engineering graduate fellowship the fellowship lasts for three years and pays for full tuition and mandatory fees it also includes a monthly stipend and a travel budget for professional development he also received an award from the national science foundation (nsf) graduate research fellowship program which recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in nsf-supported science technology engineering and mathematics disciplines the fellowship provides a three-year annual stipend a cost-of-education allowance for tuition and fees and access to professional development opportunities from texas a&m clouatre received the dr dionel avilés '53 and dr james johnson '67 fellowship which seeks to increase diversity in the graduate and professional student population at texas a&m the fellowship provides four years of funding he also received a tau beta pi fellowship which finances a year of graduate study for members chosen for merit kyle craft received the john v breakwell student travel award from the american astronautical society's (aas) space flight mechanics committee the award encourages and promotes research activity in space flight mechanics and astrodynamics by financially supporting students presenting papers at aas/american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) space flight mechanics meetings and astrodynamics conferences sai sandeep dammati received the george h markstein best paper award for his paper titled ""numerical investigation of the accuracy of particle image velocimetry technique in high-speed turbulent flows"" this award is presented by the eastern states section of the combustion institute and recognizes the best paper based on the final extended abstracts submitted to the eastern states technical meeting jeppesen feliciano received the aggie green fund award a competitive grant-making program for sustainability projects at texas a&m university it empowers students to bring their different perspectives and creative environmental improvements to texas a&m's campus the award supports students through navigating the grant writing process working with administration and campus entities implementing projects and monitoring impacts to complete reporting requirements feliciano focuses on hydration stations for the harvey r ""bum"" bright building maddie haas received the nasa space technology graduate research opportunities award this award recognizes graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to nasa's goal of creating innovative new space technologies for the nation's science exploration and economic future students receive a grant to support their research are matched with a nasa subject matter expert to serve as a collaborator and have the opportunity to perform their research at nasa facilities among leading engineers and scientists haas also placed second at the 51st international conference on environmental systems student poster competition the program aims to stimulate student participation and provides a forum for students to present their work in an informal and interactive setting posters are judged based on technical rigor poster format and the student's ability to convey the poster content to the judges through an oral presentation poonam josan received the nasa pathways internship awarded to students who demonstrate curiosity team orientation excellence passion for exploration agility and resilience pathway interns are assigned challenging meaningful work aligned with their academic or career interests providing students with life-long learning and growth opportunities interns are also considered for full-time employment with nasa as they near graduation jadon kaercher received third place at the 51st international conference on environmental systems student poster competition the program aims to stimulate student participation and provides a forum for students to present their work in an informal and interactive setting posters are judged based on technical rigor poster format and the student's ability to convey the poster content to the judges through an oral presentation roshan suresh kumar received a deutscher akademischer austauschdienst german academic exchange service research internship in science and engineering this award offers summer research internships in germany at companies and institutions with strong relations to industry students receive a scholarship and an additional stipend from their host company/institution for living expenses waylon lee received the nasa pathways internship awarded to students who demonstrate curiosity team -orientation excellence a passion for exploration agility and resilience pathway interns are assigned challenging meaningful work aligned with their academic or career interests providing students with life-long learning and growth opportunities interns are also considered for full-time employment with nasa as they near graduation david lont received the aerospace engineering academic excellence fellowship the award from texas a&m's aerospace engineering department supports outstanding graduate students and supplements research assistant and fellowship stipends kaushik prabhu received the john v breakwell student travel award from the american astronautical society's space flight mechanics committee the award encourages and promotes research activity in space flight mechanics and astrodynamics by financially supporting students presenting papers at aas/aiaa space flight mechanics meetings and astrodynamics conferences amir rad received the aerospace engineering academic excellence fellowship the award from texas a&m's aerospace engineering department supports outstanding graduate students and supplements research assistant and fellowship stipends vishala received the john v breakwell student travel award from the aas space flight mechanics committee the award encourages and promotes research activity in space flight mechanics and astrodynamics by financially supporting students presenting papers at aas/aiaa space flight mechanics meeting and astrodynamics conferences patrick walgren received the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine's national research council research associateship program award this award offers students research opportunities at sponsoring federal laboratories and affiliated institutions students have the opportunity to devote full-time effort to conducting independent research and publication collaborate with leading scientists and engineers and work in excellent facilities"
2780,dr pushkar lele and a team of researchers from texas a&m university conducted a study to see how indole an organic compound and a significant component of the bacterial exometabolome impacts the energy levels and protein function in bacteria indole can promote antibiotic resistance so understanding the metabolites diverse effects on bacterial physiology is critical this study was recently published in pnas nexus microorganisms release metabolites substances capable of breaking down food chemicals or other products these metabolites as a collective make up what is referred to as the exometabolome indole is abundant in the exometabolome and is understood to have significant effects on the functions of bacteria however the mechanisms remain poorly understood in this work the researchers attempted to understand the fundamental principles of indoles action on escherichia coli (e coli) to do this rachit gupta a doctoral student in leles group led a set of experiments to probe the energy levels in bacterial cells in the presence of indole bacterial cells require energy to perform major functions such as cell division or motility which the abundance of indole can alter however measuring energy in single cells is difficult as bacteria are incredibly small we combined several different techniques such as fluorescent dyes that make a cell appear brighter or dimmer dependent on the magnitude of its electric potential which is a major source of its energy said lele associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering in particular we focused on cell motility and molecular motor activity which indirectly track the energy levels in this work the researchers attempted to understand the fundamental principles of how indole influences such a wide variety of applications from the function of the chemotaxis (movement due to a chemical response) to protein synthesis the teams single-motor measurements revealed that indole impacted energetics only at high concentrations by dissipating e colis electrochemical proton gradient gupta then performed computational simulations of protein interactions based on statistical mechanics models and compared predictions with experiments comparisons suggested that indole at low concentrations interferes with protein-protein interactions to increase the noise in enzymatic activity and alter function at low concentrations indole affects inter- and intra-protein interactions and at high concentrations it dissipates the membrane potential which potentially explains indoles wide-reaching effects on cell behavior said lele these studies could provide insights into how pathogens invade our bodies for example indole appears to have differential effects on pathogens and beneficial bacteria in the gut which might help pathogens subvert defenses posed by good bacteria in the stomach under certain conditions on the other hand indole appears to promote colonization by beneficial bacteria as per the groups earlier work much work remains to be done to delineate indoles precise effects on bacterial physiology bacteria that lack sufficient energy to perform key functions targeted by antibiotics often survive in those lethal conditions thus the dissipation of energy by indole could underlie the failure of antibiotic treatment in the presence of the metabolite as metabolite production is linked to dietary intake such discoveries could guide personalized treatments based on diet the next thing we want to do is to determine why indole acts differently on pathogens and beneficial bacteria because then we can develop predictive models of the vulnerabilities of bacterial communities in the host said lele besides understanding the role of energy disruptors in modulating the structure of nascent microbial communities will be helpful in engineering communities with desirable properties this study was funded by the national institute of general medical sciences
2781,texas a&m university and arizona state university (asu) are collaborating on a $48 million multidisciplinary project funded by the defense advanced research projects agencys (darpa) biological technology office to create artificial intelligence (ai) for detecting fatigued states using human breath the project aims to better understand sleep deprivation mental and physical fatigue in humans by measuring breath volatile organic compounds (voc) biomarkers and how they can affect performance especially in high-stakes environments understanding the breath vocs will enable researchers to create a set of ai algorithms to detect a persons fatigued state fatigue is an important topic for the us department of defense and many other sectors in our society yet it is very challenging to quantify fatigue i am pleased to see the darpas investment in our rigorous scientific approach and its trust in our world-class team said dr roozbeh jafari tim and amy leach professor in texas a&ms college of engineering and the projects principal investigator dr steven riechman associate professor of kinesiology in texas a&ms school of education and human development said the insights may lead to new opportunities for monitoring and predicting fatigue by using wearables to prevent catastrophic failures he also said there may be new ways to intervene against fatigue to improve resilience in challenging environments and circumstances comprehensively examining the change in breath vocs during the progression from rest to fatigue will provide valuable insights into the transitions in metabolic states riechman said according to the projects proposal these compounds have been used before to detect other health issues such as bowel inflammation and asthma they will be key resources of chemical information from all body systems the project will be phased from a highly controlled environment leading to less-controlled real-life settings texas a&m researchers will collect participants breath voc samples at different states of fatigue with machines that can detect vocs in the breath samples they will use wearable monitors and sensors to measure heart rate body temperature and other biometrics dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and director of texas a&ms neuroergonomics laboratory will lead the creation and execution of fatigue protocols with riechman by inducing fatigue in a highly controlled environment this project will not only enable us to develop breath and physiological biomarkers of fatigue in general and military populations but also expand our understanding of the interactions between fatigue due to a variety of sources mehta said dr arul jayaraman executive associate dean of the texas a&m college of engineering and chemical engineering professor and dr heather bean asu associate professor in the school of life science and the biodesign center for fundamental and applied microbiomics will measure vocs in the breath samples bean says the volume and combination of breath samples at different stages of fatigue protocols will help to advance the understanding of breath vocs beyond the ability to predict fatigue this study will generate more than 3 000 breath samples which is an order of magnitude larger than any breath voc study published to date said bean the team will use pattern recognition and statistical modeling to identify vocs that can detect and discriminate the types of fatigue studied during the course of the project said dr ivan ivanov clinical professor of physiology and pharmacology at the school of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences jafari will lead the project alongside co-investigators mehta jayaraman riechman bean and ivanov
2782,"access to global information has resulted in an increasing demand for technical skills required for handling complex data and extracting information and knowledge from it a new major at texas a&m university aims to fill that demand the bachelor of science in data engineering program housed in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering will train students in state-of-the-art techniques needed for modern data-driven systems the skillsets theyll gain are sought after by several different industry sectors including manufacturing defense health care and finance ""the college of engineering continues to be a leader in engineering education by offering degree programs that meet current industry demand "" said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m ""data engineering is a field that has seen significant growth over the past few years creating the need for qualified engineers with this new program we will fill that need by producing future aggie data engineers"" the bureau of labor statistics (bls) indicated there were 63 200 data scientists and mathematical science positions in 2020 with a median annual salary of $98 230 the bls projects that this sector will have 83 000 positions by 2030 corresponding to a 314% growth between 2020 and 2030 this sector features in the top 10 list of fastest growing jobs from 2020 through 2030 understanding data can guide decision-making in business science and engineering settings among others said dr lewis ntaimo industrial and systems engineering department head our program is one of few nationally with a data-driven focus graduates of this program will be in demand for various employment opportunities including data analysts data scientists information system analysts systems analysts and systems engineers the 128-credit hour programs curriculum includes techniques in data analytics such as artificial intelligence machine learning reinforcement learning and related areas it integrates them with other science and engineering topics to train students to make data-driven informed decisions the program was developed through a task force started by ntaimo that included representatives from programs at texas a&m including computer science electrical and computer engineering and the texas a&m institute of data science there is a critical need to capture and securely store and manage data said dr amarnath banerjee associate department head for undergraduate affairs and chair of the task force for companies to remain competitive they must efficiently mine the data to visualize and extract the information and knowledge needed for optimal decision-making initially approved by the texas a&m university system board of regents on may 19 2022 the texas higher education coordinating board followed with formal approval on july 28 2022 for the college to begin program delivery in fall 2023"
2783,dr qingsheng wang associate professor and george armistead ‘23 faculty fellow in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university and his team of researchers have spent over three years finding more efficient ways to manufacture metal-organic framework (mof)-based composites for industrial applications such as flame retardants mofs are a class of crystalline materials with permanent porosity and wide applications including gas purification gas separation water remediation catalysis and drug delivery however process improvement is required to produce mofs at a higher capacity in industry as the use and applications of mof-based composites expand to produce mofs requires a deep understanding of process engineering stringent conditions and even with that only a small amount can be produced at a time said wang many alterations are needed to improve the process if we want to mass-produce mofs wangs group published four studies in acs publications regarding their discoveries on mof stability mof development processes manufacturing mof-based composites and their applications in flame retardancy currently most mof-polymer composites are prepared by a discretely bottom-up principle that requires complex chemical reactions blended within different polymers in solutions this multistep process entails significant time energy and money to produce minimal quantities by combining parts of the mofs development process wangs team has discovered a one-step method using reaction extrusion to produce mof-based composites on a larger scale safely and effectively together with the heating condition applied shear and compressive forces mofs can meet the required reaction conditions for mechanochemical synthesis in addition the findings provide new insights into creating mof-based polymer systems for polyolefins reducing their smoke emissions and enhancing flame retardancy during combustion the method also improved safety and efficiency by enhancing the thermal stability and mechanical properties of the mof while decreasing its flammability this work was recently published in acs sustainable chemistry & engineering if we use reactive extrusion manufacturing we can take the starting material combined with a polymer to produce mofs and directly mix it with plastics by neglecting several reaction steps in conventional hydrothermal methods said wang using this process each day we can get around kilogram scale compared to the traditional method which usually can produce only in gram scale they hope to see this method used in industry for progressing sustainability efforts process improvement and process safety in their study published in industrial & engineering chemistry research wang showed the use of mof as a flame retardant a commercially available mof was incorporated into an intumescent flame retardant/polypropylene (ifr/pp) composite system the results show that the additives exhibit a strong synergistic effect between them for improvement of the formation and stability of the intumescent char layer to prevent the intensive burning of pp these findings could improve ifr systems for polyolefins reducing their smoke emissions during combustion considering that all the raw materials are commercially available and the preparation method is compatible with current industrial processes the methodology presented in this study can be expanded for industrial applications we can use mofs in so many ways from water treatment to carbon capture wang said i would like to continue improving this process so that industry can use mofs on a larger scale in various useful applications
2784,millions of barrels of oil are produced daily from shale reservoirs yet a significant amount remains untouched trapped in molecular-sized pores on a nanoscale current reservoir models cant predict oil behavior or recovery at this scale so companies cant accurately estimate production amounts for financial investors texas a&m university researchers built and tested (potentially) the smallest nanopore-scale glass-topped lab-on-a-chip (loc) research platform to investigate complex fluid behaviors at the nanoscale so they could calculate them the crisman institute for petroleum research funded the project dr hadi nasrabadi dr debjyoti banerjee and their graduate students qi yang and ran bi co-designed the ultra-tiny loc and had it manufactured in texas a&m facilities such as the aggiefab nanofabrication facility and the microscopy and imaging center the device allows them to visually study and record the liquid to vapor and back to liquid phase changes oil and other elements go through on a scale similar to the conditions in a shale reservoir this was the first time i did a project where the company representatives were more interested in the equations we uncovered rather than the experimental data we produced said banerjee the james j cain 51 faculty fellow i in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering its a bizarre example of how thermodynamic equations can affect the stock price of a company the equation goes into estimating how much oil reserves a company owns or can produce and this affects their value on wall street or if they can get a financial loan at a particular interest rate why phase change matters self-contained tiny fluid volume locs are common nowadays such as home covid-19 antibody test kits or blood sugar monitors however applying locs to petroleum research is rare and took several stages for this project nasrabadi and banerjee started with 50-nanometer (nm) diameter test channels in their locs before working down to 2-nm diameter channels which are slightly smaller than the width of a dna strand at this scale matching tight shale layering oil reacts to temperature pressure and confinement fluctuations by vibrating with quirky thermodynamic flips of fluid to gas and back again phase changes because producing oil from unconventional shale reservoirs is still a learning process these changes are largely unexplored yet they impact oil recovery and affect financial investor confidence industry is currently not delivering the oil they are estimating and this is unintentional in my opinion said nasrabadi the aghorn energy career development professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering our research shows nanopore behavior does influence production which explains the recovery discrepancy
2785,issues with sensitivity the research also had delivery issues because three challenges ran hand in hand with doing experiments on such a small scale first the researchers had to learn about and implement atomic force microscopy to characterize the locs channel since 2 nm is smaller than the wavelength of visible light and the channel needed to be inspected and accurately measured second they quickly learned that certain conditions such as the humidity in the air or a car passing by the building could cause enough disturbance or vibrations to throw off the results of the experiments third getting images of the quirky phase-change reactions proved difficult because the camera needed a certain number of photons or fundamental light particles present tiny adjustments were constantly needed to improve the experiment recordings it took about two years for the research to yield direct digitally captured images that aided observation studies of liquid to vapor to liquid transitions on a scale that had never been explored before nasrabadi banerjee yang and bi wrote a paper on the work which was published by langmuir in august 2022 the experiments were done at pressures up to 100 pounds per square inch (psi) but the researchers hope to increase levels to match actual reservoir conditions which can range from 1 000 to 5 000 psi they also hope to increase the temperatures to over 300 degrees fahrenheit these higher parameters were possible with locs containing 10-nm scale channels but the 2-nm chip will need a few design modifications first we also want to vary the loc design to replicate shale formation conditions such as using etched channels that mimic the irregularities within the rock said nasrabadi applications beyond petroleum banerjee once worked in silicon valley where he was awarded 17 patents and commercialized loc platforms for a variety of biotechnology and nanotechnology startup companies he noticed irregular flows of fluids confined on a nanoscale then but didn't have a way to pinpoint why they happened years later conversations banerjee had with nasrabadi on the interesting fluid confinement issues in shale reservoirs sparked a long collaboration that led to their project for the crisman institute the success of the project has led to other conversations and ideas banerjee believes the research has come full circle because the modifications they made to decrease the loc scale below the size of a single dna strand mean better genome or genetic material research is now possible but the potential doesnt stop there at the 2-nm scale even under normal pressure and temperature conditions a nano-confined liquid can display properties similar to supercritical behavior said banerjee and that has important implications for our understanding of supercritical fluids such insights could have deep implications for power production space exploration and biotechnology applications its truly remarkable
2786,dianna stanger has recently established the stanger endowed graduate fellowship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide multiple fellowships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a phd in aerospace engineering at texas a&m university although stanger is not an aggie herself she has been impacted by many throughout her career inspiring her to give to texas a&m stanger moved to the texas coast in 1997 where she has encountered many people encompassing the texas spirit there is no mistaking texan pride and spirit but whatever i did and wherever i went in the state the people who impacted me the most were graduates of texas a&m said stanger one texan that she in turn inspired was a high schooler by the name of darren hartl who would go on to become an associate professor at texas a&m dianna stanger represents the pure joy of aviation and aerospace better than anyone ive ever met it means so much to me to have her connected to our department said hartl stanger is the owner of darkstar air racing where she and a group of pilots compete in the reno air races in nevada a few years ago stanger and her team made a trip to visit the department of aerospace engineering to discuss ways to improve the performance of their newest jet for the 2019 reno air races other visits followed with the sole purpose of being updated on the latest research throughout the department each time i visit the aerospace engineering department it leaves me wanting more stanger said the excitement challenges and vision of the students are what drive me in my aerospace manufacturing company stanger hopes this gift will empower the future of aerospace engineering by giving students the confidence they need to pursue their dreams regardless of the obstacles that are in their way she believes in the aerospace engineering department here at texas a&m and wants to aid in continuing greatness far into the future this gift will empower the future of aerospace in varying degrees by allowing a student to pursue their dreams regardless of cost as our fate is indeed in their hands she said stanger has a heart for helping others which has been her motivation throughout her career each and every one of us should have the opportunity to hear the words ‘you are the reason i am who i am she said i have always been dedicated to helping others achieve however it was a texas a&m graduate now a texas a&m professor who gave me a small credit that became the highest praise
2787,endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact anna norville senior director of development
2788,"due to human activity including the use of organic pollutants from pharmaceuticals and personal care products water systems are becoming increasingly polluted dr garrett mckay assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university received an early career program grant from the us army research office to research the role of photochemistry (light-driven chemical reactions) on the fate of environmental pollutants in lakes rivers and streams""the driving force for this research is the need to understand the mechanisms and rates by which pollutants degrade in the environment "" he saidnatural organic matter which is present in all water bodies and comes from the decomposition of plant material governs photochemical reactions in natural waters photochemical reactions convert light energy into chemical energy that can degrade pollutants""our research seeks to measure the concentrations of reactive oxidants surrounding natural organic matter macromolecules which help us better predict the importance of photochemistry to the fate of environmental pollutants "" mckay saidthese photochemical reactions are also an important driver of carbon cycling in aquatic systems natural organic matter undergoes photochemical reactions to form carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide which are then exported from the aquatic environment to the atmosphere""because natural organic matter photochemistry is incompletely understood uncertainties exist regarding carbon fluxes from aquatic systems which impacts the ability to incorporate photochemistry into global climate models "" he saidanother issue relates to global climate change a recent observation is that lake waters are ""browning"" due to elevated concentrations of natural organic matter due to climate change""the increased concentrations of natural organic material will increase the importance of photochemical degradation pathways "" mckay saidthe early career program aims to attract outstanding early-career university faculty to army-relevant research questions it supports their research and encourages their teaching and research careersmckay was also recently honored by the environmental science & technology journal with an excellence in review award established in 2003 by the american chemical society to recognize multiple high-quality contributions during a single year he has reviewed more than 50 environmental science & technology papers since 2017 and his research group the aquatic chemistry lab has recently published two articles in the journal relationships between the physicochemical properties of dissolved organic matter and its reaction with sodium borohydride and quantifying hydrated electron transformation kinetics in uv-advanced reduction processes using the re– uv method"
2789,dr judy amanor-boadu a former student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2022 distinguished new engineer award and the patent recognition award from the society of women engineers (swe) the distinguished new engineer award is a prestigious honor given to an swe member who has demonstrated outstanding technical performance and leadership in swe engineering organizations and the community the award recognizes amanor-boadus continuing dedication to swes mission to highlight the impact and importance of women in engineering across the globe to lead by example and to demonstrate that a career in engineering can be a fulfilling rewarding pursuit for women of any background it is all about paying it forward and helping people said amanor-boadu i went through challenges that i would not want others to go through so i try as much as possible to be the best mentor i can be and to accelerate people in their career and professional development she also received the patent recognition award for being a swe member who had been awarded a patent within the last three years in october 2021 she was awarded a united states patent us 11 159 036: systems and methods for flexible power topology for display assembly in an information handling system amanor-boadu pursued her undergraduate degree in ghana at the kwame nkrumah university of science and technology she later received her masters and doctoral degrees from texas a&m during her time as a graduate student she was heavily involved in the women in engineering (we) program and was the first graduate student who assisted with its revival i was one of the first graduate assistants hired by dr shawna fletcher the director of we she said it was the beginning of the program after its hiatus and our goal was to make it successful i will say it was one of the best times i had at texas a&m because i learned so much from the program she credits we for helping her with professional and personal development she noted that we taught her confidence emotional intelligence her strengths and how to respond to unconscious bias in her life we taught me highly valuable skills that i still use today and teach to others said amanor-boadu these are things i would not have known about but we gave me the opportunity to gain that knowledge dr fletcher was a great boss and mentor to me amanor-boadu is now a staff analog engineer for intel corporation she is involved in the women at intel (win) and intel network of african ancestry (nia) employee resource groups and mentors recent college graduates that are underrepresented minoritiesher awards will be presented at the society of women engineers conference 2022 in october it is a great honor to have been chosen for this award she said i am thankful to everyone who has been a part of my career so far and i hope to continue motivating others by paying it forward
2790,the covid-19 pandemic exposed the inability of national supply chains to quickly shift production and reconfigure their logistics networks to meet customer demand surges during major disruptive events the desperate scramble for items such as ventilators face masks and even toilet paper wont soon be forgotten but the recent baby formula shortage points to a larger underlying problem with a supply chain model that prioritizes being efficient and cost-effective without accommodating the additional needs for resilience and robustness but what if it was possible to proactively plan and reactively respond and recover as quickly as possible following a supply chain disruption by further employing automation and robotics at key stages of the supply chain in response to recommendations outlined in the report of the defense critical supply chain task force the secureamerica institute (sai) and the advanced robotics for manufacturing (arm) institute are partnering with industry leaders like general electric (ge) to make targeted supply chain improvements the robotics and automation decision framework for agility and resilience (radar) which is funded by the us department of commerces national institute of standards and technology (nist) plans to demonstrate the power of strategically adopting robotic and automation solutions across the supply chain led by dr lefteris iakovou sais manufacturing supply chain director and the harvey hubbell professor of industrial distribution in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university radar will demonstrate two-way visibility into and across critical supply chains to determine where the most impactful suppliers vulnerabilities and interventions could exist following black swan disruptions like covid-19 since over 98% of suppliers in the us are small and medium-sized manufacturers (smms) according to the us census bureaus 2018 county business patterns survey establishing an understanding of what makes them more agile and cost-competitive is key to realizing the vision of this program the utilization of flexible and collaborative robotics technologies to automate factory operations in the radar program has the potential for significant return on investments across multiple product lines regardless of the size of the company said dr prabhakar pagilla professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and associate dean for research in the texas a&m university college of engineering the radar program can uncover which characteristics and attributes companies should incorporate to increase their likelihood of successfully adopting robotics and automation in collaborative (human and robot) manufacturing environments an imperfect understanding of existing constraints incentives opportunities and risks that can impact supply chains currently prevents many smms from fully embracing their technical innovation capabilities and contributes to end-to-end supply chain resilience for instance during some of the darkest days of the covid-19 pandemic large automobile manufacturers were able to pivot their production lines to produce ventilators however many smms lack the scale know-how and support to fully explore their ability to be similarly agile radar aims to productize the agile operational models of larger organizations so smms are also able to pivot as needed during the covid-19 pandemic ge researchers developed a robust pandemic simulation of the supply chain volatility our industries experienced we think that simulation can be applied in the radar project to enable more intelligent production management for future pandemics said walter yund senior scientist in enterprise operations research at ge research by merging ge researchs pandemic simulation with existing hospital and covid-19 supply chain data this model could offer key insights for manufacturers to anticipate future demand and determine which elements of their supply chain are most at risk of a material shortage formalizing that decision-making process for smms also opens up more opportunities for cross-collaboration not just in times of crisis but for innovation overall sai successfully demonstrated this idea on a small scale for rapid product development with the covid-19 breathalyzer kiosk which connected several seemingly disparate organizations and people to create a unique new technology during a time of need radar also seeks to redesign supply chains critical to the security of the nation without reverting to pre-pandemic practices bolstered by a framework of dynamically resilient data-driven supply chain networks radar will support the quick detection of disruptive events efficient increasing of manufacturing capacity where needed and reduction of manufacturing capacity once recovery has been attained the defense industrial base looks holistically at the united states true manufacturing capabilities so improving the resilience and competitiveness of the domestic supply chain will have national security implications radar is on track to improve the resiliency flexibility and competitiveness of smms and is envisioned to enhance the resilience of the us manufacturing industrial base when the next supply chain disruption materializes this research is supported by a $5 million grant from nist the funding is provided by the american rescue act and is part of a larger $54 million initiative by nist to award high-impact projects for pandemic response research and development across eight manufacturing institutes in the manufacturing usa network
2791,flexible electronics have enabled the design of sensors actuators microfluidics and electronics on flexible conformal and/or stretchable sublayers for wearable implantable or ingestible applications however these devices have very different mechanical and biological properties when compared to human tissue and thus cannot be integrated with the human body a team of researchers at texas a&m university has developed a new class of biomaterial inks that mimic native characteristics of highly conductive human tissue much like skin which are essential for the ink to be used in 3d printing this biomaterial ink leverages a new class of 2d nanomaterials known as molybdenum disulfide (mos2) the thin-layered structure of mos2 contains defect centers to make it chemically active and combined with modified gelatin to obtain a flexible hydrogel comparable to the structure of jell-o the impact of this work is far-reaching in 3d printing said dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering and presidential impact fellow this newly designed hydrogel ink is highly biocompatible and electrically conductive paving the way for the next generation of wearable and implantable bioelectronics this study was recently published in acs nano
2792,the ink has shear-thinning properties that decrease in viscosity as force increases so it is solid inside the tube but flows more like a liquid when squeezed similar to ketchup or toothpaste the team incorporated these electrically conductive nanomaterials within a modified gelatin to make a hydrogel ink with characteristics that are essential for designing ink conducive to 3d printing these 3d-printed devices are extremely elastomeric and can be compressed bent or twisted without breaking said kaivalya deo graduate student in the biomedical engineering department and lead author of the paper in addition these devices are electronically active enabling them to monitor dynamic human motion and paving the way for continuous motion monitoring in order to 3d print the ink researchers in the gaharwar laboratory designed a cost-effective open-source multi-head 3d bioprinter that is fully functional and customizable running on open-source tools and freeware this also allows any researcher to build 3d bioprinters tailored to fit their own research needs the electrically conductive 3d-printed hydrogel ink can create complex 3d circuits and is not limited to planar designs allowing researchers to make customizable bioelectronics tailored to patient-specific requirements in utilizing these 3d printers deo was able to print electrically active and stretchable electronic devices these devices demonstrate extraordinary strain-sensing capabilities and can be used for engineering customizable monitoring systems this also opens up new possibilities for designing stretchable sensors with integrated microelectronic components one of the potential applications of the new ink is in 3d printing electronic tattoos for patients with parkinsons disease researchers envision that this printed e-tattoo can monitor a patients movement including tremors this project is in collaboration with dr anthony guiseppi-elie vice president of academic affairs and workforce development at tri-county technical college in south carolina and dr limei tian assistant professor of biomedical engineering at texas a&m this study was funded by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering the national institute of neurological disorders and stroke and the texas a&m university presidents excellence fund a provisional patent on this technology has been filed in association with the texas a&m engineering experiment station
2793,for years the nucleus within a cell was thought to be elastic like a rubber ball deforming and snapping back into shape as the cell navigated through pores and between fibers inside the human body researchers at texas a&m university and the university of florida have discovered that the nucleus is more complex than originally believed behaving more like a liquid drop than a rubber ball the discovery that the nucleus deforms like a liquid drop calls for a fresh look at how the nuclear shape becomes abnormal in diseases like cancer said dr tanmay lele unocal professor in the department of biomedical engineering lele a cancer prevention & research institute of texas (cprit) scholar is co-leading the team that uncovered the surprising mechanical behaviors of the nucleus their findings were published in advanced science in june 2022 the genetic material governing a cells function and behavior called the genome is safely stored in the nucleus nearly 150 years of looking through microscopes has taught pathologists and researchers that misshapen nuclei are warning signs of diseases like cancer cancer cells with such abnormal nuclei are able to migrate to other parts of the body in a process called cancer metastasis a spreading that can be lethal nuclear shape observations are used in cancer diagnosis even today but why nuclei become abnormal has remained unclear understanding how nuclei become misshapen may help uncover a way to aid cell nuclei in regaining their normal shapes leading to new approaches for treating cancer the findings from this study are critical to understanding how a protective layer surrounding the nucleus called the lamina helps preserve nuclear shape while cells crawl through the tortuous paths through pores and around tissue fibers
2794,lele and his fellow researchers began their exploration of nuclear behaviors by placing fibroblasts the most common type of connective-tissue cells in animals into a miniature obstacle course of tiny flexible pillars 1/100th of the width of a human hair in order for the cells to crawl through this obstacle course their nuclei had to squeeze in between the pillars the researchers observed the movements with an advanced high-resolution microscope that could image the 3d shapes of the nuclei imaging revealed that the pillars created deep indentations into the nuclear surface yet the overall nuclear shape was preserved allowing the nucleus to successfully pass like a liquid drop and unlike a springy elastic rubber ball through the obstacles the research also revealed that a depletion of lamin a/c one of the normal protein components of lamina caused the nuclei to get entangled in the obstacles the discovery suggests that lamin a/c helps maintain the surface tension of the nuclear drop our work points to a fundamental mechanism by which the nucleus preserves its shape and protects its genome lele said our discovery also helps us better understand how misshapen nuclei arise in cancer and how to potentially make them normal again we are now studying the implications of the drop model for the abnormal nuclear shapes commonly observed in cancer the work is financially supported by a grant from the national cancer institutes physical sciences oncology network to lele along with additional support from the national science foundation to co-principal investigator dr richard b dickinson professor in the department of chemical engineering at the university of florida the research is also partially funded by a cprit established investigator award to lele facilitated through the texas a&m engineering experiment station aside from lele and dickinson principal investigators and researchers on this project include drs pushkar p lele cynthia a reinhart-king kyle j roux and nathan j sniadecki students include aditya katiyar (lead author on the paper) jian zhang jyot d antani yifan yu and kelsey l scott
2795,datagration solutions inc recently donated software to the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university former student george w voneiff '83 coordinated the contribution which will provide current students and instructors with a cutting-edge educational experience voneiff a senior vice president of datagration is making the companys premiere software package petrovisor available to the department at no charge the donation also includes training for relevant faculty instructors and two completion optimization datasets for teaching and training the contribution is worth more than $250 000 and will be renewed every year a long-time supporter of texas a&m voneiff and his wife joan value education they fund professorships and other support for those instructing the next generation of petroleum engineers voneiff is a professor of practice in the department donating his time to teach graduate and undergraduate students the concepts of project evaluation and management and probabilistic petroleum economics and reserves
2796,according to datagration data is an asset increasingly seen as a form of currency for oil and gas companies and there is a competitive advantage for those that merge this type of economic thinking into their operation and business strategies voneiff understands this advantage having nearly 40 years of experience in oil and gas exploration and production he is an expert in data analytics and economics and is extremely well versed in risk management uncertainty analysis and completion and development optimization in unconventional reservoirs he said that petrovisor is able to integrate disparate data quickly perform sophisticated multidiscipline analytics and create visualizations this can greatly enhance students understanding of the data-to-decision quality control process workflow requirements and impact on operating capital and overall financial efficiencies for graduate students and their professors petrovisor can also help with research through greater data utility data analytics machine-learning applications and application-oriented economic evaluations voneiff said the petroleum engineering department at texas a&m is the first to use petrovisor in higher-education classrooms datagration is training professors on how to teach with the program and apply the datasets in classroom instruction the department can also tailor the application to its specific needs while the software comes with prebuilt workflows and visualizations faculty and students can edit them or even create their own for specific courses and research projects this versatility is a key factor in the programs educational value petrovisor applies petroleum economics to optimize a variety of problems artificial lift general operations acquisition and divestiture and development optimization ­ that typically don't have sophisticated economics applied to them said voneiff voneiff explained that the software enhances a decision-maker's ability to take good technical work and use that as the basis for good economic analysis the automation capabilities of the program mean students will spend less time gleaning information from the datasets to make graphs and tables and spend more time deciding on an approach to a problem analyzing the workflows and interpreting the results to see if they were on the right track this will put the texas a&m petroleum department at the forefront of advanced data analytics and sophisticated evaluations said voneiff petrovisor shortens evaluation timelines from years or months down to weeks or days without sacrificing technical accuracy it is a tool and skill set that gives our students a meaningful advantage in the job and research markets we are very appreciative of professor voneiff and datagrations gift and service said dr akhil datta-gupta university distinguished professor and interim head of the petroleum department the donation allows our students to differentiate themselves when entering the job marketplace and allows our faculty to stay current on state-of-the-art technologies employed in the software
2797,the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university welcomes dr chelsea hu hu will enter as a visiting assistant professor as part of the accountability climate equity and scholarship (aces) fellows program which recognizes researchers who are committed to enhancing equality and fostering inclusion on campus hu received her doctoral degree at cornell university in chemical engineering and conducted her postdoctoral studies at the california institute of technology hus research focuses on the interdisciplinary field of synthetic biology systems biology and control theory through a hybrid approach of experimentation and computational simulations she studies the system dynamics of synthetic genetic networks and their control strategies in synthetic microbes in addition hu aims to enable the design and engineering of safe robust and reliable diagnostic and therapeutic applications to improve human health it was very important for me to join an institute with a diverse research landscape so i can fit in and serve the community as a bridge said hu being trained as a hybrid researcher in both computation and experimentation i hope that my background can play a role in facilitating new collaborations between research fields at texas a&m in addition to research hu says she looks forward to teaching and providing mentorship to students a critical initiative she would like to spur is providing more resources for students transferring from junior or community colleges to texas a&m i would like to advocate for community college transfer students because i was one myself and i remember how overwhelming it can be she said there's a great shock when transferring and there are many ways that we can improve these students experiences throughout the aces program hu will have access to state-of-the-art facilities a network of skilled faculty and research opportunities as she transitions into a tenure-track faculty position
2798,gas turbines are widely used for power generation and aircraft propulsion according to the laws of thermodynamics the higher the temperature of an engine the higher the efficiency because of these laws there is an emerging interest in increasing turbines operating temperature a team of researchers from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university in conjunction with researchers from ames national laboratory have developed an artificial intelligence framework capable of predicting high entropy alloys (heas) that can withstand extremely high temperature oxidizing environments this method could significantly reduce the time and costs of finding alloys by decreasing the number of experimental analyses required this research was recently published in material horizons under prolonged high-temperature conditions turbine blades can result in catastrophic failure from melting or oxidizing unfortunately current turbine blade materials have already reached their operational limit engineering advancements such as coatings and cooling channels have delayed the need for changing the materials used for turbines however air travel is expected to double in volume over the next decade and gas turbines are becoming an increasingly dominant technology for power generation therefore turbines require higher efficiency to reduce fuel usage and limit carbon dioxide emissions gas turbines function by converting chemical energy into mechanical motion but are limited by their temperature threshold said dr raymundo arroyave professor in the department of materials science and engineering the next step of revolutionizing turbine technology is to change the material that is used to fabricate components such as the blades so that they can operate at higher temperatures without oxidizing catastrophically when looking at different types of alloys for turbines there is significant attention around heas heas are concentrated alloys that do not have a clear majority element a unique characteristic of heas is that these alloys become more stable at higher temperatures offering the potential for use in extreme environments despite their ability to withstand high temperatures heas are susceptible to rusting (oxidizing) heas can have many compositions exponentially expanding the types of oxides that can form finding a composition that could resist oxidation would require extensive experimentation at very high costs to circumvent the drawbacks and costs of hea discovery the researchers developed an artificial intelligence framework capable of predicting the oxidation behavior of heas this framework combining computational thermodynamics machine learning and quantum mechanics can quantitatively predict the oxidation of heas of arbitrary chemical compositions the time necessary to computationally screen the alloys is drastically reduced from years to mere minutes very fast and efficient screening in turn results in a reduced need for resource-intensive experimental trials when searching a large compositional space experimentalists would have to take hundreds of variations of a very complex material oxidize them and then characterize their performance which could take weeks months or even years said daniel sauceda a graduate student in the materials science and engineering department our research significantly shortened the process by creating a roadmap of the oxidation of heas showing researchers what you can expect from different compositions using the framework the researchers predicted the oxidation behavior of multiple alloy compositions they then sent the predictions to ames national laboratory's scientist gaoyuan ouyang and his team to test their findings and verify that the framework accurately demonstrates if an alloy would or would not resist oxidation the ability of the framework to accurately pinpoint detrimental phases will enable the design of improved oxidation-resistant materials said ames national laboratory scientist prashant singh who co-led the framework development the approach presented in this study is general and applicable to understanding oxidation behavior of heas as well as provide insights into oxidation and corrosion-resistant materials for other applications the tools developed in this study could potentially alter the process by which scientists discover materials for extreme environments by using artificial intelligence tools to rapidly siphon through astronomical numbers of alloys in a very short time this tool will help screen out alloys that will not work for our application needs while allowing us to spend more time and create a more detailed analysis of alloys that are worth investigating said arroyave while our predictions are not 100% accurate they still provide sufficient information to make informed decisions on what materials are worth investigating at a speed that would have been unthinkable before this framework was developed the heas found through this framework have potential applications such as gas turbines for propulsion and power generation heat exchangers and many others that require materials to withstand extreme operating conditions by enabling the discovery of materials capable of withstanding extreme environments this work directly contributes to the department of energys goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 said singh the joint work by texas a&m and ames national laboratory was supported by the ultrahigh temperature impervious materials advancing turbine efficiency program of the advanced research projects agency-energy the national science foundation and the us department of energy (basic energy science and fossil energy program) also supported this work
2799,dr kumbakonam rajagopal is the 2022 recipient of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) worcester reed warner medal the honor recognizes seminal contributions to the permanent literature of engineering through the formats of single papers treatises books or series of papers and digital media according to asme rajagopal serves as jm forsyth chair professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he also holds the prestigious titles of university distinguished professor and regents professor his research focuses on continuum mechanics and its applications to non-linear materials dr rajagopal is greatly deserving of this recognition from the american society of mechanical engineers said dr guillermo aguilar mechanical engineering department head at texas a&m his extensive research and expertise in the field continue to enrich not only our department but the greater engineering community as well the worcester reed warner medal was established in 1930 in honor of its namesake worcester reed warner who served as a charter member of asme and its 16th president
2800,after a successful career in pioneering software-based instrumentation dr james truchard is giving back to the educational sector to promote the future of electrical engineers computer engineers and computer scientists he has recently established two endowed chairs at texas a&m university one in the department of computer science and engineering and the other in the department of electrical and computer engineering truchard spent his childhood on a farm near columbus texas the environment was primitive without electricity or indoor plumbing he attended a one-teacher school in mentz a nearby community for primary education and went on to graduate from columbus high school as valedictorian in 1960 the launch of the sputnik 1 satellite in 1958 by russia would spur a new urgency in science in the united states with the beginning of the space race and it would inspire truchard to study physics and russian in college he received his bachelors and masters degrees in physics from the university of texas in austin and earned his doctoral degree in electrical engineering while working at the universitys applied research laboratories in the measurements division as a managing director he was responsible for testing many components of the us navys fleet sonar that experience got me excited about software-based instrumentation and software user interfaces truchard said he enjoyed his work but had a vision for something bigger that could bring solutions to the challenges he saw in his industry in 1976 with his garage as home base truchard and two of his colleagues jeff kodosky and bill nowlin founded national instruments now known as ni ni developed software such as labview which revolutionized the test and measurement industry serving millions of scientists and engineers with pc-based instrumentation over the past 40 years ni has grown into a multinational company that serves the academic aerospace defense electronics transportation and industrial machinery industries among others success for each of nis stakeholders the customers employees shareholders and suppliers was a key priority for truchard since his retirement in 2017 truchard has focused on giving his time expertise and resources to further the education and innovation of engineering and software technology through various avenues notably including alzheimers research in an effort to give back to the schools that have consistently provided his company with a large number of high-quality employees he has made gifts to several schools across texas texas a&m is among the top three schools that ni has recruited from alongside the university of texas and rice university
2801,he established the truchard foundation endowed chair in the department of electrical and computer engineering and the truchard family endowed chair in the department of computer science and engineering distributions from these endowments will be used to support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the chair holders i see establishing chairs as one of the most important things you can do truchard said giving chairs for the basic research and teaching seems to produce the most leverage for universities he hopes his gift will help promote the growth of technology research and exploration something that he has already both contributed to and witnessed throughout his career and lifetime i like to engage in intellectual investment in my field truchard said i want to be involved in the process of discovery
2802,endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact ryan mason director of development
2803,dr john hurtado interim dean of engineering at texas a&m university has appointed dr vijaykumar panchang as the associate head of the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston (tamug) panchang studied civil engineering at the university of pune he received a master of technology at the indian institute of technology before obtaining his master of science and phd degrees at the university of maine in 2002 panchang joined texas a&m as professor and head in the department of maritime systems engineering at tamug there he also served as head of the marine engineering technology department after this administrative stint of approximately 10 years he was awarded the powell chair in engineering and technology in 2013 he served as chair of the mechanical engineering program for six years at texas a&m university at qatar and was interim chair of petroleum engineering for over a year panchang was awarded the rank of regents professor in 2008 prior to joining texas a&m he served as program director for physical sciences and engineering at national oceanic and atmospheric administrations national sea grant college program (commerce department washington dc) for four years and as a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering and the school of marine sciences at the university of maine panchang is a fellow of the american society civil engineers (asce) and has served as chief editor of asces journal of waterway port coastal and ocean engineering; he currently serves on the journals editorial board he is the recipient of the asces torrens award (for meritorious services as an editor) and the moffat-nichol award (for his contributions to harbor and coastal engineering) he also serves on the editorial advisory panel of the journal of maritime engineering published by the uk institution of civil engineers
2804,the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) honored dr yassin hassan with the 2022 fluids engineering award at the fluids engineering division summer meeting (fedsm) in toronto for his outstanding contributions to the engineering profession and the field of fluids engineering hassan is a university distinguished professor regents professor and lf peterson 36 chair ii professor in the department of nuclear engineering and the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he is also director of the center for advanced small modular and microreactors and a member of the national academy of engineering asme presented the award to hassan on aug 4 during the fedsms awards dinner at the intercontinental toronto centre in toronto canada he was also a plenary speaker for the meeting presenting high resolution experiments for modeling and simulation: from nuclear applications to covid-19 this award is a testament to dr hassans vital work in the field of fluids engineering said dr michael nastasi head of the nuclear engineering department we are proud the asme has chosen him for this distinguished recognition this is a well-deserved honor recognizing dr hassans valuable contributions to the fluids engineering field said dr guillermo aguilar head of the mechanical engineering department his work continues to make positive impacts within the engineering community the fluids engineering award was established by the fluids engineering division in 1968 and operated as a division award until 1978 when it was elevated to a society award it provides the recipient with $1 000 and a bronze medal hassan earned his bachelors degree from alexandria university in egypt in 1968 he earned his masters degree and doctoral degree in nuclear engineering from the university of illinois in 1975 and 1980 respectively his research is focused on computational and experimental thermal hydraulics reactor safety fluid mechanics two-phase flow turbulence and laser velocimetry and imaging techniques
2805,"in august dr alaa elwany associate professor in the wm michael barnes '64 department of industrial and systems engineering will finish a yearlong fellowship at the national institute of standards and technology (nist) in the us department of commerce the fellowship has provided him with a unique opportunity to learn and engage in policymaking by sharing his advanced manufacturing expertise with the us government's executive branch elwany connected with nist after being chosen as the foundation swanson fellow through the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) this 50-year-old program selects engineers from academia and industry and provides them with opportunities to interface with the federal government in yearlong commitments throughout his fellowship elwany has worked at nist's office of advanced manufacturing (oam) as assistant director for technology being a team member within oam has allowed him to interact with representatives from other federal agencies including nasa the national science foundation the department of defense and the department of energy elwany said his experience in performing public service has been overwhelmingly positive and incredibly valuable he has had a unique opportunity to collaborate with members of the national science and technology council on developing the quadrennial strategic plan on advanced manufacturing for the executive office of the president of the us he has also served on the leadership team responsible for developing the strategic plan for manufacturing usa (the national network of advanced manufacturing innovation institutes) presented to us congress every three years ""policymakers often need engineering and technical advice to guide them in setting policies that benefit the nation on multiple fronts "" elwany said ""the us has a long-standing culture of engaging academic and industrial scholars to inform the policymaking process and achieve positive societal economic and national security impact"" upon finishing his fellowship elwany said he looks forward to serving as an effective liaison between texas a&m university and federal government agencies this will involve activity such as facilitating two-way visits to connect faculty and students with program officers and directors at these agencies elwany enjoyed the experience so much that he pursued other federal fellowships and was recently selected for the science and technology policy fellowship program at the american association of the advancement of science he will be working for the next year with the us department of energy ""america is still the global leader in innovation but we did give up some of our manufacturing capabilities on us soil over the past few decades "" elwany said ""from what i see in different federal government initiatives there are serious efforts to restore our leadership in critical areas such as semiconductor manufacturing i am very pleased with what i have seen at nist and other federal agencies"""
2806,the intergovernmental panel on climate change reported in 2021 that global warming will exceed 15 degrees celsius and 2 degrees celsius during this century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions occur carbon capture is among the most effective approaches to reduce emissions however the high cost of existing carbon capture technologies is a barrier to their widespread adoption researchers at texas a&m university are innovating ways to reduce the operation cost of carbon capture technologies dr chao ma assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and dr zj pei professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering conduct research on ceramic 3d printing they have found carbon capture to be an important application of ceramic 3d printing widespread adoption of carbon capture technologies can significantly reduce carbon emissions and eventually lead to net negative emissions in the future ma said as a result climate change could be alleviated saving lives and economic losses from extreme weather events ma and pei recently received a grant from the national science foundations (nsf) partnerships for innovation program the latest grant allows them to apply the knowledge generated from their fundamental research started in 2018 with support from another nsf grant their previous study aimed to produce fundamental knowledge on 3d printing of ceramic materials using granulated powder ma said printing with granulated powder would result in interconnected pores which is the key technology used to fabricate ceramic adsorbents for carbon capture in this new project
2807,it is difficult and costly to produce ceramic components with hierarchical and interconnected pore structures using existing manufacturing methods such as conventional paste extrusion pei said we will use 3d printing probably the ideal manufacturing method to produce complex structures 3d printing is not commonly used for producing components to help address climate change there is a lack of close collaboration between the two research communities ie advanced manufacturing and industrial decarbonization pei said it would be beneficial to bring together different experts to identify promising pathways for conducting convergent research to have the most significant impact possible in all areas ma said one of the projects goals is to form strong partnerships with industry and the team is seeking industrial partners interested in carbon capture along with the research the project also serves as an educational and leadership development program to nurture future leaders in innovation and entrepreneurship students will participate in the nsf innovation corps (i-corps) program to gain commercialization knowledge and insight into the commercial aspects of their inventions graduate students will have the opportunities to play entrepreneurial and technical leadership roles in a future start-up company that will be established based on this project they will also receive training on mentoring undergraduate students and present their research results to industrial partners investors and customers undergraduate students will gain research skills and demonstrate a basic understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship
2808,dr siegfried hecker and dr farheen naqvi join the faculty in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university effective aug16 where they will contribute their robust knowledge of and experience in nuclear security hecker will serve as a professor of practice and naqvi will serve as a research assistant professor both will work closely with the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) at texas a&m as nsspi faculty fellows to advance the departments commitment to nuclear safety and nonproliferation hecker brings international nuclear security expertise hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science global threat reduction and nuclear security he joins the department after a tenure at stanford university where he served as a professor emeritus in the department of management science and engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the freeman spogli institute for international studies (fsi) he previously served as the fifth director of los alamos national laboratory and co-director of the fsis center for international security and cooperation heckers current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control nuclear weapons policy nuclear security the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy and plutonium science he will guest lecture in the department and other areas across campus such as the institute for science technology and public policy at the bush school of government and public service at texas a&m i will focus on the importance of the interplay of technology and policy on all things nuclear from nuclear energy to nuclear weapons hecker said i also plan to work with students and postdoctoral fellows on projects of nuclear technology and their implications for nuclear policy naqvi brings wealth of radiation detection and detector development naqvi joins the department after serving in the massachusetts institute of technologys department of nuclear science and engineering as a research scientist during her term she applied her knowledge of radiation measurement detector development and computational analysis to focus on building technologies to mitigate nuclear terrorism and weapons by mitigating the dangers of nuclear smuggling or nuclear weapons we are making an effort to make the world more secure naqvi said she will teach nuclear security policy courses in collaboration with dr sunil chirayath professor of nuclear engineering and nsspi director i am very interested in and looking forward to teaching nuclear policy courses naqvi said i am also excited to learn from some of the great faculty at this stage in my career with their combined experience naqvi and hecker bring expertise to support the college of engineerings mission to serve texas the nation and global communities by preparing graduates to meet the complex technical challenges of society my overriding career objective has been to make the world a safer and more peaceful place getting nuclear right is crucial to that objective hecker said
2809,a research and development contest ended in a $100 000 prize for jerome sfeir a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m universitysfeir won first place in the pivot 2022 disruptive research competition receiving 43% of the total votes among five finalists he was the only student in the final competitionpivot 2022 is a decade-long geothermal energy series of conferences per their guidelines sfeir submitted details of his research and recorded a video pitch that went through several committee screenings before he became a finalist his longer detailed pitch was aired during the conference and the winner was chosen by audience vote on social mediasfeir is pursuing a geotechnical engineering degree his research focuses on geothermal energy harnessing heat from underground to generate electricity or for direct use such as heating and cooling buildingsconventional geothermal systems have three components: high temperature high permeability (ease of fluid flow in the subsurface) and water famous ones include the geysers in california and icelandenhanced geothermal systems generally involve drilling two wells deep into hot dry impermeable rock the first well is hydraulically fractured to create pathways between the two wells where the second well intercepts the fractures cold water pumped down the first well flows through the fractures and comes up in the second well as hot water or steam achieving almost the same results as a conventional geothermal system but applicable anywhere thanks to engineeringthe missing piece of the puzzle is that it needs to financially compete with the other energy sources: solar wind oil and gas sfeir said besides economics geothermal is green ‘renewable and nonclimate dependent compared to other energy sources
2810,his research goal is to better understand the behavior of an enhanced geothermal system and categorize the parameters that affect its performance and efficiency in terms of heat recovery and the lifetime of the project to do this sfeir will use 2d and 3d numerical simulations with very fine discretization using the transport of unsaturated groundwater and heat (tough) code of the lawrence berkeley national laboratory the co-chairs of his doctoral research are dr jean-louis briaud professor in civil and environmental engineering and dr george moridis professor in petroleum engineering who developed the real gas brine (rgb) version of the tough codesfeir received his masters degree also in geotechnical engineering from texas a&m under the direction of briaud he said the degree is a good overlap between his bachelors degree in petroleum engineering and his interest in the energy sectori fell in love with the geothermal energy discipline he said there's a lot of potential in it and it doesn't make sense to me that there are energy problems in the world and the solution might be just underneath our feethe met moridis while taking a pete 689 special topics courseit was on reservoir modeling for nonpetroleum assets in terms of co2 sequestration and geothermal systems sfeir said it even tackled hydrogen storage what i learned made me fall more in love with the discipline and prepared me for the competitionboth professors encouraged him to enroll in the pivot contest though sfeir said he wasnt sure his research was mature enough the prize money will pay for his education and research needsi say i talk two languages civil engineering and petroleum engineering which i think is key for communication in the industry and a much-needed skill for interdisciplinary engineering sfeir said i have two co-chairs two legends in their industries with huge backgrounds in all engineering disciplines and both work on geothermal energy i cannot imagine any better scenario for a student like me and i would like to thank texas a&m from the bottom of my heart for giving me this opportunity to learn and grow
2811,out of every 200 people three live with parkinsons disease a progressive disorder that impacts the central nervous system and currently has no cure parkinsons disease can cause mobility issues increasing patients risk of falling a team of researchers from texas a&m university has developed a toe-tapping test for patients with parkinsons disease that gathers information from smart shoe insoles and transfers data to a simple phone application the results from the test can help determine a patients falling risk while providing insights such as symptom progression and treatment suggestions this study was published in ieee sensors letters
2812,we have developed a lightweight easy-to-install self-powered insole you can place within any kind of shoe as well as a correlating test that can accurately determine fall risk said dr ya wang associate professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering for people living in rural or underdeveloped areas or people who may not feel comfortable taking a walking test our technology presents a solution to monitor their disease progression parkinsons disease can have a wide range of symptoms such as tremors muscle stiffness or degrading balance and coordination symptoms can differ from patient to patient making it difficult to diagnose and treat and often resulting in extensive medical visits and medications there are symptoms you can observe using your naked eyes such as patients taking smaller steps or imbalance said wang however many cannot be seen by using the current tests and technology available this inability to accurately characterize symptoms takes a physical toll but can also cause psychological suffering stemming from pain and immobility parkinsons disease can be diagnosed by professionals using a combination of walking and toe-tapping tests where the patients movements are closely observed the symptoms are analyzed using the unified parkinsons disease rating scale (updrs) however this method presents risks to patients struggling with mobility both while commuting to the physicians office and while taking the test itself additionally this does not consider the subtle symptoms that are not visual or may not appear during the walking tests experiments with patients show that when you ask them to walk they are usually very nervous causing differences from their normal walk wang said this can be a source of confusion when diagnosing walking behaviors and requires a long period of data to combat this problem the researchers developed a toe-tapping test that uses smart technologies capable of compiling significant amounts of data uncovering information that can help diagnose patients characterizing their symptoms and over time showcasing disease progression
2813,the test begins by inserting a wearable insole that can be placed within any shoe as the patient completes a series of toe-tapping patterns the smart insole collects and transfers data in real-time to an accessible phone application the more tests a patient completes the more elaborate and accurate the data becomes from just toe-tapping the application can tell whether a symptom is being managed appropriately and whether the management such as physical therapy or medication is effective said wang if the management is not appropriate or effective the application can suggest a doctors visit recommend an increase or decrease of medication dosage and/or frequency or provide insight into whether new medication and previous treatments worked or did not work the key finding from the study is that toe-tapping tests can yield results almost as accurately as the walking test that indicate a patients risk of falling according to the updrs scale because the test can be completed at home with fewer resources and the information gathered is readily available to the patient it provides an avenue for those with parkinsons disease to receive essential medical care at inexpensive costs through a safer and less taxing process we are providing a way for patients to easily comprehend how their symptoms and medications are correlated while outlining risks in one easy-to-use platform said wang in the future we want to use this technology to develop preventative measures installed within the sensors to help ensure their safety this research is in collaboration with dr james hubbard a professor in the mechanical engineering department rui hua a graduate student in the mechanical engineering department dr deanna kennedy an assistant professor in the school of education and human development at texas a&m and yiyu wang a graduate student in the school of education and human development
2814,a research team led by dr nitesh saxena professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university received part of a $12 million grant from the national science foundations secure and trustworthy cyberspace program to investigate the robustness and security of election systems that read hand-marked paper ballots saxena is working on the project in conjunction with dr dan wallach professor in the departments of computer science and electrical and computer engineering at rice university and dr chengcui zhang professor in the department of computer science at the university of alabama at birmingham the texas a&m team received nearly $400 000 across the country nonpartisan election officials face a demand to produce the results of local and state elections quickly and accurately and sometimes accuracy can suffer because of this while modern machine-learning and deep-learning techniques have revolutionized how computers see the world even the most sophisticated systems used to scan and process hand-marked ballots primarily look at the average darkness across bubble targets on a sheet as a result traditional paper ballot scanners can miss partially filled-in marks or misclassify stray marks and scanner noise as filled-in bubbles depending on how theyre configured in addition existing systems are not inherently designed to identify potentially fraudulent voting cases where a single voter has filled out multiple ballots the proposed research aims to respond to these issues by building an artificial-intelligence system called bubble aid by training on data from millions of actual ballots the system will use modern computer vision and learning techniques to recognize hand-marked bubble targets more effectively than existing systems our research could lead to significant efficiency and improved security helping election officials focus their attention on the ambiguous ballots that require the most manual attention as opposed to the majority of ballots that were tabulated correctly said saxena we also anticipate that our work on hand-marked ballots could be applied to other hand-marked forms such as the ones used in standardized testing this research is funded through the texas a&m engineering experiment station a state agency that solves problems through applied research and development and collaboration with industry government and academic partners
2815,as a successful leader in the silicon valley cade hensley and his wife shakira have established the shakira and cade hensley 98 endowed scholarship which will be used to provide scholarships for students in the college of engineering at texas a&m university cade hensley graduated from texas a&m with a degree in electrical engineering he stepped into a career in tech sales and found success in the silicon valley since 2014 he has been the director of sales for broadcom inc a global leader in software design and solutions in san jose california the hensleys have specified that the shakira and cade hensley 98 endowed scholarship be awarded to students who demonstrate financial need this way the endowment will allow recipients to dedicate their time and energy toward their academics
2816,endowments supporting the students in the college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact jay roberts assistant vice president for development
2817,after obtaining a graduate degree whitney mantooth 16 began working in industry a bachelors degree in applied exercise physiology and a masters degree in occupational health and public safety from texas a&m have served her well throughout her career still she realized her desire to delve into engineering and decided to join the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university a doctoral degree in interdisciplinary engineering is open-ended in many ways and there are many possibilities with the degree plan said mantooth whether its reliability chemical or industrial engineering you can tailor your degree to your needs which is enticing to people like me who work in industry mantooth has worked in several industry positions beginning with paper production and then transferring to an ammonia production facility she currently works as a health and safety manager at a methanol production facility for koch industries in this role she develops and implements employee process safety measures and programs theres definitely a heavy emphasis on engineering in my field from understanding facilities to the cyber safety realm said mantooth i want not only to understand regulations but also to know how the system works so i can help develop and improve our processes recently mantooth was accepted into the advanced study course on optical chemical sensors (ascos) in obergurgl austria an alternative to traditional conferences ascos is an initiative that brings together researchers from around the world to unveil discoveries concerning optical and chemical sensors sponsored by fran and george ligler professors at texas a&m mantooth will travel to austria for the conference in october i thought the conference was a long shot but now i am going to austria in just a few months she said its truly amazing to be accepted and its an honor to travel outside of the united states for this once-in-a-lifetime experience although mantooth says she enjoys the fast-paced environment in industry she would eventually like to obtain a role in academia where she could focus on research she would like to be a mentor to students and relay the insights shes gathered throughout her career dr mark benden an affiliate of the multidisciplinary engineering department and the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering works closely with mantooth like mantooth he worked in industry and received his doctoral degree in interdisciplinary engineering from texas a&m as mantooth goes through the doctoral program benden serves as her advisor and mentor
2818,in 2021 the texas a&m university department of industrial and systems engineering was named the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering due to the generosity of dr william michael barnes and his wife sugar the barnes family has given more than $10 million to texas a&m including the endowment to rename the department in honor of its 80th anniversary in light of the renaming the department has set a vision to be one of the top-five programs in the country in the next five years and a powerhouse of excellence and talent in engineering education and research to attain this lofty vision the department has set five integrated goals: recruit and retain excellent students attract and retain top research faculty teaching faculty and staff establish and maintain world-class research and teaching facilities foster diversity inclusion climate and equity increase departmental visibility the endowment provides students the opportunity to learn and prosper in industrial and systems engineering while also allowing for faculty retention and recognition in particular the department has now established the following professorships and faculty fellowships: mike and sugar barnes professorship ii in industrial and systems engineering mike and sugar barnes professorship iii in industrial and systems engineering mike and sugar barnes career development faculty fellowship i in industrial and systems engineering mike and sugar barnes career development faculty fellowship ii in industrial and systems engineering mike and sugar barnes faculty fellowship i in industrial and systems engineering mike and sugar barnes faculty fellowship ii in industrial and systems engineering this is in addition to the previously established mike and sugar barnes professorship i in industrial and systems engineering and the mike and sugar barnes department head chair becoming a named department has been one of the greatest opportunities that this department has had and this is a game-changer for our students faculty and staff said dr lewis ntaimo department head
2819,dr juan garay professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is a co-principal investigator on a multi-institute collaboration network that has been awarded an $8 million grant from the algorand foundations algorand centres of excellence program to transform the landscape of blockchain technology research led and coordinated by purdue university the three-year project titled multidisciplinary educational global alliance for algorand center of excellence (mega-ace) aims to develop applications and end-to-end solutions for commonly known issues within blockchain research in areas ranging from cryptography to architecture to social choice and economics as over 70 proposals were submitted and fewer than 10 were awarded ours being the largest in size and funding the honor is both humbling and rewarding said garay its a recognition of the work that both myself and members of our team have been carrying out in the last few years texas a&ms portion of the grant is $900 000 which will help support the expansion of his research group to accommodate more students and deepen educational and training efforts through hosting various events such as hackathons and annual blockchain days organized in conjunction with other institutions within the network the mega-ace team is made up of 28 diverse senior investigators from nine countries on five continents including representatives from academia and industry the mission of the mega-ace network is to become a powerhouse in the area of blockchain research create a forum to exchange ideas and promote collaboration among the centers participants and build an educational center for students in countries that currently do not provide this type of advanced training
2820,as society adjusts to become information-focused conventional computing is approaching its fundamental limits the need for computing to become faster and more energy-efficient is exponentially increasing texas a&m university is set to lead its first department of energy (doe) funded energy frontier research center (efrc) the center will focus on reconfigurable electronic materials inspired by nonlinear neuron dynamics (remind) an initiative that strives to transform computing to behave more like a human brain for rapid and efficient processing dr r stanley williams professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering will serve as the director of the efrc and dr sarbajit banerjee professor in the department of materials science and engineering and the department of chemistry will serve as the associate director we are at a crossroads for the future of computing said banerjee self-driving cars networked grids and personalized medicine are on the rise all of which require massive amounts of energy a whole new approach that focuses on brain-like computing is essential to meet the needs of society modern computers excel at various essential functions like high-precision arithmetic and solving known equations however they perform poorly when it comes to natural human abilities such as real-time learning concept identification and decision making this ability to process information is possible because human brains have nerve cells (neurons) that continuously compare incoming stimuli with previously learned data neurons communicate with one another via electrical and chemical signals through connections called synapses that store memories although the individual biological steps are slow compared to those in transistors enormous numbers of them operate simultaneously to perform sophisticated computation with energy-efficient orders of magnitude superior to the most advanced electronic computers lets say we are looking at a picture of a dog said banerjee a human brain can almost immediately recognize the dog itself its type and relative age a computer will struggle with the basic recognition and may make a significant mistake while also using much more energy to do so the researchers involved with the remind initiative are discovering ways to emulate human neurons and synapses in electrical circuits by designing creating and assembling materials that exhibit tunable nonlinear responses to incoming electrical signals such as thresholding amplification integration and embedded memory in other words they are emulating the human brains processing system and attempting to assemble it into a highly efficient and capable computer our center seeks to uncover the foundational science of artificial neurons and synapses said williams we are looking forward to solving a generational challenge that will transform the future of computing if successful in implementing these techniques their findings could significantly reduce the amount of energy consumption used by computers helping combat the energy crisis we are focused on taking computers from calculating mathematical functions to learning and making decisions in uncertain and changing environments said banerjee were discovering the fundamental chemistries and materials for manufacturing the next generation of brain-like computing the doe recently announced the efrc awards to develop technologies that can transform energy production and reduce harmful emissions the research efforts will have 54 universities and 11 national labs in 34 states contributing the efrc is a collaboration among the college of engineering the department of chemistry the texas a&m engineering experiment station the national renewable energy laboratory lawrence berkeley national laboratory and sandia national laboratories in addition to banerjee and williams remind researchers include dr raymundo arroyave dr matt pharr dr xiaofeng qian and dr patrick shamberger from the materials science and engineering department dr perla balbuena from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and dr marcetta darensbourg and dr kim dunbar from the department of chemistry the team represents the breadth and depth of expertise needed to tackle this complex challenge spanning multiple disciplines
2821,in august 2021 scientists at the lawrence livermore national laboratorys (llnl) national ignition facility (nif) had a breakthrough they succeeded in a nuclear fusion energy experiment by using a laser shot to spark an explosion of energy from a peppercorn-sized fuel capsule researchers in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university were and continue to be part of these efforts to efficiently access fusion energy fusion energy is a natural process in stars like the sun where two nuclei combine to form a new nucleus scientists would like to use this process on earth as an energy source based on controlled fusion reactions creating a high energy density plasma a gas so hot that electrons are freed from the nuclei when these electrons and ions fuse they release energy one method to create this controlled environment is inertial confinement fusion containing plasma at the correct temperature and density long enough to induce nuclear fusion reactions llnls technology uses a spherical shell to improve the energy output a recent experimental study demonstrated the ability to generate more than 13 million joules of energy a marked improvement over previously reported numbers from similar experiments dr suhas bhandarkar group leader of nif said achieving these results depends on the quality of the surface of the shell among other factors the shells are polished over a dozen or more steps to create high-quality surfaces each step takes about 24 hours to make the surface progressively smoother and more uniform long polishing cycles however expose the shells to various risks endpointing the polishing process so it stops at the right time can de-risk the process significantly that is where collaboration with texas a&m comes in dr satish bukkapatnam professor and dr yu ding mike and sugar barnes professor in the industrial and systems engineering department were brought into the project in spring 2019 when a member from nif visited their labs
2822,bukkapatnam said texas a&m researchers bring experience in smart manufacturing and data science to enhance quality assurance of the components and products critical for the llnl-led efforts to develop next-generation nuclear fusion reactors they had recently investigated using heightmap measurements of the surface at the end of each stage of the polishing process to suggest a suitable endpoint one of the challenges in deciding the proper endpoints for such long-stretch ultraprecision polishing is to account for statistical variation and quantify uncertainty in decisions ding said to address that challenge researchers developed a hypothesis-testing procedure for detecting changes in the surface quality that are more significant than usual fluctuations under polishing they used data to track representation and detection which can inform the polishers when to change actions or stop even in the presence of noises and disturbances the texas a&m approach and experience in analyzing manufacturing processes has opened up interesting new avenues for resolving our polishing problems bhandarkar said polishing is a critical step for achieving the high quality required for ignition and high energy output the analysis is already providing constructive feedback revealing that present polishing decisions are possibly conservative and can lead to over-polishing endpointing a polishing process in turn can significantly reduce overpolishing and make the process less vulnerable to defects bukkapatnam said defect-free shells appear to contribute significantly to the performance of a nuclear fusion reaction process other contributors to the research include industrial and systems doctoral students shilan jin and akash tiwari and a team of scientists at llnl their latest work was recently published in the journal iise transactions
2823,in an ever-evolving world where technology is becoming more complex and necessary the demand for cyber engineering and cybersecurity has increased drastically jacobs has recognized that need and has committed to furthering the education of young engineers by establishing six jacobs cybersecurity scholarships and five jacobs cybersecurity graduate fellowships in the college of engineering at texas a&m university jacobs is a dallas-based company that serves clients from all over the globe by providing engineering technical professional and construction services the mission of jacobs is to not only be a global solutions provider in cybersecurity architecture and engineering but also to be a workspace that promotes growth and diversity our mission at jacobs is to create an environment where diverse employees want to join where they feel they belong and where they will thrive said steve clarke 91 vice president of strategic project development we have also identified a critical need to support our cyber and intelligence business line and believe this partnership would drive value through an integrated partnership with the college of engineering and department of multidisciplinary engineerings cyber program with over 500 aggies currently employed by jacobs the company believes that the texas a&m core values of excellence integrity leadership loyalty respect and selfless service align closely with their own we have an unparalleled focus on inclusion with a diverse team of visionaries thinkers and doers clarke said at jacobs we understand that ‘inclusion is a verb not a noun it means being transparent and acting on our statements commitments and initiatives that drive meaningful measurable change both in our company and in the communities that we serve clarkes own experience at texas a&m prepared him for working at a company such as jacobs his career was modeled around the universitys core values and instilled the value of hard work and service to others
2824,the ‘spirit that can neer be told reminds you to lead from a position of humility while utilizing the diverse backgrounds and experience of team members to create something unique and special for our clients since clarkes first day on campus the core values and culture of texas a&m stood out to him the traits of the students that call this campus home are the same that jacobs strives to have in its employees things were quite different in regard to admissions but the quality and character of the students and former students of texas a&m is something that hasnt changed and is both unique and special clarke said the sense of belonging and that you are part of something larger than yourself is very important to me according to clarke jacobs strives to be the employer of choice to attract maintain and work with partners like texas a&m to graduate underserved populations as part of the companys action plan for advancing justice and equality jacobs is excited to continue its partnership with texas a&m the college of engineering and their amazing diverse talent base for this critical need for its future jacobs vision and strategy are leading in a transformational way that will have a similar effect on the future of our workforce clarke said my hope is that these scholarships inspire a desire to explore the exciting field of cyber engineering and contribute to a more sustainable and technologically advanced future a degree from texas a&m and the training and connections that can be found here are best in class
2825,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2826,on friday sept 16 12 texas a&m university former students will be recognized as recipients of the distinguished alumnus award presented jointly by the university and the association of former students this award is the highest honor bestowed upon a former student and has been awarded since 1962 to only 318 of texas a&ms more than 555 000 former students the college of engineering is proud to claim seven of the honorees they are: mark w albers 79 petroleum engineering general joe ashy 62 mechanical engineering mark fischer 72 aerospace engineering dr joe r fowler 68 mechanical engineering elaine mendoza 87 aerospace engineering travis logan smith jr class of 1898 civil engineering dr jimmy williams jr 83 mechanical engineering
2827,albers was the senior vice president of exxonmobil corporation and retired after 38 years of service in development operations production and engineering he is a member of the society of petroleum engineers and the institution of engineers australia he was awarded the core values coin by the association in 2018 the rodney d chipp memorial award by the society of women engineers in 2017 and the texas a&m college of engineering outstanding alumni award in 2010 he has served on the board of trustees of the united states council for international business and is a trustee of grace school of theology in addition he is an assistant chair of the board of ceo forum; the board of advisors texas university lands; and the md anderson cancer center board of visitors at texas a&m he serves on the boards of the association and the engineering advisory council albers and his wife cindy have funded classroom improvements in the zachry engineering education complex an endowed scholarship and an endowed fellowship
2828,ashy is the founder president and ceo of ashy and associates llc an aerospace consulting company prior to these positions he served in the united states air force for 35 years as a four-star general was the commander in chief of the north american aerospace defense command and us space command and was the commander of air force space command among his many military decorations are the silver star two distinguished flying crosses the air medal and the distinguished service medal he has also been honored with the national association for the advancement of colored people roy wilkins award in 2004 was one of the texas a&m department of mechanical engineering academy of distinguished graduates in 2002 received the national defense industrial associations general james v hartinger space award in 1997 and was inducted into the texas a&m corps of cadets hall of honor ashy continues his involvement and service as president of texas a&ms sul ross group and through his appointment to the independent strategic assessment group as a mentor in the capstone and pinnacle programs
2829,fischer is the ceo of pointe vista development a mixed-use community along lake texoma previously he founded and was chairman and ceo of chaparral energy for 28 years he chairs the boards of dippin dots skybridge development doc popcorn and resource oil and gas fischer has been recognized for his success through the texas a&m foundation sterling c evans medal in 2021 and the college of engineering outstanding alumni award in 2014 and was named a national finalist for the 2012 ernst and young entrepreneur of the year award he serves and sponsors several nonprofits including the boy scouts of america habitat for humanity and big brothers big sisters he remains involved with texas a&m where he served on the associations board of directors from 2013-21 including his time as chair in 2019 and as a representative at large from 2020 to the present he and his wife susu co-chaired texas a&ms lead by example campaign and sponsored the zachry engineering complexs fischer engineering design center
2830,fowler now retired was co-founder and president of stress engineering services an engineering consulting firm based in houston with offices across the united states and canada under fowlers leadership the company received multiple awards including #1 best place to work in texas and #2 best place to work in ohio in 2010 and was also among the best places to work in houston and best places to work in new orleans in 2011 and 2012 fowler was awarded the 2012 ernst and young entrepreneur of the year award and in both 2009 and 2005 he received the aggie 100 entrepreneur award he earned the american society of mechanical engineers at the university of houston titanium crawfish award in 2004 and the rhodes oil drop industry award in 2003 he has served in leadership positions with the accreditation board for engineering and technology college of engineering advisory council at texas a&m offshore technology conference and american society of mechanical engineers fowler endowed the fowler distinguished lecture series with his brother donald in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and together with his wife linda has established several scholarships across the department and the college of engineering
2831,mendoza is the founder president and ceo of conceptual mindworks inc a biotechnology and medical informatics company in san antonio texas she has previously been chairman of the texas a&m board of regents and now chairs the committee of academic and student affairs she has spearheaded many efforts to improve health care education and economic growth both locally and nationally locally she served on the san antonio hispanic chamber of commerce the greater san antonio chamber of commerce board of directors and several committees to advance early education in the san antonio area she has served on the christus santa rosa health system and the health care service corporation director boards and as a member of the academic health science centers of texas code red task force gov rick perry appointed mendoza to the texas higher education coordinating board committee on closing the gaps commission for a college ready texas and special commission on 21st century colleges and universities nationally sen trent lott appointed her to the commission on the advancement of women in minorities in science engineering and technology mendoza was selected as the 2016 texas a&m san antonio dream maker and was inducted into the san antonio womens hall of fame in 2016 in 2014 she earned the womens legacy award from the aggie womens association and in 2013 she received the college of engineering outstanding alumni award
2832,smith was the founder of the sul ross group and one of the original members of the ross volunteer company entering texas a&m when he was only 15 years old he graduated at 17 he undertook many business and engineering ventures including developing one of the first fixed radial engines for aircraft which was used to convert airplanes for crop dusting and spraying smith engineered the plans and development for the major pumping and rice irrigation plants throughout the rice belt in the early decades of the 1900s with community and generosity at the heart of his actions he led a student housing construction project that employed mostly students and world war ii veterans he gave the deed to the association asking that proceeds from the sale of the property be used to establish scholarships smith personally established two presidents endowed scholarships at texas a&m
2833,williams is a distinguished service professor of engineering and public policy and the executive director of the engineering and technology innovation management program at carnegie mellon university he held influential positions at both alcoa inc and pall corporation where he implemented systems and strategies that saved millions of dollars and brought additional revenue in the hundreds of millions his development team at alcoa earned the roadstar magazine most valuable product award in 2002 he also held several significant research development and program management positions during his nearly 20-year career at boeing where he was given the black engineer of the year award in 2001 williams has served on the boards of the juvenile diabetes foundation innovation works tech-solve inc and the washington university alumni association additionally he is heavily involved with texas a&m where he co-chaired the universitys commission on diversity equity and inclusion in 2020 became the first african american chair of the board of the association in 2018 and was a recipient of the college of engineering outstanding alumni award in 2017
2834,these seven honorees have committed their lifetimes to uphold the aggie core values of excellence integrity leadership loyalty respect and selfless service they have made significant contributions to their fields as industry leaders and innovators and continue to shape the college of engineering through their example to coming generations
2835,"dr yong-rak kim was recently elected a fellow of the american society of civil engineers (asce) a prestigious honor given to members who have distinguished themselves as mentors and leaders in the civil engineering professionkim is a professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university specializing in materials""my service under the asce umbrella has been wide and deep i am greatly honored to have been elected a fellow of the organization "" he said ""as a fellow i will keep devoting my scholarly research to materials that significantly impact climate-resilient infrastructure""the rank of fellow is held by less than 3% of asce's more than 150 000 members in 177 countrieskims contributions include high-impact research on civil engineering materials mechanics and transportation infrastructure systems his primary research area is understanding and predicting the behavior of materials and structures subjected to various loads (mechanical and environmental) and different conditions (ordinary to extreme)""my research outcomes have led to better materials selections design and structures in a more optimized and mechanistic manner "" he saidkim's teaching and education have significantly impacted students' learning and workforce development in the last two decades he has supervised more than 30 graduate students in their master's and doctoral research""i have developed and improved course subjects on civil engineering materials mechanics of materials roadway engineering and structural design at both undergraduate and graduate levels "" he said within the asce kim is actively involved in the engineering mechanics institute the geo-institute and the transportation & development institute he has served in various leadership positions on technical committees and journal editorships organized technical events and special publications and provided critical reviews for various articles"
2836,dr perla balbuena has been selected as a 2022 fellow of the electrochemical society (ecs) balbuena is a professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering holder of the mike oconnor chair i and joint professor in the department of chemistry and the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university im extremely happy to be named an electrochemical society fellow said balbuena the ecs fellow is one of the highest honors for a professional in the fields of electrochemistry and solid-state science and technology the selection process is extremely thorough and requires true peer recognition established in 1902 ecs is an international volunteer-directed professional society seeking to advance scientific theory and practice in the fields of electrochemical science and technology members include scientists engineers and industry leaders ecs selects fellows for their advanced individual technological contributions to the field of electrochemical science and technology as well as their service to the society balbuena is one of 15 esc members selected for the 2022 class she has served as an ecs member for many years during her time in ecs she has organized and chaired meeting symposia at national and international conferences in april 2021 she was appointed the associate editor of the journal of the electrochemical society balbuenas research focuses on computational materials analysis and design and interfacial phenomena in battery cells her groups work has led to innovative techniques that can improve high energy storage capacities and extend battery life directly contributing to the development of advanced battery technologies balbuenas research has also promoted the development of clean technologies such as catalyst materials for fuel cells and electrolyzers and materials for carbon capture and conversion
2837,looking back sheryl and john barton 86 remember well the excitement they felt as newlyweds driving into aggieland for the first time the people they encountered and moments they experienced inspired them 40 years later to establish a fellowship for aggies pursuing a graduate degree in civil engineering
2838,johns fascination with the engineering of highways and bridges sparked by his high school work experience with the texas department of transportation is what started the bartons adventure in college station texas while john pursued a bachelors degree in civil engineering at texas a&m sheryl worked off-campus to provide for them financiallyas a student john was awarded the dewitt c greer award a scholarship established in the namesake of a texas a&m graduate and pioneer in texas highway development the bartons were grateful for the scholarship which allowed john to continue to grow in his engineering education and experiencemy time at texas a&m taught me tremendously valuable life lessons and gave me technical engineering skills and knowledge that enabled me to enjoy a successful career in the transportation industry john said the friendships of my classmates and the mentor relationships with the faculty have contributed to my success in my career and lifted me up throughout my lifeleadership characteristics are among the skills john gained from his time as a student he strives to embody servant leadership a mindset and philosophy that shaped his interactions with others he lent his expertise to his alma mater serving in various roles within the texas a&m university system these include assistant vice chancellor and associate vice chancellor positions at the texas a&m engineering experiment station associate vice chancellor of texas a&m-rellis and professor of engineering practice the bartons believe that texas a&m and aggies have shaped them and are now returning the favor by establishing the sheryl and john barton '86 endowed fellowship born out of their deep love for the university we are proud to establish this fellowship to support the continued education of graduate students within the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering john said my career success and all that it has brought me and my family in terms of financial security personal growth community support lifelong learning cherished friendships and business relationships are immeasurable all of this would not have been possible or as robust without the gift of the education i received as a civil engineering student at texas a&mwhile the bartons are passionate about advancing the impact of the civil engineering department they also see the global need for more talented problem-solving civil engineers it is their wish that this fellowship will help meet that needour world is evolving rapidly and we must develop innovative and greatly impactful solutions to our growing public infrastructure challenges related to climate resiliency connectivity and equitable access to services for all john said by doing so we will continue to offer the opportunities for a brighter future to our posterity continuing a legacy that texas a&m has always been known for john and sheryl raised two aggies lauren hauver 11 and rachel barton 13 john is the senior vice president and chairman of professional services for hntb corporation sheryl is a retired educator they reside in college station where their love for texas a&m began and their generosity will growwe hope this gift will allow some of our best and brightest students the opportunity to share in this same calling and career that we were blessed to receive while attending texas a&m they said what they learn will change the world for the better
2839,fellowships encourage collaboration between the faculty students and industry mentors while allowing graduate students to further their education and thus having a greater impact on the industry if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2840,dr ya wang is a newly elected fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) the honor recognizes recipients for their exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession there are less than 3 500 fellows out of asme's more than 60 000 active members wang is an associate professor and the leland t jordan career development professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university she earned her doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from virginia polytechnic institute and state university in 2012 i really appreciate the nomination and support of the asme community wang said i am really humbled honored and thankful for such a recognition i will continue helping others while promoting the continuous prosperity and success of the asme community i would also like to thank the mechanical engineering department and the texas a&m engineering experiment station for providing resources and support in the past years my achievements would not be that impactful without their strong support wang's research focuses on creating translational research innovations to develop new understanding and methodologies to address today's challenging problems at the interface of dynamics controls sensors nanomaterials and electronics she primarily attributes her selection for this honor to her work developing non-invasive privacy-reserving human sensing technologies and nanorobotics for minimal-invasive brain therapeutics
2841,dr laszlo kish professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has solved a long-standing open problem related to the kirchhoff-law-johnson-noise (kljn) key exchange and the security it provides in the kljn exchange communication is established and explained through two parties ‘alice and ‘bob ‘eve is the name given to an eavesdropper or one with malicious intent that is actively trying to breach security and obtain sensitive information during the transmission of secure information from ‘alice to ‘bob or vice versa one way that an ‘eve can gain access to this sensitive information is through a special class of active attacks that utilizes the adjustment of time in the clocks within the hardware system by opening this door into the hardware ‘eve is then able to make more advanced attacks on the system on may 4 2022 president joe biden signed a national security memorandum that promotes the research and development of quantum-resistant cryptography unconditional security belongs to this class of security an essential component of such a system is a secure key exchange protocol that requires a hardware solution where the laws of physics guarantee privacy against passive or listening attacks of ‘eve the kljn key exchange system offers unconditional security by using classical statistical physics and the second law of thermodynamics while quantum key distribution uses quantum physics and the quantum no-cloning theorem unfortunately both protocols are potentially vulnerable to active attacks where ‘eve takes over the control of the clocks of the communicating parties ‘alice and ‘bob kishs paper on this topic titled time synchronization protocol for the kljn secure key exchange scheme proposes a general defense against clock attacks in the kljn system and will come out in the october issue of fluctuation and noise letters the preprint of the paper is currently available
2842,paul 85 and michelle fenley establish the paul r fenley and michelle j fenley aerospace engineering scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing pursuing an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at texas a&m university additional selection preferences have been made that this scholarship be awarded to students who are members of the corps of cadets entering their junior year of leadership and professional development and have demonstrated service to the community or the department of aerospace engineering paul fenley graduated from texas a&m in 1985 with his bachelors degree in aerospace engineering fenley began his career at atec inc as a support engineer in 1987 atec is an aerospace and energy engineering and manufacturing company that specializes in building high-quality products and systems ranging from jet engine test facilities to rocket engines space vehicle components and more after more than 30 years with atec fenley has made his way to become president and chief operating officer (coo) of the company he became president in 2008 and was announced as coo in 2017 fenley is now responsible for all atec enterprise operations worldwide his hard work and dedication have granted him major success throughout the years fenley has been able to give back to the aerospace engineering department by being a part of the texas a&m aerospace engineering advisory board to continue enhancing the departments abilities to shape the future and education of aggie aerospace engineers
2843,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2844,dr jeffrey m falzarano professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the dr kenneth sm davidson medal from the society of naval architects and marine engineers (sname) falzarano received the award for his outstanding scientific accomplishment in ship research specifically for his fundamental approach to considering ship dynamic stability using nonlinear dynamical systems theory this approach which he pioneered in his doctoral dissertation is similar to the international maritime organizations second-generation ship stability criteria falzarano has over 30 years of experience as a university naval architecture and ocean engineering faculty member 15 years of which have been at texas a&m his research focuses on ship dynamic stability and currently applying these approaches to consider offshore renewable energy devices such as floating wind turbines and wave energy devices his research also includes various safety methods such as predicting nonlinear ship roll motion and maneuvering in waves his career has involved teaching ship and offshore platform dynamics as well as naval architecture and researching ship/platform dynamics he has served on various advisory committees including a national academy committee to review and revise the us coast guard stability criteria he has also acted as a hydrodynamics expert on several joint us coast guard national transportation safety board marine accident investigations before his academic career falzarano worked for the us coast guards design branch since then he has also worked and visited various federal government agencies labs and international academic institutions falzarano received a doctorate in naval architecture and marine engineering and masters degrees in aerospace engineering applied mechanics and naval architecture and marine engineering from the university of michigan he earned his bachelors degree in naval architecture and marine engineering from the webb institute he was jointly nominated for the award by his doctoral advisor dr armin troesch professor at the university of michigan and his doctoral student dr amitava guha falzarano will receive the award at the upcoming sname maritime convention in houston on sept 29 he is the 32nd recipient of the davison medal the previous recipients of this award are the leaders in my field including six national academy members so im very humbled to have been selected ive had exceptional mentors and students who worked with me throughout my career so its really a great honor said falzarano
2845,across engineering and scientific disciplines machine learning is the main method for analyzing and identifying patterns in big data and making informed decisions around that data recently a new area within artificial intelligence called scientific machine learning has emerged which introduces physics laws into machine learning models scientific machine learning combines the areas of artificial intelligence and scientific computation because scientific machine learning algorithms are informed and constrained by physics laws they do not rely only on data and can even make predictions where there is no data however there has been little work on probabilistic methods in scientific machine learning meaning that current algorithms cannot model uncertainty in the data or the physics to address this shortcoming dr ulisses braga-neto professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded a three-year national science foundation (nsf) grant titled a bayesian paradigm for physics-informed machine learning which is part of a joint international program between the national science foundation and the academy of finland braga-neto and his co-investigators dr ming zhong from the illinois institute of technology and a former postdoctoral researcher under braga-neto and dr simo särkkä from aalto university finland will develop a probabilistic framework for scientific machine learning and apply it to various engineering and scientific problems this project is also a collaboration with the texas a&m institute of data science (tamids) through the scientific machine learning lab (sciml lab) of which braga-neto serves as founding director the sciml lab was established in january 2021 with a grant from tamids to support and grow a community of researchers across texas a&m involved in the development and application of scientific machine learning methods the sciml lab served as the pilot lab for the tamids thematic lab program which supports research education and outreach in emerging areas of data science the results of this research will benefit ongoing collaborative projects in petroleum engineering aerospace engineering computational biology materials science and engineering nuclear engineering and astrophysics the research is funded through the texas a&m engineering experiment station a state agency that solves problems through applied research and development and collaboration with industry government and academic partners the funding is provided by nsf as part of an international collaboration with the academy of finland texas a&m research collaborators on this project include dr nick duffield from the department of electrical and computer engineering and tamids dr raymundo arroyave from the department of materials science and engineering; dr james cai from the texas a&m school of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences; dr eduardo gildin from the harold vance department of petroleum engineering; dr elaine oran from the department of aerospace engineering; dr jean ragusa from the department of nuclear engineering; and dr lifan wang from the department of physics and astronomy other collaborators include levi mcclenny from brown university and a former doctoral student under braga-neto; xia hu from rice university; david jeffery from the university of nevada; and alexei poludnenko from the university of connecticut
2846,joe e gregory 82 began his journey in 1978 as a civil engineering student when he arrived in college station he knew texas a&m university could offer him a top-notch education and experiences matched by no other university however going into his sophomore year he did not expect to meet classmate and physical education major melanie fattig 82 who would later become his wife since meeting melanie and joe have lived their lives by the aggie core values of excellence respect and most importantly selfless service these values inspired them to establish the melanie 82 and joe gregory 82 igrad fellowship in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering
2847,the departments new investing in aggie doctorates (igrad) program focuses on developing and funding domestic students pursuing a doctoral degree in civil engineering not only is the igrad program important to the gregorys but also to civil and environmental engineering department head dr zachary grasley we fully support dr grasley's priority to increase the number of domestic phd students joe said it is our hope that the civil engineering department will be successful in attracting high-quality phd candidates this will not only enhance texas a&m's reputation but contribute to academia and industry joe currently serves on the departments advisory council where he and other members strive to enhance the department for students of all degree levels his commitment to students has been integral to the departments success i have always encouraged students to focus on developing their technical skills and competency joe said having a solid technical foundation coupled with strong character and leadership capabilities will serve former students well the gregorys hope this fellowship furthers the development of civil engineering doctoral students for years to come and allows them the opportunity to study at a university that holds its core values in the highest esteem i believe our aggie culture and values leave an indelible imprint on all texas a&m former students joe said values and culture are so vital to any company or organization and aggies make a positive contribution wherever they work and live
2848,fellowships encourage collaboration between the faculty students and industry mentors while allowing graduate students to further their education and thus having a greater impact on the industry if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2849,nuclear engineering graduate student jordan hillis '21 received the h wade peterson memorial award at the 67th annual health physics society (hps) meeting in spokane washington this past summer the award recognizes outstanding student presentations in accelerator health physics hillis presentation is part of the research she performed with oak ridge national laboratory (ornl) where she served as an intern in the summer of 2021 she already had planned to attend the meeting when she submitted an abstract of her research to the hps her abstract was selected and she presented her research at the meeting which also showed her other aspects of the health physics field the meeting for me ended up being a huge career fair and networking opportunity i had no idea there were so many different disciplines within the field of health physics hillis said it was such a rewarding opportunity to get to meet so many diverse professionals and learn what they do across the whole nation after her presentation hillis learned that she was selected as the recipient of the h wade peterson memorial award and would receive the honor at a dinner in front of approximately 200 health physics professionals she said she was overwhelmed with gratitude and appreciation and the award served as a recognition of her hard work and acknowledged her as a researcher this award makes me feel like i belong in the career field that i am passionate about and i feel as if i have proven myself as they chose to recognize my abilities hillis said getting this award acknowledgment and applause was one of the greatest moments in my life thus far and makes me even more excited to graduate and continue in the field an efficient discovery hillis internship was virtual due to the covid-19 pandemic but she said the experience remained valuable she was mentored by dr scott schwann consultant health physicist for ornl and was able to put her classroom knowledge into real-world obstacles it taught me that the world of research requires you to constantly learn new material in order to help not only the facility you work at but potentially others across the country hillis said hillis research set to prove a certain type of atom with excessive nuclear energy known as a radionuclide should not be treated with as much regulation as similar radionuclides the radionuclide hillis examined is known as beryllium-7 which commonly occurs at the spallation neutron source accelerator at ornl hillis found beryllium-7 is not harmful to people and is difficult for radiation detectors to detect in turn she suggests that less-strict regulations for beryllium-7 could save time and money for spallation neutron source operations and employees this research proves that safe operations are the main priority for all health physicists and that health physicists have the capability to make facilities work in a more efficient manner while maintaining the highest level of safety possible for employees hillis said hillis is earning her masters degree in the department of nuclear engineering specializing in health physics with dr craig marianno she earned her bachelors degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m university in 2021
2850,in the recently released 2023 us news & world report best college rankings the texas a&m university college of engineerings undergraduate engineering program ranked seventh among public engineering schools offering a doctorate and 13th overall up two spots from last yearin addition to the college four engineering departments moved up in the public school rankings the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering jumped to no 8 the department of materials science and engineering was no 11 the department of biomedical engineering was no 12 and the computer science program within the department of computer science and engineering was no 23our goal always has been and always will be to provide our students with the best education experience possible seeing that work recognized on a national level is rewarding said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering we are constantly reassessing our colleges offerings to make sure we are providing the best engineering instruction we canin addition to industrial and systems engineering six departments from the college of engineering were ranked in the top 10 of public institutions these are the harold vance department of petroleum engineering (2) the department of biological and agricultural engineering (4) which is part of both the college of engineering and the college of agriculture and life sciences at texas a&m the department of aerospace engineering (6) the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering (7) the zachry department of civil engineering (7) and the department of electrical and computer engineering (8)computer engineering (11) which falls within both the department of computer science and engineering and the department of electrical and computer engineering and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering (12) were also ranked within the top 20 of public universities texas a&m also received a ranking of 20 overall and 11 among public universities in undergraduate computer science programs for cybersecurity
2851,a group of 18 students from the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university recently experienced a new side of switzerland through a study abroad trip with dr lee peddicord professor in the department the trip gave students a hands-on look into the way switzerland manages the interim storage and final disposal of spent fuel from nuclear reactors and other radioactive waste known as the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle and radioactive waste management the trip took place over a two-week period taking students to many notable nuclear facilities in the country most notable were visits to the beznau power plant the oldest operating power plant in the world; the paul scherrer institute and the spiez laboratory two premier national laboratories; and the mont terri rock laboratory and the grimsel test site two world-class underground research laboratories while at beznau students were able to get a hands-on feel of the plants turbine housing senior ethan louis 23 said it was exciting to see what he had just studied in dr mark kimbers thermodynamics course fully operational in front of him
2852,students were able to meet with scientists researchers and government officials to learn about the countrys nuclear energy program merrick hoffman 24 said he enjoyed learning how government officials spent time working with a local farm owner to use his land as a repository site for spent fuel they are working with this farmer hoffman said they are taking the time to communicate with him and its really interesting how they will take that time for one individual so he understands what is going on according to the us energy information administration spent nuclear fuel remains temperature hot and highly radioactive so it will spend time in cooling pools which are usually about 40 feet deep with reinforced concrete and lined with steel the water acts as a cooling method and blocks the release of radiation when the pools are nearing fullness the spent fuel is moved to interim storage in containers known as dry casks a large concrete cylinder usually on the power plants site the final step is to collect spent fuel from interim storage and place them in a final disposition site in permanent underground repositories switzerland is looking at multiple sites such as the one hoffman visited to create an underground repository for the spent fuel a newfound determination the trip allowed hoffman to gain a new drive and determination for the field of nuclear engineering by being able to talk with other nuclear scientists and seeing their dedication to the innovation of nuclear science the trip reinvigorated his own desire to be a nuclear engineer to meet all these different individuals both young and old with so many different years of experience and seeing how passionate they were is really important especially as a student hoffman said it really gets you excited to pursue this career and major this trip provided the unique experience to have that kind of interaction louis and hoffman both felt the trip created an opportunity for classmates who had otherwise never met the chance to become friends there were 18 of us in the group and we were all very close by the end of the trip we would get together and go visit ruins or waterfalls and meet people we never knew before the trip louis said i think having a small group encourages that kind of thing and enhances the experience i got to meet these wonderful individuals and fellow students that i would have never known before and i think would have never fully appreciated hoffman said this trip brought us together a global stepping stone louis said the trip showed him the viability of a career outside of the us he said before he traveled to switzerland he and his fiancée would often talk about where they would move after graduation he was unsure before but the trip has allowed him to realize other options and opportunities on a global scale after going on this trip i realized how much i really enjoy the spent fuel aspect and so ive been able to narrow down a couple of companies and look at job positions louis said this trip definitely provided a bit of career guidance for me hoffman was introduced to the option of a masters program at the swiss federal institute of technology-zurich under dr annalisa manera something he said he would not have known about otherwise im glad i found this opportunity because it is a surefire way to kickstart my career hoffman said study abroad can open you up to all these opportunities and meet people who you could potentially work with hoffman believes study abroad trips should be seen as an opportunity for any student who wants to become an engaged global citizen consider the intellectual value that you gain from studying abroad hoffman said you get the unique opportunity to see someone with different ideas and perspectives and talk with them and find new ways to solve problems
2853,when robin fielder 02 was a young girl she told her parents that she wanted to be a queen her father a lab analyst at a large oil refinery told her that she should be an engineer so that she could be the boss after two decades in the energy industry fielder has been more than just a boss her leadership has been widely recognized as she was recently named a hart energy 25 influential women in energy honoree
2854,one of the first scholarships fielder received during her college application process was from the society of petroleum engineers (spe) gulf coast section along with the scholarship came an internship opportunity with diamond offshore drilling the summer after she graduated high school which fielder quickly jumped onthat internship sealed me into petroleum fielder said i got to see the cool offshore technology and learned that the energy business is all about solving big problems which really interested mewhen the fall semester rolled around fielder quickly found herself immersed in texas a&m universitys harold vance department of petroleum engineering she enjoyed the comradery among her class which was comprised of around 30 people she fondly remembers playing dominoes during study breaks in the student lounge attending home football games and planning events as secretary of the universitys spe chapterthough her time on campus was influential summer internships required by her degree with conoco texaco and anadarko were of equal importance to fielder she appreciated the access that texas a&m provided through career fairs and other resources to help her secure jobs in the industry during school and after graduationmany of these recruiters may not go to every school every year but they always come back to texas a&m fielder said theres going to be a good group of high-quality students who you know can plug in and hit the ground running on day one
2855,fielder has been helped along in her career journey by mentors teachers and friends women such as janeen judah 81 who was a mentor figure to fielder during her summer at texaco stand out as those who helped give her the tools she needed to succeedi had a lot of support and a lot of great supervisors mentors and more importantly sponsors over the years fielder saidgaining experience through many positions and roles was important to fielder to build her career throughout many of the jobs she held a network of people opened the doors to opportunities for new skills and growthas personal development has also been key to her success she attends events hosted for executive women in energy where she connected personally with many likeminded women fielder has found that there are similarities in the challenges that many women in her position have faced as working parents who are discovering how to best juggle their spouses families and careers
2856,in 2018 fielder accepted the offer to be the president and ceo of western midstream then called western gas a $20 billion enterprise fulfilling this role has been one of the proudest moments of her careerthere are so few female energy ceos and i was quite young compared to a lot of my peers fielder said theres a tremendous amount of honor and respect associated with what that role meansin 2019 she stepped into key roles at another company noble midstream (formerly part of noble energy) including chief operating officer president ceo and director leading organizational structure redesign merger and integration efforts through its acquisition by chevron corporation in 2021 since december 2021 she has led talos energy inc in carbon capture and sequestration as executive vice president of low carbon strategy and chief sustainability officernow recognized by hart energy as one of the most influential women in her industry fielder has a piece of advice that helped bring her to where she is todaydont ever sell yourself short fielder said if you dont vouch for yourself you cant expect that others will be willing to lean in and take on the new things
2857,texas a&m university researchers accomplished what was once considered impossible they created a device capable of squeezing the quantum fluctuations of light down to a directed path and used it to enhance contrast imaging this one-of-a-kind flashlight was built to increase the signal-to-noise ratio present in brillouin microscopy spectroscopic measurements that visually record the mechanical properties of structures inside living cells and tissues test results reveal the new source significantly increases image clarity and accuracy this is a new avenue in research said dr vladislav yakovlev university professor in the department of biomedical engineering in the college of engineering we are specially designing light in such a way that it can improve contrast its a new milestone in the capabilities of brillouin microscopy and imaging extensively used for bio systems said dr girish agarwal university distinguished professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering in the college of agriculture and life sciences and it becomes part of an international effort to develop quantum sensors for diverse applications like brain imaging biomolecule structure mapping and exploring underground oil and water sources by devising supersensitive gravimeters a paper detailing the work was published in optica all instruments capable of capturing a picture or image also capture signal distortions or noise in the process the distortions can stem from too much or too little light and even brightness or color issues from the environment around the subject most noise is unnoticed until the image is enlarged enough for the naked eye to see the unwanted pixels clearly brillouin microscopy is the fundamental limit of reduced-scale measurement imaging currently possible the process aims lasers at solid objects and measures the waves or signals of vibration made by the moving atoms and structures within the visibly unmoving material noise produced at this scale can severely obscure the signals received creating muddied images that are hard to interpret currently all laser spectroscopy systems like brillouin microscopy suffer from the natural and technical signal distortions associated with laser light which is why newer light sources are needed six years ago yakovlev attempted to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in brillouin microscopy by using intense light sources unfortunately overexposure to light damaged the cells he was imaging yakovlev searched literature for answers and found a theory from the 1980s that postulated quantum light could solve the problem though it didnt mention how agarwal an expert in quantum physics came up with a possible way dr tian li then a postdoctoral researcher from the university of maryland was hired to create the first quantum light laboratory at texas a&m the laboratory space was provided by dr marlan scully director of the institute for quantum science and engineering the team faced two significant challenges: finding funding for such a wild idea and finding graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to help them ones who were willing to straddle the fields of biology and quantum physics after nearly two years of vigorous explorations the device grew into a tabletop-sized contraption of complex optical configurations and measuring instruments that allowed the researchers to adjust direct and efficiently manipulate and detect light during that time li gained a better understanding of biology and yakovlev and agarwal developed a mechanism to create the proper state and matter of light needed for noise reduction without damaging live cells
2858,though the light-squeezing device can be adopted for other spectroscopic measurements like raman scattering yakovlev and agarwal are enhancing the capabilities of brillouin microscopy to identify the viscous or elastic materials in biological systems these systems control the physical properties of cells and cell structures and define everything from cell development to cancer progression seeing details clearly makes a huge difference in biomedical breakthroughs each time you get a new telescope or something like gravitational-wave astronomy you discover new things you can't possibly see without it said yakovlev the same thing works in biology before the invention of the microscope we didn't know that we consist of individual cells so far only the contrast of spectroscopy images has been improved but yakovlev and agarwal are already working on agarwals theory to enhance spatial resolution or the smallest details possible and if the task leads to creating another complex device that pushes the limits of current technology the researchers are ready and willing to make that happen i love those types of projects where people tell you something will never work and it works said yakovlev i love challenges the project was primarily supported by funding awarded to the texas a&m engineering experiment station from the air force office of scientific research with yakovlev agarwal and scully listed as principal investigators
2859,developing compact low-cost high-functioning energy storage technologies is becoming increasingly important as society attempts to improve the power grid and continues to create game-changing alternative energy solutions dr emily pentzer and dr david powers from texas a&m university are key personnel of case western reserve universitys breakthrough electrolytes for energy storage (bees) energy frontier research center pentzer will serve as the lead of one of the two thrusts within the center the bees center funded by the department of energy was recently renewed for another four years the goal of the bees center is to use cheap and abundant liquid materials for electrolytes that can be used for electrochemical energy storage the applications of these electrolytes range from redox flow batteries to supercapacitors we want to fundamentally understand how physical properties like density or viscosity impact the ability to store energy said pentzer additionally we want to make sure we are developing energy storage devices that use domestic resources are readily available and provide low-cost energy storage options the researchers hope their experimental and theoretical findings on electrolyte chemistries will lead to innovations and the design and development of new electrolytes that will ultimately transform the field of energy storage i hope this spurs interest in our research areas and programs but more than that i hope this leads to sustainable and efficient energy storage innovations said pentzer pentzer is an associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering and the department of chemistry at texas a&m powers is an associate professor in the department of chemistry at texas a&m the center is a collaborative effort between researchers at case western reserve university; the university of tennessee knoxville; the university of notre dame; columbia university; new york university; hunter college of the city university of new york; brookhaven national laboratory; and pacific northwest national laboratory
2860,"the path to a discipline like mechanical engineering is not always direct however the twists and turns that define a journey can result in a fresh perspective ready to bring new ideas to solve a problem dr rebecca friesen joined the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university in january 2022 she serves as an assistant professor after earning her doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from northwestern university an unexpected turn from her undergraduate beginnings in physics her current research interests include surface haptic displays haptic wearables for extended reality human-machine interaction tactile perception and the biomechanics of skin the following is an interview with friesen in which she shares how she came to join the mechanical engineering department explains the research she is passionate about and the impact she hopes to have throughout her career q: what led to your decision to pursue mechanical engineering a: i actually took a very long and circuitous path to mechanical engineering my undergraduate degree is in physics where i loved learning math and exploring how the world fundamentally works but i was not very excited about the research opportunities i knew i wanted to keep learning and do hands-on work so after college i found a job as a medical school research lab technician there i worked with neuroscientists and biomedical engineers to develop brain-machine interfaces ie technology that enables the control of robotic arms and machines with electrical signals measured directly from our neurons this work involved a lot of brain surgery and design of mechanical systems that interface with the body when i chose to go back to graduate school in mechanical engineering i was excited to focus on the latter q: what brought you to texas a&m university and the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering a: texas a&m has a huge pool of resources from research facilities to potential collaborating professors to support grant writing and teaching making it very attractive over smaller institutions texas also offers a young and growing population and i'm so excited to work with all the enthusiastic and motivated students here who i'm already meeting in my first months on the job q: what is your primary area of research a: my research is in haptic interfaces designing technology that applies touch sensations to a human user much of my past work focused on surface haptic devices which can ""display"" the tactile sensations of textures buttons sliders and other features on a flat touchscreen surface by manipulating friction forces on a fingertip as it touches a specialized screen we can create a wide variety of programmable and dynamically changing haptic effects similar to the rich videos and images that a touchscreen typically displays i'm also researching the design and control of wearable haptic devices that apply sensations directly to your hand to provide haptic feedback for teleoperation or virtual and augmented reality applications besides actual actuation design a lot of my research looks at where we need to distribute actuators on a persons body and how we need to modulate their output in response to human movement to create realistic and compelling haptic experiences q: what about this research area most inspires you a: early on during my post-college work with brain-controlled prosthetics it became painfully clear that people are really bad at moving and controlling their bodies without any haptic (touch-related) feedback imagine trying to pick up a glass of water or write a letter while your hand is completely numb although often taken for granted our sense of touch plays a critical role in our ability to move dexterously and interact with the world yet as more of our work and communication moves to the digital realm from phone touchscreens to teleoperation to the metaverse haptic technology hasn't kept up with advances in video and audio capabilities we're operating these interfaces in essentially a numbed state haptics research has a chance to transform that radically q: how might the general public be affected by this work a: in the past couple of years hopefully you have already seen haptic technology improvements on your personal phone commercial touchscreens are debuting increasingly sophisticated use of vibration motors to simulate button clicks and textured surfaces our research aims to provide new methods of actuation and control strategies that produce increasingly natural and satisfying sensations whether you're touching a screen or a completely virtual object further out i think many of us will see indirect benefits from haptic interfaces that enable remote operation and training simulators for skilled manipulation tasks particularly in the medical field for example you might get surgery from a doctor trained in a medical simulator receive a teleoperated medical exam from a remote medical specialist or simply want a satisfyingly reassuring hug from your robot nurse q: how do you hope to have a positive impact through your role a: i hope to cultivate students from a diverse range of backgrounds and life experiences in haptics research they will determine the types of problems we solve and the populations we serve in the future these days lots of people use virtual interfaces for many tasks (from working to online shopping to socializing) and i think there's a huge need to consider how we can improve and leverage haptics to make these interactions more intuitive useful and delightful for everyone q: what advice do you have for students interested in a similar career path a: don't be afraid to try things out get to know intimidating people doing cool things and be open to opportunities as they come your way for the longest time i had no idea what ultimate career i was headed toward but i kept working alongside many brilliant colleagues who often directed me toward the next job or research opening and while jumping from field to field isn't necessarily advisable the cross-disciplinary experience can actually be a huge benefit in haptics research which lies at the crossroads of engineering human perception and design"
2861,cells are constantly making decisions that lead to differentiation for instance cells in an embryo make a series of decisions that determine whether they will become neurons in some cases and muscle cells in others how do cells make these decisions researchers at texas a&m university and north carolina state university are determining how cells facilitate decision-making processes through this work they hope to precisely measure the concentrations of specific vital signaling proteins within cell tissues in addition they will use the measurements to develop mathematical models that can predict and control cellular differentiation this study was recently published in acs omega we want to understand differentiation decisions so we can ultimately harness them said dr gregory reeves an associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m we are engineering tools to understand cell differentiation and describe the processes through equations to accomplish these tasks we need to understand the concentrations of the proteins in live tissues however determining the concentrations of key signaling proteins can be extremely difficult to combat this issue reeves collaborated with north carolina state university researchers who used an experimental and analytical framework to develop mix-and-read assays mix-and-read assays mean that critical reagents are placed in combination with a lysed cell allowing for luminescence detection if the target protein is present
2862,"the researchers then used a protein engineering technique to create two proteins that bind strongly to a target protein in this case lysozyme these two protein binders are fused to two halves of luciferase an enzyme that creates bioluminescence as you would see in a firefly ""when the target protein is bound by the two engineered protein binders it brings the two halves of luciferase together to create bioluminescence which we can use to take measurements "" reeves said researchers from reeves lab analyzed a mathematical model of this method to predict how much bioluminescence results from the binding events allowing them to determine the sensitivity of the assay this in turn will help researchers gain a deeper understanding of how and why cells make differentiation decisions the broader impacts of this study include using this technique to detect the presence of target proteins such as antibodies or upregulated cancer markers in a cellular lysate other applications which we will use in my lab include allowing us to cleanly measure some proteins that were not able to be measured previously in live tissues said reeves the researchers also hope to further apply these methods to other classes of molecules that are difficult to detect in live tissues such as mrna this work is in collaboration with the lead author nikki mcarthur alongside dr balaji rao dr carlos cruz-teran and apoorva thatavarty from the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at north carolina state university the research was funded by the eunice kennedy shriver national institute of child health and human development one of the national institutes of health the research is now funded through the texas a&m engineering experiment station a state agency that solves problems through applied research and development and collaboration with industry government and academic partners"
2863,the stewart familys aggie legacy began with jc stewart he served in the united states air force for three years before arriving at texas a&m university to pursue a degree in electrical engineering where he graduated in 1953 while studying for his degree jc was actively involved in the corps of cadets during his career he worked for western electric at&t and lucent technologies he also founded competitive communications systems inc which primarily focused on installing telecommunications in retirement jc served as a life member president of the telephone pioneers of america donating his time to volunteering for the non-profits various aid programs that serve the underprivileged jc and his wife joyce had two sons who attended texas a&m brian and mark stewart brian graduated with a civil engineering degree in 1981 and had a successful career working for the army corps of engineers and the union pacific railroad he followed in his fathers footsteps by founding his own company specializing in security matters for the ports along the gulf of mexico mark graduated with a degree in environmental design in 1980 two years later he walked the stage again to receive his masters degree in architectural design like jc he also served in the united states army and is now retired after the passing of his father jc and his brother brian mark and his wife marcia were moved to endow two scholarships the jc stewart '53 endowed scholarship in electrical engineering and the brian duncan stewart '81 endowed scholarship in civil engineering to honor jc and brians values mark and marcia specified that these scholarships be awarded to students who are studying engineering and demonstrate interest in creating a sustainable future the stewart family legacy will live on at texas a&m through the scholarship recipients and their dedication to creating a better tomorrow
2864,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2865,three high school students from around the state of texas spent this summer participating in a high-impact research experience at texas a&m university through the us army educational outreach program (aeop) high school apprenticeship program neha adusumilli sabrina hu and richa kalari had the opportunity to work in the nanobio systems laboratory which is directed by dr arum han texas instruments professorship ii in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m being able to meet and interact with many of the phd students around the lab opened up my mind to ideas and concepts that i didn't even think were possible adusumilli said kalari said that the most rewarding aspect of this summer program for her was being able to see her own ideas transformed into physical working devices with real-world applications
2866,the aeop high school apprenticeship program connects high school students to a university or us army research laboratories and centers to spend the summer conducting cutting-edge research in state-of-the-art laboratory facilities as part of this authentic science and engineering research apprenticeship program high school students work one-on-one with a university researcher or us department of defense scientist mentor with this summer program i felt a stronger connection to my love for science adusumilli said i not only gained knowledge about microfluidics but also about the out-of-the-box thinking required for research this summer program inspired me to want to work in lab research in my future career being able to provide hands-on experiences is one of the best ways to get students excited about science and engineering han said these students are the future of our society advancing the forefront of technology it was also very exciting for me to see them experiencing the fascinating world of microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip without the support from the us army these activities would have not been possible and i deeply appreciate their support the aeop program is funded by a grant from the us army research office awarded through the texas a&m engineering experiment station a state agency that solves problems through applied research and development and collaboration with industry government and academic partners
2867,like many young boys retired maj gen wilbert d doug pearson jr 69 looked to his father in adoration mimicking all he did wilbert pearson sr served in world war ii as a flight engineer for a powerful american bomber the consolidated b-24 liberator and came back home with an enthusiasm for aviation mechanics and the military which his son shared this appreciation for aviation led pearson to get his degree from texas a&m university in aerospace engineering and he hopes to help others who share this passion to do this pearson and his family established a scholarship for students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m for students pursuing their pilot licensein pearsons young eyes aviation became a concept that must be explored and understood from the time he was six years old he was building working model airplanes copied from pictures in his familys set of encyclopediasin high school pearson became fascinated with flight tests and test pilots every day he picked up the local newspaper to read the latest updates on the edwards air force bases work on the north american x-15 an experimental rocket-powered plane he was hooked while at texas a&m he joined squadron gator 2 and the air force rotc and spent his spare time at easterwood airport cutting grass pumping gas and earning enough money to pay for flying hours for his private pilot license he also worked for the aerospace engineering department at the flight mechanics lab an experience that would be transformative in his career researchers in the lab took concepts designed in the classroom built them and implemented them to demonstrate whether they worked in a hands-on experience
2868,after graduating from texas a&m in 1969 pearsons experience and passions collided as he began a 34-year career in the united states air force upon graduation of air force test pilot school he was a test pilot for many of the well-known aircraft of the time while flying an f-15 eagle he was the first and only person to launch an antisatellite missile which successfully destroyed a satellite in earths orbitpearsons background aided him in helping write the air defense plans using the f-15 i used a combination of understanding the airplane because of my engineering background and knowing how to fly the airplane in confronting the enemy he saidat the pinnacle of his career pearson was appointed commander of the air force flight test center at edwards air force base california he was responsible for safely executing approximately 200 programs to develop and test fighters bombers transport tankers and nearly all other air force weapon systemsin 2004 pearson retired from the air force but soon received a call from lockheed martin corporation to manage the f-35 lightning as vice president of the flight test program he was successful in establishing all three of its air force navy and marine corps variants in flight testing pearson retired from lockheed martin in 2011 and for the next several years he provided executive consulting services to various government and civilian organizations
2869,pearson and his wife teresa have five children usaf retired lt col todd pearson 99 rebecca becky pearson 00 rich lau travis lau and jessica davis now at a place where his experiences knowledge and wisdom can be used to propel others forward pearson and his family are giving back through an endowment to enable the success of other engineerswere at a point in our lives where we want to give back and say thank you for everything pearson said we started with little and have been blessed with the successes we have had we want to help a few people that may be in the same boat have the opportunity to succeedto inspire students to engage and be hands-on in operational problems to solve the nations most challenging aerospace issues the teresa and major general doug pearson 69 excellence in aerospace engineering scholarship will be awarded with a preference for students who have or are pursuing a pilot license im hoping to encourage someone who like me is interested in the operational side of flying and not just the technical side pearson said i hope it inspires people to move on in the operational way and helps them get their degree and pursue a career doing things as well as designing thingsultimately both pearson and teresa are excited to see their endowment take flight when placed in the hands of eager aggie engineers this is our opportunity to help and encourage somebody to do more than they ever thought they could pearson said if we help someone then that someone tends to help someone else and it goes right on down the line which is truly the aggie way
2870,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2871,"five texas a&m university students enjoyed the opportunity to give back to the local community by designing new mechanics for and creating new schematics of a famous feature in downtown bryan texas mitch fauber aaron ildefonso daniel mayoral sneha sequeira and cara sutter undergraduate students in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering were tasked with a capstone project to redesign the interior mechanics of the rotating crown atop the queen theatre using a system that will function long term they were also asked to produce an accurate set of shop drawings for fully replicating the buildings regal topknot should it ever need to be recreated the students took time to sit down and discuss the project funded by the downtown bryan association (dba) what drew me to this project was the opportunity to work with people in our community and directly impact the beautiful and iconic area of downtown bryan sutter said the most important lesson we learned was being able to adapt to the changes that came up said mayoral originally we thought we would fully redesign the crown itself as part of the queens renovation in the 2010s the rotating crown on the parapet wall of the art deco-style building was temporarily removed and restored with new paint and neon lighting by a local business while the new lighting continues to function properly the 80-year-old drive and motor system that rotates the crown still needed help the queen theatre crown is an iconic landmark with great sentimental value said sequeira however its rotational mechanism often malfunctions and the crown lacks any original drawings the project has two parts fauber said the first is creating a set of 3d computer-aided design (cad) models of the full-scale crown accompanied by drawings that include its critical dimensions the second is redesigning the rotational mechanism that turns the crown along with a cost model the proposed design changes will be shown in the prototype the team is currently fabricating our main challenge has been taking accurate measurements of the crown sequeira said since its directly connected to the roof and cannot be removed its difficult to access certain areas and the team had to make do with estimations however we enjoyed taking measurements and photos for the cad modeling this project implied that solidworks cad software would be heavily involved in modeling the crown said ildefonso this proved to be very true the most surprising element has been the design of the crown itself sutter said we were able to visit the queen theatre and see the crown up close several times and each time we learned more about how this unique landmark was constructed the historic building was originally a hotel built in the late 1800s the hotel management began showing silent films on the ground level in the early 1900s in 1914 the hotel was officially named queen theatre it was converted into a fully operational movie theater in 1939 from that time to the mid-1970s it was operated by the schulman family who also operated other local movie theaters the dba purchased the building in 2010 and reopened it in 2018 as a single-screen film house and performance venue the theater is now run by a company owned by the same schulman family additional modifications have been made so the queen can feature first-run movies and other premiere events i think the part that makes us the proudest is that we are able to help the city of bryan with something that holds such historical significance said mayoral being part of the citys history is something not a lot of engineers can say and is something we will cherish forever we would like to thank our sponsors for giving us this opportunity fauber said we look forward to delivering the final products to them a representative for the city of bryan deputy city manager joseph dunn also took time to comment on the project ""it was a privilege to work with a top-notch team of engineering students in developing a viable long-term mechanical solution to enhance one of bryans most iconic downtown buildings "" dunn said"
2872,every summer weather forecasters blast news about african dust plumes crossing the southern united states and to most people its just dust to researchers at texas a&m university its much moreresearchers have developed a new method called isotope-resolved chemical mass balance to identify dust participles using isotopic measurements this new research builds off previous studies where they identified and quantified the dust by determining the elemental compositionthe study was recently published in environmental science & technologyto do this work the team specifically sourav das research assistant and doctoral student in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering collaborated with brent miller professor in geology and geophysics at texas a&m and researchers at the university of miamiwe are one of the very few groups that study how this african dust or any kind of global or regional dust sources influence local air pollution by mixing with aerosols from various proximal sources said dr shankar chellam professor of civil and environmental engineering and ap and florence wiley professor iii sourav had to first develop a brand-new instrumental method to measure dusts isotopic and elemental composition and then perform modeling using these measurements researchers documented this new isotopic analysis procedures in talanta the international journal of pure and applied analytical chemistry previously chellams students examined and determined the elemental analysis of african dust but this new method quantifies the isotopic composition of three different metals that serve as unique tracers an element could be labeled simply as strontium (an alkaline earth metal) but geochemists would carefully label it as strontium 86 or 87 depending on the atomic mass for example for dust they analyzed the rare earth metal neodymium along with strontium and hafniumchellam said to think of the elemental analysis as identifying a full fingerprint but this new method is like identifying each curve and groove in the fingerprint das added that the analogy is that chemically similar sources are like twins with the same face but whose fingerprints would be unique which can be quantified using isotopeshow do we improve the accuracy of not only identifying african dust but also quantifying its contributions (in the air) at low levels before the arrival of the main plume and after its departure chellam said to do that is a herculean task if it was hard before it is now 10 times harder to pursue low concentrationsaccurately and quantitatively tracking saharan dust across the globe is essential to explain its effects on the earths climate water and nutrient cycle and human health in previous studies air samples were collected from barbados and houston at different times but this study is distinct because they tracked the same dust plumes from africa to houston using nasa satellite images and large-scale models
2873,nobody has ever determined these three isotopes in african dust with relevance to urban air pollution so theres no model for that chellam said sourav had to improve the existing model to add the capability of statistically modeling the isotopic fingerprints in addition to the elemental datawhen looking at the soil from africa or houston the elemental composition is essentially the same but going deeper into the isotope realm researchers have quantified how different resuspended crustal material from the two continents are especially after crossing the atlantic oceanwe found that when you accurately quantify african dust in houston we are also accurately measuring other sources das said its more a universal method if you have two or three sources that look similar due to their composition (eg dust from north africa and resuspended dust in houston) we can distinguish them more accurately this method of using isotopes is not just applicable to one particular geographical or subject area but is more applicable to any location and many fields of air pollutionair pollution can be caused by petroleum refining in industrial areas vehicles and natural factors such as dust and smoke from fires affecting air quality according to researchers there is a clear need for a fuller understanding of the chemical and physical properties of the air to assess potential health impacts of the dust this isotopic method can be applied and implemented in any metropolitan or remote area in north america europe and asia impacted by desert aerosolsthere are numerous other possibilities where we can apply this isotope-based method to quantify anthropogenic and natural aerosols polluting urban air das saidin a separate study published in atmospheric environment researchers also quantified the episodic influences of long-range transatlantic saharan-sahelian dust and regional north and central american biomass burning sources on the air quality in houston and their effects on the chemistry of rare earth metals using elemental analysis smoke from agricultural and forest fires can cause respiratory and cardiovascular problems and even death biomass burning can also result in non-compliance with air quality regulations from the environmental protection agency chellam and co-workers determined that biomass burning significantly affected aerosol levels from mid-september to november and between april and june during their study period nearly half of the smoke particulate matter came from central american fires a quarter from agricultural burning in neighboring states and the remaining quarter from forest fires in canada and the southeastern united states
2874,in 2020 the us department of energys advanced research projects agency-energy (arpa-e) awarded texas a&m engineering researchers $13 million in funding as part of the aviation-class synergistically cooled electric-motors with integrated drives (ascend) program the ascend program funding aims to support researchers in developing an all-electric powertrain that will help enable net-zero carbon emissions in single-aisle 150-200 passenger commercial aircraft electrical engineering doctoral students dorsa talebi mehdi seyedi and erick pool are working closely with their faculty advisors on different aspects of the project while also collaborating with other graduate students across the college to complete phase one of the project dorsa and mehdi are working alongside dr hamid toliyat their faculty advisor and principal investigator on the project to configure the design of the electric motor component of the project to accomplish this after an extensive literature review to obtain the unique design idea of the most efficient power dense electric motor design they performed an analysis to evaluate the configuration and dimension of the system utilizing the ansys maxwell software which provides 2d and 3d low-frequency electric field simulation for analysis of electromagnetic and electromechanical devices through this process talebi was able to design the electromagnetic model motor for the aircraft targeted by the arpa-e program
2875,talebi explained that the output of the electromagnetic design of this axial flux dual rotor permanent magnet motor is over 94% efficient with a peak output power of 250 kilowatts for aircraft takeoff at 5 000 revolutions per minute pool is working alongside his faculty advisor dr prasad enjeti on the power electronics component of the project more specifically they are working on the design of a multilevel inverter employing silicon carbide and gallium nitride semiconductors by employing these semiconductor technologies they have achieved a lightweight and highly efficient circuit to convert direct current (dc) such as electricity into alternating current to drive the electrical machine of the aircraft pool said the proposed converter is able to deliver a peak efficiency of 99% at peak power (250 kilowatts) and a total mass excluding the cooling system of 15 kilograms has been achieved the texas a&m team is led by toliyat it includes many collaborators across the college of engineering including faculty and students from the department of electrical and computer engineering the department of aerospace engineering the department of materials science and engineering and the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering talebi and pool agree that though the process has had its challenges the multidisciplinary aspect of this project is the key to achieving the milestones they have up to this point the opportunity to work on a multidisciplinary project like this is very exciting talebi said this is how industry actually manufactures products i believe that in the market there is no single electrical group working on the entire project multiple teams with different expertise are working together the knowledge ive gained from other teams on this project has been crucial for my design as they are closing phase one of the project they are fabricating a portion of their powertrain design to validate their modeling and simulation analysis
2876,the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university welcomed 10 new faculty members for the fall 2022 semester with research expertise in areas such as approximation algorithms high-level programming models and computational geometry the computer science and engineering department continues to expand significantly not only at college station but also at galveston with the start of our degree program there this fall said dr scott schaefer head of the department im excited to have these promising faculty join our program and we look forward to their future contributions and successes the new faculty members include:
2877,marcus botacin visiting assistant professor who received his doctoral degree in computer science from the federal university of paraná and his masters degree in computer science and bachelors degree in computer engineering from the university of campinas his research interests include reverse engineering antivirus malware forensics and hardware-assisted security
2878,zoran budimlić instructional associate professor and director of undergraduate studies at texas a&m university at galveston who received his doctoral and masters degrees in computer science from rice university and his bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from the university of belgrade his research interests include compiler optimizations runtime systems high-performance and parallel computing computer science education and high-level programming models
2879,christiana chamon instructional assistant professor who received her doctoral and masters degrees in electrical engineering from texas a&m and her bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the university of houston her research interests include unconditional (information-theoretic) security over the wire analog electronics design for information security and unconditionally secure electronics design
2880,victoria crawford assistant professor who received her doctoral degree in computer engineering and her masters and bachelors degrees in mathematics from the university of florida her research interests include applied optimization approximation algorithms and data mining
2881,alpaslan duysak instructional associate professor who received his doctoral degree from the national centre for computer animation at bournemouth university masters degree in electrical engineering from penn state and bachelors degree in electrical-electronics engineering from gazi university his research interests include computer graphics haptic design deformation algorithms optimization and machine learning
2882,alan kuhnle assistant professor who received his doctoral degree in computer science and masters degree in mathematics from the university of florida and his bachelors degree in mathematics from florida state university his research interests include data science machine learning combinatorial optimization and algorithms and theory
2883,sandeep kumar associate professor of practice who received his doctoral degree in computer science from purdue university masters degree in computer science from the university of tennessee and bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the indian institute of technology his research interests include computer security and computer networking
2884,jason okane professor who received is doctoral and masters degrees in computer science from the university of illinois at urbana-champaign and bachelors degree in computer science from taylor university his research interests include planning algorithms autonomous robots and computational geometry
2885,wenping wang professor who received his doctoral degree in computer science from the university of alberta and his masters and bachelors degrees in computer science from shandong university his research interests include computer vision visualization computer graphics and geometric modeling and computing
2886,tianbao yang associate professor who received his doctoral degree in computer science from michigan state university and his bachelors degree in automation from the university of science and technology of china his research interests include optimization artificial intelligence and machine learning
2887,john and claire vassberg have both been impacted by texas a&m university in different ways and their experiences have inspired them to establish a scholarship for students in the department of aerospace engineering when claire was seven years old her older brother began his freshman year at texas a&m since then she held the university in high esteem and considered it very important to her claire didnt end up attending texas a&m herself but she made sure it became a part of her heritagei have a strong tie to texas a&m and it almost feels like i went there though i didnt claire said it runs in my bloodjohn did attend texas a&m he grew up on a farm in south texas with plans of farming as a lifelong career but he also wanted to attend college to mature and grow personally before settling down on the land having always been intrigued by flying and the crop dusters his best friends family owned he decided to study aerospace engineering in collegeby his sophomore year john caught the attention of several professors in his department who noticed his eagerness to learn and natural inclination toward aerodynamics they offered him a spot as a student researcher for the department a position usually reserved for juniors and seniorsdr leland carlson was a professor whose influence was transformative in johns life throughout his junior and senior years john took every class carlson offered he developed a greater passion for aerodynamics which altered his future entirely dr carlson changed my trajectory from farming to a career in aviation and he kicked me in the right direction john said he recommended my first job which was the best job in the world and ive had it ever sincejohn remained at texas a&m for his masters degree where he continued to take carlsons classes he received a full-time job offer from douglas aircraft company in long beach california realizing that he would be working closely with the aerodynamicists he had studied in his textbooks john eagerly took the jobover the years john worked with many early-career engineers and student interns he began to see a growing trend in academia of inadequate understanding of aerodynamics to address this issue john established the claire and dr john c vassberg 80 aerodynamics endowed scholarship
2888,the vassbergs main hope for the scholarship is to reward and encourage future aerodynamicists who will be transformative in the industry they have ensured the scholarship will do just that by setting it aside specifically for those who are studying and excelling in aerodynamics classes with an overall gpa of 35 or higher scholarship recipients wont have to look far for inspiration john has contributed enormously to the knowledge and research of aerodynamics throughout his career he owns dozens of patents related to aerodynamic technologies including the advanced winglets of the boeing 737 max he has also worked on the design and development of the boeing 747-8 the 787 dreamliner and numerous advanced research vehicles under study within boeing phantom worksto promote cooperative aeronautical research on a global scale john worked with mark dehaan melissa rivers and richard wahls to develop the common research model (crm) which enables researchers to use a standard model in their research his work was honored with the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics international cooperation award in 2017 this september his continuing efforts to foster international collaborations were recognized by the international council of the aeronautical sciences (icas) at icas 2022 in stockholm with the maurice roy awardin 2000 john founded the drag prediction workshop (dpw) series which he still runs today the dpw utilizes the crm as teams of people solve the same set of problems and present their solutions to the group since it was born dpw has grown to be international with many other workshops modeled after the same structure the data are made available to the public domain and as a result over a thousand technical papers have been produced the crm and the numerical workshop ecosystems continue to expandwe collect all of the results put them on the same plot and show how members of industry are comparing with each other john said this is something that was never done before here we are working not only with outside individual groups but across the whole worldhis drive to change the world on a global scale did not stop with the crm or dpw in 2021 he joined jetzero a company that is working with nasa to create sustainable aircraft with the eventual goal of zero-emission flights though his endeavors have been many john never forgot his roots at the family farm in congruence with an essay he wrote his junior year at texas a&m about using wind turbines for green energy he brought engineering back to the farm where 10 large wind turbines now jut 525 feet into the sky producing two-and-a-half megawatts of green energy eachjust as the guiding hand of a professor propelled john into his career the vassbergs are hopeful that their gift to texas a&m will inspire greatness and open opportunities for aerospace engineering students with a lifetime of ingenuity ahead of themi think this scholarship will impact a few students now john said hopefully it will explode into having a greater influence in the future
2889,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2890,dr yue kuo nesbitt professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is the 2022 recipient of the prestigious edward goodrich acheson award from the electrochemical society (ecs) kuo received the highest ecs honor for contributions to the advancement of solid state science and technology and leadership it is a great honor to receive it kuo said kuos research focuses on nano and microelectronics with special interests in semiconductors and thin films he aims to create high-performance reliable manufacturable devices for current and future applications his dedication to the advancement of these studies led him to receive this and many other prestigious awards from professional societies governments and industries kuo recently delivered a keynote speech at the 17th international thin-film transistor conference in guildford united kingdom the edward goodrich acheson award was established in 1928 after its namesake edward goodrich acheson an american chemist he served as the sixth ecs president and invented the acheson process used today to make silicon carbide original charter members of the ecs in 1902 include herbert dow (the dow chemical company founder) m hall (inventor of the hall process for the manufacture of aluminum) edward weston (founder of weston instruments) g acheson (inventor of commercial graphite process) and in 1903 thomas edison currently ecs has 10 000 members from 80 countries including industry pioneers such as gordon e moore and distinguished scholars as well as 19 nobel laureates kuo has been a member of ecs for more than 30 years he was selected as an ecs fellow in 1999 received the electronics and photonics division award in 2007 and the gordon e moore medal of outstanding achievement in solid science and technology in 2015 he served as president of ecs from 2018-19 he also served as technical editor for the journal of the electrochemical society the journal of electrochemical society solid-state letters and the journal of the solid-state science and technology kuo will receive the award at the 242nd ecs meeting on oct 9-13 in atlanta georgia
2891,additive manufacturing techniques used to produce metal alloys have gained popularity due to their ability to be fabricated in complex shapes for use in various engineering applications yet the majority of studies conducted have centered around developing single-phase materials dr kelvin xies team in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university employed advanced characterization techniques to reveal the microstructure of the 3d-printed dual-phase multi-principal elements also known as high entropy alloys (heas) that display ultra-strong and ductile properties this work is a collaboration with dr wen chen from the university of massachusetts at amherst and dr ting zhu from the georgia institute of technology this study was recently published in nature the hea reported in this study was fabricated through laser powder bed fusion (l-pbf) at the university of massachusetts at amherst l-pbf is the process of heating and cooling materials at very fast rates which allows the creation of unique microstructures and tailoring of mechanical properties however researchers have largely focused on using l-pbf for single-phase materials in this work xie and his graduate student dexin zhao led the characterization effort to understand 3d-printed dual-phase eutectic heas rather than being composed of a single phase dual-phase heas are layered in a self-organized structure at the nanoscale a eutectic alloy is similar to a lasagna said xie first you have a sheet of pasta then sauce meat and cheese these layers repeat in materials the face-centered cubic phase and body-centered cubic phase are like sheets of pasta and the filling the interfaces separating these phases are strong barriers that provide additional strength the super-fast cooling rate which is unique to l-pbf 3d printing created the super fine pasta sheets and filling this creates exceptionally high-density interfaces that are critical to the combination of excellent strength and ductility according to xie this is the first time that the researchers achieved the 3d-printed nanostructured hea that displays both ultra-strong and ductile properties a difficult feat to overcome in materials science due to the opposing nature of these characteristics in addition to its favorable physical properties when used in applications like aerospace or automobiles this material offers the potential to decrease energy costs wherever energy is consumed there is a concern said xie for example a car moving passengers consumes way more energy moving itself than it does moving the passengers our findings show new avenues for materials design which eventually can lead to lightweight alternatives to many of the materials we currently use in manufacturing in the future the researchers hope to harness this technology for various engineering applications and manufacturing materials that must be lightweight while resisting deformation this research is funded by the national science foundation and lawrence livermore national laboratory it is a collaborative effort between the university of massachusetts at amherst the georgia institute of technology the university of california los angeles rice university and the oak ridge and lawrence livermore national laboratories
2892,dr robin murphy professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university and her team from the center for robot-assisted search and rescue were recently deployed to support floridas urban search and rescue efforts with drones and advanced wireless communications devices after hurricane ian made landfall in southwestern florida as a category 4 storm on wednesday sept 28 murphy and her graduate student tom manzini joined researchers from the florida state university center for disaster risk policy (cdrp) and drone pilots from 10 agencies including miami-dade fire rescue florida department of law enforcement and boone county missouri in addition to drones murphy brought firstnet wireless devices developed by dr walt magnussens group at the texas a&m internet2 technology evaluation center led by cdrp director david merrick the state emergency response team florida unmanned aircraft system team 1 is collecting processing and managing large amounts of critical data collected by the drones as they fly critical missions to identify damage on pine island sanibel fort meyers beach boca grande and the inland flooding in wauchula this data is being used to help incident command organize search and rescue missions get to the citizens hit the hardest arrange resources for residents and get a head start on recovery the effort is expected to continue for another week data management is now as important as the drones themselves said murphy in just the first four days the teams collected nearly 800 gigabytes of images and video from 34 missions and 214 flights advances in computing wireless communications and artificial intelligence are critical for getting the right information to the right people in time for them to make the right decisions for saving lives and speeding up economic recovery murphy and her team have deployed ground aerial and marine robots to over 30 disasters in five countries including hurricanes katrina (2005) and harvey (2017) in addition texas a&m task force 1 has been deployed by texas gov greg abbott and the federal emergency management agency (fema) to assist with recovery efforts sponsored by the texas a&m engineering extension service the task force is one of 28 federal teams under femas national urban search and rescue system
2893,dr ignacio rodriguez-iturbe university distinguished professor and professor emeritus in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university passed away wednesday sep 28 in his home country of venezuela he was 80 years old rodriguez-iturbe led a fulfilling 50-year career and became a globally recognized leader in ecohydrology a field to which he contributed some of the most important research in the rapidly growing field he served in many roles during his career both at texas a&m and elsewhere he began at his alma mater the university of zulia in venezuela and later served and taught at the massachusetts institute of technology; simón bolívar university in caracas venezuela; the university of iowa; princeton university and texas a&m
2894,rodriguez-iturbe was a member of the national academy of science and the national academy of engineering and a fellow in the american academy of arts and sciences in 2010 he was appointed by pope benedict xvi to the pontifical academy of sciencesduring his career he earned several notable awards including the bowie medal of the american geophysical union and the stockholm water prize from the stockholm international water institute rodriguez-iturbe was known for his passion and dedication to educating the next generation of leaders who shared his inquisitive nature of learning and understanding the world around them most of all he encouraged them to have funhe is survived by his wife mercedes daughter olympia and sons oscar ignacio luis and juan rodriguez his son juan currently serves as assistant director of advising services for the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&mrodriguez-iturbe received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the university of zulia in 1963 he continued his graduate studies at the california institute of technology where he earned a master of science in 1965 and went on to earn a doctorate in civil engineering from colorado state university in 1967read more on rodriguez-iturbes career and the wisdom he shared in a 2020 college of engineering news story
2895,"elizabeth weichel a senior in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is involved in many programs and opportunities that have allowed her to gain a wide variety of experiences from peer mentorship to a semester abroad and two internships with texas instruments (ti) and other activities in between she welcomes opportunities that can open new and exciting doors for her future weichel has been involved in the texas a&m institute of electrical and electronics engineers (tamu ieee) chapter since she was a freshman and this year she is serving as president of the organization through tamu ieee weichel has had the opportunity to help facilitate hackathons and interface with companies for the organizations career fair which was relaunched this fall after being on hold due to the pandemic this fall the tamu ieee career fair hosted 10 companies and over 100 students participated the officer team hopes to hold another event in the spring ""i'm so thankful to have been involved with ieee throughout my four years here at a&m weichel said i've met friends and gained valuable leadership experience i'm looking forward to this next year with ieee as we continue to grow the club and interact with companies"" last fall weichel participated in a semester exchange program at denmark technical university during which she was able to take coursework in a completely different academic environment meet new friends and even travel to six other countries in europe during her stay she said that this experience was one of the most impactful of her academic career during her two internships with ti she served as an applications engineering intern on the low-power audio team there she worked part time in the lab and part time completing other duties such as creating two videos for tis website and assisting with the creation of an application note that allows companies to find answers to common questions regarding chip inventory in the lab she contributed to an evaluation model for the company which is given to customers in order to perform testing on a chip"
2896,through these experiences weichel has solidified her passion for electrical engineering i love circuits she said they're like little puzzles it's all logical deductions which i really enjoy weichel has not solidified her plans upon graduation though she has taken steps to keep various doors open including taking the law school admission test in preparation for a possible future in technology and intellectual property law she is a member of the engineering honors program and is an electrical and computer engineering student ambassador as a student ambassador she meets with prospective students or freshmen looking to learn more about electrical or computer engineering and help provide a peers perspective on what the coursework and potential career paths could look like in this role she also provides peer advising during registration times for current electrical and computer engineering students student ambassadors epitomize the core value of selfless service by interacting with faculty and mentoring their peers serving as an embodiment of the aggie spirit
2897,antibiotics are standard treatments for fighting dangerous bacterial infections yet the number of bacteria developing a resistance to antibiotics is increasing researchers from texas a&m university and the university of são paulo are overcoming this resistance with light the researchers tailored antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (apdt) a chemical reaction triggered by visible light for use on antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains results showed the treatment weakened bacteria to where low doses of current antibiotics could effectively eliminate them using apdt in combination with antibiotics creates a synergy of interaction working together for a solution said dr vladislav yakovlev university professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m and co-director of the project its a step in the right direction against resistant bacteria the research results were published in proceedings of the national academy of sciences (pnas) a peer-reviewed journal ultraviolet light was first used to sterilize bacteria over 100 years ago the treatment was based on the work of dr niels finsen who won the nobel prize in physiology in 1903 for using filtered sunlight the higher frequency or ultraviolet spectrum as a cure for skin tuberculosis phototherapy advances faded in popularity a few decades later when antibiotics became the weapon of choice against bacteria antibiotic-resistant bacteria showed up soon after antibiotics were first used if antibiotic treatment stops before bacteria are fully killed the remaining bacteria develop a resistance or immunity to the antibiotic that immunity transfers to every new bacteria cell so more potent antibiotics or new treatment methods are needed to overcome the growing resistance photodynamic therapy was a forgotten tool yakovlev said yet bacteria cannot overcome it there is no resistance some human cancer cell therapies already use apdt to prevent the growth of abnormal cells but treating resistant bacteria with it is still a novel approach the researchers began their work by choosing the bacteria and the three main parts of apdt needed to combat it: molecular oxygen light and a photosensitizer something that creates a reaction between oxygen and light an already fda-approved dye called methylene blue served as the photosensitizer the light sources were specially constructed panels of 25 leds in reflective cones built by the technical support laboratory of the são carlos institute of physics methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus served as the bacteria and the researchers grew cultures with the blue dye in them to ensure the photosensitizer alone would not affect the bacteria most of the lab work occurred in the texas a&m health science center under dr paul de figueiredo professor in the department of microbial pathogenesis and immunology in the college of medicine at first the team used apdt by itself at various light strengths durations and in a specific series of follow-up treatments to log the bacterias response the idea was to find the lowest dose and shortest series that could weaken the bacterial membranes and other resistance mechanisms cell recoveries and reproductions revealed how many generations it took before antibiotic resistance returned next the researchers added measured levels and combinations of antibiotics at different time intervals after apdt treatments to note the weakened bacterias responses the use of antibiotics with apdt is a unique idea said yakovlev we can use lower doses of both to achieve our goal in contrast to using one or the other at higher doses that could have side effects the goal is to shorten the treatment time and reduce the dosage to the lowest levels needed getting medical care down to one doctor visit is especially important to dr vanderlei bagnato professor in the department of physics and materials science at são paulo and co-director of the project he is trying to improve recovery odds for populations in remote areas of brazil where patients might only see a doctor once per illness without any chance for follow-up care the us department of defense is following the project closely because battlefield wound infections also happen in remote locations and must be dealt with quickly so far the results are extremely positive the resistant bacteria weakened by apdt treatments were killed with far lower doses of current antibiotics as a benefit these therapies reduced the need for battling resistant bacteria with more potent and expensive antibiotics that take years to produce future work for the project involves more timing and dosage investigations and tests on other resistant bacteria strains to see if the effectiveness is universal imagine the real-life applications said yakovlev you visit a doctor who uses an ointment and shines a light on the infected area and then youre done it would be a quick and harmless treatment as needed the project was primarily supported by funding awarded to the texas a&m engineering experiment station from the air force office of scientific research with additional support from the us department of defense and the hagler institute for advanced studies additional researchers on the project include jace willis vsevolod cheburkanov shaorong chen jennifer soares giulia kassab and kate blanco
2898,"researchers are looking to nature to build better power grids that are more resistant to various potential disturbances like natural disasters or cyberattacks using biological ecosystems as inspiration research published in the journal ieee transactions on power systems presented models of improved power systems that displayed greater survivability when faced with cyber or physical attack scenarios compared to traditional security-oriented designs ""our bio-inspired approach improves power system resilience an urgent need especially considering the increasing prevalence of natural disasters and cyberattacks "" said dr astrid layton assistant professor and donna walker faculty fellow in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university layton and dr katherine davis assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m lead the interdisciplinary project and are supported by graduate students including dr hao huang a recent doctoral candidate in the department of electrical and computer engineering potential applications of the research include improvements to power network design power system operation and even renewable energy placement ""biological ecosystems are complex networks of species that together are very resilient to unexpected disturbances "" layton said ""these networks offer unique guidance for designing resilient human networks here we have applied their characteristics both topological and functional to improve the robustness of power network design such as in power grids and operation"" huang said an ideal implementation of this type of system could result in fewer disruptions to the power supply during adverse weather conditions less dependence on backup measures and a more secure power supply for critical buildings and tasks while most conventionally designed human networks tend to be focused on efficiency laytons research explores the redundancy-favoring design that allows for added protection against potential disturbances by utilizing more than one source of power this method is preferred by biological ecosystems and boosts resilience while supporting their growth and development in this application the biologically inspired redundancy allows power grids to adaptively adjust according to the needs of the network ""while mimicking the actual redundancy levels found in ecosystems in power systems may not be practical due to the economic consideration it is possible to use the biological behavior to strategically add redundancy either with additional power lines or in how power flows are controlled to improve the resilience with reasonable costs "" layton said the teams study showed that power grids designed to achieve ecological robustness values while in most cases costing only 5% more on average than the traditional approaches offered significant benefits for that additional cost: the ecosystem-inspired designs reduced operating stress-caused violations such as branch power flows exceeding thermal limits anywhere from 5-100% and unsolved contingencies 20-100% the approach is also unique in that it is able to deal with all potential disturbances including unexpected ones whereas the traditional approaches depend on anticipating specific incidents the team referenced the recent struggles of the texas electrical grid as an example in which a system with a more ecologically robust organization could have produced a more secure and reliable energy supply ""our work shows that the bio-inspired operation of power systems improves their inherent ability to absorb disturbances "" layton said ""when contingencies cannot be predicted this approach ensures that the power system can maximumly tolerate any disturbances supplying electric energy to customers and ensuring power system security this could for example buy more time for operators to prepare remedial and restoration strategies after a disturbance"" davis said the research highlights the team's work to build a more stringent mathematical optimization model capable of considering both ecological resilience metrics and the physics of power flow models by investigating the model's feasibility and validating resilience-related improvements under various threat scenarios they have shown a connection between ecosystem resilience and disturbance tolerance in power systems ""current approaches for improving power system resilience focus more on response and restoration perspectives neglecting the importance of the network structure and operation strategies "" davis said ""that is why we are focused on using inspiration from resilient biological ecosystems"" the project titled bio-inspired design of complex energy systems to achieve robust efficient and sustainable networks received support from the texas a&m energy institutes 2018 annual research seed grant"
2899,"four students in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university received awards for their contribution toward positively impacting service-learning projects that affect small communities pranav ambadasugari from industrial distribution and his teammate max chen received the envisioning the neo-traditional development by embracing the autonomous vehicles realm (endeavr) community impact award andrew lin and michelle nguyen from electronic systems engineering technology received the endeavr best project award for making telemedicine accessible to people who live in small communities for the endeavr community impact award community advisors nominate a team project demonstrating a commitment to addressing the community client's challenges and has proven to generate measurable effects in the community ambadasugari's team created a prototype that would notify community members when a train would pass through their area and allow emergency responders to work around the train the prototype is a step forward to creating a system that would be easy to maintain and inexpensive to replace ""if a train is coming it's good to know so you can adjust your timing or know when it's going to get loud "" ambadasugari said ""if this is successful and we see an improvement to the well-being of the community imagine being able to scale that and bring that to more people"" lin and nguyen successfully established a foundational system for a remote blood pressure monitor with similar processes as industry-standard blood pressure monitor systems ""we shouldn't be comfortable with the technologies we already have "" lin said ""there is a need for innovation in biotechnology and telemedicine theo nyan also from electronic systems engineering technology contributed to the endeavride program his team was honored with the endeavr leadership award current and future members of endeavr aim to positively impact the thousands of small towns in the united states endeavr recognizes its members contributors and collaborators who give their support by volunteering their time and efforts toward endeavr initiatives dr wei li associate professor of urban planning at texas a&m is the founding director of endeavr a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to future-proofing small communities by enabling them to become smart cities li aspires to grow entrepreneurs from engineering and from the endeavr program to provide high-value and sustainable solutions to small communities i would love to see and support other students who are from industrial distribution to join endeavr and i would love to see companies spin off this project to sustain technology development in the long term "" he said ""industrial distribution students are incredible they are more powerful and impactful than they think"
2900,hypersonic technology presents a vast number of revolutionary opportunities including the advancement of future commercial flight travel with the potential to reach speeds of 4 000 miles per hour nearly eight times faster than current average cruising speeds for commercial airliners before implementation however researchers must ensure the vessels themselves can withstand the challenges of traveling at such high speeds one hazard for next-generation hypersonic vessels is hydrometeors water or ice particles that have formed in the atmosphere including clouds fog snow rain or hail which have the potential to cause significant damage to the vehicle structure at hypersonic speeds the us office of naval research is supporting a research team led by dr dorrin jarrahbashi in better understanding the impacts of these hydrometeors as well as solid particles like ash and dust on hypersonic vessels upon their re-entry to the atmosphere the goal of this research is to enhance the fundamental understanding of the evolution of aero breakup and evaporation of rain droplets and the behavior of ice particles approaching the transient shocked flow induced by a hypersonic projectile flying through precipitating clouds said jarrahbashi assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university if successful the research will be able to better estimate the physical damage on a hypersonic vessel by predicting the state of the particles and flowfield around it
2901,while each flight is different with its potential for encountering hazards determined in part by its objectives and flight trajectory takeoff and landing pose the greatest likelihood for a hypersonic vessel to encounter hydrometeors which could present a significant erosion hazard to its thermal protection system or even cause the nose-tip to change shape either outcome has the potential to set off a cascade of other damaging effects for the vessel a change in the nose shape and enhanced surface roughness affect the flowfield causing extra heating and shear to the vehicle body that ultimately controls the vehicles aerodynamic performance jarrahbashi said the next generation of hypersonic projectiles requires novel component design and resilient materials to withstand the impact of hydrometeors to aid in developing better designs and materials that are adequately equipped to handle these particles jarrahbashi and her team are set to apply a comprehensive computational framework to address this versatility in scales that are currently lacking without the availability of practical experimentation the team will also validate their findings through shock tube measurements in collaboration with the fluid mixing at extreme conditions laboratory directed by dr jacob mcfarland associate professor of mechanical engineering the team specifically hopes to augment a material damage model extensively used by the us department of defense by adding adjustments to account for expected particulate flow behavior when traveling at hypersonic speeds the attributes of particle clouds and particularly ice crystals obtained in this project can be used in surface erosion models to estimate the extent of the damage to the hypersonic vessel jarrahbashi said understanding the effect of the shock layer to decelerate and deflect particles to protect the material of hypersonic vehicles is a key step to predict the resistance of different materials and the potential influence of the shocked particulate flows on the vehicle designs the advancements planned for this project will provide direct contributions to the improvement of the performance and resilience of current and future us navy hypersonic technologies
2902,"drying is an essential part of the product manufacturing industry which accounts for up to 25% of the national energy consumption of developed countries with the support of the us department of energy researchers from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university are employing their expertise to significantly reduce energy consumption in a specific area the wood-drying industry the project is jointly led by dr zheng o'neill and dr bryan rasmussen as part of a multi-million-dollar initiative to reduce industrial emissions and manufacture clean energy technologies o'neill serves as associate professor and j mike walker '66 career development professor and rasmussen serves as leland t jordan professor ii the team is also supported by the texas a&m engineering experiment station through the energy systems laboratorys industry assessment center nearly 15 000 companies in the us make up the wood product manufacturing industry and the energy-intensive kiln drying process greatly contributes to the large energy consumption of the industry the team's proposed shift in wood-drying mainly known as kiln drying technology could provide improved energy efficiency more unified product quality and increased throughput and reduced reliance on fossil fuel sources ""with the proposed desiccant-assisted heat pump system we aim to achieve at least 25-30% energy consumption reduction 40-50% carbon intensity reduction and 25% operation cost reduction "" said o'neill ""if successful this project will help the wood-drying industry achieve carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035"" the technology and methods the team seeks to use in this project include dehumidification low-cost internet of things sensors data assimilation and model-free predictive controls to intelligently and safely operate the drying process the project will apply a three-module drying system which is set to be the first example of a kirigami-based heat exchanger system alongside innovations in desiccant-assisted heat pumps the third component of the three-module system will be an intelligent deep-reinforcement learning-based product-centric controller although this project is primarily focused on wood drying o'neill noted that the principles of the system could also be applied to various other drying applications like food or textiles in addition the proposed heat pump innovations will have wide applications for heating ventilation and air-conditioning in buildings to promote building decarbonization through electrifications an additional objective of the research is to involve students from underrepresented minority groups in stem by collaborating with minority-serving institutions and offering training and workshops on the technologies and industry drying process in underserved communities and economically disadvantaged areas in addition to o'neill and rasmussen partners on the project include dr shu yang from the university of pennsylvania dr cindy chang from the university of virginia dr xinfeng xie from michigan technological university and dr andy pascall from lawrence livermore national laboratory"
2903,as an athlete with a mind for engineering david g barker 66 had a journey to texas a&m university that stands out from the rest his experiences have inspired him to establish two scholarships for texas high school graduates who are studying mechanical or nuclear engineering at texas a&mhailing from la marque texas barker was recruited to run track at schreiner college in kerrville texas now a four-year university schreiner was at the time a junior college known for its engineering programafter setting several schreiner records in the 880-yard dash cross country two miles and mile relay barker graduated from schreiner with an associates degree in engineering and set his eyes toward college station texas once he was off the track barkers new journey required equal commitment this time being fully immersed in his academic pursuitsi was attracted to texas a&m due to its reputation in engineering and science barker said the academic rigor as well as the engineering skills that were delivered to me as a student certainly helped me in my early careerbarker earned a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering supported by the frank m & wilton h leverett mechanical engineering scholarship which he was awarded in 1965 and 1966 he remained at texas a&m to obtain his masters degree in nuclear engineering what he experienced during graduate school would later be pivotal in his careeri had some great professors barker said my work with dr john randall 65 associate head of the nuclear science center enabled me to work in applied research and project management later in my career barker found success in his professional career managing the engineering construction and other operative aspects of large projects in the oil and gas sector and with other commercial facilities he is proud of his work with houston lighting & power where he was recruited just several years post-graduation i am extremely proud of the work i did while managing the south texas nuclear project which is likely one the most successful nuclear power plants on earth barker saidboth schreiner and texas a&m have recognized barker for his professional success in 1999 he was a j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering distinguished graduate and in 2014 a nuclear engineering distinguished graduate he was also designated a schreiner university distinguished former student in 2015eager to give others the same opportunity he was given to succeed at texas a&m and beyond barker has established two new scholarships the david barker 66 nuclear engineering endowed scholarship and the david barker 66 mechanical engineering endowed scholarship they will be awarded to students who have graduated from a texas high schoolthe scholarships should give deserving students the ability to complete their studies at texas a&m and go into the world and make a difference barker said
2904,his passion for texas a&m engineering extends beyond the students who will receive the endowed scholarships barkers confidence in the university and the culture of excellence that surrounds it has also driven his desire to give enabling and expanding the schools impactmy support also goes to all the departments professors staff and top leadership of texas a&m who strive to be the best in all endeavors barker said texas a&m is a unique american university likely unmatched in the nation and i want to help preserve the enduring effort of those before me and serve as a guiding light for current students to excel the nation and the world need aggies to succeed and make a difference
2905,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2906,the future of work is here as industries begin to see humans working closely with robots theres a need to ensure that the relationship is effective smooth and beneficial to humans robot trustworthiness and humans willingness to trust robot behavior are vital to this working relationship however capturing human trust levels can be difficult due to subjectivity a challenge researchers in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university aim to solve dr ranjana mehta associate professor and director of the neuroergonomics lab said her labs human-autonomy trust research stemmed from a series of projects on human-robot interactions in safety-critical work domains funded by the national science foundation (nsf) while our focus so far was to understand how operator states of fatigue and stress impact how humans interact with robots trust became an important construct to study mehta said we found that as humans get tired they let their guards down and become more trusting of automation than they should however why that is the case becomes an important question to address mehtas latest nsf-funded work recently published in human factors: the journal of the human factors and ergonomics society focuses on understanding the brain-behavior relationships of why and how an operators trusting behaviors are influenced by both human and robot factors mehta also has another publication in the journal applied ergonomics that investigates these human and robot factors using functional near-infrared spectroscopy mehtas lab captured functional brain activity as operators collaborated with robots on a manufacturing task they found faulty robot actions decreased the operators trust in the robots that distrust was associated with increased activation of regions in the frontal motor and visual cortices indicating increasing workload and heightened situational awareness interestingly the same distrusting behavior was associated with the decoupling of these brain regions working together which otherwise were well connected when the robot behaved reliably mehta said this decoupling was greater at higher robot autonomy levels indicating that neural signatures of trust are influenced by the dynamics of human-autonomy teaming what we found most interesting was that the neural signatures differed when we compared brain activation data across reliability conditions (manipulated using normal and faulty robot behavior) versus operators trust levels (collected via surveys) in the robot mehta said this emphasized the importance of understanding and measuring brain-behavior relationships of trust in human-robot collaborations since perceptions of trust alone is not indicative of how operators trusting behaviors shape up dr sarah hopko 19 lead author on both papers and recent industrial engineering doctoral student said neural responses and perceptions of trust are both symptoms of trusting and distrusting behaviors and relay distinct information on how trust builds breaches and repairs with different robot behaviors she emphasized the strengths of multimodal trust metrics neural activity eye tracking behavioral analysis etc can reveal new perspectives that subjective responses alone cannot offer the next step is to expand the research into a different work context such as emergency response and understand how trust in multi-human robot teams impact teamwork and taskwork in safety-critical environments mehta said the long-term goal is not to replace humans with autonomous robots but to support them by developing trust-aware autonomy agents this work is critical and we are motivated to ensure that humans-in-the-loop robotics design evaluation and integration into the workplace are supportive and empowering of human capabilities mehta said
2907,every aggie dreams of the day they graduate from texas a&m university however it is not just their hard work that gets them to this point many people along the way helped shape and mold their education this is especially true for three former students from the department of ocean engineering vincent yu ‘11 ning xu 06 and liqing huang 10 dr jun zhang had a great influence on these three over the years and it led them to establish the professor jun zhang endowed scholarshipthis gift is from our hearts yu said the three of us loved our time at texas a&m so much that we became faculty and now help train the next generation of ocean engineersestablishing this scholarship was never a hard decision for yu xu and huang being able to honor a person that was so influential in their lives seemed like the right thing to doin order to thank professor zhang for his great contribution to the field of ocean engineering as well as our own education and career developments we collectively decided to establish this scholarship named after him said xu we want to encourage the next generation of young scholars in the ocean engineering department to achieve their career goalsthe ocean engineering department was a second home to yu xu and huang there were so many lessons they learned in and out of the classroom and a lot of those came from zhang campus was more than just a place to advance their education it was a place to develop into the people they are todaymy time at texas a&m for both my undergraduate and graduate studies was probably the happiest period of my life said xu everything i learned inside and outside of class impacted my career in different ways i am privileged and proud to be called an aggie ocean engineertheir scholarship is not only meant to honor zhang but to encourage other former students to give back to the department that gave so much to them this fund will directly impact and benefit students in the ocean engineering department and help prepare them for greatness as they move on to their careerswe hope that this scholarship inspires others to give back yu said our goal is to grow this endowment to help other students in the departmentany former students of zhang or the ocean engineering department that are interested in contributing to this scholarship are encouraged to do so by donating to the professor jun zhang scholarship fund
2908,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2909,"in september the texas a&m university college of engineering held the first aggies invent of the year this month's challenge information viz was sponsored by the national security agency (nsa) teams were urged to focus on the different aspects of data to allow access to information to all people students from the bush school of government and public service were also invited to participate neil ziring technical director for the cybersecurity directorate at the nsa took part in the judging process he even spent the weekend helping teams work through their ideas and answering all questions about the challenge ""the problems that have been posed to the participants all have aspects that are relevant to the kinds of work the nsa does; they're not precisely nsa problems but they have the same attributes "" said ziring ""we're hoping that by participating in this event and this activity the students will get a flavor of the kinds of challenges the nsa faces and maybe get interested in working in national security"" the first-place team created a wi-fi traffic monitoring system to tell if any of an individual's smart devices were talking to things they should not be this allows the user to keep personal data stored in their computers on their home network safe and away from untrustworthy actors ""it's a good chance to look into cybersecurity and how cybercrimes actually take place and see that it's not a ‘theyre only coming after the government sort of thing; it's a very personal situation too "" said aerospace engineer anderson royer '23"
2910,"in second place was up to data whose idea was to use student insights about their participation in college in events and organizations such as aggies invent and compare it to their performance in their careers after college their data would specify what organizations and programs at texas a&m are most valuable to student success ziring emphasized the impact of aggies invent ""it gets them working in teams makes them think creatively and makes them think about a problem and approaches to solving it"""
2911,team illuminate placed third for their idea of designing an algorithm that highlights the weak points of a power grid in doing so the algorithm takes entered data generates a map of risk and separates that map into grids based on risk to identify where infrastructure investment is needed
2912,"in a rare turn of events the judges chose to include a fourth-place team mediator the team developed software that could integrate with social media platforms to combat disinformation it would analyze primary sources cross-verify citations and assign a score based on its perceived credibility the team included indira gunness a graduate student at the bush school of government and public service who offered a more policy-centered perspective on the challenge ""i think it provides you with a wonderful platform to work with the technical side and the policy side of things "" said gunness ""it allows you to integrate both of those perspectives into your thinking and decision-making processes when you're coming up with solutions and thinking of policy"""
2913,dr arum han texas instruments professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was honored with the regional solid waste management award for environmental education and outreach by the brazos valley council of governments (bvcog) for his innovative plastic waste biodegradation strategy he began working on this strategy last year as part of a new project he is leading funded by the national science foundation's emerging frontiers in research and innovation program this award is presented annually to an individual who supports and demonstrates education and outreach activities in environmental stewardship a broad interest for the bvcog solid waste management program which is funded by a grant from the texas commission on environmental quality for this project han is trying to integrate the areas of synthetic biology and microfluidics by developing and utilizing high-throughput microfluidic devices this would enable him to screen millions of individual strains/variants from microbial libraries to identify the most efficient microbes that can degrade and reutilize plastic he is also committed to providing opportunities for students to receive hands-on experiences in the lab to promote next-generation biotechnology and learn its use for broad societal benefit
2914,han is a texas a&m chancellors enhancing development and generating excellence in scholarship (edges) fellow and a texas a&m presidential impact fellow he also holds courtesy joint appointments in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and the department of biomedical engineering he is a graduate faculty member of the texas a&m health science center faculty of the texas a&m institute for neuroscience and faculty of texas a&ms toxicology program he currently also serves as the editor-in-chief for the journal biomedical microdevices his research interests center on solving grand challenge problems in the broad areas of health biotechnology sustainable energy and synthetic biology through the use of micro/nano systems technology han was presented the regional solid waste management award for environmental education and outreach at the brazos valley council of governments annual meeting on sept 14 it was great to see that our local citizens are very interested in the research and educational activities we do here at texas a&m and it gives me even stronger motivation to make significant and lasting contributions to our society han said it was truly a great honor to be recognized for what we do here
2915,"the ground rumbles and buildings shake as energy waves travel through the earth's crust an average of 55 earthquakes happen every day worldwide but while some include tiny shocks and tremors that reoccur throughout an area others have the potential to be severe and devastatingdr maria koliou assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering received a faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) to study the impact of these seismic events on aging wooden residential buildings and communitiesthe career award is one of the most prestigious awards for up-and-coming researchers the grant provides funding to support promising integrated research and education projects""the findings of this study will advance our understanding of the interplay between chronic and acute hazard effects on wooden residential buildings and enable the development and evaluation of mitigation strategies that will improve functional housing recovery "" koliou saidlocal communities and governments can use these mitigation strategies as a framework for post-disaster rehabilitation and pre-disaster preparedness according to koliou wood-frame structures represent the vast majority of single- and multi-family residential units in the us and about 38% of houses were built before 1970 now more than 50 years old""the aging of such buildings may significantly increase the risk of extensive damage in the event of a natural hazard resulting in costly unplanned maintenance/repair work and injuries fatalities and population dislocation she said through our work we will evaluate the response of housing infrastructure of various ages and environmental exposures to propose mitigation strategies to improve their response to earthquake events"" the outcomes will inform building codes on the response and capacity of aging residential infrastructure and influence the adoption of environmental degradation in the design of new homes as part of the career award koliou will focus on education and outreach of her work to various audiences including middle school students and hispanic female college students to develop and prepare a diverse stem workforce with interdisciplinary training to tackle future housing challenges this award contributes to the nsf's role in the national earthquake hazards reduction program"
2916,jody brusenhan ‘83 a texas native grew up fishing and hunting in rockwood after graduating from high school brusenhan attended texas a&m university to study civil engineering he was proud to be an aggie engineer and graduated with his degree in 1983 he then began a fruitful career in the construction industrybrusenhan strived for excellence which led to many successful positions throughout his career in 2018 he became president and ceo of the heico construction groupwhile he loved his job and the people he worked with his family was his ultimate source of joy he married his high school sweetheart rhonda and had two daughters his daughters ashley and jennifer attended texas a&m and graduated in 2010 and 2017 respectivelybrusenhan passed in 2021 the heico construction group now known as the heico construction solutions group established the jody brusenhan 83 memorial scholarship fund in honor of their former president and ceo this fund will grant scholarships to native texas students who are pursuing a bachelors degree in civil engineering and are enrolled in the construction engineering and management program the donors hope this fund will honor brusenhan while alleviating the recipients' financial burden
2917,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2918,the national centers of academic excellence in cybersecurity (located within the national security agency) has awarded a grant (h98230-22-1-0234) to the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university and the texas a&m cybersecurity center the funds will support a research project focused on automating risk detection and mitigation in cybersecurity systems the project is led by dr drew hamilton and dr nitesh saxena professors in the department and chris lanclos and kohler smallwood research engineers at the texas a&m cybersecurity center automated risk detection and mitigation is the future of cybersecurity for many different systems but extensive research must be done to address the challenges in developing autonomic systems said hamilton the research will focus on developing a novel malware detection system for cybersecurity analysts that uses autonomic methods based on the latest advancements in machine-learning and deep-learning techniques current automated systems typically only respond to specific events with predetermined responses in contrast autonomic systems can determine whether an action plan is needed and formulate a logical answer for a potential malware threat based on the essential information it gathers during each step of its management cycle with the number of automated cyber-attacks increasing rapidly autonomic computer system defenses need to promptly respond and defend against malicious software this research addresses multiple areas of interest in the autonomic security research community and explores additional ways to detect malware with cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques said saxena as one of only nine universities in the nation to be designated a center of academic excellence in cyber operations cyber research and cyber defense education this work contributes to the universitys overall vision of leadership and excellence in cybersecurity
2919,a northwestern medicine study has identified a protein that drives breast cancer stemness and metastasis the findings enabled by machine learning were published in the journal elife tumor-initiating cells with stem-progenitor cell properties (stemness) are thought to be essential for cancer development and metastatic regeneration in many cancers however elucidation of the underlying molecular network has been challenging according to the studys senior author dr huiping liu md phd professor of pharmacology and medicine in the division of hematology and oncology combining machine learning and experimental investigation liu and her team demonstrated that the protein membrane cd81 interacts with another previously identified tumor-initiating cell marker called cd44 in promoting tumor cell cluster formation and lung metastasis of triple-negative breast cancer (tnbc) the findings have broadened the knowledge of the molecular regulatory network of breast cancer cell stemness and may be significant for therapeutic targeting liu said tnbc comprises 10 to 15% of newly diagnosed breast cancer cases and is highly metastatic with low long-term survival tnbc metastasizes to the visceral organs such as the lungs liver and brain while the cellular mechanisms contributing to the spreading of the tumor cell remain largely unknown protein networks offer a clue we know that protein functions and their networks are part of the backbones directly mediating cellular phenotypes and performance she said in previous research lius team found that the breast tumor-initiating cell marker cd44 mediates the formation of circulating tumor cell (ctc) clusters (two or more cells) and its enriched expression in such clusters predicts an unfavorable overall survival of patients with breast cancer especially tnbc ctc clusters possess up to 100-fold greater efficiency than single ctcs in seeding metastasis in this study to characterize the protein network of cd44 the scientists found that cd44 binds to cd81 for coordinated membrane localization and both are required for optimal self-renewal ctc cluster formation and metastasis emphasizing the indispensable functions of cd44 and cd81 in cell adhesion and intercellular interactions in metastasis to demonstrate the partnership between the two membrane proteins the scientists used sophisticated computational algorithms-based protein structural modeling (machine learning) to predict the interface regions and amino acid residues involved in the protein interactions experimental approaches were then used to validate cd44 and cd81 interface interactions machine learning and deep learning have transformed protein structure modeling greatly facilitating the molecular understanding and therapeutic development for tnbc and other metastatic disease liu said liu adds that machine learning and deep-learning-facilitated research will not only exponentially scale up the simulated therapeutic screening for the best efficacy and lowest toxicity but also make personalized medicine more achievable and affordable our next step is to combine the ctc biomarker analysis with personalized targeting therapy development she said dr tujin shi a senior scientist at pacific northwest national laboratory and dr yang shen associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university were co-senior authors of this study contributing to proteomic analyses and machine learning respectively for cd81-cd44 network and molecular signaling studies dr massimo cristofanilli former professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology (now at cornell university) provided patient blood samples to the ctc analyses in the study erika ramos a student in the driskill graduate program in life sciences was the first author of the study and research associate nurmaa dashzeveg was the co-last author; both work in lius laboratory this research was supported by the department of defense the national institutes of health the national cancer institute the national science foundation the lynn sage cancer research foundation the susan g komen foundation the american cancer society northwestern university and the julius kahn fellowship
2920,"dr dimitar filev is among the 2022-23 class of hagler fellows where he will collaborate with students and faculty from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university ""we are excited to have dr filev at texas a&m collaborating with our faculty and students "" said dr guillermo aguilar mechanical engineering department head ""he brings invaluable experience and expertise that will prove greatly beneficial to our program"" the hagler institute for advanced study's purpose is to recruit talented faculty researchers who strive for innovation and excellence in their respective fields the institute was founded in 2010 to bring world-class scholars hagler fellows to texas a&m to collaborate with faculty and students at the university since its inception the institute has hosted more than 80 fellows ""i have known and collaborated with dr filev over the past three decades "" said dr reza langari engineering technology and industrial distribution department head ""he is a natural fit for serving as a hagler fellow with his strong academic-oriented background and experience in a broad range of areas on the research and development side he will be an invaluable resource to faculty and students in the college of engineering during his term as a hagler fellow"" filev is a national academy of engineering member and serves as henry ford technical fellow at the ford research and innovation center he is the recipient of numerous recognitions including the norbert wiener award from the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) systems man and cybernetics society; the outstanding industrial applications award international fuzzy systems association; and the pioneers' award ieee computation intelligence society his research focuses on computational intelligence artificial intelligence and intelligent control and their applications to autonomous driving and vehicle systems and automotive engineering he has authored or co-authored over 200 research publications and holds over 100 us patents"
2921,the ability to analyze the properties of individual cells is vital to broad areas of life science applications from diagnosing diseases and developing better therapeutics to characterizing pathogenic bacteria and developing cells for bioproduction applications however the accurate analysis of individual cells is a challenge especially when it comes to a cells biophysical properties due to large property variations among cells even in the same cell population as well as the presence of rare cell types within a larger population addressing this need dr arum han texas instruments professor ii in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university together with his graduate students and postdoctoral researchers have developed a new technology that can accurately analyze cell properties through the use of a single-cell electrorotation microfluidic device which utilizes an electric field to probe the cells properties the technology works by using an electric field to first capture a single cell in a microfluidic device followed by applying a rotating electric field to rotate the trapped single cell and then measuring the speed of rotation by knowing the input electric field parameters and analyzing the rotation speed accurately analyzing the dielectric properties of a single cell becomes possible by knowing how much force was applied and how fast the cell turns you can extract many basic biophysical properties of cells han said there have been previous efforts to accomplish this but this technology is the most accurate in measuring these properties because of its capability to apply a high-frequency electric field (up to 100 megahertz) and its use of an eight-electrode-pair design to simultaneously trap a single cell and apply rotational force to the trapped cell the research teams findings are featured on the cover of the june 2022 issue of the journal biomedical microdevices
2922,this technology has been fully developed and applied to several different cell analysis applications having successfully demonstrated that analysis can be accurately completed on one cell at a time yuwen li graduate student in hans lab and the lead author of the work is now leading the effort to further develop the technology so that this can be executed at a much higher speed and against many cells simultaneously other contributors to this research are postdoctoral researcher can huang and research scientist songi han from the electrical and computer engineering department this project was funded through a cooperative agreement with the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory facilitated through the texas a&m engineering experiment station
2923,a research duo in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering is discovering how men and women adapt differently in fatiguing work situations by looking at their brains doctoral student oshin tyagi and texas a&m university associate professor dr ranjana mehta received the human factors prize during the 2022 human factors and ergonomics society (hfes) annual meeting in october the award recognized their research on equity and inclusivity titled uncovering neuromuscular fatigue difference in older women and men: shedding light on causal brain dynamics our research highlights the importance of studying work capabilities of vulnerable demographics and the usefulness of using a neuroergonomics approach to do so tyagi said i am thrilled that this work received recognition i hope findings here generate interest in understanding the impact of fatiguing work on different demographic groups in cognitively and physically demanding environments tyagi and mehta aimed to uncover sex-based differences in neuromotor strategies adopted by older adults during fatiguing tasks due to a historical bias in human subject studies to only include male participants to represent an entire population or a failure to include sex in the statistical model numerous workplace design parameters do not accommodate female work capacities especially when workers conduct fatiguing tasks this is concerning given that the pre-pandemic labor participation rates are higher for women than for men mehta said citing a 2021 report from the us bureau of labor statistics using data from a study funded by the national institutes of health the duo worked with 59 men and women ages 65 years and older to study fatiguing and motor performance outcomes as participants completed a repetitive handgrip fatiguing task the researchers also collected 24/7 physical activity data for days before the experiment to ensure results did not skew from routine physical activity or sleep behaviors mehta said this is where most studies in the past have stopped in measuring how fatigue impacts neuromuscular health however tyagi and mehta went further they imaged the participants brains using functional near-infrared spectroscopy to assess activation and connectivity patterns between frontal and motor brain regions during the fatiguing task using this integrated brain-behavior approach led to a new observation traditional ergonomic evaluation metrics such as endurance times or strength loss were comparable between older men and women however there were distinct sex-specific neuromotor strategies including causal information flow between frontal and motor regions that signaled reliance on different brain networks in older men versus women these metrics can help researchers identify different tactics men and women choose to adopt when fatigued and facilitate the development of effective and targeted ergogenic strategies that accommodate varying capacities and limitations of diverse worker demographics this information is the key to developing targeted strategies to ensure that workplace tasks and processes remain equitable for different groups of workers tyagi said i hope to build a line of research that extends this work with my independent research program along with research impact mehta said this work is vital to continue elevating awareness of diversity and equity challenges through inclusive research practices among research labs professional societies and institutions i believe that a systematic shift to inclusivity and diversity will be accelerated when the equity/inclusion viewpoint is integrated into our science mehta said thus i am very proud of hfes for elevating equity and inclusivity as a scientific topic
2924,the human factors prize established in 2010 recognizes excellence in human factors and ergonomics research through an annual competition in which authors are invited to submit papers on a specific topic for that year the topic for the 2022 competition was equity and inclusivity the prize carries a cash award of $5 000 and consideration of publication of the winning paper in the society's flagship journal human factors
2925,the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university welcomed several new faculty members to its ranks this year please join us in welcoming the newest members of our prestigious faculty listed below tenured and tenure track dr wei gao associate professor gao earned a phd in engineering mechanics from the university of texas at austin his research interests include mechanics of materials multiscale materials modeling surface and interface mechanochemistry and mechanobiology artificial intelligence and machine learning dr aravind krishnamoorthy assistant professor krishnamoorthy earned a phd in materials science from the massachusetts institute of technology his research interests include machine learning computational synthesis of 2d materials excited-state dynamics and multiscale modeling dr matthew powell-palm assistant professor powell-palm earned a phd in mechanical engineering from the university of california berkeley his research interests include materials thermodynamics biological thermodynamics metastable and nonequilibrium states organ and tissue cryopreservation planetary thermodynamics of icy worlds supercooling nucleation and vitrification processes dr yuxiao zhou assistant professor zhou earned a phd in mechanical engineering from pennsylvania state university her research interests include orthopedic device design computational and experimental biomechanics bone regeneration machine learning and mechanobiology dr jingjing (jenny) qiu associate professor qiu earned a phd in industrial and manufacturing engineering from florida state university her research interests include advanced manufacturing nanomaterials synthesis and characterization multifunctional composites sustainable materials and energy harvesting health care and regenerative medicines dr mohsen taheri andani assistant professor andani earned a phd in mechanical engineering from the university of michigan his research interests include additive manufacturing physical and mechanical metallurgy mechanical behaviors of materials and the processing-structure-properties relationships of advanced materials he will join the faculty in fall 2023 academic professional track dr matt elliott instructional associate professor elliot earned a phd in mechanical engineering from texas a&m university dr naveen thomas instructional assistant professor thomas earned a phd in mechanical engineering from texas a&m university dr ravi thyagarajan professor of practice thyagarajan earned a phd in applied mechanics from the california institute of technology dr hai tran instructional assistant professor tran earned a phd in mechanical engineering from the university of south florida
2926,dr emily pentzer associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering and the department of chemistry at texas a&m university is making 3d-printed polymers more environmentally friendly through a process that allows the polymers to naturally degrade over time pentzers research is a collaborative effort that includes researchers from the texas a&m college of engineering the texas a&m engineering experiment station the texas a&m department of chemistry and the university of kashmirthe research was published in the journal angewandte chemieour goal was to create sustainable degradable polymeric structures pentzer said we did this by leveraging the microstructures afforded by chemistry in conjunction with the macrostructures afforded by 3d printingmost commercial synthetic polymers consist of large molecules that do not break apart under normal conditions when left in the environment manufactured items such as foam cups or plastic containers break down into small pieces that are unseen by the naked eye but the long polymer molecules remain present foreverits not just the plastic bottle being kicked down the road pentzer said these materials break down into microplastics that stay in the environment we dont fully understand the impact of microplastics but theyve been shown to carry diseases heavy metals and fecal bacteriato make the degradable polymers pentzer collaborated with dr don darensbourg distinguished professor in the department of chemistry at texas a&m to use carbon dioxide and table salt to create the ink that was used in the 3d printing process after printing the structures are washed with water to dissolve the salt and solidify the structure while the outside of the structure continues to look smooth the process creates thousands of small pores which allow the chemical compounds to degrade at a quicker rateunder the right conditions the polymers weve created will actually degrade quickly pentzer said ideally theyll break apart into small molecules that are not toxic these smaller molecules wont be able to carry things like heavy metals or bacteriaas the research progresses pentzer hopes to use this process to create packaging materials so that things like boxes and tape can degrade quickly rather than sitting in a landfill for years she also sees a bright future for 3d-printed polymers in the biomedical fieldthese materials can be used for diverse biomedical applications pentzer said things like scaffolds for implants that will degrade over time so your body can heal but you wont have that piece of plastic in you foreverthrough her interdisciplinary research pentzer is seeking to solve a worldwide problem that could have implications on the environment human health biomedicine and almost every aspect of human existenceits kind of like marrying the science with the engineering pentzer said working together we can create synergy and achieve much morethis research was supported by grants from the texas a&m triads for transformation program the welch foundation and the national science foundation
2927,"the texas a&m university college of engineering hosted aggies invent with the theme of solving different problems facing nuclear security the challenge questions were influenced by situations researchers at the los alamos national laboratory confront every day within 48 hours 11 teams researched and developed an idea with the help of mentors from los alamos which they presented to a panel of judges once the event ended teams had the opportunity to transform their idea into a start-up company through the college of engineering's engineering inc program ""these are some of the most complex problems we actually have at los alamos we're able to bring these over in an unclassified form and the students are able to attack these and give us really viable solutions "" said dr donald quintana division leader for weapons modernization at los alamos and judge for the competition ""they're not perfect but at least it gives us that kind of outside-the-box thinking that we're looking for"""
2928,after a lengthy deliberation the judges announced the top three teams to award first place went to the team degenerators their idea was to use a pressure differential to preserve energy and convert it to potential energy so it could be used at any time this idea creates reliable access to power that can be trusted anytime during an emergency we used everyone's best skill and where they were suited to do that particular project i think that really gave us an advantage in the end said senior electrical engineer samuel roth we were able to hone in on what everyone's good at and then bring that all together at the end
2929,the second-place team ultrabot's goal was to have the ability to scan complex geometries so they created a probe mounted on a robotic arm that would automatically scan and give calculations of models the system simplifies and automates ultrasonic testing of complex parts aggies invent really does prepare you for industry in that it prepares you for how to attack a problem and take on a project efficiently and effectively said junior mechanical engineer jena hopper
2930,team fog placed third for creating a helmet that tracked radiation in 3d the helmet would be uploaded to an augmented reality headset so you could look around and see where radiation is coming from this could be helpful in laboratories the medical field and nuclear nonproliferation
2931,dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was honored with a women in robotics engineering and science (wires) award for her contributions to disaster robotics and human-robot interaction during the 2022 institute of electrical and electronics engineers/robotics society of japan international conference on intelligent robots and systems (iros) she was one of 35 women from 12 countries to be recognized the conference is one of the largest and most influential conferences in robotics and was held in kyoto japan on oct 23-27 of this year the recipients were honored during a special awards ceremony and given a prize of 20 000 yen murphy has published 18 papers in iros starting in 1989 as a graduate student at georgia tech university back in 1989 there were almost no women in robotics said murphy the ratio was 100 men for every woman in the past 35 years that has changed not only are there many more women but in the wires 35 group you can also see the leadership and accomplishments of these women i am truly honored to be part of this group her papers have mostly reported her groups basic research in autonomously detecting and recovering when a robot is failing and predicting the successful operation of robots and human-robot teams in extreme environments her most recent paper published with dr jason moats director of the texas a&m engineering extension service for iros 2021 presented a model of responsible innovation during disaster response it won an honorable mention for the best paper in ethical robotics from the systems center for human-compatible artificial intelligence at the university of california berkeley and the berkeley existential risk initiative my paper back in 1989 was one of the first things i had published with my advisor and an important first step in my career said murphy i still remember how proud and nervous i was since then nine of my students have published at iros cementing their careers as well i think of this award as really our award view a short retrospective video showing how much robots have changed since 1989 the video shows eight ground marine and aerial robots featured in murphy's iros publications
2932,dr hung-jen wu associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is working to defeat bacteria that have become resistant to multiple types of antibiotics to achieve interdisciplinary results wu is collaborating with researchers in the texas a&m college of engineering and the texas a&m health science centerthese bacteria are not just drug-resistant they are multidrug-resistant wu said this means several different classes of antibiotics cannot kill them this has become a really big threat to public health because doctors are unable to effectively treat these diseases with the same medications that were used in the pastthe research has been published in advanced therapeutics and acs applied materials & interfacesin the past the medical research community has attempted to defeat antibiotic-resistant bacteria by developing new antibiotics this approach is expensive and can take decades to accomplish wu is taking a different approach by using a targeted system he is delivering the antibiotics directly to the bacteria thus allowing them to have a greater impact on the pathogenby using a targeted delivery system we can actually reduce the dose of the antibiotic and still effectively kill the pathogen wu said the idea to use a targeted approach emerged when researchers observed the behavior of the pathogens they were seeking to kill when bacteria enter the body they use a combination of strong and weak ligand connections to attach to a cell membrane and infect the cell ligands which are molecular connections that exist on both the bacteria and cell membrane allow the two cells to stick to each other by using unique molecular structures wu and his collaborators are exploiting this characteristic of bacteria by using this binding method to efficiently deliver antibiotics directly to the bacteria we noticed how bacteria attached to the host cells strong and weak ligands simultaneously and we wondered how we could use that wu said we were inspired by the bacteria to develop this new drug carrier systemwhile the medical community has tried to use these connections before the effectiveness was low because researchers focused only on strong ligand pairswhat makes our laboratory unique is our focus on the weak ligand pairs wu said while strong ligand pairs are important researchers had trouble finding them on the cell membrane because they are scarce the abundance of weak ligand pairs makes them more effective to deliver medication to the cellto facilitate the targeted delivery wu has engineered molecular ligand structures on the outside of antibiotic particles that bind with the weak ligand pairs on the bacteria cell membrane when an antibiotic particle encounters a bacteria cell the abundance of weak ligand pairs causes the antibiotic particle to adhere to the cell in multiple locations creating a more stable connection this allows for more effective absorption of the antibiotic by the bacteria cell this quick absorption of the antibiotic leads to a more effective destruction of the pathogenwus research has focused on two types of bacteria the bacterium that causes tuberculosis mycobacterium tuberculosis and one of the leading bacterial pathogens which has displayed antibiotic resistance pseudomonas aeruginosa in the future he hopes to apply his method to additional types of bacteria to help slow the spread of other infectious diseasesthis mechanism was designed to work with all types of bacteria wu said when we apply it to other types of bacteria i can quickly identify the ligand pairs we will be able to effectively treat many different types of bacteria with this new toolthis research was supported by grants from the national institutes of health the national science foundation and the men of distinction foundation
2933,despite advances in medical knowledge and treatments chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease continue to affect certain people in the united states at higher-than-average levels in 2017 the national science foundation (nsf) funded an engineering research center (erc) to address this problem through technology development and outreach four universities partnered on the project and their successes in the last five years have led to a $175 million nsf renewal grant to continue the work the precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) erc is a partnership between texas a&m university the university of california at los angeles rice university and florida international university all four schools work with underserved communities in rural and urban areas of their states with texas a&m as the lead university people hear underserved in the title and automatically think underrepresented said dr gerard coté professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m and head of the paths-up erc a medically underserved person typically lacks good access to health care our underserved also happen to be underrepresented hispanic latinx and african american communities unequal health issue rates over 40% or two-fifths of the american population is obese which leads to heart disease and diabetes among other chronic ailments a close look shows underrepresented populations are at a disadvantage a black child is over 70% more likely to be obese than a white child in normal hispanic communities a childs risk falls to about 60% more than a white child coté said the heart disease and diabetes numbers in underserved and underrepresented communities are higher and usually compounded by low socioeconomic conditions engineering an increased health care reach one paths-up goal is to create innovative robust and affordable technologies engineered to be low-cost accurate and tough enough for use wherever people live for instance the erc is developing a rice-grain-sized device to be injected under the skin that tracks and records blood chemistry levels and changes over time the data is retrieved optically and noninvasively by a watch-like scanner and the injected device remains in place for future scans another device worn on the wrist will monitor pulse body activity and eventually blood pressure without using a cuff the technology will understand the context so a high heart rate during a low movement period would trigger an alert and accurately monitor people of all skin tones and weight ranges a third innovation involves paper embedded with nanoparticles 1 000 times smaller than a human hair that will when combined with a hand-held device analyze and detect specific biomarkers from a drop of blood the ambulance crew for a potential heart attack victim facing a 45-minute ride to the hospital can do an immediate blood test on the patient and do another one 30 minutes later during transport upon arrival the hospital will receive two points of data from the patients history with data points plural we can see trends coté said we can see if the biomarkers for a heart attack are going up or down the current standard of care is to do a blood test when the patient arrives doctors get results back from a lab 30 to 45 minutes later and only have one data point to start from faculty graduate students postdoctoral researchers and undergraduate students are all involved in creating and testing the devices doctors and other medical care providers along with over 20 large and small companies work with paths-up to help get the technology prototyped and taken to the point where the companies can do the final development and manufacturing making medical information part of the culture the second paths-up goal involves recruiting and educating the diverse precollege college and postcollege scientists and engineers needed for developing future technology and improving underserved community health the erc achieves this through communicating with and empowering community leaders students and teachers; health care providers; and university students and faculty communicating with underserved community participants allows paths-up to share medical information in an approachable way empowered teachers create actionable lesson plans on science technology engineering math and health these plans are shared with their students and other schools high school students and teachers interested in engineering and health care are recruited to be a part of the research teams in the four universities where they are mentored by doctoral students doing the research many of these doctoral students join cooperative education programs in the communities and learn more about the people they will care for in the future in turn the center learns whats needed to engineer successful devices from the community whether they speak english or spanish diabetic patients listening to doctors instructions on blood sugar levels might lose track of what to do paths-up engineers work with engineers and behavioral psychologists to develop apps that use visually clear-cut graphics like color-coded ranges and simple if-this-then-that guidelines people can understand future goals currently the universities can only develop technology to a certain point beyond that a company must take over and that transition can be a challenge coté said in the next five years he would like to explore ways to make that path easier by providing more fully developed and tested technologies coté also said that while many of the erc technologies would be useful for other diseases diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are running rampant across the world even in developing countries which calls for more community engagement and communication my biggest joy is working with people from so many different areas of expertise who bring different perspectives to the project coté said it makes rowing the boat in the same direction a challenge but it's also one of the greatest rewards the nsf grant will be administered through the texas a&m engineering experiment station a state agency that solves problems through applied research and development
2934,"the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) elected dr bruce tai among its latest fellows the honor recognizes recipients for their exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession over 3 000 of asme's more than 60 000 active members have attained the distinction of fellow in the organization tai is an associate professor and the gulf oil/thomas a dietz career development professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and a member of the texas a&m engineering experiment station institute for manufacturing systems he earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the university of michigan ann arbor in 2011 ""i am grateful and it is encouraging to be elected as an asme fellow among so many outstanding researchers and educators worldwide "" tai said ""the recognition provides great momentum for me to do better and contribute more to our mechanical engineering society and students"" tai's research focuses on non-traditional machining processes material removal mechanics and modeling surgical simulation and analysis advanced additive processes for polymers and 3d printing of polymer composites he largely attributes his selection for this honor to his training in manufacturing as a core subject in the field of mechanical engineering tai said manufacturing has applications in various areas including healthcare energy and additive manufacturing this has helped him build a strong track record in research and inspired much of his teaching activities and course development"
2935,students at texas a&m university built an extended reality (xr) flight simulator that could potentially be used by the texas air national guard as a cost-effective training tool for pilots the simulator has been designed to work in conjunction with a mixed-reality deep-immersion headset developed by passenger inc a company out of austin texas after seeing the retro rocket simulator created by students in the department of aerospace engineering and department of mechanical engineering ron maynard ceo and founder of passenger inc connected with dr darren hartl associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering about building the f16 xr flight simulator although hartl works with virtual reality (vr) xr was new territory for him and his students xr is a combination of vr and augmented reality (ar) vr is an immersive experience; think about the headsets gamers use today it uses a computer-generated environment to replace what the user is viewing ar takes a computer-generated view and overlays that onto our reality such as snapchat filters or pokémon go xr lies between these two by blending virtual and physical worlds almost seamlessly allowing the two to interact when youre sitting in the simulator i dont know that you can get any closer to feeling like you are flying an f16 visually and tactically in terms of how you use and see your hands and other features of the experience that we have made said hartl the physical elements of the design include toggle switches functional buttons hotas (hand on throttle and stick) controls rudder pedals and a vibrating seat that immerses the user in the flight there is also a multifunctional display onto which different vr elements can be cast and it serves as a touchscreen all these are fully tactile and pilots can see their own hands as they manipulate each one this is all within the aluminum frame designed by the students to be light portable and modular the simulator also has a virtual landing gear lever controlled by hand tracking so as the user places their hand over the virtual lever it moves accordingly the students also created a vr terrain equipped with pylons for racing agility simulations missiles that the pilot can fire and a fully viewable aircraft around the pilot the purpose was to demonstrate that we can use this for any airframe said jesse cate aerospace engineering student the hand tracking was there to show that we might not even need a full physical cockpit and the touchscreen was also important to show that we could replace the physical components as well if needed this design shows that a system can be built quickly economically and flexibly to give more pilots a chance to stay proficient regarding a range of mission tasks when not at the airfield
2936,outside the projects outcomes the students gained a unique hands-on experience that elevated their field knowledge and technical skills i had no idea there was anything like this before the retro rocket project started but ever since then ive been really interested in this field so i wanted to join this project said jake schrass aerospace engineering student what can we do with virtual reality what can we do with mixed reality or augmented reality and how does that fit into an aerospace context it also created an opportunity for collaboration when hartl was first approached about the project he reached out to dr ann mcnamara associate dean for research and creative works and professor in the school of performance visualization and fine arts about advising the project together this opened the door for aerospace engineering and visualization students to work together and gain real-world interdisciplinary experience this project represents the excellence that can be achieved through interdisciplinary collaboration; students across aerospace and visualization worked alongside industry professionals to create a truly remarkable highly functional prototype on a minimal budget said mcnamara the results are compelling and impressive demonstrating the high caliber of our students at texas a&m hopefully this is the beginning of future collaborations across disciplinary lines
2937,the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution sponsored and hosted a professional development workshop for teachers and multidisciplinary engineering technology stem students at texas a&m university that involved robotics and lego bricksthe workshop was organized by dr garth v crosby and taught by dr mohamed gharib both are associate professors in the multidisciplinary engineering technology program gharib is a certified teacher trainer by the lego education academythis workshop was born out of our vision for making an impact in our community crosby said the workshop provided professional development opportunities for the participants to introduce robotics in their school settings
2938,"""as educators we aim to develop human capacity in college station schools the workshop allows undergraduate students and teachers to build their skills in robotics while learning how to teach the subject to young students gharib said our unique science technology engineering and math (stem) education track introduces teachers to high technical skills which will drive students toward an increased interest in science and engineering following the lego education academy approach for teaching which is called learning through play""the workshop introduction to lego education spike prime uses a classroom-friendly robotics kit and software that allows participants to learn through hands-on experience to encourage critical thinking and promote creative confidence it focuses on subjects such as engineering coding and physics using intuitive guides and puts real-world topics in the hands of its participantseveryday engineers create things whether it's a building a software program or a robot said sophia slabic a multidisciplinary engineering technology stem-track student the workshop was very useful in practicing how to facilitate hands-on playful stem learning with students and how i can help grade school students see how it applies to their life and understand they can become an engineer one day"
2939,"the robotics workshop at texas a&m was extremely valuable to me as an educator and the sponsor teacher of the oakwood intermediate school robotics club the training allows me to assist our students during our weekly stem sessions said rick velez teacher at oakwood intermediate school my confidence level rose and i feel more than adequate now to continue to sponsor this outstanding club that teaches our students hands-on stem activities"" from preschool to junior high and beyond lego education provides the opportunity for its participants to continue learning with playful tools that spark students interests and curiosities and help them further develop skills theyll need to pursue fulfilling careers in stemthis program will present the department of engineering technology and industrial distributions humble contribution to serve the community and inspire younger students "" gharib said and give them the motivation to learn about science and engineering"
2940,nurses help millions of people address their physical and mental health but who makes sure the nurses health is taken care of dr farzan sasangohar associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university aims to better understand systemic contributors to providers mental health issues such as stress anxiety post-traumatic stress disorder and burnout sasangohars research focuses on applying human factors engineering methods to design develop and evaluate complex systems such as health care his latest study used innovative and unconventional ways to evaluate how workloads and other factors could tax intensive care unit nurses cognition and trigger stress events that may lead to burnout over time sasangohars multidisciplinary research team including researchers with clinical psychology and industrial engineering backgrounds used nonintrusive wearable eye tracking and physiological monitoring technologies to collect real data participants in the study were registered nurses in a cardiovascular intensive care unit at houston methodist hospital nurses wore the glasses for the entirety of their 12-hour shift and their physiological reactions to stress were assessed over several shifts the data provided an objective account of tasks conducted identified potential distractions and accurately tracked gaze behavior which sasangohar said is key to understanding mental load we were interested in documenting what external triggers or events lead to stressful events or high workload and how mental health outcomes changed over the duration of a shift sasangohar said we were also interested in differences between the day and night shifts in terms of physical and cognitive loads and stress the research partially funded by a dyer fellowship awarded to sasangohar at houston methodist hospital documented several key relationships between stress and physiological correlates including heart rate and skin temperature and eye metrics such as the number of eye fixations gaze entropy and pupil diameter one interesting finding was the workload did not significantly differ between the day and night shifts while the night shift involved relatively fewer social and team-related activities the effects of drowsiness might have made the workload equivalent to the day shift the unique dataset collected in this study may pave the way for further research to support nurses work the eye tracking data collected covering the entire shift of more than 20 nurses provides a unique opportunity to understand the context of care and has implications beyond mental health sasangohar said for example the data can be used for task and teamwork training quality improvement workflow analysis among other purposes this research has been published in two separate articles in human factors: the journal of the human factors and ergonomics society: quantifying workload and stress in intensive care unit nurses: preliminary evaluation using continuous eye-tracking quantifying occupational stress in intensive care unit nurses: an applied naturalistic study of correlations among stress heart rate electrodermal activity and skin temperature sasangohars next steps involve using some of his teams recent advancements in objective measurements of cognitive and physical stress to design and evaluate remote and continuous stress monitoring and self-management tools for nurses health care is one of the most complex and difficult work environments that we will all interact with and benefit from at some point he said the covid-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll among health care providers and has resulted in an alarming increase in mental health issues im passionate about this vulnerable population and im glad my research will potentially improve their well-being
2941,"the american society of heating refrigerating and air-conditioning engineers (ashrae) awarded the 2022 louise and bill holladay distinguished fellow award to dr david claridge claridge who was named an ashrae fellow in 2008 serves as a professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and director of the energy systems laboratory of the texas a&m engineering experiment station he also serves as the interim director of the architectural engineering program in the department of multidisciplinary engineering the award is among the highest bestowed by ashrae recognizing one engineer for their continued preeminence in engineering or research ""i am honored and humbled to be presented with the louise and bill holladay distinguished fellow award and to join the incredibly distinguished group of previous recipients "" said claridge claridge said his contributions to the field in continuous commissioning® have had the most impact on energy use to date he also believes his current work on refrigerant-free dehumidification and air conditioning will likely have the most long-term impact ""it is deeply satisfying to feel we have helped existing building commissioning save energy all over the country and the world and to see membrane dehumidification getting close to a real application "" said claridge ""it has been a privilege to work with so many talented students engineers and faculty over the years at the energy systems laboratory i want to thank them for their critical contribution to these efforts"" founded in 1894 ashrae is an organization of over 50 000 members dedicated to building systems energy efficiency indoor air quality refrigeration and sustainability within the heating refrigerating and air-conditioning industry"
2942,dr xuejun zhu assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a $17 million grant from the national institute of general medical sciences (nigms) a branch of the national institutes of health the grant will support her research on discovering and developing new pharmaceuticals and therapeutic alternatives to address and combat the rapid emergence of drug resistancethe new funding allows zhu to study and discover synergistic antibiotics or pharmaceuticals by identifying and using naturally occurring resources such as microbes to maximize the potential of currently available drugs combined this type of drug cocktail is an attractive approach to addressing and combating drug resistancezhu notes that the trial-and-error cycle of combining antibiotics is tedious and often results in an ineffective drug cocktail she said that many antibiotics are produced by many natural microbes that never have a drug resistance problem so those microbes need some solution to fight against those resistant antibioticszhus project titled discovery and development of drug cocktails designed by nature outlines two research directions that could lead to the discovery of effective drug cocktail recipes that combat drug resistance the project would also provide fundamental insights into the design rules of combination therapy and address challenges in producing these compoundsthe discovery of co-produced and synergistic natural products remains difficult because it is challenging to predict co-produced natural products based on the genomes of the microbes that synthesize them its also challenging due to their complex chemical structuresi expect our findings will provide some insights on how to design synergistic antibiotics that help fight the antibiotic resistance crisis and i hope we can also provide effective production strategies for making those good antibiotics zhu said zhu was awarded the maximizing investigators research award (mira) grant from nigms mira enhances an investigators scientific productivity and the chances for important breakthroughs by providing stability and flexibility for the research in their laboratory during the five-year granti feel very honored to receive this grant because i can focus more maximize my research productivity and recruit a talented team to further this exciting research zhu said
2943,the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is home to renowned faculty who continually strive for excellence listed below are just a few of the many honors and recognitions they have received so far in 2022 dr robert ambrose j mike walker ‘66 chair professor american society of mechanical engineers (asme) thomas a edison patent award dr david claridge professor american society of heating refrigerating and air-conditioning engineers louise and bill holladay distinguished fellow award dr ali erdemir halliburton chair in engineering professor european academy of science and arts member dr james hubbard oscar s wyatt jr ‘45 chair i professor asme adaptive structures and materials systems award; national academy of inventors (nai) fellow dr ying li professor and pioneer natural resources faculty fellow iii fellow of the royal society of chemistry dr andreas polycarpou james j cain '51 chair professor nai senior member dr kumbakonam rajagopal jm forysth chair professor asme worcester reed warner medal dr jn reddy odonnell foundation chair iv professor international association of computational mechanics congress medal dr luis san andres mast-childs chair professor asme aircraft engine technology award dr arun srinivasa holdredge/paul professor asme ben c sparks medal dr bruce tai associate professor and gulf oil/thomas a dietz career development professor asme fellow dr pablo tarazaga professor asme fellow dr ya wang associate professor and leland t jordan career development professor asme fellow dr lesley wright associate professor and jana and quentin a baker 78 faculty fellow asme fellow; american institute of aeronautics and astronautics associate fellow
2944,researchers at texas a&m university are working to design a longer-term organ-on-chip (vessel-chip) system a 3d cell-culture model that mimics living organs' biological activities this will increase understanding of the progression and signs of atherosclerosis (acd) the buildup of fats and/or cholesterol in and on artery walls and drug-tissue interactions in both astronauts and earthbound humans since age and radiation exposure are powerful risk factors for acd in both astronauts and earthbound humans the primary focus of this research is to model these stressors and associated therapeutics by using human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hipsc) and immune cells by monitoring and capturing dynamic events over a period of several months the team can track the progression of acd with high physiological relevance and precision that cannot be provided by current preclinical experimental systems for the first time we will be able to validate our hipsc-vessel-chip for the prolonged modeling of a healthy blood vessel followed by an assessment of cellular and proton radiation stressors and of mrna therapeutics said dr abhishek jain associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering we want to understand how aging and radiation may result in acd in both astronauts and earthbound humansthe research team includes dr john cooke dr nhat-tu le and dr guangyu wang at houston methodist research institute and dr vladislav yakovlev professor of biomedical engineering at texas a&mthese vessel-chip systems offer a promising in vitro modeling platform where current systems may fall short including the most relevant hipsc-derived cells and the ability to perform long-term investigations all in a clinically relevant hemodynamic microenvironment the team plans to achieve these goals in two phases in the first phase the researchers will use the existing vessel-chip resembling human arterial dimensions and cyclic hemodynamics they will continuously monitor physiological parameters and sustain the culture of hipsc-derived endothelial cells (hipsc-ec) and vascular smooth muscle cells [ad2] (hipsc-smc) for a few months the plan in the second phase will be to introduce ipsc [ad3] cells from patients with progeria a genetic disorder causing children to age rapidly who also exhibit symptoms of acd the team will expose the vessel-chip to radiation and test novel mrna therapy in the system for months of observationthe organ-on-chip technology of blood vessels has been transformational over the last decade but in the context of modeling acd the significance of our system is the inclusion of hipsc endothelial cells smooth muscle cells immune cells pulsatile hemodynamics and relevant humoral factors in an anatomical architecture and tracking performance over a long period jain said the maximum duration such vessel systems have performed does not exceed two to three weeks and this system will outperform most others in terms of stability and longevitythis proposition will produce a platform technology to deploy in future human clinical trials for vascular diseases this chip also has broader value because the insights garnered regarding mrna delivery to the vessel wall will be useful for vascular targeting of other rna therapeutics going forward including gene editing another opportunity would be to use hipscs from different racial and ethnic patient groups and characterize those differences in response to stressors of vascular health since this disparity in acd is known an interesting future prospect with this device would be to test how robust the model is when additional subject variables are added to the model including intraluminal pressure or tobacco condensate from burning tobacco as these variables are often associated with acd disease in elderly patients jain said this research is jointly funded by nasa the national institutes of health the food and drug administration and the biomedical advanced research and development authority read more about this program on the nasa website
2945,the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university continues to seek new ways to help financially support graduate students the department is excited to award inaugural fellowships to two doctoral students these fellowships have a positive impact on our students said dr lewis ntaimo department head they are valuable to alleviate living and other expenses on our graduate students so they can focus on their academics
2946,oshin tyagi received the dr milden j fox jr 69 and mary p fox 73 fellowship and incoming student samantha hopkins received the inaugural barnes doctoral scholarship tyagis award rewards graduate students who are active participants in the department and are in good academic standing she is a member of the neuroergonomics lab at texas a&m this will definitely help alleviate some of that financial burden and help me be self-sufficient tyagi said it's not very easy being a grad student especially for international students because our only source of income can be through the university dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the department and the director of the neuroergonomics lab nominated tyagi for the award as her faculty advisor in addition to the rigor and discipline she applies to her science she is committed to equity and inclusivity in her approach toward research teaching and service activities mehta said her leadership technical competency and passion are the characteristics that make her the ideal candidate for this fellowship which also represents the best of our department tyagi also received a $10 000 grant from the southwest center for occupational and environmental health pilot projects research training program funded by the national institute for occupational safety and health the program supports novel research ideas by new faculty and senior graduate students planning a career in academia tyagi will serve as principal investigator of a yearlong research project to investigate the role of exoskeletons in reducing back injuries in occupations such as emergency response and health care in this context exoskeletons are devices worn by people to enhance and support physical capabilities more news on this project will be shared as the research moves forward
2947,hopkins award recognizes students with excellent potential for academic success and those with exceptional research aptitude her research will focus on mitigating college students' mental health by developing and evaluating effective self-management tools and digital therapeutics there's currently a huge uptick in mental health issues especially with covid and people being isolated hopkins said dr farzan sasangohar hopkins faculty advisor and associate professor in the department nominated her having observed many excellent phd students in our program succeed i believe that the secret ingredient for academic success is the passion for the problem being addressed by research sasangohar said samanthas excellent academic record industry work experience curiosity and passion for addressing mental health an important societal issue will fuel her academic thriving and makes her worthy of the barnes doctoral scholarship hopkins also received the college of engineering graduate merit fellowship awarded to only one incoming doctoral student in the department
2948,dr alexandra alex walsh assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has received the national institutes of health maximizing investigators research award (nih mira r35) grant for her research on autofluorescence lifetime imaging the goal of our work is to create a robust platform technology for label-free imaging of cellular and mitochondrial metabolism said walsh this technology is useful for improving our knowledge of how metabolic heterogeneity within and across cell populations contribute to health disease and the discovery and evaluation of new drugs the potential benefits include a better understanding of how anesthesia drugs work and improved drugs and therapies for metabolic diseases such as cancer diabetes and neurodegeneration cellular-level metabolic information is necessary across multiple scientific disciplines from nutrition and cancer biology to drug discovery with this grant walsh hopes to advance autofluorescence technologies used for imaging cellular metabolism and robustly validate the technology and image analysis tools so that it can be easily adopted by other researchers she also hopes to use metabolic imaging technologies to evaluate the effects of anesthesia on cellular metabolism there are currently gaps in scientific understanding of how anesthesia drugs function in cells and living organisms a deeper understanding of these processes may lie within metabolic imaging the nih mira r35 grant is awarded by the national institute of general medical sciences to give investigators greater stability and flexibility by providing five years of funding for their research vision the grant is awarded to a single principal investigator rather than several collaborators rather than identifying specific research aims the grant emphasizes the field that the individual researcher works in the gaps present in that field and how the grant recipient is situated to address those gaps walshs research areas include optical microscopy label-free imaging fluorescence lifetime and cellular metabolism
2949,cellular metabolism optical imaging means we use light to capture images of cells and tissues said walsh specifically we look at cellular metabolism which is the process that cells use to generate energy from sugar during that process cells use molecules called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (nadh) and flavin adenine dinucleotide (fad) nadh and fad serve as energy carriers so that reactions can occur both molecules already present in cells also have a physical phenomenon called fluorescence where they give off light when shined with the light of the correct color wavelength typically fluorescence imaging requires fluorescent labels or dyes to provide contrast walsh uses the fluorescence of molecules innately within tissues or autofluorescence as contrast she and her student researchers can detect differences in cells without adding contrast agents or dyes as nadh and fad provide the contrast this technology is further explained by a paper published in the journal jove in addition to measuring the intensity or brightness of the fluorescence walsh and her team measure the fluorescence lifetime or the time between the fluorescence photon absorption and emission currently autofluorescence lifetime imaging is excellent at detecting relative changes between two groups and can provide specific information about nadh and fad enzyme-binding states but pinpointing specific changes in metabolic pathways from the autofluorescence imaging is more complicated the information we get in the imaging will change if cells use different substrates or different types of molecules to make energy she said if their rates change then our quantitative information changes there's still a gap for a robust model that can take what we measure with the label-free imaging and then predict what happened metabolically within the cell the grant focuses on combining autofluorescence lifetime imaging with machine learning we're trying to create models that can predict more specific metabolic information from the nadh and fad fluorescence imaging metrics walsh said preliminary results since receiving the grant walsh and her doctoral student linghao hu have developed some exciting results with models that can predict whether a cell is using oxidative phosphorylation or glycolysis from the autofluorescence metrics its helpful if we can infer more information about metabolic pathway use or mitochondrial-specific metabolism from label-free imaging we are working on computational models to achieve that goal we are now testing the model across different cells and contexts and will soon try adding complexity to predict additional metabolic states said walsh since starting her research group in the biomedical engineering department at texas a&m walsh has also received the air force office of scientific research (afosr) young investigator award and an afosr defense university research instrumentation program award to fund her research she is a scialog advancing bioimaging fellow and this year was awarded a collaborative advanced biomedical imaging grant with johannes schöneberg from the chan zuckerberg initiative donor advised fund an advised fund of the silicon valley community foundation she also serves as the cain development faculty fellow in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m
2950,guiding a drill bit through the earth with the same cutting-edge automation used for steering airplanes and cars is currently impossible because dense subsurface materials slow the speed of any transmitted instructions down to a crawl two recent texas a&m university engineering graduates are bypassing this slowdown with an advanced smart tool that processes sensor data renders subsurface models maps a route and steers the drilling all while sitting down hole behind the drill bit drs enrique losoya 22 and narendra vishnumolakala 22 had the idea for the device while they were graduate students together with another student connor ust they founded their own company teale engineering llc in 2020 to take on the challenge of creating their product in 2021 teale received a phase i grant of $256 000 nondilutive seed capital from the national science foundations (nsf) small business technology program the objective of phase i was to perform research prove the technical feasibility and build the proof-of-concept hardware and software needed said losoya the former students enlisted dr eduardo gildin lf peterson 36 professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering; sheelabhadra dey a doctoral student in the department of computer science and engineering; and former student paul deere 92 an accomplished innovator and expert in downhole and measurement-while-drilling technology as the research team for the project currently drillers steer drill bits using a bottom hole assembly that contains a bias or bend the drill string the pipe attached to the assembly is pushed down on from above and constantly rotated to make the bit go straight down if the drill string is not rotated the bit will drill in the direction of the bias drillers know which way a bit is heading by following a tracker in the assembly they direct the bit by reading reservoir models or maps generated by computers using data from subsurface sensors unfortunately the sensor data is transmitted up through thousands of feet of rock and other materials to reach those computers while modern commercial cellular transmissions can travel up to 10 000 000 000 bits or 10 gigabits per second through air or space the earths subsurface slows those speeds down to a stunning 2 to 6 bits per second drilling using models is somewhat like blindly driving a car in the dark with only the instructions on the dashboard screen to guide you said gildin who serves as the teams technical advisor slow transmission speeds mean those instructions take a while to produce the team is putting the tool downhole to be as close as possible to the sensors that way it can process the data and model a map in near real time putting the device right behind the drill bit also means it can steer with faster reaction times several obstacles stood in the way of their product first the team had to build a physical device small enough to fit in the space behind a drill bit yet big enough to hold all the hardware second they had to produce the software needed for processing and rendering the sensor data third they had to create animated simulations to train their tools machine-learning algorithms how to understand its unique view of the reservoir and model as a car driver would if looking through a 360-degree windshield and how to manipulate the drill string behind it plus the tool had to look at the reservoir model the way a driller would with production needs and safety issues as the top destinations and priorities
2951,for the first prototype the former students borrowed what they could from off-the-shelf hardware while creating a lot of software gildin and dey helped develop the reinforcement-learning algorithms needed for the tool to understand how to correctly judge the best drilling course and bit speeds from the models losoya and vishnumolakala created the virtual environment and real-time linearized model simulations necessary for testing the learning algorithms abilities the work was done on teales servers and texas a&m supercomputers under gildins guidance dey said the custom drilling simulators were developed using popular simulation engines like the unity physics engine a mature 3d development platform typically used for video games several months of trial and error eventually led to successful lab tests but the work is far from over now that the simulations and algorithms work the team must replace all the off-the-shelf technology with more robust equipment that can handle the harsh conditions downhole we are seeking a phase ii grant from the nsf said losoya thats where we scale refine and focus on developing a field-ready intelligent prototype and product costs are higher as we experiment with new configurations and materials said deere the teams executive and commercialization advisor we will work with the large downhole tool providers we know to scale our production so we can provide a smart and affordable product for operators i am excited to help commercialize this research and expect it will greatly impact the directional drilling market if the team can produce an economical product smart enough to follow the best drilling routes every time the tool could make drilling oil and geothermal wells more accurate more profitable and far safer losoya and vishnumolakala both graduated with masters degrees in petroleum engineering and doctoral degrees in multidisciplinary engineering from texas a&m gildin who mentored them during their time in petroleum engineering pointed out how rare this opportunity is this is a tangible project where a product is developed gildin said its a side of research few students get to see because most research is scholarly because this project has strong research components losoya vishnumolakala dey and gildin are producing a paper on the phase i work that is slated for publication in 2023
2952,two students in the department of materials science and engineering won both of the 2022 college of engineering outstanding graduate student awards tianyang zhou was named outstanding engineering phd graduate student and alex strasser was named outstanding engineering ms graduate studentestablished in 2012 this award recognizes one masters student and one doctoral student who have demonstrated excellence above and beyond usual levels of achievement awardees must be in good academic standing with a minimum cumulative and degree plan gpa of at least 375zhou is performing vital research that addresses the immediate need for improved efficiency in aerial and ground vehicles by developing structural energy storage materials that can simultaneously bear mechanical loads and store electrical energy she is pursuing her doctoral degree under the co-advisement of dr dimitris lagoudas associate vice chancellor for engineering research and dr james boyd associate professor of aerospace engineeringi am extremely honored to receive this prestigious award in recognition of my research teaching and mentoring efforts during my phd said zhou i would not be where i am today without the ever-present support and help from my advisors my mentors my peers and my students receiving this award motivates me to achieve more and provide more to the field and the communityin addition to her research she has excelled in both teaching and mentoring roles for undergraduate and graduate students she was selected as a graduate teaching fellow a competitive collegewide position and subsequently became an instructor of record
2953,tianyang has made key contributions to the field of structural storage devices during her phd work and at the same time she has developed skills as a successful peer mentor to her fellow students always willing to help others grow following the aggie core values of excellence and selfless service said lagoudas tianyang has benefited from the collaborative research effort on multifunctional storage devices coordinated by dr jodie lutkenhaus and supported by the air force office of scientific researchstrasser has a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from texas a&m and plans to pursue a phd in physics his research interests are primarily in the functional properties of 2d materials dr xiaofeng qian associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering serves as strassers faculty advisorstrasser has presented at eight scientific conferences has one first-author publication and has co-authored five others on topics including computing nonlinear optical properties experimental synthesis and characterization of 2d materials and nanocompositesin addition strasser has research interests in the philosophies of physics religion and ethics and has presented at three philosophy conferences he is also highly active in effective altruism for christians which investigates and promotes how to do the most good with ones money and career
2954,while i find the process of scientific discovery intrinsically fascinating and motivating since it helps reveal the fundamental nature of the world as well as the nature of god (as so many founding scientists also believed) i am thankful to the college for their recognition of my research contributions said strasser i am honored to be chosen for this award and i am grateful to my advisor dr qian for the research opportunities and mentorship he has providedalex strasser is a very talented and self-motivated student with deep curiosity about fundamental science said qian through extensive advanced electronic structure calculations and highly nontrivial group theoretical analyses alex discovered that janus structuring can effectively break mirror symmetry of two-dimensional materials and enable strong nonlinear optical and photocurrent responses this offers a unique approach for developing ultrathin chiral linear and nonlinear optical platforms with out-of-plane photocurrent responses that are often lacking in their pristine counterpartthese awards were created by the college of engineering to recognize students who demonstrate exceptional dedication and tenacity in their research and academic studies
2955,"dr daniel a jiménez professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university received a best paper award at the 2022 institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee)/association for computing machinery international symposium on microarchitecture (micro) held in chicago in october jiménez co-authored the award-winning paper whisper: profile-guided branch misprediction elimination for data center applications with baris kasikci tanvir ahmed khan and muhammed ugur from the university of michigan; krishnendra nathella and dam sunwoo from arm research; and heiner litz from the university of california santa cruz two papers were selected to receive the award out of 83 accepted to micro in the paper the researchers focused on branch prediction a technology that enables high-performance microprocessors they introduced technology that improves performance and reduces energy consumption for data center computing one of the most widely used and energy-intensive applications of computing technology ""the paper demonstrates how to use a special kind of boolean formula to predict hard branches increasing the effective capacity of modern branch predictors said jiménez jiménez received his doctoral degree in computer sciences from the university of texas at austin and his masters degree in computer science and bachelors degree in computer science and systems design from the university of texas at san antonio he has been honored with the 2021 b ramakrishna rau award from the ieee computer society and the high-performance computer architecture test of time award for his previous work in branch prediction he is an ieee fellow micro is one of the top computer architecture conferences that brings together researchers from fields related to compliers systems microarchitecture and chips to present discuss and debate innovative ideas and techniques for communications systems and advanced computing"
2956,on nov 8 the texas a&m university college of engineering hosted a dinner and celebration in honor of its first-generation students as of fall 2022 texas a&m has over 12 000 first-generation students over 3 300 of them are in engineering to help first-generation students assimilate into college life seamlessly with the help of those who have been in their shoes before the college of engineering offers programs like the first-generation engineering students mentoring program (fgen) the college offers several support systems for these students through scholarships our mentoring program and services provided by the office of access and inclusion said dr harry hogan senior associate dean for academic affairs beyond that our faculty staff and industry partners are very committed to supporting this community as well and we appreciate all the generous support by our donors to the fgen program jim wilkes 78 president director and co-owner of texland petroleum was a guest speaker at the dinner celebration he shared his experiences as a first-generation student and what led him to become a petroleum engineer my parents did not expect to advance their studies beyond a high school diploma said jim we were from a small town in southwestern missouri where very few people had college degrees at 12 years old jim left missouri for tulsa oklahoma there he had his first interaction with an engineer: his stepfather an electrical engineer from new mexico state university who worked for general electric we moved to tulsa then to dallas then to houston and this enabled me to attend spring woods high school said jim it was a great school for two reasons: i met becky there and i had a great education that prepared me for success at texas a&m we had a counselor that encouraged becky and me to apply for scholarships in engineering then during my senior year i received a call from the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m they offered me a scholarship and it made choosing engineering easy jim graduated from texas a&m in 1978 and received many job offers as it was a prime time in the oil and gas industry he credits his degree and mentors for the success that followed him up to this point in my years at texland i have been part of a great company with many fine people that have mentored and educated me about how to manage an oil and gas company said jim
2957,jim reflected on the pride he felt as a first-generation student who with his wife began generations of higher education in his family becky wilkes ‘78 former student in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering also spoke at the dinner to reflect on her perspective and the different direction her degree took her i didnt expect to be here after my lifes trajectory said becky i once read a statement that stuck with me: ‘every decision you make is a step toward the person you are becoming so many of our decisions seem insignificant when we make them and if you have goals you are either moving toward them or away from them there is no other choice beckys parents were both first-generation students who earned their degrees later in life after having children seeing her parents work hard and earn their degrees changed the direction of beckys life and her familys all too soon you will graduate and you will have to decide where you work and determine which values will make it a reality said becky the decision to be where you want to be in the future depends on the choices you make today after spending some time in the industry becky chose to be a stay-at-home mom she expressed love for her education being an aggie and working in the industry for the time she did she credited her degree for allowing her to master hard concepts and persevere through the challenges she faced texas a&ms college of engineering recognizes the system barriers in higher education that first-generation students face transitioning to college is hard and the fgen program has significantly impacted students' college careers students are encouraged to join and faculty staff and students are encouraged to become mentors with the fgen program
2958,dr george m pharr professor and erle nye 59 chair i in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university was recently named a 2022 university distinguished professor the designation of university distinguished professor is the highest faculty honor at texas a&m and was awarded to only six faculty members in 2022 the distinction is given to faculty members who are considered pre-eminent in their field and have made transformational contributions to their discipline this honor is very meaningful to me pharr said i am very appreciative of what the university has done for me pharr came to texas a&m in 2017 after working for 18 years at rice university in houston and 18 years in a joint faculty appointment at the university of tennessee and oak ridge national laboratory texas a&m recruited him through the chancellors research initiative and the governors university research initiative (guri) the guri recruits distinguished researchers from outside texas and provides grant funding for their institutions to bring experienced and accomplished researchers and professors into the state pharr received a doctorate in materials science and engineering from stanford in 1979 in 2014 he was elected to the national academy of engineering throughout his 40 years of research he has focused on measuring material strength at the nanoscale the method he pioneered has been named nanoindentation nanoindentation is the process by which a very sharp diamond is pushed into an object with nanoscale dimensions pharr said the diamond is pushed into the object until it deforms or breaks which determines the strength of the nanoscale object in his five years at texas a&m pharr has already made a large impact on the university and the department of materials science and engineering i consider him the father of nanoindentation said dr ibrahim karaman department head of the department of materials science and engineering he has made a significant impact on the growth and depth of research in our department nanoindentation was initially developed for electronics in the 1990s the importance of nanoindentation grew with the boom of the semiconductor industry semiconductors use silicon wafers with very thin films to create the chips used in many electronics such as computers phones and watches as the use of electronics grew in the 1990s pharr assisted with the creation of a thin film that covers the disks in hard drives the magnetic material on these disks where data is stored is extremely sensitive and prone to breaking to write or read information on the disk the read head must be very close to the disk just a few nanometers away without pharrs knowledge of nanoindentation any slight bump or jostle could cause the disk and stored data to be damaged when the read head impacts it to solve this problem pharr assisted with the development of a thin film that protects the disk during development his technique was the only method that could accurately determine the hardness of the extremely thin film the film had to be thin enough to not impact storage density but hard enough to protect the magnetic material pharr said nanoindentation is now used in many industries including health care recently researchers used the technique to study changes in cancerous cells when a cell becomes cancerous its stiffness changes this change can be measured to determine if an individual cell is cancerous in addition to pursuing his research pharr has taught university students for more than 40 years for his contributions to the materials science and engineering field pharr has received many honors including the inaugural innovation in materials characterization award (2010) given by the materials research society and the nadai medal (2018) from the american society of mechanical engineers in 2021 pharr received the william d nix award from the minerals metals and materials society for his development of nanoindentation and fundamental contributions to the field of contact mechanics he is a fellow of the american society of metals international (1995) the materials research society (2012) and the minerals metals & materials society (2016) since 1990 he has served as an associate editor of the journal of the american ceramic society and principal editor of the journal of materials research since 2012 with his vast experience and many accolades pharrs passion for his research and making a difference has only grown i hope to continue to be active in my research pharr said i still very much enjoy what i do
2959,the stars recently aligned at texas a&m university with multiple representatives from nasa visiting campus to share their stories with students faculty and staff the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering hosted its first nasa day on nov 2 students and faculty had multiple opportunities to meet and learn from the nasa representatives experts brought a spacesuit model and a virtual reality simulation of walking on the moons south pole that students could interact with in the simulation they had the ability to virtually move rocks drive a rover and climb a ladder to the lunar module we have simulations of the different mission functions like flying the jet pack driving the rover on the lunar surface and exploring different robot dynamics said asher lieberman systems engineering simulator manager in the software robotics and simulation division at johnson space center all those models and dynamics need to have very high fidelity so we can train and practice space dynamics on earth that way there arent any surprises when they get in orbit erin maddix industrial and systems engineering senior at texas a&m said she heard about the event and wanted to come to learn as much as possible human factors and ergonomics is my focus maddix said ive been trying to gain as much experience as possible before i graduate with my bachelors degree nasa is doing a lot of cool stuff that will involve human factors in the future and i wanted to learn more about it as well as meet some current employees to ask them about their experiences i'm excited the department was able to get so many people down here
2960,dr lewis ntaimo department head said events like nasa day are important to show the variety of careers industrial and systems engineering students can pursue we have several former students working at nasa today ntaimo said showing our students what kinds of career opportunities are open to them at nasa is valuable and we hope to host similar events in the future a panel of five experts spoke with students about their career journeys to nasa offered advice and answered student questions the panel members included: elmer bubba johnson 83 occupational safety manager specializing in program assessment security and fire operations ronald lee 86 chief of nasas office of emergency management at the johnson space center asher lieberman systems engineering simulator manager in the software robotics and simulation division at the johnson space center mike mcfarlane chief simulation and graphics branch eddie paddock virtual reality technical discipline lead i would tell you all that if nasa or working in space is something you want to do it's been a great 36 years for me lee said im excited about what i've been able to do and what i've been a part of
2961,all members of the panel encouraged students not to hesitate to apply for positions at nasa that theyre interested in some examples of avenues included internships and contract work mcfarlane for example worked as an intern while he was an undergraduate student and said the experience benefited him greatly it was so valuable to come to nasa and sit down next to some of the smartest people in the world and see how they went about attacking these problems so that we could fly in space successfully mcfarlane said at the end of the day that's what engineers are we're problem solvers daniel levi industrial and systems senior at texas a&m said he appreciated that the panelists shared their different backgrounds and the paths they took to get to nasa it was cool to hear all the stories about contracting and that there's a lot of different pathways to get there levi said it doesnt matter where you start youre going to end up at the same place and work on all these really cool projects
2962,"dr lesley wright is among the latest class of associate fellows for the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) the honor recognizes recipients for their exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession the distinction of associate fellow recognizes the contribution of important engineering or scientific work advancing the arts sciences or technology of aeronautics or astronautics according to the aiaa wright is associate professor and holder of the jana and quentin a baker 78 career development professorship in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university she is also a member of the texas a&m engineering experiment station's turbomachinery laboratory and the center for advanced small modular and micro nuclear reactors she earned her doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from texas a&m in 2006 ""being selected as an aiaa associate fellow is an honor and a blessing "" wright said ""the recognition is based on outstanding contributions to the field of aeronautics and astronautics it is a great feeling for experts within my community to recognize our research group's sustained high-quality work"" wright's research focuses on gas turbine cooling and heat transfer convective cooling technology heat transfer enhancement and heat transfer and fluid mechanics experimentation she primarily attributes her selection for this honor to her work improving the performance of gas turbine engines particularly in developing cooling technology in the hopes of increasing both power production and efficiency"
2963,howdyhack is a 24-hour beginner-friendly hackathon where students from texas a&m university compete by brainstorming building hacking then submitting their product to a panel of judges to potentially win a variety of prizes jordan deshan lauren kerno and stefanus komala-noor from multidisciplinary engineering technology and dawson brown from electronic systems engineering technology won second place in the hackathon for their work on bitwise boogie the dancing robot
2964,"after an hour of brainstorming brown and komala-noor contributed to the robot's frame by sketching designs and determining the type of frame they wanted deshan and kerno focused on software design and inverse kinematics to determine the motion the robot should take to reach each desired position ""we knew we wanted to build a robot because robots stand out at hackathons so we expanded that to a hexapod a six-legged robot "" deshan said ""i had most of the electronics at my house where we built the robot and we substituted with scrap for the rest of the parts we needed but didn't have"" ""everybody in our group enjoys getting together and making new things especially with robotics and programming brown said the howdyhack was predominantly a software hackathon so we were happy to have been able to place with the hardware project the hackathon was a fun opportunity to gain experience and challenge ourselves by making something we were only given 24 hours from start to finish to conceptualize design and build our project"" beyond hacking howdyhack is about connecting aggies with other creative and talented engineers it's an opportunity for hackers to share their skills and capabilities with fellow hackers to share insights and learn new skills ""this was an educational experience our main goal was to learn and apply something new about the software and hardware we had on hand "" brown said ""we looked around the room grabbed what we could and made something out of it"" the future of bitwise boogie is to refine the inverse kinematics to perform complex movements and operations such as exploring dangerous environments with unparalleled mobility going where wheeled robots or drones cannot and executing autonomous missions on a predetermined schedule or with the push of a button"
2965,"the us nuclear regulatory commission (nrc) has docketed abilene christian universitys (acu) nuclear energy experimental testing (next) lab construction permit application placing it under formal regulatory review the application is the first for a new research reactor in more than 30 years and the first-ever for an advanced university research reactor acu is the lead university in the next research alliance (nextra) which includes texas a&m university the university of texas at austin (ut austin) and the georgia institute of technology (georgia tech) nextra has a $305 million research agreement with natura resources to design and build a university-based molten salt research reactor this is a significant achievement and i am very proud of the nextra team for producing a quality application sufficient for nrc docketing said dr rusty towell director of the next lab and professor in the department of engineering and physics at acu ""our nextra consortium is a very unique effort and we at texas a&m are very fortunate to work with our colleagues at acu ut austin and georgia tech supporting the acu effort to build this research reactor and set up programs around the facility once operational "" said dr pavel tsvetkov texas a&m project lead and associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering after receipt of the construction permit application in august the nrc conducted a thorough acceptance review the application is now formally docketed and the nrc will begin a detailed safety and environmental review acus molten salt research reactor (msrr) is the only research reactor currently under review by the nrc and it is the first and only liquid-fueled reactor ever to be reviewed by them its also one of only two advanced nuclear reactor applications currently under their review demonstrating the successful licensure of an advanced reactor with the nrc is one of the primary goals of this project after spending more than two years in pre-licensing activities the docketing of acu's msrr application marks the beginning of their formal technical review"
2966,abilene christian university media contactwendy kilmer director of communications and media relationswendykilmer@acuedu
2967,for the hilyard family the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has changed their lives for the better after the positive experience greg hilyard 22 had in the talent incubator program (tip) an internship program that pairs students with industry leaders to conduct real-life research the hilyard family created a new avenue of financial assistance for students involved in the programbeing able to attend a university close to home was one of the many aspects that drew both gretchen 90 and alan 90 hilyard to texas a&m more importantly the campus culture rooted in tradition and friendliness solidified their decision to attend the university texas a&m has a fantastic atmosphere where you can get a world-class quality education gretchen saidwhile gretchen worked toward her degree in recreation parks and tourism sciences alan pursued his degree in industrial distribution in the college of engineering he was no stranger to hard work as his mornings often began at 3 am so that he could work at the united parcel service from 3:30 to 8 am before attending his classes for the day after graduation alan used the skills and knowledge from his industrial distribution classes on a daily basis as he began his career as his industry experience grew he founded his own business swpc fluid solutions a valve and fitting distributor the hilyards found alans degree so beneficial that when their son greg applied for college he easily chose to study industrial distributionwe're very excited that we have two industrial distribution majors in the family gretchen said we think that industrial distribution is an amazing versatile degree because it is an engineering and business hybrid degree that prepares students for a variety of careers during gregs senior year he applied and was accepted into tip tip is sponsored by industry leaders who partner with students in a faculty-advised setting to conduct research and create product deliverables for company executives the program helps students gain critical skills in business development market intelligence innovation customer experience digital strategies and supply chain operations and management because of gregs great success in the program the hilyard family was inspired to create the garver black hilyard family talent incubator scholarship to allow even more students the opportunity to participate
2968,the hilyards are not only passionate about supporting students through tip but strongly want to give back to the university that propelled them into the world they believe that texas a&m fosters an excellent academic environment and shapes students to become life-long learners and more importantly molds students into good members of their community the students that come out of texas a&m are quality members of the community and society and we think that there's no better place on earth to go to school gretchen said the hilyards hope their gift provides students with financial relief so they can better enjoy their time here in aggielandscholarships change lives gretchen said they allow recipients to follow their dreams get the degree they are seeking and turn around and give back to the university to help other generations follow their dreams
2969,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2970,susan and keith macivor 85 are no strangers to engineers especially those who graduated from texas a&m university after witnessing the impact of a degree in petroleum engineering the macivors have established a scholarship in their name to enable the continued success of aggies who aim to make a difference in the petroleum industrywichita kansas was home for keith until he made his way to college station texas to pursue his degree his career choice was inspired by two of his uncles who were petroleum engineers in oklahoma keiths experience at texas a&m prepared him to thrive as he entered the industry
2971,although susan did not attend texas a&m her tie to the university has been strong from the beginning her father tommy walker frank sr studied civil engineering at texas a&m but was forced to cease his studies for financial reasons with his story close to her heart susan is motivated to prevent finances from becoming an obstacle that hinders aggies from receiving their degreesi want to help students stay in school and achieve their goals susan said as the daughter wife and mother of aggie engineering students im thrilled to pay it forward and support future generations of aggiestogether the couples dedication to increasing financial opportunity within higher education will profoundly impact the recipients of the susan and keith macivor 85 petroleum engineering scholarship to honor petroleum engineers who are residents of kansas oklahoma or texas the scholarship will be awarded to students who graduated from high schools in those states by providing students with this financial gift i hope it will help lighten the load of their educational costs keith said i benefited from scholarships when i was a student and i would like to return the favorthe macivors two children meredith macivor 19 and alan macivor 20 both graduated from texas a&m as well strengthening the familys dedication to the university and its programsthree generations of our family have loved texas a&m and we hope that continues for many more generations susan said its an outstanding university and the spirit and culture cant be beat
2972,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2973,an eight-person team from texas a&m university competed at the 2022 southeastern conference (sec) machining competition in knoxville tennessee the competition is sponsored by the department of defense and the industrial base analysis and sustainment (ibas) in conjunction with projectmfg through the secureamerica institute (sai) which is powered by the texas a&m engineering experiment station the competition allows university teams to display their machining abilities and problem-solving skills learn more about computer numerical control machining and promote state-of-the-art manufacturing education and training the aggie team included six undergraduates from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution colton lee liam fortier alyssa bryd tobias gualandri david nemec and benjamin smith as well as two other engineering undergraduates nathan panak from the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and madeline sellards from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering the aggies competed against other university teams made up of undergraduates and graduate students from auburn university mississippi state university and the university of tennessee
2974,"""for the 2022 competition the sec logo was split digitally into four quadrants and each team had to machine its section from an aluminum plate "" fortier said ""our objective was to manufacture the upper right quadrant of the sec logo"" ""the event was both a collaborative effort and a competition between all the sec schools "" lee said ""the major components that judges looked at were speed dimensional accuracy smoothness and surface finish we practiced perfecting similar tasks on the equipment provided to us by sai and we went into the competition prepared and confident thanks to sai's support"" headquartered at texas a&m-rellis sai is a private-public research collaboration converging industry government and academia to combine advancements in us manufacturing resilience its members provide world-class leadership through applied research scaled education and workforce deployment economic analysis and policy recommendations and market-driven technology transition sai seeks to support and develop the united states manufacturing and defense industrial base from regional to national levels and strives to counter global marketplace supply chain disruptions maintain leadership in developing and deploying innovative manufacturing technologies and products and fully employ their people through comprehensive education and training in new and emerging advanced manufacturing technologies and processes on behalf of sai i congratulate the aggie group of students for an outstanding accomplishment said dr dean schneider acting director of sai we are proud to have been a part of their success and we wish the team all the best as it moves forward to the next competition ""the aggies had a strong start but quickly realized their machining fixture had been improperly installed after fixing the issue they finished with the competitions best time of 74 minutes and 57 seconds "" said dr darrell wallace the aggie team advisor and professor of practice in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution ""though the tennessee team's time was longer their careful use of fewer tools and their proficiency in achieving excellent surface finish gave them enough of an advantage to claim the inaugural title"""
2975,"these events show the significance and excitement of modern manufacturing and allow professionals from industry and scholars from various universities to mentor and engage with their peers in similar programs the competition sparks new friendships and opportunities and introduces students to the career possibilities in manufacturing ""one of the speakers who impacted me was adele ratcliff the director of the ibas "" said byrd ""during the competition ratcliff talked to sellards and me about how happy she was to see us competing in this space as women it made me feel like she saw herself in us women fostering the next generation of women in the industry and that inspired me"" ""we do some incredible things as engineers however it can sometimes be challenging to connect with other engineers so to come together and do amazing things as a community is great "" lee said ""i am thankful for all the support from dr wallace and justin carter who helped with the logistics of our trip also i am grateful to dr tony schmitz from the university of tennessee knoxville the originator of this competition for helping make this event happen"" ""the competition allowed us to bring people from the industry national research and academia together into one place and learn from each other "" said panak ""it was an awesome experience and the team is eager to go back next year and win it"""
2976,dr chelsea hu an assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university and a member of the accountability climate equity and scholarship (aces) faculty fellows program is using synthetic biology to help scientists control genetically engineered cells her study is the first to use modeling and a physical experiment to show the effectiveness of layered feedback mechanisms hu collaborated with dr richard murray at the california institute of technology synthetic biology is incredibly useful hu said it allows scientists to engineer a cell by turning a specific gene on or off to make the cell behave in a certain way the problem is that once scientists have created the engineered cell they have very little control over how it reacts to external factors my research is about using synthetic biology to implement the needed control mechanisms hus research was published in the journal nature communications control is the most vital aspect of engineering hu said we can develop anything but if we cant control it its not useful to us the goal of my research is to help scientists have more control over engineered cells by applying feedback mechanisms engineers regularly use feedback mechanisms to control systems in a way that impacts daily life without feedback mechanisms things like modern aircraft or motor vehicles could not exist the best way to think about a feedback mechanism is to think about your air conditioner hu said if you program your air conditioner to 72 degrees when the temperature rises to 73 the unit will cool the room until it returns to 72 degrees when the thermostat reaches the set temperature the unit will shut off however because not all feedback mechanisms are created equal adding them will not always improve performance the mechanisms must be properly combined because there is often a tradeoff between speed and robustness a quick response is usually frail and a robust response usually takes more time engineers often layer two feedback mechanisms to overcome the tradeoff when designing a fast and robust system this optimization strategy is largely responsible for the robust performance of most modern technology similar layering strategies are also naturally occurring in biology when a living organism experiences a disturbance such as an environmental physical or chemical change it uses layered feedback mechanisms to return to homeostasis we are trying to determine if its a coincidence that evolution and engineering use the same layered feedback design hu said we are also researching if layered feedback mechanisms in biology overcome the speed and robustness tradeoff in the same way they do in engineered systems most importantly we are determining if using layered feedback mechanisms is the right path to gain control of synthetic biological systems while layered feedback mechanisms are widely used in modern technology hus work is the first of its kind to design model analyze and engineer this layered architecture in living cells after creating the living cells with the layered feedback mechanisms hu administered disturbances to measure the cells response her research confirms both computationally and experimentally that layered feedback mechanisms improve cell performance over time hus research is the first step in figuring out how scientists can have greater control over engineered cells in the future this research could have a profound impact on humanity when it is integrated into the biomedical agricultural industrial and environmental fields once we can control engineered cells we can use them to improve human life hu said the cells could be used to help with things like treating bowel inflammation improving plant growth or cleaning up chemical waste but control in synthetic biology is still in its infancy and we have a lot of work to do before this technology is widely integrated into our everyday lives this research was partially funded by the defense advanced research projects agency
2977,representatives from the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university celebrated success at the most recent human factors and ergonomics society (hfes) annual meeting attended by more than 1 100 people dr xudong zhang professor and chair of the human factors prize committee said this was the first fully in-person annual meeting since the pandemic started faculty and graduate students took part in 30 lectures eight poster presentations and one panel dr farzan sasangohar associate professor served as technical program chair for the conference the department is proud of our faculty and will continue to support their presence at this flagship conference said dr lewis ntaimo department head this year the department sponsored an information booth at the conference doctoral student srihari menon attended the meeting to present his research under faculty advisor dr nancy currie-gregg on the injury outcomes of posture in astronauts hfes was overall a good experience for me i got to present my work to a diverse audience menon said while there i discovered a professional opportunity i reconnected with two professors and networked with a lot of professionals new to the field we increased the visibility of the department at the conference said dr ranjana mehta associate professor and member of the hfes executive council everyone i talked to was in awe of our group and their collective breadth of research and excellence in our science awards received during the conference were presented to: john hayes and mehta best student-authored paper training technical group karim zahed outstanding student member with honors farzaneh shahini outstanding student member with honors oshin tyagi outstanding student member with honors tyagi and mehta human factors prize aakash yadav yinsu zhang and mehta hart best video dr maryam zahabi assistant professor said for human factors researchers this conference is their flagship it provides an excellent opportunity for the students to showcase their research and increase the departments visibility zahabi said it was great to see all of the texas a&m folks at the premier conference in our field said dr thomas ferris associate professor im thrilled to see how we have grown in recent years into a very strong presence
2978,many biomedical engineering students at texas a&m university work on research that could impact peoples lives so its not uncommon to see students or graduates in this major come up with innovative and marketable ideas two of these aggies took their inventions to a competition tailor-made to help them succeed with their entrepreneurial goals in 2022 senior haley clark and former student madi heck 21 promoted their ideas at aggie pitch a texas a&m university-wide competition encouraging the engagement and promotion of businesses and product innovations with potential investors mentors and partners the contest has three divisions: full pitches for current students full pitches for former students and elevator pitches for both clark competed in the current student full pitch and won third place heck competed with her business partner mark golla 22 in the former student full pitch also winning third place both women had positive things to say about the advantages of creating competing and inventing with a biomedical engineering background courses promote versatility clarks entrepreneurial journey began with a membership in engineering inc in the college of engineering at texas a&m she conducted a customer discovery interview there and found out tampon leakage wasnt just her problem when she engineered a better way of controlling and managing menstruation blood flow a professor encouraged her to apply for aggie pitch during the competition clark had the opportunity to discuss her designs basic principles and feasibility with an engineer working on feminine hygiene products at the procter and gamble company they were pretty excited clark said clark is using the $3 500 she won to prototype her product depending on how much she spends she may be able to use the rest to fund a patent application she credits her major's versatility with her product's potential success there are a lot of different sides to biomedical engineering clark said we take electrical mechanical and broad-spectrum engineering classes combined with medical sciences we also take anatomy and physiology which helped me understand the uterus and the general principles of blood flow clark was recently accepted into texas a&ms school of engineering medicine a collaboration between the college of engineering the college of medicine and the houston methodist hospital the program offers clark the perfect environment for encouraging medical invention while learning physician skills advanced degrees focus application heck graduated in december 2021 with masters degrees in biomedical engineering and business administration she is currently the ceo of sagespectra a company founded on the device she and golla introduced at aggie pitch their creation is a low-cost device that quickly measures tissue oxygen saturation a key indicator of tissue health we wanted to target the early detection of peripheral artery disease or pad said heck pad occurs when narrowed vessels traveling from the heart to the legs result in reduced blood supply to the extremities approximately 20 million people in the us have pad yet it remains highly underdiagnosed when left untreated pad can progress to critical limb ischemia where the blood supply is severely reduced or even blocked causing ulcers and in extreme cases tissue death requiring amputation our primary goal is to increase access to pad screening for at-risk individuals and communities said heck a more comprehensive cohort of patients can be screened right in their homes or primary care offices with a low-cost portable device through market research and networking heck and golla discovered their device could also serve other health needs such as grading pressure ulcers monitoring peripheral fluid flow and even assessing tissue and organ fluid flow for robotic surgery entrepreneurial programs available aggie pitch has become a critical networking event in the last five years a competition where aggie entrepreneurial ecosystem members connect with and show support for each other all majors and industries with all stages of startups can apply the thousands of dollars awarded as prizes have funded further research prototypes business startups and patent applications plus students and teams who compete at aggie pitch as finalists become part of an exclusive group of startup business founders able to represent texas a&m at national and global entrepreneurial competitions aggie pitch is one of four competitions in the mcferrin center for entrepreneurship and one of several programs open to students and former students hoping to change the world one idea at a time
2979,while departments at universities and colleges continuously strive to improve their curriculum complete redesigns are rare however a foundational education based on accurate and up-to-date knowledge is paramount especially for student engineers who will go on to work in a rapidly advancing field members of the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university recently reviewed and redesigned its engineering curriculum to address its growing undergraduate program and ongoing industry needs dr charles patrick a professor of practice in biomedical engineering served as the lead faculty member in the curriculum review numerous universities and programs are faced with grappling with how to incorporate education technologies changes in student mindsets advances in education pedagogy and employers needs in redesigning curricula as a function of continuous improvement said patrick however a robust framework for curriculum review does not exist the national academy of engineering recently stated that ‘engineering education must continuously adapt both to advances in science and technology fields and to the changing needs of industry society and workers themselves adaptation of engineering education requires robust curriculum review he said the department used a new faculty-driven data-informed framework known as the curriculum continuity checkup process to conduct its review the research detailing the continuity checkup process framework is published in the biomedical engineering education journal the review team used the continuity checkup process framework to evaluate the current undergraduate curriculum develop outcomes that define the contemporary ideal graduate and create a curriculum map resulting in specific courses by addressing gaps redundancies and sequencing issues in the curriculum the team can better strategically position the program for ongoing growth and excellence now that the review process is complete the department can apply it to the undergraduate program it is not however limited only to texas a&m from the beginning patrick envisioned both local and national outcomes he hoped to provide a process and framework that the biomedical engineering education community could adopt and use to review their curricula the continuity checkup process can be generalized and extended to other biomedical engineering programs as they look towards assessing and redesigning curricula motivated by continuous improvement and responding to transformation in engineering education future industry needs rapid scientific and technological innovation and societal changes he said the process can be used for any of the three curriculum strategies of changeadd-on integration or re-building contributors to the paper include several biomedical engineering faculty: dr reza avazmohammadi assistant professor; dr daniel alge associate professor; dr charles w peak instructional assistant professor; and dr mike mcshane professor and department head biomedical engineerings curriculum review and redesign is complete and approved by the faculty and the external advisory board the redesigned curriculum will be implemented in the fall 2023 catalog
2980,"researchers at texas a&m university have uncovered a solution to a decades-old mystery surrounding the failure of certain ultra-thin coatings during the phase-change heat transfer process led by dr dion antao a team from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering has not only helped illuminate the previously elusive challenges facing silane self-assembled monolayers (sams) during the phase-change heat transfer but also developed enhanced versions of the coatings offering exponentially improved performance the research has the potential to provide significant improvements to the efficiency of electric power generation resulting in lower carbon emissions for fossil fuel-based technology and lower energy production costs for renewable energy production methods improved silane sams can affect the performance of heat exchanger components of refrigeration or air conditioning technology and devices said antao assistant professor and j mike walker '66 faculty fellow ii benefits could also extend to two-phase thermal management devices used to cool electronics or electrical devices in electric-based power generation or conversion technologies the concept of enhanced dropwise condensation came about in the 1930s and continued to be refined and further explored through the 1950s when researchers focused on ultra-thin silane sam coatings the silane sams however are known to degrade within minutes of operation during water vapor condensation a failure that researchers have struggled to determine and improve upon for decades to our knowledge our work was the first in the field of thin coatings-assisted heat transfer enhancement to experimentally validate the coating failure mechanism and propose a corresponding method to mitigate coating degradation "" said dr ruisong wang a former texas a&m mechanical engineering doctoral student and a member of the research team wang said the team first identified the bonding mechanism between the coating material and its underlying material or substrate after finding an explanation for why these silane sams fail during water vaper condensation heat transfer the researchers then applied that knowledge to extend the lifetime of the coatings on silicon to at least 500 hours using oxygen plasma to enrich the surface with that success antao and his team took those coating concepts and applied them to copper substrates ""copper as a substrate is much more widely used as a heat exchanger material than silicon but it is also more challenging to create robust silane sam coatings on copper or other metal substrates "" antao said ""our silane sam coatings on copper that use our proposed coating integration and synthesis procedures were able to survive without failure for more than 350 hours compared to coatings integrated on copper or other metals using the more common procedure which fails within 30 minutes"""
2981,"the results of their testing showed the coatings on copper to have vastly improved condensation heat transfer characteristics according to the team's heat transfer measurements throughout the research process the research was published in the american chemical society's applied materials & interfaces journal and the international journal of heat and mass transfer documenting their work to first determine why the coatings failed and how they successfully developed more robust silane sam coatings ""our coating methods and procedures developed based on our validated silane sam coating 'condensation-mediated degradation' hypotheses are the key difference "" antao said ""additionally our condensation testing system is extremely well controlled we have no impurities like non-condensable gases such as air in the test system during water vapor condensation this allows us to be confident in our proposed mechanism and validated hypothesis"" as the research continues antao said his team will explore different types of coatings and their impacts on the environment and human health they are specifically seeking alternatives to fluorinated compounds which have been connected to harmful health effects ""we have been exploring alternate nonfluorinated low surface energy coatings as robust dropwise promoters and this is an active area of our current and future research "" antao said ""the potential for impact of robust low surface energy coatings on enhanced condensation heat transfer with applications ranging from power generation to water purification/recovery is huge we wish to leverage our knowledge of making and testing robust nonfluorinated and fluorinated low surface energy coatings to achieve such an impact on liquid-vapor phase-change technologies"" antao was honored at the 2022 micro flow and interfacial phenomena conference with the outstanding early career award the honor recognized this research as well as other ongoing work of antao and his team"
2982,"three prestigious organizations recognized dr jn reddy for his outstanding and continued contributions to the field of engineering and science reddy's recent recognitions include his elections as a fellow of the spanish royal academy of engineering as an honorary member of the european academy of sciences and member of the european academy of sciences and arts reddy serves as the o'donnell foundation chair iv professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and the director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station's center of innovation in mechanics for design and manufacturing his distinctions include serving as a university distinguished professor and regents professor at texas a&m and a us national academy of engineering member in total reddy has been elected to eight different national academies including his recent recognitions reddy attributes his extensive contributions to engineering literature and his international research collaborations as the primary reasons behind his election to the international organizations ""my research my books frequent travels to collaborate and conduct research with european colleagues and major professional society awards that i have received have contributed to this election "" reddy said ""getting elected to eight national academies from engineering is itself a major recognition to me individually i am humbled by these recognitions by different bodies and the personal recognitions also put texas a&m globally in a list of institutions whose faculty members are members of these academies"""
2983,after a twice-delayed trip to rwanda to build latrines eli norris a senior in the department of materials science and engineering had an eye-opening experience that reinforced his career goals norris along with five other students and a professional mentor traveled to rwanda in may for engineers without borders (ewb-tamu) and spent 11 days embedded in the culture of matyazo working on these projects was eye-opening and culturally significant norris said its been a unique experience to see into the lives of people completely across the world it helped reinforce that whatever i end up doing i want it to matter i want it to make a difference in january 2020 norris joined ewb-tamu to contribute to something meaningful and continued to move up the ladder in the organization and eventually became the vice president of projects i joined because we got to do something that matters while were here in college norris said i wanted to move up into more of a leadership role instead of just being the guy who does my few tasks after doing that for a semester i became a sub-team leader and led a small group of students i enjoyed doing that and it led me to be a project lead as vice president of projects norris took over the latrine project right after an assessment trip conducted in 2020 he drew out the latrine and created a 3d model that he completed in 2021 the project was a collaborative effort between ewb-tamu and the rwandan community for four years to improve sanitary and agricultural conditions it was an educational experience because i was managing this project which was international so were talking to people in rwanda that dont speak english norris said figuring out how to communicate with someone whose first language is not english was something we had to do i learned how to manage people delegate tasks and keep everyone motivated i discovered a lot about project management and the softer skills to be a successful engineer the original plan was to go over the summer of 2021 however the trip had to be postponed because of covid-19 the trip was delayed for a second time after the omicron variant ramped-up with the outline of the latrine already in place norris and his team did a remote implication with the community of matyazo they built the first latrine with instructions from ewb-tamu in college station texas we created detailed instruction manuals he said it was almost like a lego set on how to build the latrine we sent that and the funding to them they built the first one with our remote support in april after that we finally made the trip happen in may they already knew how to build the latrines so when we were there we worked with them giving pointers and tips when norris arrived with the team they built the latrine on the hillside due to the lack of flat land and built a square box with stones carried from the river up the mountain local stonemasons were employed to break the stones into rectangles and a mixture of cement sand and water was used in between the stones a concrete slab formed the pit where the waste goes and the superstructure was made of mud bricks the cool thing about these latrines is that everything theyre made out of is crafted locally so were not having to import from the us he said we can help them with the sanitation problem and stimulate their economy by purchasing materials from local people and using local labor to build them
2984,the first latrine was built by the community before the ewb-tamu teams arrival and the second was built while they were there the third fourth and fifth are now completed and the sixth seventh and eighth are about to be constructed we want to build more than 100 and we cant be there for most of them so we tried to figure out a way that allows them to build with our remote support norris said this idea is cool because its new to engineering and construction normally you want to be onsite watching it with the hurdles the team and norris have overcome dr rené elms associate professor of practice and primary advisor for ewb-tamu has been extremely impressed with the project's progress even with the challenges and postponements due to covid they were very resourceful in developing an effective strategy to keep moving forward elms said their tenacity and sincere desire to serve the community members provide a powerful example of what it truly means to be an aggie engineer funding for the project came from ewb-tamu which raised 95% from fundraising and local engineering companies and private businesses each latrine takes about $500 to build and will last up to 20 years we learned a lot; there were many things they taught us that we would have never thought of norris said one was the process of pouring the concrete slab we originally planned to pour the slabs and lift them on top of the pit but they decided to create supports in the pit and pour the concrete directly on top although that was not in the previous design norris said it was more efficient because builders dont have to lift the slabs and worry about anyone getting hurt when we were building the latrine people from the community started bringing supplies norris said seeing the sense of community they have and how much they care about each other and how hardworking they are made me realize we take advantage of a lot of things and we should be happy even when stuff doesnt go our way
2985,the texas a&m university college of engineering hosted decembers aggies invent with the theme of tackling different problems the health care industry faces the issues were provided by their sponsors sling health at the event 11 teams had 48 hours to solve one of 12 need statements identified as issues in the medical field due to a tie this aggies invent had one first-place winner and two second-place winners both second-place winners received the same amount of money awarded first-place team permaclear tackled the need statement to create a device that holds visual acuity during procedures with a thin camera known as a cystoscope that is used internally they discovered a common problem that doctors face during a cystoscopy procedure is debris on the lens of the cystoscope making it difficult to see inside a patient's bladder their solution was a device that filters out debris from the saline solution inserted into the bladder through an irrigation system much like the practice of dentists their idea is to replenish the individuals bladder during the procedure by filtering out the used saline solution that has debris and pumping in new filtered saline to make it easier to see so the procedure can be faster and simpler permaclear also decided to add led light strips and fiber-optic led cables to eliminate and distinguish between noncancerous and cancerous tissue that is found commonly during these procedures and optimally is used to help diagnose bladder cancer it has been an exhilarating experience said arthur farnsworth ‘23 undergraduate student in the department of biomedical engineering and member of permaclear when we formed and met each of our teammates i instantly knew there was a connection and we were on the same page on how to approach our problem i was really fortunate to work with such esteemed colleagues being able to translate and innovate medical solutions and apply them to actual practice and impact the real world is my biggest takeaway from this experience
2986,second-place team cowboy dental was tasked with improving rural health care access the team narrowed this broad task down by focusing specifically on dental care the problem they found was that it is difficult to get to a dentist in rural areas so their solution had to include something the patient could do at home cowboy dental came up with a way to measure someones current dental hygiene techniques to potentially find ways to improve it at home such as brushing your teeth more often flossing more or brushing for a longer period of time our prototype solves the inability to measure how ineffective your preventative care is at home said wyatt smith a senior in the department of computer science and engineering the mouthguard we designed measures the actual plaque levels in your mouth and will tell you if youre doing an inadequate job and offer suggestions like needing to use more toothpaste or it can tell you that you are doing a great job and to keep doing what you're doing it would be a part of your new dental routine and take maybe 30 more seconds than what you would usually take
2987,patho-gone the team that tied for second place developed a novel method for sanitizing white coats they identified the problem that approximately two million patients get in-hospital infections and their solution was to create a device that is effective and time efficient to integrate with the fast pace of a doctors life the device is a cabinet with multiple slots like a locker with uvc lights that kill all bacteria in five minutes all a doctor would need to do is place their white coat in the slot shut the door and in five minutes their coat would be sanitized on the outside i have to say this experience has been fantastic and the first time we met on friday we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into said marcus glass ‘24 undergraduate student in the department of biomedical engineering and member of patho-gone this weekend has been a transformation going into the process of design development brainstorming and the team as a whole meshed so well together the teamwork is what got us to second place my biggest takeaway is seeing the engineering design process in action i think oftentimes we hear about how to go about executing things and seeing how efficient it is to go from step a to step b was beautiful students who participate in aggies invent are always encouraged to take their ideas and innovations to the next step with the engineering entrepreneurship program's start-up incubator engineering inc
2988,rudy dismuke was a first-generation aggie and attended texas a&m university to study chemical engineering as a proud member of the class of 1978 throughout his time at texas a&m he was inspired by his parents and several professors who helped him on his journey to a successful career in chemical engineering the impact of these mentors led him to establish nine scholarships in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineeringi want to help inspire future chemical engineers especially first-generation low-income or ethnically diverse students dismuke said my father was in the army and never made a lot of money however my mom and dad fully understood the importance of an education and made the financial commitment to get all three sons a college educationit was the generosity of his parents and professors that inspired him and his wife susanne dismuke to establish the chieko and wt dismuke scholarship in the chemical engineering department to assist students from lower-income families in receiving an education since the passing of his mother chieko dismuke rudy has established five scholarships in her name including this one that also honors his father wt dismukei recall as a four or five-year-old my mom spent a lot of time teaching me math said dismuke this skill enabled me to become an engineerwhile his foundation of becoming an engineer was set up by his parents at an early age dismuke also credits many of his professors with helping him become the first college graduate in his family some of those professors were dr charles holland dr rayford anthony dr ron darby and dr kenneth hall rudy and susanne have also established four scholarships honoring these professors over the years i have recognized several key professors with endowed scholarships because they helped me attain the knowledge that allowed me to succeed in the oil business said dismuke his father is a 93-year-old world war ii korean war and vietnam war veteran and was honored to have a scholarship in his name i showed him the scholarship agreement and he was very proud to have his name and my mother's name on an endowed scholarship because the scholarship is endowed i told him that this scholarship will financially help students forever dismuke said he was pleased and i cannot wait to send him the thank you notes from studentsdismukes impactful experience has led him to continue giving back to the aggie engineering family and inspiring the future of chemical engineers
2989,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2990,"a new approach by texas a&m university researchers to predicatively controlling supercritical liquid fuel injection mixing could significantly impact the performance and efficiency of engines powering vehicles from automobiles to hypersonic jets dr dorrin jarrahbashi and her students seek to shed light on the challenges in understanding the science of droplet breakup at supercritical conditions pushing the fuel beyond the point where traditional liquid or gas phases apply the research which will use molecular dynamics and direct numerical simulations alongside high-speed experimental measurements could help lead the way to a new generation of high-speed liquid-fueled propulsion systems that are faster and more efficient than the current standard potential applications for the knowledge sought by this research include a broad range of high-pressure propulsion systems including diesel gasoline biodiesel dual-fuel engines liquid rockets scramjets rotating detonation engines and gas turbines ""this research will promote the next generation of high-speed liquid-fueled propulsion systems for supersonic and hypersonic air and space transportation and supercritical power generation cycles "" said jarrahbashi assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering ""these benefits will promote us clean energy initiatives and strengthen national security defense and economic competitiveness"" the national science foundation selected jarrahbashi as a 2023 faculty early career development (career) award recipient the award will further support her research into advancing liquid fuel combustion technology the career award honors promising junior faculty as they pursue cutting-edge research while simultaneously promoting excellence in education ""i am very honored and pleased to receive this prestigious award which provides the needed resources to build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research in fluid dynamics with significant impacts on a wide range of applications to benefit society "" jarrahbashi said ""this career project is significant as it generates new knowledge over multiple scales on breakup and phase change of supercritical droplets difficult or impossible to gain experimentally or computationally the new knowledge is critical for enhancing mixing to enable higher combustion efficiency and lower emission"""
2991,"when liquid fuel injects into the compressed air of internal combustion engines it breaks into several micron-size droplets creating a fuel spray before evaporating into an ignitable fuel-air mixture this process is called atomization the details of this process determine the quality of the mixture and in turn the combustion efficiency and pollutant formation to improve the performance efficiency and environmental impact of these systems modern engine design is moving toward higher-pressure systems that push fuel into supercritical conditions dramatically changing the fuel's thermophysical properties jarrahbashi's research will explore the mechanisms that apply to liquid fuels in droplet breakup at supercritical conditions from molecular interactions to higher scales to advance supercritical combustion to improve control of the mixing that occurs before combustion the research outcomes could fundamentally advance the field of multiphase flow the research team's approach combines molecular dynamics with direct numerical simulations in exploring supercritical fluids an area rich with potential but challenging to navigate jarrahbashi hopes her approach will provide her team and peers with a powerful new tool capable of making a significant impact in the fluid dynamics and combustion community ""what excites me about this project is that it introduces the first coupled molecular dynamics-direct numerical simulations approach for modeling supercritical breakup to enable implementation of the molecular interfacial behavior in modeling high-speed multiphase flows "" jarrahbashi said one of this project's challenges is finding a way to measure droplet atomization in high-pressure and high-speed conditions these situations can involve shockwave interaction with the fuel spray entrapping the droplets in a cloud of vapor and requiring a knowledge of the phase change process and surface tension changes rooted in the molecular-level interaction at the droplet interface ""computational modeling of supercritical breakup requires knowledge of the phase change process and surface tension changes rooted in the molecular-level interaction at the droplet interface "" jarrahbashi said ""due to lack of experimental data and limitations of theories on interfacial behavior surface tension effects are overlooked in modeling supercritical flows molecular dynamics simulations emerge as a unique tool to determine the link between phase change and surface tension behavior in supercritical flows"" to combat this obstacle the team will combine the methods of coupled molecular-continuum simulations and experiments using a novel computational approach focusing on the molecular level to the micro-scale however molecular dynamics simulations are limited by the computational costs fortunately there are resources available at texas a&m to help in easing the limitations jarrahbashi and her team will be using the highly efficient parallel computational simulation resources of the texas a&m high-performance computing center to overcome these computational challenges posed by coupled molecular dynamics and direct numerical simulations the project will also include a collaboration with sandia national laboratory to conduct high-speed microscopic imaging of supercritical sprays and provide students an opportunity to work alongside its combustion research facility as the team works to set up and validate its models the educational component of jarrahbashi's career award includes work aimed at cultivating an inclusive learning environment in fluid dynamics and diversifying future leaders in stem by fostering sustained mentorship for underrepresented minorities and women components of the plan include training high school teachers and informing students and parents at school's science technology engineering and math events to enhance public literacy on fluid mixing to promote clean combustion ""the vision motivating my education approach is that creating an inclusive and integrated education-research framework will cultivate a sense of relatedness and competence in students to pursue higher education and career in stem and in turn decrease the attrition rate "" jarrahbashi said ""executing this vision requires intervention in the early stages of education by preparing parents teachers and students"""
2992,aggies travel near and far to receive their education at texas a&m university vikram torpunuri 90 came from a small village in india to the united states where he received a masters degree in civil engineering from texas a&m his passion for promoting the value of higher education has led him and his family to establish a fellowship for out-of-state civil engineering studentstorpunuri learned about texas a&m from friends he met when he moved to the united states in search of higher-education opportunities when he transferred to texas a&m he was impressed by what he encountered on campusi was pleasantly surprised by the campus academic focus and rich traditions at texas a&m he said the friendly environment on campus diversity among the student population and the academically focused small-town atmosphere was the perfect combinationafter he received his civil engineering degree torpunuri shifted his academic focus and earned a second masters degree in finance from the mays business school at texas a&m his professional career encompasses a range of leadership and founding positions with companies focused on providing business intelligence solutions currently he is the founder and ceo of hoap health a person-centric health care analytics company that leverages advanced artificial intelligence technologies to improve patient outcomesoutside work torpunuri volunteers as an advisor and mentor in the paul merage school of business university of california irvine he values the education he received which enabled him to find the success he has today he is also an avid hiker and loves outdoor activities
2993,torpunuri and his family established the torpunuri family civil engineering endowed fellowship to support out-of-state students pursuing their masters or doctoral degrees and focusing on addressing climate change they hope to enable students to pursue higher education by removing a financial barrier preventing them from doing so i had a great experience at texas a&m with world-class professors torpunuri said i hope our small gift will help a student in need finish their educationthe torpunuri familys generous gift will continue to provide academic opportunities for aggie graduate students in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering for generations to come
2994,fellowships encourage collaboration between the faculty students and industry mentors while allowing graduate students to further their education and thus having a greater impact on the industry if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
2995,the texas a&m university electric boat racing team is a student-led engineering design organization that designs creates and tests electric boats it starts each year by creating a vessel from scratch selecting components such as the motor and batteries the team also drafts and builds the boat hulls in-house james frizzell ‘22 who graduated with bachelors degree in ocean engineering and david moulton 22 founded the electric boat racing team during their senior year the two students were members of the human powered submarine team another ocean engineering student organization however frizzell and moulton wanted to create something new and the texas a&m electric boat racing team was born this summer the five-member team participated in the national 2022 promoting electric propulsion (pep) competition for the first time and took first place with their 6-foot boat 12th volt in the unmanned category
2996,the pep for small craft is an annual program hosted by the american society of naval engineers (asne) that empowers students with the knowledge to design and safely construct an electric-powered boat through online learning industry mentorship and grants college teams can then race their completed boats during a summer competition in virginia solar wind and human-powered entries are not allowed instead teams can only use batteries to power their boats which are tested on speed and endurance the texas a&m electric boat racing team rose to the challenge and set to work designing its boat from the ground up in early september they began preliminary stages the team spent some time which would prove to be well-invested deciding upon a hull type a hull is the body or framework of a vessel that sits in the water in electric boats it also holds the various electrical components after researching designs and consulting with their pep advisor they settled on a catamaran-style hull which is a multi-hulled vessel with two parallel hulls choosing a style with two points of contact in the water would ensure a naturally stable boat that wouldnt capsize in heavy waves additionally both sides could be equipped with an individual motor and batteries effectively doubling the boats overall power we used 3d printers to make a mold which we laid sheets of fiberglass in said frizzell for many members this was their first time working with fiberglass and epoxy resin forming the first hull was a learning curve for everyone but we mastered the technique for the second hull we then used carbon fiber tubing to act as the bridge and connected the hulls moulton led more of the initial design phase since he had more knowledge of electrical systems than i did frizzell said i provided what technical knowledge i could and worked as a logistical advisor to ensure that the project moved smoothly and was completed on time by the beginning of the spring semester they had constructed the main body and had the boat in the water moreover they had achieved motion in the water still months out from the competition the team celebrated its progress by plunging into the next step: strengthening the boats hardware they spent eight weeks refining the boats electrical processes followed by three weeks of painstakingly correcting mechanical issues their precautions and patience paid off on race day the team arrived at pohick bay regional park in virginia feeling calm collected and confident in 12th volts ability to successfully complete the 5-mile course the texas a&m electric boat racing team went on to take first place in the unmanned category and also set a course record of completing the 5-mile course in 17 minutes and 42 seconds the best part of the day for me was when our boat crossed the finish line frizzell said that was the moment of relief when all the hard work and hours spent on this project finally paid off frizzell and moultons goal for the electric boat racing team is simple for it to continue a winning legacy
2997,hayder alhilo moved from iraq to the united states with his family in 2017 in 2020 he enrolled at texas a&m university as a first-generation student and has been involved in undergraduate research and multiple internships he also served as vice president of the texas a&m chapter of the institute of industrial and systems engineers and recruitment chair for the professional brotherhood of engineers after graduating in december alhilo will start a job at dow inc as a supply chain engineer in january q: what drew you to industrial and systems engineering a: it is a broad department and being an industrial and systems engineer will allow me to get into many different industries job positions and experiences it also has a business side in addition to engineering i can get into the people aspect of engineering such as consulting supply chain and management i wanted to study something that would allow me to work in project management and work directly with people while using my engineering skills q: you are a first-generation student what surprised you once you were on campus what was expected a: what surprised me was that of course i made a lot of mistakes i went to the wrong major at first i took the wrong classes; i didn't have enough guidance i did not have the experience of a person who went to college and told me what i needed to do and what i didnt want to do i had to make my own mistakes and learn from them that was surprising what was not surprising was that i knew i had to ask questions network and try to experience new things that i wasn't told to try i knew i had to learn on my own because if i asked my parents they didnt know they never went to college they only graduated from high school and they also graduated in another country as an immigrant first-generation student it was tough for me to learn the culture get used to the language and from there learn how the school system/job hunting works q: what tips do you have for first-generation students a: network talk to people ask questions as early as possible and learn from others mistakes that's something i started doing midway through my school career getting into organizations getting involved as much as possible and hearing other people's experiences once this happened i started getting into leadership getting help from others and helping others make your own mistakes but network talk to people and get involved so you can learn from and hear other experiences q: how has being part of student organizations influenced your time here at texas a&m a: getting involved allowed me to make long-lasting friendships and get to know many people involved in companies internships and other student organizations being a leader in organizations also improved my skills and taught me new skill sets you develop better ways to communicate with people and gain emotional intelligence when you build these relationships i was motivated to get out of my comfort zone and look outside the box after developing those professional and interpersonal skills i started helping other people i now really enjoy it when i see them getting jobs speaking with recruiters and doing well in their classes i only had that help once i asked and worked with others also getting involved allowed me to build an extensive network which helps with giving or receiving help bringing people together and giving back
2998,q: did you participate in any internships a: i worked at bmw (co-op) and then at tesla (internship) for two different summers my experience was very positive and i learned a lot i applied what we learned here in classes quality engineering coding systems engineering process improvement and mainly interpersonal skills learning about project management helped me communicate with higher management and better prepared me to lead other teams i was managing a lot of projects and making decisions for big-name companies in addition to being responsible for managing people and running complicated systems i'm still not as knowledgeable as some experienced people in industry but with the aggie network the knowledge we gain here and the experiences we get to have i got the opportunity to shine q: are you still thinking about the automobile industry as something that you'd like to work in after graduation or did you learn that youd rather work elsewhere a: that's the point of an internship to learn what you want and what you don't want i did enjoy the manufacturing environment for a short time but i don't see myself being there long term that's why i switched my career perspective to supply chain within the chemical and oil and gas fields i prefer a style of management with decision-making and new challenges every day q: from your experience especially as a leader what part of the aggie network do you think current students should better utilize a: a lot of people don't really understand the second piece of the word aggie network they are aggies but they don't network if you look at alumni aggies you will see that most of them are leaders and managers working in many industries they would love to talk to you hire you or share their experiences with you remember we all hold the same values as aggies we were all accepted to this university for a reason some students don't like to get into leadership they don't like to network and they don't ask questions which causes them to lose lots of opportunities i also notice that some students dont get to know people outside their circle network with other majors ask about each others backgrounds and understand others experiences we're all unique individuals if students network they will realize yes i have a huge opportunity to grow and learn we have a tremendous amount of support after school because of the aggie spirit and the aggie network q: what general advice do you have for students a: your net worth is your network build your network and connections as early as possible and be a leader you will be able to help people when you join the industry always think about how you can give back and help others use the resources that are available on campus try to get a mentor and ask if any professors or faculty members have time to mentor you these people have knowledge and experience i met with lots of professors who gave me pieces of advice on things that id never even thought about as a first-generation student i needed those mentors finally challenge yourself get involved get into organizations compete climb into leadership positions make friends and most importantly have fun
2999,for ajey chandra it was the lively environment of campus and the outstanding education provided by the engineering program that led him to texas a&m university he had always wanted to pursue a degree in chemical engineering which made his decision easy chandra graduated from the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and is a proud member of the class of 1986 he and his wife ann piccolo chandra 87 have generously established the chandra family scholarship in chemical engineering following graduation chandras passion for chemical engineering continued and he has worked for several companies in the oil and gas industry over the past 35 years this ultimately led to a successful career and his current position as the executive vice president at baker & obrien inc in houstonthe degree i received at texas a&m has been instrumental in my career in oil and gas chandra said more importantly ive had the chance to work with and learn from a lot of great aggies throughout my careerajey chandra is not the only aggie in his family his wife ann piccolo chandra graduated with the class of 1987 and her father joe piccolo was a member of the class of 1950 their love and devotion for the university were easily passed along to their children who also attended the university their son raj chandra graduated in may 2022 with a mechanical engineering degree their daughter mary chandra graduated in august 2021 with a degree in biomedical sciences and is pursuing a doctoral degree from the school of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences at texas a&m
3000,the chandra family has been forever impacted by texas a&m to show their gratitude for the opportunities given to them they have established a scholarship to give back to the college of engineering they hope the chandra family scholarship in chemical engineering will help provide some of the funds needed for future aggies to earn their engineering degrees with this opportunity both ajey and ann chandra can continue to support the university that has provided the best education for not only themselves but their children as well with their gift they hope to inspire future generations of chemical engineers they also want to provide a chance for these students to be part of a university that opens up countless opportunities for aggies futures after graduation aggies always help other aggies chandra said the university and its graduates stand out as a result
3001,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
3002,"five students from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university won the judge's choice–teamwork award at the 2022 fluid power vehicle challenge organized and sponsored by the national fluid power association (nfpa) to design and manufacture a bike that can operate using fluid power the nfpa fluid power vehicle challenge promotes original thinking in a competitive setting by combining two technology platforms that are not generally associated with one another human-powered vehicles and fluid power (hydraulics and pneumatics) for nine months under the supervision of dr ahmed abdelaal the students rhett lee aren davis henry harshfield arden sinclair and sebastian salazar designed hydraulic circuits and fabricated different brackets that were attached to a tricycle ""the goal of the competition is to create opportunities for motivated students to join the fluid power industry "" abdelaal said ""the team first went through a midterm review where they presented their design to a panel of judges and were selected to participate in the final competition in littleton colorado"" ""our award shows that nobody was left behind "" lee said ""at the beginning of our project we sat down as a team to talk about our strengths and weaknesses and assigned roles based on our discussion"" ""everyone was held accountable "" davis said ""we were cheering and being encouraging to each other if fixing a part of the bike was a one-person job the rest of us were present while it was repaired"" the aggies played it safe with a tricycle for its stability and to focus on optimizing the components of their hydraulic system ""being able to turn an idea into a tangible item helped me experience all phases of a project "" sinclair said ""this helped me learn the importance of planning budgeting and assessing risks with various tasks it helped me connect the engineering side of things to the overall scheme of a project and how each process affects another"" ""working together isn't just about ensuring the work is equally balanced "" harshfield said ""teamwork is about hearing opposing ideas taking a logical route to determine the best action plan and respecting everyone's perspective through the entire process"" ""the competition was an excellent opportunity that allowed the students to connect all the theories they learned in the classrooms to real applications "" abdelaal said ""the team would like to give a special thanks to the nfpa and brian tritle and kensey sydness from iowa fluid power for their technical guidance as industry mentors for the team"" ""i'm grateful i had an opportunity to compete "" salazar said ""hard work pays off and i wish all the best to the team who goes out to represent texas a&m university at the competition in april 2023"""
3003,dr mohamed gharib from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution jointly mentored the afghan dreamers robotics team with their coaches in preparation for their participation in the first global challenge 2022 in geneva switzerland where they competed with teams from 162 countries the afghan dreamers is an all-women robotics team from afghanistan founded in 2017 by roya mahboob as part of the digital citizen fund organization mahboob is the president and a board member of the digital citizen fund formally the women's annex foundation a nonprofit organization focused on digital literacy to empower women and children in developing countries mahboob was named to time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for 2013 for her work building internet classrooms in high schools in afghanistan team afghanistan consisted of 10 high schoolers and their mentors who worked as part of the digital citizen fund initiative supported by the qatar fund for development and qatar foundation the first global challenge invites teams from each nation to build and program a robot to compete in an annual olympic-style robotics competition in a different country the teams work together to complete tasks in a game-themed form around one of the most significant challenges facing the planet including the 14 grand challenges for engineering to foster understanding and cooperation among the youth as they use their abilities to solve world problems gharib led the digital citizen fund coaches to train and mentor the afghan dreamers in qatar for the virtual first global challenge 2021 he extended his mentorship in 2022 until they participated in the competition held in geneva switzerland
3004,"""it was a great experience mentoring the talented afghan dreamers robotics team "" gharib said ""the students' enthusiasm and determination to learn motivated me to contribute to developing their future mentors' program"" gharib received the outstanding mentor award for leading team qatar in robotics in the first global challenge 2019 and the francisco josé de caldas award for sustainable excellence for mentoring team qatar and team afghanistan in the first global challenge 2021 these awards are bestowed to committed mentors who positively impact students attending the first global challenge who help create solid and sustainable first global programs and inspire students to push forward and overcome challenges ""despite incredible obstacles the afghan dreamers have made remarkable advances yearly with previous alums receiving placements in elite colleges "" said mahboob ""this generation represents even grander promise and is an inspiration to women everywhere we have to ensure that our younger generation has access to the tools and guidance to making a better afghanistan to become the next scientist entrepreneur and technologist"" it was great to see the encouragement and support of texas a&m university to be involved in serving local and international communities "" said gharib gharib plans to expand his robotics and engineering contribution to brazos county schools by training and mentoring new teams to compete in robotics competitions as part of the science technology engineering and mathematics outreach initiatives in the community led by the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution"
3005,"during the years as a graduate student money and tuition become part of the balancing act along with school internships and jobs to help ease their financial strain 11 students in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university were named recipients of various graduate fellowships the students include ahmed elkady anirudh gairola denis johnson dohyun kim harry escobar huaixuan cao jarad yost niranjan sitapure silabrata pahari suyash oka and yufend ouan every day our graduate students make groundbreaking discoveries that provide clean and renewable energy affordable and sustainable products access to abundant food and water and state-of-the-art health care said dr victor ugaz interim department head and chemical engineering professor these experiences uniquely equip our students to be at the forefront of efforts that improve the quality of life for everyone fellowships are crucial for the department because they showcase the students' accomplishments and inspire them to become leaders in their future academic and professional careers he said we are truly fortunate to have so many outstanding graduate students in our program ugaz said each of these students has a different connection with the fellowship they received such as gairola who was awarded the dr mn karim graduate fellowship this fellowship is special for me since dr karim championed my admission to the phd program back in 2019 and he was my first phd co-advisor gairola said he already had a big impact in my life by supporting me receiving a fellowship under his name makes me feel even more honored and special after completing his doctoral studies gairola plans on joining the bio-pharmaceutical industry as a formulation scientist working on drug product development this fellowship has given me a financial and moral boost further galvanizing me to strive for future goals gairola said as a phd researcher i am working on developing targeted drug delivery systems against infectious bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis to receive the fellowships the students had to submit a research summary of their work and how it ties into their future plans yost who was awarded the brunner-barnes graduate fellowship wrote about his research on microfluidics and electrokinetics and how it is an up-and-coming field because of the covid pandemic i study microfluidics and electron kinetics which entails manipulating small amounts of fluid with electricity yost said i work on both improving sample preparation and improving diagnostics through nucleic acid amplification covid is diagnosed through pcr and my research performs the same thing there is a clear need for rapid and portable diagnostic tests and being able to take these small devices out to the field this fellowship has lifted some of the financial burden and has allowed him the peace of mind to focus on his research he said elkady who received the lee (bender) coleman 81 and keith fellowship feels that it gives him the ability to make his research his main priority his research focuses on identifying and assessing the risk factors involved in offshore green hydrogen production to support the growth of emission-free green energy as well as the safety and security of the process mr and mrs coleman's generous funds will help me overcome the expenses of living and studying as well as holster my efforts to make a profound positive impact on the world he said i'm working on the safe and secure remote production of green energy and how to operate similar chemical industries in such a way as to ensure minimum risk to operating personnel equipment or the environment"" similarly escobar's research addresses safety and sustainability in different applications for the energy transition he was honored with the jim and cathy holste graduate fellowship since escobar will be graduating this fall the fellowship has allowed him to continue to achieve in his professional and personal pursuits ""this fellowship honors fundamental and applied research in chemical engineering "" escobar said ""with my work i tie together fundamental computational chemistry with applied industrial safety and sustainability research it is a great honor to be the 2022 recipient of this fellowship because it signifies how my contributions to the department and to the texas a&m university system are in line with the values of the holste family and their contributions to texas a&m meet the 2022 chemical engineering graduate fellows"
3006,huaixuan cao: cao is the recipient of the phillips 66 technical fellowship he received his bachelors degree in chemical engineering from east china university of science and technology and joined the texas a&m chemical engineering doctoral program in 2019 he is working with dr micah green professor in the chemical engineering department caos research interests include pickering emulsions 2d nanomaterials and polymer composites he has 17 peer-reviewed journal articles that include three first-author papers
3007,ahmed h elkady: elkady is the recipient of the coleman fellowship for 2022-23 a testament to his excellent work and success at texas a&m he is a second-year doctoral student in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and completed his masters degree in petroleum engineering at texas a&m and his bachelors degree in petroleum engineering at suez university egypt he is currently a graduate research assistant with the mary kay o'connor process safety center under the supervision of dr faisal khan elkady's research focuses on the safety and security of offshore wind-integrated green hydrogen production through water electrolysis he placed second in the society of petroleum engineers (spe) 2020 gulf coast regional student paper contest he was also awarded the 2021 lamiya zahin memorial safety scholarship and the 2022 harry h west memorial service award
3008,harry escobar: escobar obtained his bachelors degree in chemical engineering with a focus in environmental science from universidad de los andes colombia he joined the doctoral program in the chemical engineering department at texas a&m in 2017 and his research focused on new technologies' safety and sustainability his career has centered around advancing safety knowledge based on science and multidisciplinary research during his time at texas a&m escobar served as the publicity chair and vice president for the chemical engineering graduate student association and senator of the graduate and professional student government in 2021 he was selected as a christine mirzayan science and technology policy graduate fellow at the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine his professional interests include science and technology policy human rights social justice diversity inclusion equity and contributions to a safer sustainable industry with science-based decisions escobars interests include volunteering for political campaigns and registering voters enjoying the arts (especially cinema) and figure skating
3009,anirudh gairola: gairola is the recipient of the dr nazmul karim endowed chemical engineering graduate fellowship he earned his bachelors degree in bio-chemical engineering from harcourt butler technical university india in 2016 he joined the chemical engineering department at texas a&m as a masters student and in 2019 he started his doctoral studies under karim he now works alongside dr hung-jen wu in drug delivery research gairola is the recipient of the best presenter award in the 9th annual chemical engineering graduate student association research symposium and the qualifying exam excellence award in 2020 he has published two papers and will have published three more by the time he graduates
3010,denis johnson: johnson received his bachelors degree in chemical engineering at the university of pittsburgh johnstown in 2020 and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in the fall of 2020 during his undergraduate studies his research focused on modeling and tools for education he has received travel grants to conferences at electrochemical society and mxene and the phillips 66 technical fellowship in the fall of 2022 his research now focuses on electrocatalysis with a focus on ammonia production utilizing the nitrogen reduction reaction on 2d nitride mxenes and understanding the mechanism through in-situ/operando spectroelectrochemical techniques
3011,dohyum kim: kim is the recipient of the phillips 66 technical fellowship he completed his bachelors and masters degrees from yonsei university south korea and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2018 he is working with dr joe elabd professor in the chemical engineering department kims research interests include proton exchange membrane fuel cells and solid polymer electrolytes for lithium batteries he has seven peer-reviewed journal articles that include four first-author papers he is the recipient of the best poster presentation award at the 2022 texas a&m conference on energy
3012,suyash oka: oka was awarded the phillips 66 technical fellowship he received his bachelors degree in dyestuff and organic chemistry technology from the institute of chemical technology india and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2019 he is working with dr jodie lutkenhaus professor in the chemical engineering department okas research focuses on developing mechanically strong fast-charging structural batteries for low-temperature applications using organic redox active polymers so far he has written four peer-reviewed journal articles as a first author for one in the american chemical societys acs applied materials & interfaces journal and has presented his research at multiple conferences he worked as a battery cell engineering process development intern at tesla during the summer of 2022 and looks forward to learning about and making a difference in sustainable energy
3013,silabrata pahari: pahari is the recipient of the paul & ellen deisler fellowship he received his bachelors degree in chemical engineering from the birla institute of technology and science india and joined the chemical engineering doctoral program at texas a&m in 2019 paharis research interests include stochastic simulations advanced process control and data-driven optimization techniques he has authored and co-authored nine peer-reviewed articles and has published papers in the journal of colloidal and interfacial science the royal society of chemistrys soft matter acs catalysis and the chemical engineering journal alongside other reputed journals
3014,yufeng quan: quan is the recipient of the brunner-barnes fellowship he received his bachelors and masters degrees at tianjin university china and joined the texas a&m chemical engineering doctoral program in 2019 he is working with dr qingsheng wang associate professor in the chemical engineering department quans research focuses on the efficient and sustainable manufacturing of polymer composites and their applications in flame retardancy he has authored 14 peer-reviewed journal articles and one book chapter has one pending patent and has delivered several technical presentations previously he received the 2022 spe henry kahn memorial scholarship
3015,niranjan sitapure: sitapure is a fifth-year chemical engineering doctoral student in dr joseph kwons research group he joined the doctoral program after pursuing his undergraduate degree at the institute of chemical technology india his research at texas a&m focuses on multiscale modeling and control of quantum dot (qd) manufacturing which is a timely topic considering the high-value application of qds in solar cells and next-generation display technology sitapure is also an innovation fellow for greentown labs a large-scale climatetech incubator and is the ex-fund manager for the aggie green fund he will soon join bain & companys houston office as a management consultant
3016,jarad yost: yost is the recipient of the brunner-barnes fellowship he received his bachelors degree in chemical and biological engineering from colorado state university joined the chemical engineering masters program at texas a&m in 2018 and then continued into the doctoral program he is working with dr zachary gagnon associate professor in the chemical engineering department yosts research interests include improving sample preparation and nucleic acid amplification by using microfluidics and electrokinetics he has been the lead author of one publication (with two more on the way) and has co-authored two other publications his work faradaic-free electrokinetic nucleic acid amplification (e-naamp) using localized on-chip high frequency joule heating was published in the journal biomicrofluidics additionally he was co-entrepreneurial lead during the national science foundations innovation corps program
3017,four former students were recently honored by the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university for their career achievements in the engineering industry they were recognized during the annual distinguished graduate scholarship and fellowship banquet
3018,dr james e caffey ‘55a native of rockdale texas dr james e caffey 55 grew up on a small farm he enrolled at texas a&m in 1951 where he was a member of the corps of cadets as a senior he was a cadet lieutenant colonel and served as corps intelligence officeras a member of the student ymca cabinet caffey helped plan a summer camp for incoming students the first year they hosted 35 future freshmen at fort parker state park to teach them about life on campus and texas a&m traditions he was the chairman of the first fish camp which has grown from 35 to more than 6 000 todaycaffey graduated in 1955 with a bachelors degree in civil engineering followed by a masters degree in civil engineering in 1956 he was a member of all the honorary academic organizations at texas a&m he received his doctorate in civil engineering from colorado state university in 1965caffey joined the university of texas at arlington (uta) faculty as an instructor and was promoted to professor in 1971 during his tenure he taught 21 different undergraduate courses and seven graduate coursesafter leaving uta caffey worked in private and governmental sectors he worked as an employee or consultant for such firms as freese and nichols carter and burgess (now jacobs) turner collie and braden state agencies such as the texas department of transportation federal agencies like the fort worth district of the corps of engineers and cities such as arlington texascaffey has also been a member of the century club of the association of former students at texas a&m for the past 44 years and a member of the corps of cadets association
3019,david b casteel 84as a civil engineering student david casteel 84 was involved in the american society of civil engineers asce chi epsilon tau beta pi and intramural sports his most memorable professor was dr bob gallaway - mr seal coat later in his career the texas asphalt pavement association presented him with the bob m gallaway award it is one of his most prized possessions and recognitionsafter graduating cum laude with a bachelors degree in civil engineering casteel applied for and was accepted as one of the first classes formed between the texas department of transportation (txdot) and texas a&m he was a txdot employee but able to work on research at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) while obtaining a masters degree in civil engineeringcasteel dedicated 30 years of his career as a licensed professional civil engineer to the people of texas he initially served in roles of increasing responsibility at txdot after spending his early years as a construction and traffic safety research engineer at tti while on dual assignment with txdot he quickly advanced to area engineer in big spring texas and transportation planning and development director in abilene texassince 2016 casteel has served as a vice president of williams brothers construction company his executive-level department of transportation knowledge and experience has bolstered the organization to effect growth and critical organizational improvements he was a pioneer at txdot in developing and implementing alternative deliverycasteel currently serves as president of the associated general contractors of texas one of the countrys oldest and most progressive trade associations
3020,maj gen timothy green (united states air force ret) ‘86when retired maj gen timothy green joined the us air force in 1987 it was for four years he thought he would return to work in the west texas oil fields but then he fell in love with the people and after a 30-year career he retired as a major generalgreen was in the aggie band at texas a&m and had an academic advisor who was a civil engineer that he looked up to which led him to choose a career in civil engineering after his sophomore year he decided on the air force and was offered a scholarship he received a bachelors degree and masters degree in civil engineering from texas a&mduring his time in active duty he was responsible for overall strategy and technical and financial performances across a broad customer set related to installation operations he has over 30 years of experience as an officer in the air force culminating as director of civil engineers at their headquarters in washington dcgreen is a registered professional engineer in texas and a professor of practice in the civil and environmental engineering department he is also a member of the texas a&m college of architecture development advisory groupin march 2019 he joined the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as strategic advisor for national security initiatives at the center for infrastructure renewal a joint facility operated by two texas a&m university system state agencies the texas a&m transportation institute and teesgreen led the tees proposal development team that in three months established a $65 million five-year cooperative agreement between the texas a&m system and the united states army futures command he currently advises the team charged with the construction of $130 million in research facilities and test instrumentation supporting national security requirements that will form the backbone of the george hw bush combat development complex at texas a&m-rellis
3021,dennis wittry 91dennis wittry graduated with a bachelors degree in civil engineering from texas a&m in 1991for more than 28 years he has been a structural engineering leader for walter p moore houston one of the leading structural engineering firms in the country he is a senior principal and regional director of structural engineering services for central texas and chairman of walter p moorefor the past 20 years wittry has been very involved with the civil and environmental engineering department at texas a&m he is actively involved during the fall and spring semesters with the structural engineering capstone course cven 483 analysis and design of structures in cven 483 he and another engineer from walter p moore generally serve as the architect and owners delegate for the class projectwittry has served on multiple industry advisory boards including over a decade on the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering advisory council as an inaugural member of the architectural engineering advisory and the honors college advisoryhe joined walter p moore in 1994 in 2002 he became managing director of the houston office which he recently handed over and is now the regional director for south and central texas he became a principal in 2003 and a managing principal in 2014 he is a licensed engineer in 27 stateswittry is one of the leading structural engineers in texas and has worked on many of walter p moores premier texas a&m projects including the kyle field redevelopment corps dormitories redevelopment and the george p and cynthia woods mitchell institute for fundamental physics and astronomy his extensive and diversified experience with commercial industrial aviation public/civic buildings and sports facilities has included numerous state and nationally awarded projects for engineering excellencewittry is also very engaged in service activities for the profession including the technical committees of the american concrete institute (aci) and the aci foundation through the concrete research council providing critical practitioner feedback on research proposals received through the foundation
3022,"ensuring manufactured goods and components have not been copied and replaced illegally by counterfeited goods is a high-priority concern of the manufacturing and defense industries in the us and around the world a potential solution would hold wide-reaching impacts and implications in various areas ranging from enhancing biomedical implants to protecting national defense assets texas a&m university researchers have developed a method of imprinting a hidden magnetic tag encoded with authentication information within manufactured hardware during the part fabrication process the revolutionary process holds the potential to expose counterfeit goods more easily by replacing physical tags such as barcodes or quick response (qr) codes with these hidden magnetic tags which serve as permanent and unique identifiers the project titled ""embedded information in additively manufactured metals via composition gradients for anti-counterfeiting and supply chain traceability "" is a faculty partner project supported by the secureamerica institute it includes researchers from the department of materials science and engineering and the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m the team recently published its research in the journal additive manufacturing the faculty investigators on the project include dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and department head of the materials science and engineering department; dr raymundo arroyave professor of materials science and engineering and segers family deans excellence professor; and dr richard malak associate professor of mechanical engineering and gulf oil/thomas a dietz career development professor in addition to the faculty dr daniel salas mula a researcher with the texas a&m engineering experiment station and doctoral student deniz ebeperi both members of karamans research group have worked on the project the team has also collaborated with dr jitesh panchal professor of mechanical engineering at purdue university ensuring security and reliable authentication in manufacturing is a critical national concern with the us investing billions of dollars in manufacturing without such a method readily available it can be nearly impossible to differentiate an authentic part or component from its counterfeit copy"
3023,"""the issue is that when i come up with an idea device or part it is very easy for others to copy and even fabricate it much more cheaply though maybe at a lower quality "" karaman said ""sometimes they even put the same brand name so how do you make sure that item isn't yours (the embedded magnetic tag) gives us an opportunity and a new tool to make sure that we can protect our defense and manufacturing industries"" the team is implementing metal additive manufacturing techniques to accomplish its goal of successfully embedding readable magnetic tags into metal parts without compromising on performance or longevity researchers used 3d printing to embed these magnetic tags below the surface into nonmagnetic steel hardware other applications for this method include traceability quality control and more largely depending on the industry in which it is used once embedded into a nonmagnetic item the magnetic tag is readable using a magnetic sensor device such as a smartphone by scanning near the correct location on the product allowing the designated information to be accessed by the user while other methods exist for imprinting information they primarily require sophisticated and costly equipment that introduces a barrier to real-world implementation ""different approaches have been used to try to locally change the properties of the metals during the manufacturing process to be able to codify information within the part "" said salas mula ""this is the first time that magnetic properties of the material are being used in this way to introduce information within a nonmagnetic part specifically for the 3d printing of metals"" ebeperi said that to map the magnetic reading of the part the team created a custom three-axis magnetic sensor capable of mapping the surface and revealing the regions where the embedded magnetic tag was accessible while the system is more secure than a physical tag or code located on the exterior of an item the team is still working to improve the complexity of the method's security as the project continues karaman said the next steps include developing a more secure method of reading the information possibly through the implementation of a physical ""dual-authentication"" requiring the user to apply a specific treatment or stimulus to unlock access to the magnetic tag"
3024,as a native of zambia john kalyondo 20 did not grow up dreaming of attending texas a&m university his passion for learning was the motivator behind both coming to america for his college education and later giving others that opportunity through funding a scholarship kalyondo wanted to receive the best education so the prestigious degree offered by the harold vance department of petroleum engineering and the universitys core values made texas a&m his choice for college the community at texas a&m is like no other i have built long-lasting relationships both in my professional and personal life kalyondo saidwhile the transition from zambia to texas a&m was not easy kalyondo quickly fell in love with the university and the aggie family and soon felt at home he got involved with the american association of drilling engineers and the texas a&m student chapter of the society of petroleum engineers experiencing the diverse community that texas a&m fosters to help students succeed is something that kalyondo was proud to be a part of
3025,one way of leading is helping those who are less fortunate like me in fulfilling their dream kalyondo said the covid-19 pandemic hit during his time as a student in addition to being an international student far from home kalyondo was faced with the additional challenge of finishing school in the middle of a lockdown amidst the hardship he was supported and inspired by the generosity of the aggie family through scholarships and other financial assistance he was able to finish his college education at texas a&m and fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming an engineer two years into his career kalyondo now feels it is important to give back to the university that supported his journey after experiencing the impact that scholarships have in propelling students toward their dreams he established the pete class of 20 endowed scholarship for petroleum engineering students my hope is that this gift transfigures the life of at least one student as mine was transformed by the generous donations of fellow aggies before me kalyondo said growing up kalyondo was taught that knowledge is not worth having if you cannot share it with others he hopes that scholarships from his endowment will allow students to continue chasing their dreams and to share their knowledge with others
3026,endowments supporting the students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
3027,"when ashley saquic tax stepped onto texas a&m universitys campus for the first time in august after transferring from texas a&m university at galveston (tamug) it was initially a nerve-wracking experience after one semester she knew she was home saquic tax is a junior studying architectural engineering in the department of multidisciplinary engineering while in her architectural engineering foundations class she heard about an opportunity to attend an educational symposium on building enclosures the concept of building enclosures also known as building envelopes is used in construction to physically separate the exterior of a building from the interior the iibec/aei 2022 building enclosure symposium marked a collaboration between the international institute of building enclosure consultants (iibec) and the architecture engineering institute (aei) the premier professional organization for saquic taxs degree technical building experts and industry members gathered to present educational sessions and share research during the two-day symposium in november in milwaukee saquic tax was one of 20 students sponsored by the rci-iibec foundation which utilizes grants and sponsorships to showcase and advance knowledge in the building enclosure industry ""i was in disbelief shocked even "" she said ""out of all the students who applied i was one of the few chosen for it i am very grateful for such an exciting opportunity to attend the symposium"" filza walters professor of practice in multidisciplinary engineering and architectural engineering encouraged her students to apply for the iibec/aei 2022 building enclosure symposium she was delighted when saquic tax was selected ""the building façade often referred to as the ‘building envelope or ‘skin of the building can be the single most impactful contributor to a building achieving a net zero energy and carbon footprint "" walters said ""the façade is a buildings exterior system when designed and engineered well it separates the indoor and outdoor environment to provide a barrier consequently buildings use less energy to keep the occupant safe comfortable and healthy being at the conference among like-minded students and professionals was a life-changing experience for ashley we are very proud of her and grateful for this opportunity from iibec and aei"""
3028,"the symposium began with a welcome reception for the students and their individually assigned mentors who were all professional employers in the building industry saquic tax remembers feeling nervous however an event organizer approached her and the other students and advised them to relax and most importantly to remember that this was a unique opportunity to speak with professionals in the industry his advice gave saquic tax the confidence and calmness she needed to begin connecting with guests at the reception ""i met wonderful people who told me 'we're here to help you we were once in your shoes and now we're here to guide you into this industry dont be afraid to ask questions '"" saquic tax saidduring the symposium she attended panel presentations spoke with exhibitors and cultivated personal connections with the professionals in attendance her biggest takeaway was the importance of architectural engineering ""with the state of the world the need for sustainable buildings is higher than ever "" she said"
3029,"after attending seminars and department information saturdays as a freshman saquic tax knew she wanted to be in stem specifically engineering to her surprise when she shared that aspiration with others many people offered a word of caution ""one thing i heard a lot was 'you'll have a difficult time because there arent a lot of female engineers out there she said and that made up my mind i didn't know what type of engineer i wanted to be but i knew i would become one i knew i liked architecture and engineering so in the end i got the best of both worlds"" this semester her class with walters has only cemented that decision ""she wants us to fully engage with the architectural engineering major "" saquic tax said sharing that walters feels like the godmother of architectural engineering in many ways ""she reminds us that we're learning about different disciplines – mechanical structural electrical and construction are combined in architectural engineering"" as a first-generation student and daughter of guatemalan immigrants saquic tax is proud of the rich culture and stories found in the community she comes from in southwest houston likewise her first two years as a sea aggie at tamug were a formative experience she also cites an early connection as her primary source of inspiration ""josue and lizeth campos have seen me grow up and mentored me throughout my early academic years as well as college life "" she said ""their help and encouragement have led me to where i am today"" even now as a proud student in aggieland saquic tax reflects on what it meant when she first joined the aggie family ""galveston will always have a special place in my heart and be my first home"""
3030,raised only a few miles from texas a&m university mary hirsch 83 teddy jim hirsch jr 91 and sarah hirsch thompson grew up witnessing their parents devotion to higher education mary jane hirsch 72 and dr teddy hirsch 52 regularly brought their children to campus and exposed them to the aggie core values from a young age now the siblings have collectively established a scholarship named after their parents to honor the familys foundational values in community and education at texas a&mmy parents dedication to education and young people makes our gift a great opportunity to honor their legacy mary hirsch saiddr teddy hirsch pursued an undergraduate degree in civil engineering while actively involved on campus soon after graduation he was hired by hb zachry construction to build a new runway for high-speed jets his talent was quickly recognized and he received a scholarship to return to texas a&m to pursue his masters degree and later his doctoral degree in civil engineeringteddy and mary jane met while teddy was pursuing his masters and they soon began their life as a married couple mary jane attended texas a&m the first semester women were allowed to enroll in the university and she graduated with her masters degree in education she was passionate about creating academic opportunities within the community so she taught algebra at a&m consolidated high school and sponsored the junior engineering technical societyteddy was also heavily invested in education specifically civil engineering he dedicated nearly 40 years of his career to conducting groundbreaking highway safety research teaching as a professor and holding many leadership positions within the college of engineering his expertise brought him across the globe to deliver presentations on his researchmy parents teddy and mary jane always taught us to value education and shared their passion for influencing young minds mary hirsch saidthe hirschs did not focus their time on academics alone teddy and mary jane cultivated an aggie community as they settled down to raise their family close to campus they became active members of their church and hosted many activities for the students in their church mary jane took pride in working to level the playing field for women in the community by bringing girls sports to college stationas firsthand witnesses to their parents academic accomplishments and their ability to cultivate a strong community the hirsch siblings were inspired to establish the dr teddy j 52 and mary j munson-hirsch civil engineering memorial scholarship the scholarship will provide students with financial support to embody excellence and community just as teddy and mary jane did the siblings hope this scholarship will allow their parents legacy to live on in generations of aggie engineersmy hope is that other students in the future will have personal values and pride instilled in them have opportunities to become successful and have a positive impact on the world jim hirsch said
3031,endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
3032,researchers are working to improve 2d semiconductors by better understanding dark excitons and how they could be applied to future technologies ranging from quantum computers to next-generation solar panels dr shoufeng lan assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is leading a project to explore how the optically inactive dark variant of excitons the bound state of an electron and electron-hole pair often found in semiconductors can be accessed and manipulated in a new way this would allow for a variety of applications in quantum materials the discoveries from the research support a better understanding of the fundamental aspects of dark excitons with potential implementation in future next-generation devices quantum computers and more efficient solar panels this demonstration is poised to pave the way for applications such as quantum information processing quantum computing photonic circuitry and valleytronics that use the fascinating features of dark excitons for encoding and transporting information lan said the research titled coherent momentum control of forbidden excitons was published recently in the journal nature communications excitons can be found in two variations: optically bright or dark bright excitons can emit photons massless particles for light whereas dark excitons are typically optically inactive but boast a longer radiative lifetime the latter is a feature that lan said is particularly interesting as the team explores ways to implement dark excitons in quantum information processing the research team was able to outline a more efficient low-loss solution to the dilemma posed by dark excitons by reintroducing photonic bound states in the continuum (bics) to manipulate them in a momentum-space photonic environment lan said this platform could be used to redefine the light-matter interactions produced in nearby quantum materials which would be challenging or impossible to accomplish otherwise using photonic crystals that support photonic bics the research demonstrated the brightening of dark excitons and obtained coherent directional photoemission from them at room temperature lan said compared to approaches that use external stimuli such as a strong magnetic field the teams use of photonic crystals with lossless insulators showed to be more compatible with semiconductors and photonic circuitry while also enabling control of the directionality looking ahead the team is working to improve the design and implementation of their bics with a plan to develop low-threshold lasers and quantum phenomena and devices at the nanoscale one typically uses supercomputers with commercial software to simulate the spectral responses by scanning all parameters experimental conditions geometries material properties etc which can take days if not weeks lan said using artificial intelligence with deep learning we could increase the speed of this process significantly the teams research on using artificial intelligence with deep learning for photonic bics was published earlier this year in the journal laser & photonics reviews faculty collaborators at texas a&m on the project include dr cynthia hipwell oscar s wyatt jr 45 chair ii professor in the mechanical engineering department; dr zi jing wong assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering; and dr xiaofeng qian associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering collaborators from the national institute for materials science in japan include dr kenji watanabe and dr takashi taniguchi
3033,researchers embarked on a multidisciplinary project to determine how cavitation bubbles within micro- or nano-structures could mitigate surface erosion and enhance the efficiency in microfluidic mixing devices often used to quickly and effectively mix multiple samples potential applications of the research findings include the creation of more efficient and resilient pumping machinery and implementation in portable high-precision biological tests currently reserved only for laboratory settings the research was recently published in natures scientific reports journal the project was led by dr guillermo aguilar james and ada forsyth professor and department head in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university cavitation the rapid formation and collapse of vapor bubbles in a liquid is a widely studied field this project sought to better understand the basic science of cavitation dynamics while also identifying potential applications
3034,although cavitation has been studied extensively the interaction of cavitation bubbles and jets with micro- or nano-structures and shockwaves are still an active area of research aguilar said this study may also help us better understand and further develop new technologies such as erosion mitigation through surface micropatterning and development of efficient microfluidic mixing devices researchers used high-speed cameras equipped with microscope lenses alongside laser-induced cavitation to document the tiny bubbles which typically boast the size of a single millimeter and last just one-tenth of a millisecond additionally the project used multiple different lasers to serve various purposes throughout the research process including a femtosecond laser to create the micropatterning in the target surface a nano-second laser to induce cavitation and a continuous wave laser to perform particle tracking the methods enabled the team to trap air pockets in a microstructure surface and demonstrate how these air pockets could serve to greatly diminish the erosion typically caused by cavitation phenomena mechanisms at the same time the collapse of cavitation bubbles near micro- and nano-patterned surfaces enhanced the mixing of the contiguous fluid
3035,we believe that this work has the potential to be the starting point for developing applications in microfluidics and erosion mitigation aguilar said in the future we could have commercial microfluidic devices that use this technique for in-situ high-precision biological tests which are currently restricted to laboratory environments we also believe that this technique can be implemented to allow pumping machinery to work more efficiently and last longer which would translate into cost reduction one of the major challenges for this project came in the preparation while assembling the team a multitude of expertise in various disciplines was needed to effectively execute the project a task for which aguilar said mechanical engineers are well equipped this can be described as a multidisciplinary project as not only fluids but also optics photonics and material science aguilar said as mechanical engineers we have the broad knowledge base to tackle complex problems like this thus this kind of multidisciplinary research relies heavily on teamwork collaborators on this project included aguilars former doctoral students dr juan carlos gonzalez-parra and dr vicente robles alongside dr natanael cuando-espitia from the universidad de guanajuato in mexico