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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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"
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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"
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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"
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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