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another contributor to the chair is silicon labs with whom sanchez-sinencio enjoyed a fruitful relationship for much of his career silicon labs is proud to support the edgar sanchez-sinencio and yolanda f de sanchez chair at texas a&m said tyson tuttle chief executive officer at silicon labs for over 15 years we have funded dr sanchezs research in analog and mixed-signal circuits and have directly benefited from the talented engineers produced by texas a&m this chair honors dr sanchezs lifetime of research contributions and enables his legacy to continue in the electrical engineering department we look forward to continuing our close relationship with texas a&m to celebrate his career and academic excellence as well as the establishment of the new endowed chair the electrical and computer engineering department held a virtual recognition event via zoom over 180 friends and supporters attended the event
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numerous former colleagues and students spoke at the event detailing their relationship with sanchez-sinencio and how his work affected them and other students during his tenure congratulations were echoed in english and spanish the event concluded with a toast by dr miroslav begovic electrical and computer engineering department head to sanchez and his wife who were given commemorative champagne flutes in acknowledgment of their contribution to the department an endowed chair is the highest academic award the college can bestow on a faculty member and distributions from the edgar sanchez-sinencio and yolanda f de sanchez chair will be used to support the teaching research service and professional development activities of the holder in addition to the endowed chair the yolanda and edgar sanchez endowed scholarship was also established by former student wenjun sheng and another donor who wishes to remain anonymous this endowment will be used to support students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering
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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 faculty endowments encourage and reward faculty members who embody the passion for and commitment to the education of engineering students they bring years of rich experiences from the field and add tremendous value to the college of engineering if you are interested in supporting faculty or would like more information on how you can give please contact one of our development officers
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dr ruihong huang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was selected to receive the national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award one of the most prestigious awards given to up-and-coming researchers the grant provides funding to support promising integrated research and education huangs five-year career project aims to create document-level event graphs that identify the relationships (eg temporal and causal relations) between events mentioned anywhere in a document in order to better contextualize real-world events and interpret how and why they happened thus better supporting various event-oriented applications events tend to be described in a complex relationship with other events said huang for example a news article describing the events of a protest without information on why it was launched would be considered incomplete it has been observed that the events described in various natural language texts (news articles manuscripts blogs etc) play a large role in forming a cohesive story and their presence is tightly related to the overall structure of a document and how its organized with the number of documents describing real-world events growing larger on a daily basis document-level event graphs which are models used to filter and structure information about the events described in text are in high demand however building them requires identifying the relationship between the events even if they are sentences away which causes multiple technical challenges in addition current event extraction methods rarely focus on how the events relate to each other and mainly focus on extracting isolated events with no context huangs research is focused on extracting events and understanding event-event relations from natural language text which is the key to carrying out various analytical tasks such as predicting future events detecting misinformation and other attempts to validate events managing extreme events answering complex questions and generating concise text summaries for analysis and to help the government companies and general public with improving situational awareness reducing information overload and assisting with timely decision-making during this research i will study correlations between events and the way in which an entire document is organized in order to overcome the fundamental difficulties in identifying event-event relations posed by the long distance between event mentions and the range of different words used to describe them said huang the integration of research with education will also play a role in this career project in addition to supporting her current and future research the funds will also go toward the teaching and training of future researchers in advanced information extraction views and methods as well as to outreach efforts to expose high school and undergraduate students to computer science and natural language processing research read more about huangs research and objectives in her nsf abstract
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a paper by dr jodie lutkenhaus professor and axalta coating systems chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been selected as the winner of the 2019 molecular systems design & engineering (msde) outstanding early career paper award the award-winning paper design of multifunctional supercapacitor electrodes using an informatics approach was co-authored by dr raymundo arroyave professor presidential impact fellow and chancellor edges fellow from the department of materials science and engineering in the paper the research team examined the selection and design of supercapacitor electrodes for application in structural energy and power according to lutkenhaus the research is focused on two properties in particular the goal is to design supercapacitors that are both electrochemically superior and mechanically robust the challenge is that these two properties are often at odds with each other and the route to maximizing both is not immediately clear therefore informatics were employed to tease out which composition would provide the best combination of these properties specific to electrodes containing reduced graphene oxide aramid nanofibers and carbon nanotubes she said by employing informatics principles to the research lutkenhaus and the team were able to develop a greater understanding of the relationship of the different materials and the resulting energy storage and mechanical properties the research project was one of the first to result from texas a&ms national science foundation-sponsored data-enabled discovery and design of energy materials program (d3em) which blends materials science informatics and engineering design theory lutkenhaus said her participation in the d3em program led directly to this breakthrough we teamed up with professor raymundo arroyave (d3em program director) to apply data science to an afosr-sponsored (air force office of scientific research) project out of our lab i think it is a great example of what results when scientists and researchers step outside of their comfort zone as this research is a direct result of the cross-discipline d3em program lutkenhaus said that msde was the perfect place to publish the results molecular systems design & engineering is a great venue for materials informatics and design research because the editors and the reviewers understand and appreciate this emerging field in other venues it can be harder to publish because the cross-disciplinary effort may not be holistically considered more information on this research and the msde outstanding early career paper award can be found on the molecular systems design & engineering blog
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dr mahmoud el-halwagi professor and holder of the bryan research and engineering chair in chemical engineering in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) computing in chemical engineering award the prestigious award presented by the computing and systems technology division of aiche recognizes outstanding contributions in the application of computing and systems technology to chemical engineering el-halwagi who also serves as managing director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations gas and fuels research center is internationally recognized for his pioneering contributions to the fundamentals and applications of sustainable design of industrial processes through systems integration and multiscale optimization in 2017 he published the second edition of his widely used textbook sustainable design through process integration: fundamentals and applications to industrial pollution prevention resource conservation and profitability enhancement el-halwagi has written two other textbooks co-edited 10 books and co-authored about 500 refereed papers and book chapters he is also an aiche fellow and a recipient of the aiche sustainable engineering forum research excellence award the national science foundation's national young investigator award and many university-level research and teaching awards
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garrett jares and hannah stroud doctoral students from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have each received a 2020 national science foundation (nsf) graduate research fellowship this prestigious fellowship provides financial support to outstanding graduate students in science technology engineering and mathematics who are pursuing a research-based degree nsf graduate research fellows are part of an elite group who have gone on to become leaders in industry and education
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since his undergraduate senior capstone project jares has been working in the vehicle systems & control laboratory (vscl) with dr john valasek director of vscl and holder of the thaman professorship while his undergraduate degree in computer science focused heavily on cybersecurity jares work within vscl has revolved around developing embedded systems for unmanned air systems and overseeing the operation of the engineering flight simulator laboratory combining his undergraduate knowledge and his experience in vscl to investigate cybersecurity for air and space vehicles jares doctoral dissertation will investigate cyberattacks that are designed to take control of an aircraft by targeting the vehicles sensor data this research will help identify and better understand the vulnerabilities in current systems and develop safeguards against such attacks jares is also a recipient of the crawford & hattie jackson foundation scholarship the edward c clay '47 memorial scholarship and the 2018 lechner graduate fellowship
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like jares stroud also received her undergraduate degree from texas a&m hailing from buffalo new york her undergraduate research as a member of the multifunctional materials and aerospace structural optimization (m2aestro) lab motivated her to pursue graduate studies her graduate research includes developing unconventional applications of aerospace skills coursework and educational activities and utilizing these concepts to explore applications in biomedical devices and fabric development focusing on complex structural modeling of knitted shape memory alloy structures which are the building blocks of shape-shifting fabrics for her fellowship she proposed augmenting her current work by developing new tools to allow efficient analysis and design of functional patterned fabrics stroud is also highly involved in department initiatives such as the pitch up! competition camp soar activities and demonstration development for the physics and engineering festival stroud is advised by dr darren hartl assistant professor and dr kristi shryock associate department head and frank and jean raymond foundation inc endowed instructional associate professor
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in a new study researchers from texas a&m university and industry have designed a smart technology that can help utility companies better serve communities affected by blackouts the researchers said their single device works by improving energy delivery between home solar-power systems and the electrical grid our innovation lets solar energy consumers be less dependent on the external power grid the same technology also allows the utility company to control energy distribution which is particularly useful during power outages caused by storms and other natural disasters said dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering so it's a win-win scenario for both the consumer and the utility company the study was published online in the institute of electrical and electronics engineers journal of emerging and selected topics in power electronics in april over the last decade a sharp drop in the cost of solar panels has encouraged more households to adopt solar power systems in these homes the current generated by rooftop solar panels is fed into an inverter before the electricity is ready for residential use and charging solar backup batteries another set of power electronics connects the solar panels and the batteries back to the grid these connections ensure that homes are always connected to the grid as long as the grid is functional during the day homes consume more solar energy and any excess energy is supplied to the grid at night homes draw electricity from the grid the researchers noted that these conventional systems have many disadvantages any voltage fluctuations in the grid due to damage to the power lines or overloading affects connected devices in homes also they said the current injected into the grid from solar-powered homes can have certain irregularities known as harmonics affecting the quality of the power within the grid the researchers explained that another pertinent problem is there is little that a utility company can do to limit the amount of grid electricity consumed by solar-powered homes this drawback is particularly harmful during natural disasters where other communities or essential services like hospitals need energy support currently there's no system in place to regulate or limit energy consumption said dr prasad enjeti ti professor iii in analog engineering in the department of electrical and computer engineering end users with solar-powered systems continue drawing electricity from the grid because utility companies have no way of controlling it unlike the conventional solar-powered systems that involve many electronics to connect back and forth from the grid the researchers put together a single device called the power electronics intelligence at the network edge or pine this device which is installed outside a home has three main connections: one going to the home one to the utility grid and another to the solar panels and batteries pine can control the flow of electricity in any one of these directions this device is like an intelligent energy router said enjeti it regulates the grid voltage integrates solar energy which is locally produced and intelligently manages and routes the energy in all directions the researchers designed this device to also be programmable so that an authorized external user like the utility company can control the amount of grid electricity reaching solar-powered homes enjeti said pine systems installed at different homes can also be programmed to communicate with each other and with the distribution operator to test if the pine networks will operate as envisioned the researchers built a hardware prototype and conducted extensive computer simulations of a mixed neighborhood in which some homes had pine systems and others did not the hardware performance along with simulations revealed that the homes with the pine system had a cleaner stable voltage at the grid level the injected voltage from these homes was also stable because the pine system was regulating that as well
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pine systems can dynamically and in real-time inject different voltage support to the utility grid so the utility companies need not spend millions in buying capacitor banks to support the voltage across the feeder lines said xie during power outages pine allows homes to be self-sufficient and use their solar power efficiently the technology also allows the utility company to wirelessly instruct pine systems to limit the grid current to solar-powered homes and redirect it to other affected areas pine technology is co-invented by enjeti xie and dr p r kumar regents professor and distinguished professor in the electrical and computer engineering department and the college of engineering chair in computer engineering other contributors to this research include jorge ramos-ruiz in the department of computer science and engineering; dr bin wang from the national renewable energy laboratory and dr hung-ming chou from dominion energy this research was funded by consejo nacional de ciencia y tecnologia the national science foundation and the united states department of energy
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dr chanan singh regents professor and irma runyon chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2020 foreign fellow of the chinese society for electrical engineering (csee) csee fellow is the highest professional distinction in the society it honors those who have made extraordinary accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology or practice in power engineering or made outstanding contributions to the progress of society and the organization and development of csee csee is a nonprofit non-governmental academic and professional organization of scientists and engineers in the electrical engineering field among this years cohort are three us national academy of engineering members including singh singhs research interests lie in the areas of reliability and security of electric power systems theory and applications of system reliability integration of renewable energy sources and the reliability of cyberphysical systems
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the united states department of energy (doe) is supporting a texas a&m university college of engineering project to improve the cybersecurity and energy efficiency of commercial buildings the securing grid-interactive efficient buildings through cyber defense and resilient system project led by dr zheng oneill received $35 million from the does building technologies office to research develop and demonstrate a real-time advanced building-resilient platform through multi-layer prevention and adaption mechanisms texas a&ms partners on the three-year project include raytheon technologies research center drexel university arizona state university pacific northwestern national laboratory and northwestern university as part of the project a hardware-in-the-loop – a simulation technique that is used in the development and testing of complex real-time embedded systems – and a local testbed in texas will be developed to help explore and demonstrate potential approaches to cybersecurity and energy efficiency in a real physical space both on the texas a&m campus and off the team is currently searching for potential building partners to deploy their cyber defense and resilient system (cydres) for limited field testing once in the third year of the project the proposed cydres system will accurately identify cyber threats in real-time and offer immediate defense against malicious network activity oneill said in addition the fault detection diagnostics and prognosis and cyber-resilient control scheme will enhance grid-interactive efficient building tolerance to both cyber-related and physical faults while maximizing the potential energy savings and load flexibility and maintaining occupant satisfaction cydres will be prototyped and tested in a hardware-in-the-loop and real building environment the resulting test data will be used to inform the building community and support the technology transfer to the industry oneill associate professor and j mike walker '66 faculty fellow ii in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering said current building automation systems (bas) are designed and operated with little consideration of cybersecurity challenges leaving many building systems vulnerable to attack this is of special concern for emerging grid-interactive efficient buildings (geb) which if attacked could result in especially adverse consequences ranging from energy waste and occupant discomfort to equipment downtime and disruption of grid operations current physical behavior-based anomaly detection methods employed by building automation systems fail to differentiate cyberattacks from equipment or operational faults oneill said such distinction is critical in ensuring the appropriate automated mitigation via control response of cyber threats and providing actionable recommendations to facility managers a special initiative of the doe gebs are expected to improve the amount and timing of energy use making an overall building more energy efficient by outfitting them with next-generation sensors controls connectivity and communication in hopes of giving occupants more control in managing comfort and productivity while simultaneously reducing energy costs the doe also hopes smarter buildings can provide benefits to the electric grid including enhanced reliability and resilience the project will streamline the cutting-edge network analyzer and control algorithms for cybersecurity into commercial building automation systems products and expedite the transfer of the latest technologies to benefit building owners building automation companies and utility companies oneill said the market size of the intended end user of this technology is all commercial buildings with bas in the us oneill said the primary annual energy savings anticipated across the country by 2030 is approximately 086 quads – a unit of energy equal to 1 quadrillion british thermal units which is often used to describe national and world energy resources – according to an estimation using doe scout tool in 2019 the us was estimated to consume a total of 1002 quads according to the us energy information administration by the projects conclusion oneill said she expects to see cydres effectively monitoring detecting and responding to cyberattacks and physical system faults the does building technologies office has a roadmap to advance the role that gebs can play in modernizing the power grid the security intelligence and resilience of the building automation systems directly affect the performance and market adoption of geb technologies in the same doe program oneill is also participating another geb project led by drexel university called hardware-in-the-loop laboratory performance verification of flexible building equipment in a typical commercial building in addition to the primary mission of the project oneill hopes to see a multidisciplinary collaboration on the project with researchers from around the texas a&m campus in further pursuing research in the area of smart buildings and cities
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a new faculty member in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university recently received a multi-million dollar grant to support groundbreaking cancer research in may dr tanmay lele received a $5 million recruitment of established investigators grant from the cancer prevention and research institute of texas (cprit) to further knowledge about cancer and how it progresses leles research focuses on mechanobiology the mechanical aspects of biology where he works to understand how cells sense external mechanical forces as well as how they generate mechanical forces and how these mechanical forces impact cell function in cancer both cellular mechanical forces and the mechanical properties of resisting cellular structures go awry these errors cause abnormalities in cell structure a particularly striking feature of cancer cells is the highly irregular and/or distended shape of the nucleus the nuclei in normal tissue have smooth surfaces but over time the surfaces of cancer nuclei become irregular in shape lele said now why nobody really knows were still at the tip of the iceberg at trying to figure this problem out but nuclear abnormalities are ubiquitous and occur in all kinds of cancers breast prostate and lung cancers pathologists study biopsies and note abnormalities in the shape of the cell and its nucleus to grade the severity of cancer lele and his team are computerizing the analysis of nuclear shapes to research the cause of abnormal cancer structures using photos of nuclei and cells in human tissue taken by a pathologist leles team has developed a computational algorithm to measure the degree of irregularity in the nucleus with the algorithm the team can run statistical analyses of the abnormalities and search for correlations between the extent of the irregularity changes to genetic or molecular signatures in tumors and ultimately patient outcomes leles research aims to help the medical community develop new knowledge of human cancers and how they progress to better diagnose and manage cancers understanding the mechanisms behind the abnormalities can help develop therapies to better treat cancers by targeting the nucleus like any other basic field we are trying to make discoveries with the hope that they will have long-term impacts on human health lele said lele will have two laboratories one in college station and one in the texas a&m health science centers institute of biosciences & technology in houston the cancer grant from cprit is a collaborative effort with dr michael mancini and dr fabio stossi from the baylor college of medicine he said he is looking forward to collaborating with researchers in both college station and houston lele received his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from purdue university before coming to texas a&m he served as the charles a stokes professor of chemical engineering at the university of florida at texas a&m in addition to being in biomedical engineering he will be a joint faculty member in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering all my career has been spent in chemical engineering departments but my research is also now in the biomedical space lele said the move to texas a&m was an opportunity for me to also be part of a different culture if you will of research being in the biomedical engineering department in addition to the chemical engineering department brings new opportunities to collaborate with researchers who have closely shared research interests
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in march texas a&m universitys society of automotive engineers (sae) aero design team took first place in the 2020 sae aero design east competition in lakeland florida this achievement is one texas a&m has only seen once before in its 10-year history competing the competition intended to immerse students in real-world engineering situations challenged teams from across the globe to design and optimize an aircraft to meet a specified set of configurations and mission requirements this years objective was to design an aircraft to successfully take off within 100 feet while carrying a payload of steel and soccer balls the more payload an aircraft was effectively able to carry the higher the score in addition to the set of rules teams received an equation that allowed them to determine how much they could score on any given flight which helped to inform the design process from the get-go we determined that we were going to understand and use that equation to make sure we werent just setting an arbitrary design goal for ourselves said jack kassing 20 an aerospace engineering major and team director we spent two weeks before we ever started designing doing calculations" after meticulously analyzing the equation and variables in their control the texas a&m team farmers flight confidently opted for a small wingspan design despite larger wingspans being the more efficient option in prior years of this design competition
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im not sure i fully appreciated how strange it was until we got to competition and saw the other planes said kassing it was by far the smallest wingspan most teams designed to the limit which was 10 feet farmers flights aircraft was roughly half that size and quickly attained speculation from the other teams and judges when they arrived in florida despite others confusion the team was well versed in the parameters and knew a small wingspan held the most potential however reaching that potential required an untapped commitment from texas a&ms sae team preparing for takeoff because they were working with a design unlike any previous sae aircraft the team was limited on what knowledge they could use from prior experience their unconventional design also meant being unable to fully rely on what simulation software could tell them so to best work through their designs the team logged an impressive 11 trips to the runways at the rellis campus to conduct a series of flight tests it was an aerodynamic challenge to maximize the amount of lift we could get out of a small wingspan aircraft so the flight tests were all about refinement said john blausen 21 a mechanical engineering major and the teams chief engineer farmers flights first nine flight attempts were unsuccessful challenging the team to face one problem after another
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it was tough but ultimately it was that challenge that allowed us to outperform the others in competition said blausen devoting hundreds of working hours to their design after every flight gave the team a well-rounded knowledge of their aircraft the constant reevaluation of their design also offered members a practical experience that translated to and from the classroom sae improved my learning experience because i had real-world examples in front of me that gave me context for what they were teaching me in class said blausen i was learning equations that i could go home and apply to the work on our aircraft overcoming turbulence together although their hard work paid off pursuing a design that demanded extensive testing required a team of students willing to pick back up time and again and put in the effort to understand and adjust their aircraft for kassing and blausen keeping up morale was as intentional and imperative as the refinement of their design "a project like this does not happen unless everybody's engaged in it " said kassing "i think john and i did a good job of stepping right back into it after a crash and saying ‘ok lets pull up our sleeves and fix the problem and go out and do it again
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in addition to the leadership from kassing and blausen the team found motivation in their advisors' support "the biggest impact our advisors had was motivating the team " said blausen "brad worsham and scott mcharg took time out of their weekends to come and fly for us i think that their commitment to do that every single week and sometimes twice a week was really motivating to the members" farmers flight made continuous changes in the grueling months leading up to competition and with only a month left managed to complete 10 consecutive successful flights locking in their confidence "it was a symbiotic relationship between shooting very high and having a team drive and organization that was able to make that happen " said kassing coming in for a smooth landing from december to march the team ended up building a total of five aircrafts plus a wind tunnel model and prepared three aircrafts for competition
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i think most people knew that texas a&m came to compete but they might have been caught off guard that ours performed as well as it did said blausen despite the doubt their small-winged aircraft received from teams and judges farmers flights perseverance leading up to competition equipped them with everything they needed to succeed this year we did numerous flight tests so we knew exactly what conditions our plane could fly in said blausen we had the experience and the confidence to push the limits and as a result by the end of day one wed already scored enough to win this years win pulled texas a&ms sae aero design team out of a six-year slump as gratifying as the victory was for the team their takeaways extend beyond a first-place award to see people grow from being not too self-assured about the things theyre designing to stepping in at competition and suggesting solutions was amazing said kassing the value behind seeing our team gain confidence in engineering and the intuition which that practical experience builds is incalculable farmers flight competed against teams from india czech republic poland brazil mexico china and canada along with placing first overall farmers flight received first place in mission performance and second place in oral presentation learn more about texas a&ms sae design team and the annual sae aero design competition
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four faculty members of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university were recently recognized with international awards from the society of petroleum engineers (spe) dr dan hill regents professor and noble chair was awarded honorary membership the highest honor given by the spe for a lifetime of technical and service contributions "it is particularly humbling to receive this award in light of the company in our department i am joining " said hill referring to colleagues dr w john lee dr akhil datta-gupta dr thomas blasingame and dr jeff spath who also hold honorary memberships dr hisham nasr-el-din was awarded the anthony f lucas gold medal for his distinguished achievement in the identification and development of new technology and concepts the award comes with an automatic distinguished membership dr yucel akkutlu professor and rob l adams '40 professor in petroleum engineering will receive the lester c uren award this honor recognizes his high achievements in petroleum engineering technology he will also receive distinguished membership jointly with the award "it is truly a privilege " said akkutlu "this puts me on a shortlist of names with significant technical contributions to our field i feel in debt to my department my former academic supervisors and all my students for supporting me" dr marcelo laprea-bigott professor of engineering practice will receive distinguished membership due to his distinctive achievements in both the petroleum industry and the academic community i'm very grateful for my rewarding career and feel fortunate to be part of this fantastic department at texas a&m " said laprea-bigott "we push each other to perform and work toward achieving excellence together" "these are all very significant achievements " said dr jeff spath department head "i'm very proud of each of them and i'm proud to be part of such a distinguished and recognized faculty" the recipients will be recognized during the spe annual technical meeting and conference held virtually in october 2020 because nasr-el-din passed away on july 3 his award will be accepted posthumously by his family
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three doctoral students from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university won first place with their paper in the 2020 excellence in highway safety data award competition jointly administered by the federal highway administration (fhwa) and the institute of transportation engineers (ite)their award will be announced during the 2020 virtual ite annual meeting and their paper will be published in the ite journal later this yearthe paper titled safety criteria for selecting a smart corridor: random forest using hsis data from washington state proposed a two-step selection method with a machine learning algorithm to identify safety criteria for helping practitioners in selecting a corridor ready to implement smart technologies also known as a smart corridormy team and i are deeply honored to receive this award we are very proud of winning first place in the competition we believe that we represent not only ourselves but also texas a&m university said xiaoyu sky guo lead author civil doctoral student focusing on transportation and a graduate assistant researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) we are the first aggies winning this award and we hope this prestigious award gives us the recognition that can inspire other studentsyongxin peng also a graduate assistant researcher at tti and chaolun ma also contributed to the research of the paper all three students are active members of the texas a&m ite student chapterguo said she has wanted to compete for this award since she first learned of it in 2018 and shared her idea with peng and ma yongxin specializes in working with spatial and geographical data and chaolun is a very knowledgeable peer in the area of machine learning she said while we reviewed papers and gathered pieces about safety criteria for roadways many papers and reports by dr dominique lord came up and we found him to be an expert in the area of safety dr lord is very friendly and encourages collaboration and communication so it was not very hard to invite him to be our faculty advisorlord professor and ap wiley faculty fellow in the department worked with the three students from the beginning and reviewed their paper before submissionguo said conducting the research in a short time frame and communicating efficiently with her team impacted her as a student"leading a team to win a national competition/award boosted my confidence and highlighted my achievement " she said "it truly helps me believe that i am on the right track in pursuing an academic career i believe teamwork and team management is critical in the engineering field these days the gains from leading a team and knowing how to collaborate with others are sometimes more important than my gains from a piece of workthe excellence in highway safety data award which was created in 2016 encourages university students to use highway safety information system data with the intent of introducing potential future highway safety professionals to useful quality safety data the application of appropriate research methods to derive recommendations and the practice of using data to make decisions that advance highway safety
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radiation portal monitors are used around the world to detect the illegal transportation of radioactive material at border crossings and points of entry these portal monitors utilize scintillating detectors composed of polyvinyl toluene (pvt) plastic to screen vehicles and cargo for gamma-ray emissions that would indicate the presence of radioactive materials unfortunately the pvt plastic has a tendency to fog over time due to exposure to temperature and humidity fluctuations rainbow suh a graduate student with the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) is part of a research team led by nsspi deputy director dr craig marianno looking into solutions to the problem of pvt fogging this work is sponsored by the united states department of energys national nuclear security administration (nnsa) according to suh recent studies confirmed pvt is susceptible to specific environmental changes and can cause radiation monitoring activities to slow down or cease if left unchecked pvt fogging represents a change in opacity that can lead to reduced light collection in the photomultiplier tube of the detector suhs work has led to the development of an opacity monitoring system capable of observing changes in opacity in deployed detectors suh says this remote system is necessary to determine the state of health of pvt detectors and extend the operational lifetime as part of the ongoing effort to combat nuclear and radiological smuggling suhs final design consists of an array of multiple light-emitting diodes (leds) as a light source an optical sensor and a microcontroller board for data capture and transmission suh prototyped and tested the system for feasibility at texas a&m university on a small scale and then performed testing on full-scale pvt panels in an environmental chamber at oak ridge national laboratory tested over multiple hours of extreme temperature cycling the system was able to register opacity changes in the pvt detector the testing demonstrated not only the ability of the system to monitor the opacity of the pvt over time it also demonstrated the ability of the hardware to resist extreme environmental conditions
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this system could be deployed to monitor the health of pvt in detectors at points of entry around the world to ensure that the detectors continue to work as intended to prevent radioactive materials from being smuggled across borders this work has been concluded and the design of the system was very successful as an engineer i could not have asked for a better challenge as a basis for my masters thesis from the very beginning my work felt important and the impact it would make was clear suh said having successfully defended her thesis suh will be graduating with a masters degree in nuclear engineering with a specialization in nuclear nonproliferation from texas a&m this summer she previously earned her bachelors degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m with minors in physics and mathematics she has participated in multiple international experiences including the 2019 international nuclear facilities experiences in the netherlands germany and austria and an externship to france switzerland and austria regarding nuclear waste management she was recently selected as a fellow in the nnsa graduate fellowship program
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dr amy epps martin professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and a researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute has been named one of 20 women of asphalt to watch in 2020the list includes women in leadership positions influencers thought leaders and newcomers to the asphalt industry all have demonstrated success in the asphalt industry affected positive change served as a mentor and given back to their community i am honored and humbled to be recognized by my peers as one of the 20 women of asphalt to watch in 2020 i strive to continue to be a role model of integrity excellence and balance in all that i do epps martin saidduring her more than 22 years in civil engineering epps martin said among the most significant achievements in her career is the positive impact she has had on approximately 1 800 students including mentoring 42 graduate students she is also an accomplished researcher her work is balanced between fundamental theory and practical science and led to the development of performance-based specifications for asphalt pavement materials national guidelines for the design and construction of specialty asphalt mixtures as well as the development of sustainable and durable asphalt materialsin 2019 she was elected a fellow of the american society of civil engineers and to the board of directors as director-at-large for the association of asphalt paving technologistswomen of asphalt is a national coalition supporting women in all aspects of the asphalt industry through mentoring education and advocacy and by encouraging women to seek careers in the asphalt industrylisten as she passionately discusses her pride in educating and elevating future women in the industry
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cell phone batteries often heat up and at times can burst into flames in most cases the culprit behind such incidents can be traced back to lithium batteries despite providing long-lasting electric currents that can keep devices powered up lithium batteries can internally short circuit heating up the device researchers at texas a&m university have invented a technology that can prevent lithium batteries from heating and failing their carbon nanotube design for the batterys conductive plate called the anode enables the safe storage of a large quantity of lithium ions thereby reducing the risk of fire further the researchers said that their new anode architecture will help lithium batteries charge faster than current commercially available batteries we have designed the next generation of anodes for lithium batteries that are efficient at producing large and sustained currents needed to quickly charge devices said juran noh a material sciences graduate student in dr choongho yus laboratory in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering also this new architecture prevents lithium from accumulating outside the anode which over time can cause unintended contact between the contents of the battery's two compartments which is one of the major causes of device explosions their results are published in the march issue of the journal nano letters when lithium batteries are in use charged particles move between the batterys two compartments electrons given up by lithium atoms move from one side of the battery to the other on the other hand lithium ions travel the other direction when charging the battery lithium ions and electrons go back to their original compartments hence the property of the anode or the electrical conductor that houses lithium ions within the battery plays a decisive role in the batterys properties a commonly used anode material is graphite in these anodes lithium ions are inserted between layers of graphite however noh said this design limits the amount of lithium ions that can be stored within the anode and even requires more energy to pull the ions out of the graphite during charging these batteries also have a more insidious problem sometimes lithium ions do not evenly deposit on the anode instead they accumulate on the anodes surface in chunks forming tree-like structures called dendrites over time the dendrites grow and eventually pierce through the material that separates the battery's two compartments this breach causes the battery to short circuit and can set the device ablaze growing dendrites also affect the batterys performance by consuming lithium ions rendering them unavailable for generating a current noh said another anode design involves using pure lithium metal instead of graphite compared to graphite anodes those with lithium metal have a much higher energy content per unit mass or energy density but they too can fail in the same catastrophic way due to the formation of dendrites to address this problem noh and her teammates designed anodes using highly conductive lightweight materials called carbon nanotubes these carbon nanotube scaffolds contain spaces or pores for lithium ions to enter and deposit however these structures do not bind to lithium ions favorably
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hence they made two other carbon nanotube anodes with slightly different surface chemistry one laced with an abundance of molecular groups that can bind to lithium ions and another that had the same molecular groups but in a smaller quantity with these anodes they built batteries to test the propensity to form dendrites as expected the researchers found that scaffolds made with just carbon nanotubes did not bind to lithium ions well consequently there was almost no dendrite formation but the batterys ability to produce large currents was also compromised on the other hand scaffolds with an excess of binding molecules formed many dendrites shortening the batterys lifetime however the carbon nanotube anodes with an optimum quantity of the binding molecules prevented the formation of dendrites in addition a vast quantity of lithium ions could bind and spread along the scaffolds surface thereby boosting the batterys ability to produce large sustained currents when the binding molecular groups are abundant lithium metal clusters made from lithium ions end up just clogging the pores on the scaffolds said noh but when we had just the right amount of these binding molecules we could ‘unzip the carbon nanotube scaffolds at just certain places allowing lithium ions to come through and bind on to the entire surface of the scaffolds rather than accumulate on the outer surface of the anode and form dendrites noh said that their top-performing anodes handle currents five times more than commercially-available lithium batteries she noted this feature is particularly useful for large-scale batteries such as those used in electric cars that require quick charging building lithium metal anodes that are safe and have long lifetimes has been a scientific challenge for many decades said noh the anodes we have developed overcome these hurdles and are an important initial step toward commercial applications of lithium metal batteries other contributors to this research include jian tan from the mechanical engineering department; and digvijay rajendra yadav peng wu and dr kelvin xie from the materials science and engineering department this research is funded by the national science foundation
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deborah 83 and kenneth delano jr ‘84 have established the deborah 83 and kenneth delano jr 84 deans scholars award this award will provide one or more scholarships to full-time incoming freshman students who have excelled academically demonstrated outstanding leadership and are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the college of engineering at texas a&m university as first-generation aggies deborah and kenneth each decided to attend texas a&m for a multitude of reasons deborah chose texas a&m because it was an excellent engineering school for the study of computer science because of my degree and experience gained through the years i have been able to secure work easily no matter where we have lived she said similarly kenneth chose texas a&m because he wanted to go to a university with an outstanding engineering program and stay in texas because of the lower tuition costs texas a&m fit the bill and helped me pay my college expenses with a scholarship " he said deborah and kenneth wanted to establish this scholarship with texas a&m for a few reasons texas a&m was our home for more than four years we had some professors who really cared that we learned and we made good friendships deborah said we also both received scholarships to assist in achieving our goal of getting our education and now we want to give that gift to others since they got married deborah and kenneth have wanted to give back to texas a&m and help others get a college degree in engineering we have established several scholarships in the college of engineering at texas a&m and are always looking for new areas that can benefit from financial assistance and which we feel are good programs deborah said thus this scholarship the deans scholar award was established to aid select freshmen achieve the goal of becoming an engineer the students we have met who have received our scholarships are truly exceptional people texas a&m has helped them grow and given them the foundation to succeed in life and in their careers kenneth said deborah and kenneth hope their gift will help increase the number of engineers around the world texas a&m will provide them the opportunity to learn and make a difference in new fields with growth and improvements in existing fields deborah said the delanos have two children cynthia and michael and although neither are aggies they hope their grandson braydon will attend texas a&m in the future
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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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as the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge worldwide there is an urgent need for anything that can bring us closer to a vaccine or treatment that will protect people from future infections sars-cov-2 (also known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) is the virus that infects cells and causes the coronavirus disease in humans researchers could theoretically eliminate the threat of the coronavirus if they can discover how to prevent this virus from binding to cells in the first place preventing this binding is easier said than done but the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) has received funding from the national institute for innovation in manufacturing biopharmaceuticals (niimbl) to help find a way to do just that nctm is producing spike proteins to identify antibodies that can attach to the sars-cov-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain and prevent the virus from binding to key sites thus obstructing the virus from entering and infecting human cells there are hundreds of virus-fighting antibodies in plasma and using recombinant spike proteins is the fastest way to detect the correct ones we need to fight covid-19 said dr zivko nikolov professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering at texas a&m university and director of nctm
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nctms strategy is derived from what happened with dr kent brantly who survived ebola then donated his plasma to help others recover as well doctors and scientists identified antibodies in his blood that could recognize the ebola virus and prevent it from multiplying further in patients similarly nctm researchers are making versions of covid-19 spike proteins that can be used to measure antibody responses to the sars-cov-2 virus spike proteins in order to aid in the recombinant development of these antibodies in the future nctms spike proteins will also be useful once a covid-19 vaccination is available beyond screening convalescent plasma the spike proteins will be needed to determine if protective responses are being generated in response to the vaccination how long responses persist and if having antibodies to the spike protein provides a person with immunity such that they can safely return to the workplace without fear of reinfection said tees research scientist dr susan woodard nctm is collaborating with the army research lab (arl) whose research affiliates have been studying coronavirus spike proteins since 2013 the most promising constructs designed by arl partners have been shared with nctm to produce more proteins the proteins that nctm makes in cell culture will be provided to arl and they will work with houston methodist hospital to use the purified material in serology assays to screen donors for convalescent plasma therapy arl will also use nctms proteins to screen monoclonal antibodies that neutralize the virus the purified spike proteins are important for determining the strength of antibodies present in recovered covid-19 patients and antibodies made against the spike proteins are expected to prevent the virus from binding to and infecting human cells i am excited to scale up the effort to produce spike proteins and to deliver hundreds of milligrams of purified proteins to collaborators at the arl houston methodist hospital the us department of commerces national institute of standards and technology and niimbl nikolov added i truly believe nctm is uniquely qualified to respond to the education training and applied research needs of texas a&m university and the broader community this work was performed under financial assistance award 70nanb20h037 from the u s department of commerce national institute of standards and technology
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the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) is a first-of-its-kind multi-disciplinary workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center located at texas a&m university in college station texas the nctms workforce development mission is to provide education training and outreach programs to produce a highly skilled workforce for the vital us and global pharmaceutical industry
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dr hae-kwon jeong professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2020 institute award for excellence in industrial gases technology by the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) this award recognizes an individual's sustained excellence in contributing to the advancement of technology in the production distribution and application of industrial gases jeongs research focuses primarily on chemical purification and separation specifically jeong and his research team have developed a novel membrane-based method to separate light olefins from paraffins this method utilizes metal-organic frameworks as the membrane material especially zeolitic-imidazolate frameworks (zif) which are composed of metal ions (usually zn2+ or co2+) and imidazole-derived organic linkers traditionally zif membranes while quite effective in olefin- paraffin separations have been quite expensive to produce however jeong has developed a method that drastically reduces the effective thickness of the zif membranes while increasing the membrane area drastically reducing the cost of production jeong says his research group is focused on refining and scaling up the production of the membranes currently my group has been developing innovative strategies for large-scale production of tunable zif membranes for custom gas separations jeong hopes the award will lead to wider adoption and more research in the area of zif-based separations this recognition will certainly draw more interest from both academia and industries finally jeong acknowledged his supporters and contributors i would like to thank my academic advisor dr michael tsapatsis at johns hopkins for his training and guidance also i want to thank my former and current students and postdocs for their hard work lastly i'm indebted to the department for the support
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dr hisham nasr-el-din professor and holder of the john edgar holt endowed chair passed away on july 3 2020 he leaves behind a legacy of service respect professionalism and kindness not soon forgotten in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university nasr-el-din was the recipient of many accolades during his lifetime from the department college and university as well as numerous society of petroleum engineering (spe) honors that highlighted his distinguished achievements over a long career in industry and academia most recently he was named winner of the prestigious anthony f lucas gold medal award from spe of which he was also a distinguished member as well a prior recipient of the spe faculty award but perhaps one of the most significant honors and the one that defines why he was such a beloved faculty member was the 2017 student employment impact award he received from texas a&m nasr-el-din maintained eight scientific research laboratories in the petroleum engineering department his student researchers in those labs numbered from 20 to over 40 per year he worked tirelessly to provide financial support for all of them by seeking out graduate research assistantships student assistant positions and funding from industry partnerships and consulting work these efforts enabled his students to work on real-world problems in the laboratory and collaborate with industry leaders earning advantages for them that led to internships and permanent employment after graduation most importantly nasr-el-din ran his research group as if part of a company drawing on his 20 years of experience as a researcher for saudi aramco attendance was taken every morning researchers reported to their offices or labs during the day and were held to standards of laboratory safety equal to or higher than those in industry he read all of their daily reports and responded with answers or guidance so his students would have realistic expectations ample experience and practice fulfilling the level of expectation industry would demand yet this same professor who demanded respect and professionalism from his students also served them with kindness often called dr hisham by his students who dubbed themselves hishams army he was humble and approachable but a firm and realistic mentor his door was always open to those with questions regarding research or life and he organized his student workspaces to encourage those from different cultures to mingle with and learn from one another since his death countless tributes have poured in over social media following the hashtag #hishamstrong colleagues and current students and former students have already begun supporting causes important to him including establishing memorial graduate funding and a campaign to provide clean water wells in his name to needy communities in the middle east something he cared deeply about remarks left by those who knew him memorialize his life in the best way possible dr hisham is a true example of a professional who was passionate about his work he definitely transferred that attitude to all his students in a personal sense he saw a chance to help and never hesitated to do so wrote dr ahmed rabie he fought for me supported me professionally and personally he was so patient humble wise wrote former student khatere sokhanvarian everyone's life needs a shining light that paves the way to unimaginable opportunities and circumstances dr hisham nasr-el-din was that light in my life wrote current student raja ramanathan he had the highest of manners an inspirational soul that sparked enthusiasm planted resilience and discovered passion a petroleum engineering guru with unfathomable professional generosity wrote current student ahmed elkady my world was a much better place when i had him in it he was more of a mentor than a boss: firm but with gentle guidance wrote gia alexander nasr-el-dins staff editor he was a paragon of humility in a state of greatness we are bidding farewell to a distinguished world-renowned scientist a prodigious researcher a gifted teacher a great educator a true gentleman and a shining example to all of us wrote dr george moridis to say that he will be missed is an understatement he was a kind man with a big heart and a giant in our discipline wrote dr eduardo gildin i have been honored and humbled to have served beside him wrote dr jerome schubert dr nasr-el-din by far outperformed everyone else on every imaginable metric he was beyond doubt our department's greatest engineer and educator wrote dr ruud weijermars now he will be allowed to rest from a meaningful and fruitful life his memory and legacy lives on
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researchers in the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory are working to develop a drone with the ability to morph while in flight to better fit its mission for example shortening and lengthening the wing for efficiency and speed to begin their work they turned to the expertise of researchers at texas a&m university for assistance with the complex analysis and design stage
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tackling part of this first step a team led by dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering developed a novel fluid-structure interaction algorithm this vital tool will provide the army research laboratorys researchers with a streamlined means to analyze the interaction between fluid and air flows and flexible or adaptable solid structures in their pursuit of a transforming drone in aerospace a really common problem that we have to consider is the interaction between fluid flows and the solid structure that your vehicle is comprised of said hartl that analyzing of how the fluid pushes and deforms the structure and how the changing shape of the structure changes fluid flow in a simultaneous way is what is known as fluid structure interaction take an airplane for example its design is largely based on aerodynamics and should stay stiff and not change shape mid-flight however if the wings were allowed to lengthen on longer international flights the design would need to go back to square one because the shape change alters how the air is flowing around the original design interacts with the actual physical structure of the plane when you decide to morph a structure it completely changes how the flow is acting which changes how the pressure pushes on the structure which changes how the structure works said hartl fluid-structure interaction in morphing vehicles is much more complicated because motion is intentional so that's why we leaned into this problem; we needed a better way to solve fluid-structure interaction traditionally fluid-structure interaction is analyzed by running individual fluid and structural codes one at a time updating the pressure one increment at a time to see how it affects the structure and then updating the structural shape to see how it affects the pressure this impacts the design process because if any aspect of the design is changed the expensive fluid-structure interaction scheme has to be redone this could take days of computation going back and forth to find the sweet spot for design
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to fix this hartl and his team developed an algorithm that substantially cuts down the computational cost by simultaneously running analyses for various pressures and structure shapes and then using mathematical tools to stitch together two matching solutions the ability to map the intersections of various pressure and structure points grants researchers the ability to design redesign and morph their structures as they please without needing to constantly run additional analyses cutting down the time it takes to produce this new design from days to a few runs hartl said the concept is exciting i know that up until this point weve basically been unable to do serious design studies on morphing aircrafts because of this computational expense problem said hartl frankly this is one reason why there's not a lot of morphing airplane solutions the only way to have done this in the past was to design build and test and one primary problem with structures that can move is that wrong answers quickly lead to catastrophic failures the team is comprised of collaborators from the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory and texas a&m this is an example of the potential of having army futures command and the army research laboratory integrated with texas a&m said hartl this algorithm and idea are only a couple years old and their team was able to harvest it and use it because they were here they were the first ones to hear and see about this new way of solving a problem and immediately began applying it to their work
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for more information view the teams publication uncoupled method for massively parallelizable 3d fluid-structure interaction analysis and design
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despite the abundance of renewable energy sources like solar and wind the main hurdle in fully utilizing them in power generation and other potential uses is their intermittence and unpredictability solar energy is only available during the day and wind energy depends on daily weather patterns to investigate efficient ways to tap into these natural resources the department of energy has awarded a three-year grant of $15 million to dr patrick shamberger and a team of faculty from texas a&m university with this funding shamberger will direct his efforts in discovering and developing phase-change materials that can be used to both store heat during times when solar energy is readily available and release heat on demand this project comes from the realization that storing energy in the form of thermal energy in phase-change materials is a far more efficient and cost-effective form of energy storage said shamberger assistant professor in the department of materials science and engineering the targets of our program are less than $15 per kilowatts per hour which is lower than the cost of storing that energy as electricity in a battery as their name suggests phase-change materials change their physical state in response to heat that is they convert from solid to liquid when they store heat and liquid to solid when they release their stored energy moreover these phase-change materials can be designed to be reheated and cooled many thousands of times without compromising their functionality building heating and cooling account for over 30% of the total residential electricity demand by using phase-change materials excess heat above a certain set temperature can be stored maintaining the ambient temperature at a constant value during the day at night this heat stored in these materials can be used for keeping homes warm and for other purposes thus these materials can directly contribute to reducing a complete dependency on the power grid for electricity he said however state-of-the-art commercial phase-change materials used in regulating building temperature are dominated by paraffins these wax-like materials have a number of deficiencies including flammability low energy storage density and low thermal conductivity these drawbacks have limited the use of paraffins to store thermal energy in buildings as an alternative approach the team of researchers will investigate the use of inorganic salt hydrates to store thermal energy these compounds are cheaper and store more energy per unit volume but they too have their own set of limitations that need to be addressed before they are a viable option inorganic salt hydrates require a comprehensive suite of associated technologies to reduce their inherent limitations like supercooling and material corrosion said shamberger this team of outstanding researchers is really built around addressing different aspects of advancing salt hydrate eutectics from ‘candidate materials to commercially feasible alternatives to accomplish the goal of reversibly storing thermal energy in buildings in that regard the team will focus on the discovery and testing of new inorganic salts using a combination of experiments and computational modeling stabilizing these compounds through the use of a hydrogel matrix and microencapsulation and improving the thermal conductivity of these salts by embedding them into a carbon-based matrix among other aims in the coming years as solar and wind energy change the landscape of how consumers use energy to power their homes and businesses a heightened emphasis on efficiently utilizing these energy resources without boosting costs is likely with this grant shamberger said the team of texas a&m researchers will be able to make important strides in the area of renewable energy storage and conversion using phase-change materials this funding will be instrumental in shaping next-generation technologies that will enable the use of energy more productively and efficiently by providing an alternate source of electrical energy at the demand site said shamberger shamberger shares the award with dr svetlana sukhishvili and dr emily pentzer from the department of materials sciences and engineering dr jonathan felts and dr choongho yu from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and dr charles culp from the department of architecture at texas a&m university
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four interdisciplinary projects led by researchers in the texas a&m university college of engineering will share $7 million in funding from round 3 of texas a&ms x-grants program an initiative of the 10-year $100 million presidents excellence fund these interdisciplinary projects have the potential for significant advances in areas such as cancer and covid-19 therapies natural disaster response and mitigation novel space management mental health migration behaviors water quality and improvements to the efficiency of current technologies said dr mark a barteau vice president for research titles and team leaders for each of the four engineering projects are: texas a&m lunar surface experiments program dr jeffrey bullard professor department of materials science and engineering and zachry department of civil and environmental engineering disaster city digital twin: integrating machine and human intelligence to augment flood resilience dr ali mostafavi assistant professor zachry department of civil and environmental engineering engineering nanomedicine for non-invasive cancer therapy dr shiren wang associate professor wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering integrated nanophotonics for next-generation internet of things (iot) dr zi jing wong assistant professor department of aerospace engineering the round 3 funded projects represent 80 faculty members and other researchers from eight colleges agriculture and life sciences architecture engineering geosciences medicine pharmacy science and veterinary medicine the texas a&m health science center and the qatar and galveston campuses there were 142 one-page proposals submitted to the program 43 of which were chosen for preliminary proposals twenty-two were selected to submit final proposals
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high blood pressure is the single biggest risk factor for heart disease stroke and other health problems the only way to know if youre at risk is to have it checked often while one in three american adults has high blood pressure about 20% of people are unaware that they have it because it is largely symptomless researchers at texas a&m university hope to help remedy this with a wrist-worn system that monitors blood pressure during sleep
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dr roozbeh jafari a professor in the biomedical engineering computer science and engineering and electrical and computer engineering departments and his team have received a $36 million grant from the national institutes of health (nih) to create a system a user can wear all night while they sleep for constant readings blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of arteries as the heart pumps blood high blood pressure also referred to as hypertension is when that force is too high and begins harming the body if left untreated it will eventually cause damage to the heart and blood vessels regular blood pressure monitoring systems use a mercury-based (or the digital equivalent) inflatable cuff-based sphygmomanometer many factors can affect blood pressure readings like caffeine stress and exertion and most people do not have theirs checked outside a doctors office there is a significant need to understand how blood pressure fluctuates throughout the day and night said jafari nobody knows that and there's really no technology that can capture this continuously jafari said there is a value to measuring blood pressure continuously in the natural context of the users environment especially during sleep without being disturbed by the instrument but the nature of the current cuff device allows for only infrequent measurements and its somewhat invasive nature and associated discomfort prohibits additional nocturnal measurements the objective of this research a collaborative project with the yale school of medicine is to create an unobtrusive wrist-worn cuffless blood pressure monitor for measurement and identification of nocturnal nondipping hypertension (when theres a smaller decrease in nocturnal arterial blood pressure) the research which began initially about three years ago includes extensive validation with state-of-the-art ambulatory blood pressure monitors at nighttime in the presence of varied treatment models
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their proposed technology will be able to provide a wealth of information to physicians help identify certain short-term dynamics and variations of blood pressure and allow effective monitoring of response to medication among other things nighttime blood pressure is actually a really good indicator for the health of the cardiovascular system jafari said at nighttime typically the body itself shows its true behavior you and i can get stressed out we can have a relaxing time and you could be very active physically right all those specific stimuli will impact the blood pressure but at nighttime you don't have that so you're sort of having a baseline another significance of nighttime blood pressure is that you don't have a lot of movement the movements themselves introduce a significant amount of noise and challenges with respect to capturing clean signals jafari said nocturnal measurements would obviously provide additional prognostic value in identifying risks but despite these benefits no wearable noninvasive device for continuous blood pressure monitoring exists on the market simply because none have been reliable enough to be considered clinical grade the researchers set about developing a robust and reliable blood pressure monitor that uses bioimpedance sensors (a measure of how well the body impedes electric current flow) and for the first time demonstrates clinical-grade reliability they use sensors that measure pulse-wave velocity (pwv) along with several other derivatives for cardiovascular parameters including heart rate and blood volume changes in arteries which correlate with the blood pressure the system will incorporate a hardware design to localize the underlying vascular system of the body and focus on arterial sites for enhanced accuracy the device will include a motion sensor to take into account the users movements and the contact quality and reliability of the measurements advanced machine learning techniques leveraging both general and personalized models will be developed to convert bioimpedance measurements to blood pressure
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researchers hope to validate the system and analytics in both a healthy patient cohort and a hypertensive cohort learning the impact that nocturnal nondipping hypertension and anti-hypertensive treatments have on pwv and other correlated cardiovascular and blood pressure estimates jafari said that while they have been working on their device for the past three years with a previous nih grant with the new funding they will begin two new phases of the project at texas a&m where they will create novel techniques and methods will refine their prototype design and continue testing it so the next version will be fully wearable and effectively would look like a smartwatch jafari said once we have that we are going to start the evaluation of that technology on a cohort of human subjects the last phase of the project will be at the yale school of medicine where they will do extensive testing on hypertension patients who are on different medications eventually their hope is that after decades of relying on the inflatable cuff-based technique this new system could represent a significant change in how blood pressure is measured we still have more battles to fight but i think the likelihood of success at this point is very high jafari said our objective actually is to build a system that can work for anyone even somebody who has absolutely no problem with blood pressure but the ultimate objective is to enable anybody and everybody to have this kind of technology at their disposal other collaborators on the project include dr harlan krumholz and dr erica spatz yale school of medicine; dr melissa grunlan department of biomedical engineering; dr tom ferris department of industrial and systems engineering; and dr bobak mortazavi department of computer science and engineering
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dr aakash tyagi professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been appointed holder of the zachry teaching professorship i in the college of engineering the endowed chair appointment was effective june 1 the professorship was established to strengthen the preparation of students in the college for effective careers in business and industry through seminars internships etc by involving professors of practice from those sectors in the teaching program who are in a unique position to leverage their contacts in industry tyagi joined the department as its first professor of practice in 2014 after 20 years of service at intel he received his doctorate in computer engineering and masters in electrical and computer engineering from the university of louisiana at lafayette and his bachelors degree in electronics and communication from the kamla nehru institute of technology his research interests include hardware verification secure computing and high-performance computing architectures
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the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) is paying tribute to dr je-chin han for his lifetime of service to engineering with a 2020 asme honorary membership according to the announcement the award recognizes han the marcus c easterling 30 chair professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university for his eminent achievement and distinguished service in the area of heat transfer through inspiring leadership through education and through research particularly for pioneering experiments in gas turbine blade cooling technology development that have had major impacts on increasing operational durability performance and efficiency one of the societys highest honors the award recognizes distinguished service that contributes significantly to the attainment of the goals of the engineering profession the honor was first awarded in the asmes founding year 1880 and is awarded each year to up to five honorees i am humbled and honored to be elected to the asme honorary member list said han i wish this recognition will increase our mechanical engineering faculty reputation and enhance the visibility of texas a&m university i thank my family graduate research assistants colleagues and mentors for their continued support and inspiration a formal presentation of the award is planned to take place monday november 16 during the asme mechanical engineering congress & exposition
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col rosendo ross guieb has been named the first executive director of the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) effective today guieb moves from the senior staff of army futures command (afc) to the new role of managing the bcdc a complex being built on the 2 000-acre rellis campus in bryan texas to help accelerate military innovation ross will be integral to our program and will keep serving our country in this new role said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories for the texas a&m university system and dean of engineering his experience will help ensure that the strategic partnership between afc and the texas a&m system remains perfectly aligned
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guieb will manage the vision goals and execution strategies of the bcdc while working to expand relationships with other key stakeholders in national defense innovation he will work alongside dr john e hurtado deputy director and chief technology officer of bcdc who better to lead this critical national defense initiative said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system ross understands the challenges of modernization inside and out he will be instrumental as we assist the army with next-generation battlefield readiness
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to learn more see the announcement about guieb's appointment as executive director and the story of his background on the bcdc website
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over the last few years there has been a significant increase in the use of twitter to share updates seek help and report emergencies during a disaster social media platforms can be instrumental for keeping track of events like damage to personal property or injuries during natural disasters however algorithms keeping track of social media posts to signal the occurrence of natural disasters must be swift so that relief operations can be mobilized immediately a team of researchers led by dr ruihong huang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has developed a novel weakly supervised approach that can train machine learning algorithms quickly to recognize tweets related to disasters because of the sudden nature of disasters theres not much time available to build an event recognition system said huang our goal is to be able to detect life-threatening events using individual social media messages and recognize similar events in the affected areas the researchers described their findings in the proceedings from the association for the advancement of artificial intelligences 34th conference on artificial intelligence texts on social media platforms like twitter can be categorized using standard algorithms called classifiers this sorting algorithm separates data into labeled classes or categories such as how spam filters in email service providers scan incoming emails and classify them as either spam or not spam based on its prior knowledge of what spam and non-spam messages are most classifiers are an integral part of machine learning algorithms that make predictions based on carefully labeled sets of data in the past machine learning algorithms have been used for event detection based on tweets or a burst of words within tweets to ensure a reliable classifier for the machine learning algorithms human annotators have to manually label large amounts of data instances one by one which usually takes several days sometimes even weeks or months the researchers also found that it is essentially impossible to find a keyword that does not have more than one meaning on social media depending on the context of the tweet for example if the word dead is used as a keyword it will pull in tweets talking about a variety of topics such as a phone battery being dead or the television series the walking dead we have to be able to know which tweets that contain the predetermined keywords are relevant to the disaster and separate them from the tweets that contain the correct keywords but are not relevant said huang to build more reliable labeled datasets the researchers first used an automatic clustering algorithm to put them into small groups next a domain expert looked at the context of the tweets in each group to identify if it was relevant to the disaster the labeled tweets were then used to train the classifier how to recognize the relevant tweets using data gathered from the most impacted time periods for hurricanes harvey and florence the researchers found that their data labeling method and overall weakly-supervised system took one to two person-hours instead of the 50 person-hours that were required to go through thousands of carefully annotated tweets using the supervised approach despite the classifiers overall good performance they also observed that the system still missed several tweets that were relevant but used a different vocabulary than the predetermined keywords users can be very creative when discussing a particular type of event using the predefined keywords so the classifier would have to be able to handle those types of tweets said huang theres room to further improve the systems coverage in the future the researchers will look to explore how to extract information about the users location so first responders will know exactly where to dispatch their resources other contributors to this research include wenlin yao a doctoral student supervised by huang from the computer science and engineering department; dr ali mostafavi and cheng zhang from the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering; and shiva saravanan a local high school student (who is currently attending princeton university) that interned in the natural language processing lab at texas a&m this work is supported by funds from the national science foundation
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a researcher at texas a&m university is launching a project to better understand how light can affect neurons in the brain dr alex walsh assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering recently received a grant through the air force office of scientific researchs (afsor) young investigator research program the grant supports walshs research to better understand why neurons in the brain are affected by infrared light we know that the infrared light induces a thermal gradient so it heats the neurons it happens very fast within milliseconds and changes the neurons electrical signals walsh said but we dont know how one hypothesis is that the stimulation affects the ion channels in neurons but responses are observed even in cells that lack light- and heat-sensitive channels with the air force grant walsh will pursue research to test if theres a relationship between infrared light and cellular metabolism if the infrared light is impacting how cells produce energy it could be modulating the neurons activity because ion channels need energy to function we use infrared lasers and fiber optics to deliver the infrared light on top of the cell and then use electronics to shape the pulses of the light to be milliseconds in duration walsh said we can apply pulse trains or single pulses
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walsh said one challenge that has limited the broader field of studying infrared lights impact on cells is that optimizing parameters is difficult everyone uses different laser sources wavelengths and pulse parameters so comparing studies across different labs is challenging walsh said her lab has applied for a grant to buy multiple laser sources for a head-to-head comparison of different wavelengths rather than using just one which can make replicability difficult being able to stimulate neurons to control cell behavior could have a wide variety of applications in the healthcare field walsh said many diseases ranging from seizures and pain management to heart arrhythmias could be treated by stimulating neurons to turn off another application involves turning the neurons on to interact with medical devices current prosthetic devices are integrated with the brain through electrical stimulation but there are limitations that impact the precision of the connection there may be times we want to stimulate neurons for man-machine interfacing if you have a machine like an artificial leg and you want to be able to control it the infrared light could be a precise way to tune biological responses walsh said she is also interested in learning if infrared light impacts other cell types as this may provide a light-based technology to control cell function
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blue whirls – small spinning blue flames that produce almost no soot when they burn – have attracted great interest since their discovery in 2016 in part because they represent a potential new avenue for low-emission combustion now a team of researchers at the university of maryland (umd) and texas a&m university has identified how these intriguing whirls are structured their findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal science advances on august 12 the team includes now-graduated umd aerospace engineering doctoral students joseph d chung and xiao zhang working with dr elaine s oran tees eminent research professor at texas a&m and previously dr glenn l martin professor in umd's a james clark school of engineering and dr carolyn r kaplan of the department of aerospace engineering at umd using high-performance computing methods at the university of maryland's deepthought2 cluster and other computer systems the researchers showed that a blue whirl is composed of three different flames – a diffusion flame and a premixed rich and lean flame – all of which meet in a fourth structure a triple flame that appears as a whirling blue ring the researchers also found that vortex breakdown – a fluid instability that occurs in swirling flows – enables the blue-whirl structure to emerge "the flame and flow structure revealed by the simulations serves as a fundamental base to further investigate how to create the blue whirl in a more controlled way " said zhang "it leads pathways to answering more complex questions" "examples of such questions are: how can we create blue whirls on different scales can we bypass the transitional sooty dangerous fire whirl stage and create the stable and clean blue whirl directly the newly developed algorithms and models also provide great exploring tools to find these answers " chung said blue whirls were initially discovered in 2016 by oran working with dr michael gollner previously with the department of fire protection engineering and now at the university of california berkeley and dr huahua xiao previously in the department of aerospace engineering at umd and now at the university of science and technology in hefei china at the time they were investigating the behavior of a known phenomenon – the fire whirl also known as fire tornado – when it occurs on a water base "blue whirls evolve from traditional yellow fire whirls " oran said "the yellow color is due to radiating soot particles which form when there is not enough oxygen to burn the fuel completely "blue in the whirl indicates there is enough oxygen for complete combustion which means less or no soot and is therefore a cleaner burn we now know that blue whirl will burn all of the fuel available as it exits a burner or from a surface " she said support for the new study was provided by grants from the national science foundation the army research office the army research laboratory the minta martin endowment funds in the department of aerospace engineering at the university of maryland and the tees eminent professorship at texas a&m computations used in the new study were performed on the university of maryland deepthought2 cluster thunder from the air force research laboratory and stampede2 from the texas advanced computing center
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as oran – also once an a james clark distinguished professor while at umd – explained this research has potential applications in several industries including military aerospace and environmental for example the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement aims to utilize fire whirls as a cleaner alternative to oil spill cleanups what i'm hoping now that we know the structure of the blue whirl is that we will learn more about how to control the vortex breakdown process connected to the reactive flow oran said for example suppose we could learn enough about the particularly sensitive points in a fire whirl so that if a fireman saw a big fire whirl he would know where to put in a hose of water to extinguish it or in aerodynamics controlling the nonreactive vortex breakdown but now we have the tools and the focus to learn more and it all came from this little little fire dr xiao zhang will soon join oran at texas a&m as a post-doctoral researcher in the aerospace engineering department
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as new infectious diseases emerge and spread one of the best shots against novel pathogens is finding new medicines or vaccines but before drugs can be used as potential cures they have to be painstakingly screened for composition safety and purity among other things thus there is an increasing demand for technologies that can characterize chemical compounds quickly and in real time addressing this unmet need researchers at texas a&m university have now invented a new technology that can drastically downsize the apparatus used for raman spectroscopy a well-known technique that uses light to identify the molecular makeup of compounds raman benchtop setups can be up to a meter long depending on the level of spectroscopic resolution needed said dr pao-tai lin assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and the department of materials science and engineering we have designed a system that can potentially replace these bulky benchtops with a tiny photonic chip that can snugly fit within the tip of a finger in addition lin said that their innovative photonic device is also capable of high-throughput real-time chemical characterization and despite its size is at least 10 times more sensitive than conventional benchtop raman spectroscopy systems a description of their study is in the may issue of the journal analytical chemistry the basis of raman spectroscopy is the scattering of light by molecules when hit by light of a certain frequency molecules perform a dance rotating and vibrating upon absorbing the energy from the incident beam when they lose their excess energy molecules emit a lower-energy light which is characteristic of their shape and size this scattered light known as the raman spectra contains the fingerprints of the molecules within a sample typical benchtops for raman spectroscopy contain an assortment of optical instruments including lenses and gratings for manipulating light these free-space optical components take a lot of space and are a barrier for many applications where chemical sensing is required within tiny spaces or locations that are hard to reach also benchtops can be prohibitive for real-time chemical characterization as an alternative to traditional lab-based benchtop systems lin and his team turned to tube-like conduits called waveguides that can transport light with very little loss of energy while many materials can be used to make ultrathin waveguides the researchers chose a material called aluminum nitride since it produces a low raman background signal and is less likely to interfere with the raman signal coming from a test sample of interest
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to create the optical waveguide the researchers employed a technique used by industry for drawing circuit patterns on silicon wafers first using ultraviolet light they spun a light-sensitive material called nr9 onto a surface made of silica next by using ionized gas molecules they bombarded and coated aluminum nitride along the pattern formed by the nr9 finally they washed the assembly with acetone leaving behind an aluminum waveguide that was just tens of microns in diameter for testing the optical waveguide as a raman sensor the research team transported a laser beam through the aluminum nitride waveguide and illuminated a test sample containing a mixture of organic molecules upon examining the scattered light the researchers found that they could discern each type of molecule within the sample based on the raman spectra and with a sensitivity of at least 10 times more than traditional raman benchtops
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lin noted since their optical waveguides have very fine width many of them can be loaded onto a single photonic chip this architecture he said is very conducive to high-throughput real-time chemical sensing needed for drug development our optical waveguide design provides a novel platform for monitoring the chemical composition of compounds quickly reliably and continuously also these waveguides can be easily manufactured at an industrial scale by leveraging the already existing techniques to make semiconductor devices said lin this technology we believe has a direct benefit for not just pharmaceutical industries but even for other industries like petroleum where our sensors can be put along underground pipes to monitor the composition of hydrocarbons other contributors to this research are megan makela from the department of materials science and engineering; and paul gordon dandan tu cyril soliman dr gerard coté and dr kristen maitland from the department of biomedical engineering this research is funded by the national science foundation precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) engineering research center
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calvin t ladner pe ‘80 who served on the advisory council for the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university passed away aug 18 due to complications related to the coronavirus he was 62 ladner was the president ceo and chairman of the board of directors of lja engineering inc one of the largest and most successful employee-owned multi-discipline civil engineering firms in the united states after graduating from texas a&m with a bachelors degree in civil engineering ladner began his engineering career as an intern for the texas department of transportation in 1982 he joined winslow & associates and one of his first projects was a new master planned community called the woodlands after a merger between winslow & associates and lichliter jameson & associates in 1987 and then a later corporate integration with rust engineering in 1994 ladner led a spin-off of lja engineering & surveying inc to keep the name in perpetuity and honor the original founders at 39 years of age in 1997 ladner took the reins of lja engineering as president over the next 23 years lja grew from 40 to 1 200 employees and expanded from one office to 36 offices across the south they added multiple new engineering and consulting service lines and rose in the national engineering rankings from 381 to 65 on the engineering news-record top 500 ladner loomed large throughout the industry by reputation and ljas amazing achievements while under his leadership he was an example for everyone he met especially to other leaders on how to grow future and up-and-coming employees how to selflessly serve clients and how to operate a best place to work fast growth engineering firm ladner is survived by his wife sandy; his son stuart daughter-in-law dana and grandson lucas; his daughter caroline and her partner andrew; as well as many dearly loved family members treasured friends and respected colleagues the funeral service will be live streamed on forest park westheimer funeral home's facebook page at 10 am on thursday sept 3
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due to covid-19 higher education institutions around the world have had to adapt to meet the needs of their students virtual classrooms have become a necessity not just an option navigating virtual zoom classes as a student can be frustrating and difficult to stay organized every zoom session requires an identification code and password which can become overwhelming if you have multiple meetings one after another additionally this information is often buried in an email and difficult to find when needed at texas a&m university department of engineering technology and industrial distribution junior jonathan samuel realized quickly that there had to be a unified solution to these problems using his knowledge of programming with embedded systems and digital electronics samuel created a browser extension called zoom utils
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his extension is an intuitive faster way to keep track of notify and launch zoom meetings encompassed in one application instead of students having to manually look through their emails for their classes or even create bookmarks that dont directly open the zoom application zoom utils allows students to input their classes just once and the extension takes care of the rest there is also a built-in system to detect zoom links allowing zoom utils to add them to the extension for greater accessibility for students while samuel created the extension on his own he maintains that he could not have done it all alone i have enlisted the help of a few of my fellow aggies as well as my friends back home to try to spread the extension around and help more students says samuel at my internship at dell i made use of similar technology and applied many of those solutions and knowledge to this project furthermore working at provost it specifically the web content management team who builds many of the sites for the university has helped me to grow in learning about accessibility as well as web development in my day-to-day work which has really influenced the way i made the extension
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this extension is not only useful for students but can even help people who might be not used to the zoom application such as small children and the elderly with its auto-join function once you set up zoom utils the computer can automatically join users who may not know how to use zoom
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to use the extension visit zoomutilscom or go to your web browsers add-on store and install zoom utils for free
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dr tracy hammond professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was recently named the director of the institute for engineering education and innovation (ieei) the appointment is effective sept 1 and she will devote 40% of her effort to lead the ieei i am thrilled at the opportunity provided to me by the college of engineering hammond said i look forward to bringing our already excellent faculty to even greater heights ieei is a center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) its mission is to serve as a focal point and academic resource for engineering education research for faculty and administrators in order to advance the practices of engineering education in the texas a&m university system and worldwide hammond is also director of the sketch recognition lab and chair of the engineering education faculty at texas a&m she is an international leader in engineering education and her background includes degrees from columbia university and the massachusetts institute of technology (mit) including a masters degree in anthropology from columbia and a doctoral degree in computer science from mit she has received several awards for her contributions to the texas a&m engineering program and her professional field including the 2011 charles h barclay jr ‘45 faculty fellow award and the 2020 tees faculty fellow distinction she has also earned multiple educational teaching and best paper awards hammond is an international leader in activity recognition (focusing on eye body and sketch motions) haptics intelligent fabrics smartphone development and computer human interaction research her publications on the subjects are widely cited and her engineering education research has positively impacted learning across k-12 and is part of the engineering curricula at georgia tech texas state university san jose state university letourneau university texas a&m and several high schools her work has also been featured on the discovery channel and other national and international news sources additionally she has received over $13 million in research funding including 28 engineering education research grants with 13 of these from national science foundation engineering education directorates
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as members of the student engineers' council (sec) saw their peers struggling with obtaining summer internships or having their internships canceled due to the covid-19 pandemic kiersten potter sec president had an idea within a few weeks and with the help of rodney boehm they developed a plan to provide engineering students with an exciting opportunity to participate in an internship program remotely i wanted students to be comfortable with changing the way that they think potter said even though i [the student] dont have anything structured to do i can still make a tangible impact by taking my own initiative this sheds new light on engineering entrepreneurship and shows students a different side of engineering they are not typically exposed to" what started as a simple idea by potter for the sec's members developed into a program that spread across the college of engineering with nearly 350 students involved boehm the director of the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m university played a significant role in turning this idea into a reality as a mentor and professor of practice with 35 years of industry experience boehm understood the importance of summer internships we jumped in with both feet boehm said we found a way in literally three weeks to put together a 12-week summer program that included a mixture of training as well as practical teamwork activities the internship is split into four phases: application training teamwork and presentations the application process began in april when students filled out questionnaires to determine their internship status strengths and a project statement during training students attended daily mandatory sessions for six weeks plus 30 hours of elective sessions these ranged from personal development courses to guest speakers from companies across texas the training sessions were essentially built to target four different focus areas which are relevant work experience oral and written communication teamwork and interpersonal skills and creativity and problem solving potter said in the teamwork phase students were split into over 70 different teams they began working for companies with a mentoring professor of practice we professors of practice have used our experiences in running companies and in various roles in other companies to tailor the student experience to be as much like an internship in a company as we can possibly make it boehm said we can help them see what their jobs will look like inside a company mark semmelback vice president of sentry technologies has utilized texas a&m interns for over 15 years he expressed a need for students to help with market research for several of his companys products when the sec internship came to fruition this became an excellent opportunity for interns to see a different aspect of engineering our goal for the teams was to learn how to look at a product how to categorize what does that product do and then go out and look for applications for that product semmelbeck said both of the teams have come up with close to 10 potential new applications for our hardware the teams have a zoom meeting once a week to collaborate on ideas and receive instructions although this is not a traditional internship it provides insights into the engineering industry weve been able to give these teams real-life projects that were working on that look at the growth of the company into a new area semmelbeck said a lot of engineers wont even be exposed to that in their jobs for several years to have that early on gives students a much fuller view of what a company needs from them over a longer time period nick tann a senior computer engineering major is one of the students working with sentry after his summer plans were canceled he decided to apply for the sec internship it ended up being the best replacement that was available for those who had their internship canceled tann said i wanted to gain some experience and i didnt get that opportunity i found a way to do it and i went with it tann was the team lead and coordinated meetings between his team members boehm and semmelbeck his favorite part of the project was researching markets for sentrys products he said it was an unexpected part of the program but an essential part of understanding the engineering industry tanns testimonial to this program's usefulness was accompanied by dozens of others sent to potter students will complete their internship by creating a presentation to convey what they have learned another critical aspect of the sec internship is the research component working with texas a&ms department of education an ongoing study has taken place to determine these kinds of programs' success at skill development boehm said the research can demonstrate to other schools how the program was implemented and demonstrate its effectiveness the layout and design of this program sparked interest in other universities such as purdue university and the university of texas at austin we believe through this experience our students have developed an entrepreneurial mindset boehm said we see this as a critical skill for all students that are engineers and we hope that this program continues on next year our students are telling us that theyre enjoying this program so much we want to be able to offer it next summer and to a whole new set of students
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inspired by the same modeling and mathematical laws used to predict the spread of pandemics researchers at texas a&m university have created a model to accurately forecast the spread and recession process of floodwaters in urban road networks with this new approach researchers have created a simple and powerful mathematical approach to a complex problemwe were inspired by the fact that the spread of epidemics and pandemics in communities has been studied by people in health sciences and epidemiology and other fields and they have identified some principles and rules that govern the spread process in complex social networks said dr ali mostafavi associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering so we ask ourselves are these spreading processes the same for the spread of flooding in cities we tested that and surprisingly we found that the answer is yesthe findings of this study were recently published in nature scientific reportsthe contagion model susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (seir) is used to mathematically model the spread of infectious diseases in relation to flooding mostafavi and his team integrated the seir model with the network spread process in which the probability of flooding of a road segment depends on the degree to which the nearby road segments are floodedin the context of flooding susceptible is a road that can be flooded because it is in a flood plain; exposed is a road that has flooding due to rainwater or overflow from a nearby channel; infected is a road that is flooded and cannot be used; and recovered is a road where the floodwater has receded the research team verified the models use with high-resolution historical data of road flooding in harris county during hurricane harvey in 2017 the results show that the model can monitor and predict the evolution of flooded roads over timethe power of this approach is it offers a simple and powerful mathematical approach and provides great potential to support emergency managers public officials residents first responders and other decision makers for flood forecast in road networks mostafavi saidthe proposed model can achieve decent precision and recall for the spatial spread of the flooded roads
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if you look at the flood monitoring system of harris county it can show you if a channel is overflowing now but theyre not able to predict anything about the next four hours or next eight hours also the existing flood monitoring systems provide limited information about the propagation of flooding in road networks and the impacts on urban mobility but our models and this specific model for the road networks is robust at predicting the future spread of flooding he said in addition to flood prediction in urban networks the findings of this study provide very important insights about the universality of the network spread processes across various social natural physical and engineered systems; this is significant for better modeling and managing cities as complex systems the only limitation to this flood prediction model is that it cannot identify where the initial flooding will begin but mostafavi said there are other mechanisms in place such as sensors on flood gauges that can address thisas soon as flooding is reported in these areas we can use our model which is very simple compared to hydraulic and hydrologic models to predict the flood propagation in future hours the forecast of road inundations and mobility disruptions is critical to inform residents to avoid high-risk roadways and to enable emergency managers and responders to optimize relief and rescue in impacted areas based on predicted information about road access and mobility this forecast could be the difference between life and death during crisis response he saidcivil engineering doctoral student and graduate research assistant chao fan led the analysis and modeling of the hurricane harvey data along with xiangqi (alex) jiang a graduate student in computer science who works in mostafavis urbanresilienceai labby doing this research i realize the power of mathematical models in addressing engineering problems and real-world challenges this research expands my research capabilities and will have a long-term impact on my career fan said in addition i am also very excited that my research can contribute to reducing the negative impacts of natural disasters on infrastructure servicesthis research is funded by national science foundations crisp 20 type 2 project in which mostafavi is the lead principal investigator
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three aggie engineers have been selected as recipients of the distinguished alumnus award the highest honor bestowed upon a former student of texas a&m university fewer than one-tenth of one percent of the universitys 527 000 former students will be recognized with this prestigious award the 2020 recipients from the college of engineering are: • mike hernandez iii 83 industrial distribution • weldon jaynes 54 industrial technology • tim leach 82 petroleum engineering since the inception of the award in 1962 only 303 former students have been recognized with the distinguished alumnus award awarded jointly by texas a&m and the association of former students this honor recognizes those aggies who have achieved excellence in their chosen professions and made meaningful contributions to texas a&m and their local communities we are proud of these wonderful former students and all of their accomplishments and contributions said president michael k young they are all deserving of the highest honor bestowed upon our alumni we look forward to joining the association in recognizing their achievements
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hernandez is the owner and ceo of d&m leasing one of 2019s top 100 places to work rated by the dallas morning news among the fort worth business press top 5 privately held companies and dealer raters top leasing company in america he founded the brownsville scholars program at texas a&m and is president and founder of the hernandez foundation which has provided significant support to schools and scholarships and has supported ventures that boost opportunities in cameron county in 2019 gov greg abbott appointed him as a member of the texas a&m university system board of regents he was recognized as one of fort worths top ceos in 2014; in 2016 he was named brownsvilles person of the year and in 2017 he was rio grande valleys citizen of the year honorable mention he is a member of the advisory committee for texas a&ms mcallen campus and lt gov dan patricks advisory committee on workforce training
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jaynes was chairman ceo and majority shareholder of priester supply co which he spent more than 40 years building into a prominent southwest us regional distributor for electric and gas utilities he also created repcom international a national telecommunication company he is a past president (now called chair) and trustee of the 12th man foundation who helped start its major gifts department a recipient of its e king gill award and member of its diamond champions council he has created the mr and mrs l weldon jaynes 54 sul ross scholarship the weldon jaynes 54 presidential endowed scholarship and a texas a&m corps of cadets scholarship jaynes is a texas a&m lettermens association hall of honor inductee and a past director of the fort worth a&m club he and wife judy give time and support to trinity united methodist and first baptist church in arlington mission arlington and the md anderson cancer center
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leach is the founder chairman and ceo of concho one of the energy industrys leading companies and vice chairman of the texas a&m system board of regents leach has supported texas a&m projects including the zachry engineering education complex eb cushing stadium leach teaching gardens and memorial student center renovation; he has supported the association the 12th man foundation and the george and barbara bush foundation and created a scholarship professorship and chair in petroleum engineering he is a petroleum museum hall of fame honoree and a member of the all-american wildcatters association his service to texas a&m and his community includes serving as president of the board of the scharbauer foundation on the midland college foundation board of directors and midland memorial foundation board of governors as a former member of the association of former students board and as an emeritus member of texas a&ms college of engineering advisory council the association of former students honored the 2020 recipients in the july-august 2020 issue of its texas aggiemagazine nominations for the 2021 distinguished alumnus award will be accepted through oct 2
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the aggies against covid-19 virtual competition began in april teams of students competed against one another to develop innovations that would help in the fight against covid-19 the top 10 teams automatically qualified to take part in the national science foundation (nsf) i-corps site program – a program that provides resources and funding to further the commercialization of student products a team of nine students from various backgrounds created the coro-no uv-clave and placed in the top 10 out of 71 teams marianela cintrón and john karako from the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering were part of this team i thought this was a great way to get involved and make a difference with everything that was happening said cintrón i pulled a group of friends together who were interested and we created a solution to the mask shortage
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the coro-no uv-clave is a light chamber that resembles an oven placing an object in the chamber such as a mask quickly and efficiently sanitizes that object by using uv-c lighting the team completed their project and placed in the competition but realized that their product was no longer an original this is when the nsf i-corps site program provided an opportunity for the team's creation to evolve through engineering entrepreneurship and adaptations to their original product by the time we finished the design and presented it during the competition there were tons of products like this already on the market said karako (nsf i-corps site) reached out after we placed in the top 10 and offered to fund changes to the project and four of us decided to continue working on it the team of four includes karako cintrón tyler hope and jerry reiger hope is working toward a double major in biochemistry and genetics and reiger is a geographic information science and technology major their revised product is called sterilight
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according to karako the primary change from their original invention is stopping the use of uv-c in exchange for another light source far uv-c this change eliminates potentially harmful radiation that is associated with uv-c lights as cintrón also pointed out far uv-c has a broader range of materials it can sanitize sterilight construction is ongoing and the team is conducting research developing the product and looking for other areas their concept can be used in with the help of the nsf i-corps site program their most recent prototype aims to sanitize objects and areas that are constantly being touched we are hoping that once we complete our design it can be implemented in k-12 and colleges so that the fear of transmission through using community objects such as crayons or lab supplies is diminished said cintrón along with schools another effective use could be in stores stores may sanitize their credit card readers every 30 or 60 minutes karako said many people go through in 60 minutes and obviously you cant clean it after every person if we have a constantly cleaning light then its a hotspot thats being constantly cleaned karako and cintrón are working with their team to create a final prototype of sterilight and contacting local institutions to determine how to improve their product they will receive a certificate of completion from the program potentially qualifying the team for an additional $2500 through the help and guidance of the nsf i-corps site program they hope to demonstrate their inventions entrepreneurial potential and aid in the battle against covid-19
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the texas a&m university system appropriated $603 million today to build the nations largest enclosed hypersonic testing facility as well as an autonomous vehicle testing site at the george hw bush combat development complex the bush combat development complex (bcdc) is being built on the rellis campus as part of the a&m systems agreement with the us army futures command based in austin the complex will provide an ecosystem to accelerate research and technology development to modernize the us army of the total expenditures $378 million will be spent on the innovation proving ground (ipg) an outdoor testing site for autonomous vehicles ipg construction is expected to start next summer and be completed a year later also $225 million will be spent on the ballistic aero-optics and materials (bam) test range a hypersonic and laser testing facility bam construction is scheduled to begin in february with substantial completion expected by october 2022 for more information see the a&m systems press release
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the bush combat development complex located on the 2 000-acre rellis campus includes a full complement of facilities equipment and instrumentation learn more about all of the bcdcs planned facilities and capabilities
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interdisciplinary collaboration spurs innovation – bridging different perspectives and expertise to produce the best possible product to celebrate this union of ideas engineering academic and student affairs and the department of ocean engineering launched the inaugural educating smart marine aggies robotic technologies (esmart) competition in spring 2020 this new semester-long competition in galveston challenged student teams to put their innovation creativity and communication skills to the test to create race and present a remote-controlled water vehicle capable of racing around a floating marker and returning to shore it was headed by dr paul mario koola ocean engineering professor of practice and assistant director of the first-year engineering program in galveston and dr jay porter professor and associate dean for engineering at texas a&ms galveston campus dr sharath girimaji ocean engineering department head also played a pivotal role in the creation of the program which was inspired by previous student competitions held in galveston learning in engineering happens best when one is self-motivated said koola esmart enabled students to play with ideas to produce designs that when built and tested taught them something that cannot be gained by just reading books and taking exams
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taking advantage of the waterfront location on the galveston campus the competition was designed to take to the water using a small section of the shoreline to have the student-made water crafts battle waves and currents on their way around a floating marker the ocean engineering department is on two campuses one at college station and one at galveston said koola the galveston campus provides tremendous learning opportunities for students being in close proximity to the ocean esmart is a means to give students a first-hand opportunity to develop technologies related to the oceans and determine their interest in pursuing a career in this field as porter expressed proudly while the kickoff competition was disrupted and transitioned online due to covid-19 students from across all departments rose to the challenge to compete virtually for the monetary prizes esmart was intentionally designed right from the start to provide an experience like no other for our galveston students taking advantage of this unique location said koola this year we could not get wet but the student spirit is so strong i believe we will come back much stronger in the coming years the first-place team even shared their design asking us to ‘please give this to the next batch with the hope the next batch will take this competition to an even higher level this makes me truly proud of this batch of students who understand how humanity has progressed by building off on the knowledge generated by those who went before us taking home first place in the inaugural challenge was a team comprised of at the time of the competition general engineering sophomore rong xu general engineering freshman saini ye general engineering sophomore jiaze cai general engineering sophomore jiawei zhang general engineering sophomore yuezhou kang ocean engineering senior skylar bayman and oceanography graduate student chenxi ma
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my main takeaways from this competition were leadership and friendship said xu through esmart i learned how to make a schedule for the whole process how to make appointments for meetings how to make sure every member was available and how to be efficient as a team additionally i made friends who have the same interest as me from other teams through esmart that i might have classes with or solve problems with in the future xu also explained that as a general engineering student esmart also provided him an opportunity to both apply his knowledge to a physical experiment and to experience how to work within a team dynamic on an engineering project as such he learned how important it was to trust his teammates consider other perspectives and find and apply everyones strengths for example xu took the lead on coding for his team the second-place team consisted of then general engineering sophomore botong deng computer science undergraduate linjian leo yang and general engineering sophomore wenhui li the third-place team included ocean engineering junior michael alan thiel ii general engineering sophomore robin henriquez marine engineering technology junior seth andres and general engineering freshman sriramkumar krishna kumar despite the changing tides caused by the covid-19 pandemic in the spring the leaders of the esmart program are hopeful in its future and are excited to bring together students on campus once more when it is safe like a celebratory reunion they are looking forward to the future of interdisciplinary innovation the excitement of this first batch of esmarties as i call them is what drives us to provide our students with opportunities that are unique to the galveston campus – a time in their life they will remember forever said koola as long as dr porter is here to back us esmart will live on
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visit here for more information or to get involved with esmart
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dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr lewis ntaimo head of the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university the appointment is effective sept 1 ntaimo is currently a professor and has served as the interim department head since jan 1 he joined the department in 2004 as an assistant professor his research interests include mathematical models and algorithms for decision-making problems involving data uncertainty and risk in the general area of stochastic optimization systems and process modeling and optimization and computer simulation he is a member of the institute for operations research and the management systems (informs) and the institute of industrial and systems engineers (iise) he served as the president of the informs minority issues forum for 2018-19 and was the informs 2018 tutorials chair and the informs 2019 george nicholson prize chair he is the associate editor of the informs journal on computing iise transactions iise transactions on healthcare systems engineering and is on the editorial board of the journal of global optimization ntaimo earned his phd in systems and industrial engineering masters degree in mining and geological engineering and bachelors degree in mining engineering all from the university of arizona
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as the new semester begins one director in the college of engineering is hoping to attract a new cohort of students to an engineering sector hes passionate about subsea engineering ronald ledbetter director of subsea engineering at texas a&m university is an expert in subsea engineering systems and offshore field development he spent more than four decades working in the oil and gas industry and hes excited for the opportunity to train future engineers who will solve many of the problems the industry is currently facing on aug 21 ledbetter will host a virtual information session that is open to anyone interested in learning more about the two graduate degrees offered at texas a&m focused on subsea engineering a master of engineering in engineering and a master of science in interdisciplinary engineering ledbetter has invited two industry leaders to join him for subsea 101 theyll provide an overview of what a career as a subsea engineer entails karl schnakenburg a subsea engineering advisor in the oil and gas industry and mark carter a retired subsea engineer with more than 31 years of experience will be offering their expertise during the half-day eventim thrilled that mr schnakenburg and mr carter will be joining us ledbetter said they are industry-recognized experts in their field and this is a tremendous opportunity for our students to have the chance to speak directly with both of these men and hear their perspectives of the oil and gas industry and their careers schnakenburg said he is excited for the opportunity to talk to students from texas a&m this is such a niche market and this is a good opportunity to share what we do he said i think students will gain a broader understanding of what subsea engineering is about and whether this fits within their interestsschnakenburg said while the energy industry is shifting to renewable sources this shift will take many decades in the meantime he believes many offshore oil and gas projects will continuewhile many subsea engineers work in the oil and gas industry they are not limited to that industry alone we study structures corrosion soil mechanics subsea control systems and many other aspects that are relevant to almost any type of offshore construction or development he said most envision offshore wind farms and other facilities that will help power our future world carter agreed that subsea engineers are still in great demand subsea fields are very attractive in terms of productivity and therefore economic return he said it is not the only way to produce lots of oil and gas but it is one of the leading methods and has been spreading to offshore basins worldwide i foresee the need for these resources long into the futurea relatively new profession schnakenburg said subsea engineering offers many unique opportunities and technical challenges the profession may take you almost anywhere on the planet and it may with a bit of luck provide opportunities and applications in other future offshore businesses he said subsea 101 is open to all engineering students and is not limited to students at texas a&m for more information about the event and to register visit the event website
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as with many seniors graduating from texas a&m university biomedical engineering student amanda rakoski has much to look forward to as she prepares for her upcoming graduate program at the prestigious johns hopkins university next fall over her time at texas a&m she has definitely had many achievements including becoming involved in the clare boothe luce (cbl) program the biomedical engineering society president and the tamu orchestra clubs vice president among all of them rakoski has found that her commitment in the clare boothe luce program has truly enhanced her educational passions the clare boothe luce program offers women monetary support to grow as researchers and find projects that hold value to them for rakoski this was her 3d cell culture model for breast cancer she was able to utilize different chemistries and bio-instructive peptides in gels to emulate breast cancer cell behavior and develop a model for breast cancer that can be used to test different drugs i am eternally grateful as the program has given me the opportunity to pursue research and has only strengthened my passion to earn my phd in the future rakoski said as one of eight students on campus to be in the clare boothe luce program this semester she wants to become someone who could shape the program and be an example to other women to show what they could do in their time at texas a&m being awarded something for my enthusiasm for research as i contribute to my field of biomedical engineering has shown me that research is a career option rakoski said i want to support other women to find their passion in research as well following her success she has also been admitted into the national science foundation graduate research fellowship program that supports graduate students by granting them over $35 000 in the realms of scientific innovation additionally in this endeavor to make research her career rakoski applied to 12 graduate programs because rakoski said she felt that she did not stand a chance among so many other applicants i was nervous and knew that what i wrote in my personal statements and cv (curriculum vitae) would need to prove what i had done research-wise where i wanted to go in the future and that i deserved a chance to go to their school so i wrote with all my heart and left it ‘all on the field rakoski said
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from this feat and in addition to her accomplishments as a student she was accepted to many top programs on her list including carnegie mellon md anderson rice university texas a&m the university of california-davis and johns hopkins university it felt surreal when a professor from johns hopkins offered me a research fellowship before i even got the email that i was invited to their invitational rakoski said i felt so blessed for the opportunity i couldnt believe that they wanted to recruit me rakoski said that she decided to continue her academic career at johns hopkins because she found that their research is something that she could work on for the rest of her life my experience has truly changed my life and showed me what i love to do i cannot thank the clare boothe luce program enough for giving me the opportunity to find my passion in my undergraduate career rakoski said
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invent for the planet (iftp) an annual competition hosted by texas a&m university brought together more than 800 students from nearly 40 universities around the world the final presentations were held on july 28 2020 where the final five teams presented virtually and the three winning innovations were announced first place went to the joint-university team from brazil comprised of centro federal de educação tecnológica celso suckow da fonseca and universidade federal do rio de janeiro the team from texas a&m was in second place and the makerere university team from uganda was third each year the competition has grown as more universities and students ask to participate in the global design challenge this year was no different in february teams from each participating university were challenged to tackle one of 14 challenges set by industry leaders and academics on a range of issues affecting the planet the teams representing nearly all continents were tasked with developing and presenting engineering solutions on their chosen issues during the initial 48-hour weekend challenge after some local judging and polishing of presentations and prototypes over 35 teams submitted their innovations to virtual judging after their local competition ultimately the final five were selected it's been an inspiration to see the five teams participate in the iftp 2020 finals said rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship and invent for the planet they overcame the global pandemic to showcase how innovative solutions exist around the globe we look forward to hosting invent for the planet again in 2021 one of the unique aspects of the challenge is the final round where the top teams are invited to texas a&m to meet other engineers from around the world and compete in person after the first round of local competitions in february no one would have expected that the finals would have to be held virtually due to the safety concerns and travel restrictions from covid-19 the most memorable experience was our ability to quickly and effectively adapt to new circumstances said noble gutierrez member of the texas a&m team ecotory covid-19 turned the final round of competition into a virtual event and our team was incredible we were all fully committed cooperative and continued to develop our product and prepare for the competition the winning innovations are: first place: corais - centro federal de educação tecnológica celso suckow da fonseca and universidade federal do rio de janeiro brazil: roughly 37% of microplastics found in the worlds oceans are derived from personal care products and synthetic textiles like clothing expelled in the wastewater from washing machines team corais developed an easy-to-use filter containing magnetite a recyclable metal which attracts microplastics and prevents them from being released into waterways second place: ecotory - texas a&m: ecotory created a sustainable inventory app that allows airlines to better gauge passenger needs in advance this would then integrate with their inventory systems reducing excess weight and airline waste and thus reducing fuel consumption and the contribution to greenhouse gases passengers are incentivized with the ability to exchange unwanted meals and amenities for airline miles third place: hya bioplastics - makerere university uganda: the hya bioplastics team aimed to solve two environmental issues at once their innovation would eliminate single-use oil-derived plastics through a biodegradable alternative made from water hyacinths an invasive aquatic weed in the waterways of uganda by clearing the lakes of these invasive aquatic weeds to produce the packaging this design would address multiple local and global problems the two runners-up are: walkalot – james madison university virginia: the walkalot team developed a personalized app that promotes walking as the primary mode for transportation in urban environments users may select the preferred or most accessible routes when moving around outdoors like where ramps are available for wheelchair users or which route has the most scenic views crustacean – new mexico university: in order to address microplastics in the ocean crustacean designed a floating buoy with collection bins to trap microplastics and repurpose into reusable materials the winners are invited to continue collaborating with event sponsors and the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m many of the final five teams have expressed the desire to take their innovation to industry our team concurrently participated in the nsf i-corps site program which provides foundational elements for pursuing commercialization said gutierrez our team conducted 30 customer interviews and researched market potential receiving feedback from industry professionals clearly delineating airline needs and further establishing the feasibility of our product has greatly helped our team we submitted our application to the engineering incubator and are hopeful to have a real-world viable and industry-implemented solution the event was made possible with numerous volunteers from industry faculty and staff at participating universities as well as sponsors electrocomponents and socar find out more about invent for the planet on our website
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natures blueprint for the human limb is a carefully layered structure with stiff bone wrapped in layers of different soft tissue like muscle and skin all bound to each other perfectly achieving this kind of sophistication using synthetic materials to build biologically inspired robotic parts or multicomponent complex machines has been an engineering challenge by tweaking the chemistry of a single polymer researchers at texas a&m university and the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory have created a whole family of synthetic materials that range in texture from ultra-soft to extremely rigid the researchers said their materials are 3d printable self-healing recyclable and they naturally adhere to each other in air or underwater their findings are detailed in the may issue of the journal advanced functional materials we have made an exciting group of materials whose properties can be fine-tuned to get either the softness of rubber or the strength of load-bearing plastics said dr svetlana sukhishvili professor in the department of materials science and engineering and a corresponding author on the study their other desirable characteristics like 3d printability and the ability to self-heal within seconds make them suited for not just more realistic prosthetics and soft robotics but also ideal for broad military applications such as agile platforms for air vehicles and futuristic self-healing aircraft wings synthetic polymers are made up of long strings of repeating molecular motifs like beads on a chain in elastomeric polymers or elastomers these long chains are lightly crosslinked giving the materials a rubbery quality however these crosslinks can also be used to make the elastomers more rigid by increasing the number of crosslinks although previous studies have manipulated the density of crosslinks to make elastomers stiffer the resulting change in mechanical strength was generally permanent crosslinks are like stitches in a piece of cloth the more stitches you have the stiffer the material gets and vice versa said sukhishvili but instead of having these ‘stitches be permanent we wanted to achieve dynamic and reversible crosslinking so that we can create materials that are recyclable so the researchers focused their attention on the molecules involved in the crosslinking first they chose a parent polymer called prepolymer and then chemically studded these prepolymer chains with two types of small crosslinking molecules furan and maleimide by increasing the number of these molecules in the prepolymer they found that they could create materials stiffer in this way the hardest material they created was 1 000 times stronger than the softest however these crosslinks are also reversible furan and maleimide participate in a type of reversible chemical bonding put simply in this reaction furan and maleimide pairs can click and unclick depending on temperature when the temperature is high enough these molecules come apart from the polymer chains and the materials soften at room temperature the materials harden since the molecules quickly click back together once again forming crosslinks thus if there is any tear in these materials at ambient temperatures the researchers showed that furan and maleimide automatically re-click healing the gap within a few seconds
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the researchers noted that the temperatures at which the crosslinkers dissociate or unclick from the prepolymer chains are relatively the same for different stiffness levels this property is useful for 3d printing with these materials regardless of whether they are soft or hard the materials can be melted at the same temperature and then used as printing ink by modifying the hardware and processing parameters in a standard 3d printer we were able to use our materials to print complex 3d objects layer by layer said dr frank gardea research engineer in the united states army research laboratory and a corresponding author on the study the unique advantage of our materials is that the layers that make up the 3d part can be of vastly different stiffness as the 3d part cools to room temperature he added that the different layers join seamlessly precluding the need for curing or any other chemical processing consequently the 3d-printed parts can easily be melted using high heat and then recycled as printing ink the researchers also noted that their materials are reprogrammable in other words after being set into one shape they can be made to change into a different shape using just heat in the future the researchers plan to increase the functionality of their new materials by amplifying its multifaceted properties outlined in the current study right now we can easily achieve around 80% self-healing at room temperature but we would like to reach 100% also we want to make our materials responsive to other stimuli other than temperature like light said gardea further down the road wed like to explore introducing some low-level intelligence so that these materials know to autonomously adapt without needing a user to initiate the process other contributors include qing zhou primary author of the paper and zhen sang from the department of materials science and engineering; and dr seunghyun lee and dr matt pharr from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering this research is funded by the united states combat capabilities development command army research laboratory
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dr harry hogan is now a fellow of the american society for bone and mineral research (asbmr) the asbmr awards the honor to those who have made outstanding contributions to the field of bone and mineral science hogan serves as professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and associate dean for graduate programs in the college of engineering at texas a&m university "being selected a fellow of asbmr is a definite honor " hogan said "it is a recognition of long term contributions to musculoskeletal research that is initiated and supported by ones peers it is also a testimony in my case to the value and benefits of a decades-long cross-disciplinary collaboration with a colleague in the department of health and kinesiology dr susan bloomfield" established in 1977 asbmr is a professional scientific and medical society that brings together clinical and experimental scientists who study bone and mineral metabolism it has more than 4 000 active members internationally hogan and his fellow honorees will be recognized at the asbmr annual meeting in 2021
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recent discoveries made by researchers at texas a&m university could change the way ovarian cancer is understood and treated dr abhishek jain assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering and the department of medical physiology in the college of medicine collaborated with researchers from the departments of gynecologic oncology and cancer biology at md anderson cancer center to gain a better understanding of the interaction among ovarian cancer tumors blood vessels and platelets they found that tumors break the blood vessel barriers so that they can communicate with the blood cells such as platelets when these tumors come into contact with platelets they can then metastasize or begin to spread to other sites in the body the collaborative research was recently published in the journal blood advances
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currently researchers understand that platelets are one of the initiators of ovarian cancer metastasis but did not know what led to the introduction of the platelets to the tumor cells instead of struggling to view this relationship in animal models jains team brought a new solution to the table: organ-on-a-chip research organs-on-a-chip are microfluidic medical devices the size of a usb drive the team designed on the ovca-chip to give researchers an easier window to view the biological processes between tumors and platelets in an interview with the international society on thrombosis and hemostasis jain explained that "it basically is a microenvironment where ovarian tumor cells can be co-cultured along with their blood vessels and then they can interact with blood cells once we learn about these interactions we can then move forward to look into how drugs will impact these kinds of interactions" viewing the interaction between tumors and blood vessels on the ovca-chip led the researchers to an extraordinary result the tumor cells systematically broke down the endothelial cells which are the barrier that lines the interior surface of blood vessels and prevents exterior interaction with blood cells once this barrier was gone blood cells and platelets entered the tumor microenvironment and could be recruited for metastasis harnessing this knowledge could change how clinicians approach ovarian cancer treatment jain said suggesting that anti-vascular drugs could be considered along with anticancer treatments a benefit of the organ-on-a-chip is that it can also test these novel drug treatments and drug combinations another application of the chips could be diagnostics "you have to understand that these are chips that are living they contain living cells the advantage is that these are all actually human samples " jain stated in the interview "so what we think the future for this technology is is perhaps we can advance it in the direction of personalized medicine where we could actually take stem cells from patients and other patient-derived cells and make this entire chip from a single patient"
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since the early 1930s electron microscopy has provided unprecedented access to the alien world of the extraordinarily small revealing intricate details that are otherwise impossible to discern with conventional light microscopy but to achieve high resolution over a large specimen area the energy of the electron beams needs to be cranked up which is costly and detrimental to the specimen under observation texas a&m university researchers may have found a new method to improve the quality of low-resolution electron micrographs without compromising the integrity of specimen samples by training deep neural networks a type of artificial intelligence algorithm on pairs of images from the same sample but at different physical resolutions they have found that details in lower-resolution images can be enhanced further normally a high-energy electron beam is passed through the sample at locations where greater image resolution is desired but with our image processing techniques we can super resolve an entire image by using just a few smaller-sized high-resolution images said dr yu ding mike and sugar barnes professor in the wm michael barnes ‘64 department of industrial and systems engineering this method is less destructive since most parts of the specimen sample neednt be scanned with high-energy electron beams the researchers published their image processing technique in institute of electric and electronics engineers transactions on image processing in june unlike in light microscopy where photons or tiny packets of light are used to illuminate an object in electron microscopy a beam of electrons is utilized the electrons reflected from or passing through the object are then collected to form an image called the electron micrograph thus the energy of the electron beams plays a crucial role in determining the resolution of images that is the higher the energy electrons the better the resolution however the risk of damaging the specimen also increases similar to how ultraviolet rays which are the more energetic relatives of visible light can damage sensitive materials like the skin there's always that dilemma for scientists said ding to maintain the specimens integrity high-energy electron beams are used sparingly but if one does not use energetic beams high-resolution or the ability to see at finer scales becomes limited but there are ways to get high resolution or super resolution using low-resolution images one method involves using multiple low-resolution images of essentially the same region another method learns common patterns between small image patches and uses unrelated high-resolution images to enhance existing low-resolution images these methods almost exclusively use natural light images instead of electron micrographs hence they run into problems for super-resolving electron micrographs since the underlying physics for light and electron microscopy is different ding explained the researchers turned to pairs of low- and high-resolution electron microscopic images for a given sample although these types of pairs are not very common in public image databases they are relatively common in materials science research and medical imaging for their experiments ding and his team first took a low-resolution image of a specimen and then subjected roughly 25% of the area under observation to high-energy electron beams to get a high-resolution image the researchers noted that the information in the high-resolution and low-resolution image pair are very tightly correlated they said that this property can be leveraged even though the available dataset might be small for their analyses ding and his team used 22 pairs of images of materials infused with nanoparticles they then divided the high-resolution image and its equivalent area in the low-resolution image into three by three subimages next each subimage pair was used to self-train deep neural networks post-training their algorithm became familiar at recognizing image features such as edges when they tested the trained deep neural network on a new location on the low-resolution image for which there was no high-resolution counterpart they found that their algorithm could enhance features that were hard to discern by up to 50% although their image processing technique shows a lot of promise ding noted that it still requires a lot of computational power in the near future his team will be directing their efforts in developing algorithms that are much faster and can be supported by lesser computing hardware our paired image processing technique reveals details in low-resolution images that were not discernable before said ding we are all familiar with the magic wand feature on our smartphones it makes the image clearer what we aim to do in the long run is to provide the research community a similar convenient tool for enhancing electron micrographs other contributors to this research include dr yanjun qian from virginia commonwealth university jiaxi xu from the industrial and systems engineering department at texas a&m and dr lawrence drummy from the air force research laboratory this research was funded by the air force office of scientific research dynamic data and information processing program (formerly known as the dynamic data driven applications system program) grants and the texas a&m x-grant program
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dr gerard coté director of the center for remote health technologies and systems texas a&m regents professor and holder of the james j cain professorship i received the walston chubb award for innovation from sigma xi the scientific research honor society i am honored that i was considered to receive the chubb award from sigma xi and that the committee felt our research merited their high standards for promoting creativity in science and engineering coté said i say ‘our work as much of what has been accomplished has been a team effort with my students staff and colleagues coté was recognized for his leadership in the development of biomedical optical systems for an array of medical applications with clinical impact along with a stipend coté will be recognized and present at this years annual meeting and student research conference which will be held virtually in november since the award is focused on innovation and the audience is broad including distinguished scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines as well as high school undergraduate and graduate students i plan to discuss engineering for impact with a focus on technologies for monitoring health at the point-of-care coté said the endowed award was formed to recognize research into new areas of potential scientific importance novel approaches to a long-standing problem in science or engineering or research that may create a new methodology of importance to science or engineering
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dr jeyavijayan jv rajendran assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has been selected to participate in the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) automatic implementation of secure silicon (aiss) program the four-year $75 million project aims to automate the process of incorporating security and defense mechanisms into digital integrated circuit designs one of many potential applications for this research include devices that are a part of the internet of things such as smartphones smartwatches and smart refrigerators because these types of devices have become a key target of hacking it is imperative that security measures are considered during the chip design process unlike software cybersecurity which can be quickly and more easily updated after production if security measures within chips for these types of devices are thought of after the fact it could be too late with hardware chip manufacturing now mostly being done abroad the security concerns for intellectual property theft and manufacturing of sensitive defense technologies have become an important issue for national security rajendran heads a research team focused on logic-locking technology on the team led by prime contractor synopsys the team which includes researchers from arm boeing and ultrasoc will explore the development of a novel design tool and internet protocol ecosystem – which includes tool vendors chip developers and internet protocol licensors – allowing for defenses to be incorporated efficiently into chip designs it excites me to be part of the larger hardware security community to develop this suite of tools and also about transitioning the technology from our lab to industry rajendran said (approved for public release distribution unlimited)
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polymers reinforced with ultra-fine strands of carbon fibers epitomize composite materials that are light as a feather and strong as steel earning them versatile applications across several industries adding materials called carbon nanotubes can further enhance the composites functionality but the chemical processes used for incorporating carbon nanotube end up spreading them unevenly on the composites limiting the strength and other useful qualities that can be ultimately achieved in a new study texas a&m university researchers have used a natural plant product called cellulose nanocrystals to pin and coat carbon nanotubes uniformly onto the carbon-fiber composites the researchers said their prescribed method is quicker than conventional methods and also allows the designing of carbon-fiber composites from the nanoscale the results of the study are published online in the journal american chemical society (acs) applied nano materials composites are built in layers for example polymer composites are made of layers of fiber like carbon fibers or kevlar and a polymer matrix this layered structure is the source of the composites weakness any damage to the layers causes fractures a process technically known as delamination to increase strength and give carbon-fiber composites other desirable qualities such as electrical and thermal conductivity carbon nanotubes are often added however the chemical processes used for incorporating the carbon nanotubes into these composites often cause the nanoparticles to clump up reducing the overall benefit of adding these particles the problem with nanoparticles is similar to what happens when you add coarse coffee powder to milk the powder agglomerates or sticks to each other said dr amir asadi assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution to fully take advantage of the carbon nanotubes they need to be separated from each other first and then somehow designed to go to a particular location within the carbon-fiber composite to facilitate the even distribution of carbon nanotubes asadi and his team turned to cellulose nanocrystals a compound easily obtained from recycled wood pulp these nanocrystals have segments on their molecules that attract water and other segments that get repelled by water this unique molecular structure offers the ideal solution to construct composites at the nanoscale said asadi the hydrophobic part of the cellulose nanocrystals binds to the carbon fibers and anchors them onto the polymer matrix on the other hand the water-attractive portions of the nanocrystals help in dispersing the carbon fibers evenly much like how sugar which is hydrophilic dissolves in water uniformly rather than clumping and settling to the bottom of a cup for their experiments the researchers used a commercially available carbon-fiber cloth to this cloth they added an aqueous solution of cellulose nanocrystals and carbon nanotubes and then applied strong vibration to mix all of the items together finally they left the material to dry and spread resin on it to gradually form the carbon nanotube coated polymer composite
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upon examining a sample of the composite using electron microscopy asadi and his team observed that the cellulose nanocrystals attached to the tips of the carbon nanotubes orienting the nanotubes in the same direction they also found that cellulose nanocrystals increased the composites resistance to bending by 33% and its inter-laminar strength by 40% based on measuring the mechanical properties of the material under extreme loading in this study we have taken the approach of designing the composites from the nanoscale using cellulose nanocrystals this method has allowed us to have more control over the polymer composites properties that emerge at the macroscale said asadi we think that our technique is a path forward in scaling up the processing of hybrid composites which will be useful for a variety of industries including airline and automobile manufacturing other contributors to this research include shadi shariatnia and annuatha v kumar from the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and ozge kaynan from the department of materials science and engineering this research was funded by the national science foundation
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the covid-19 pandemic has brought changes to higher education and texas a&m university has been no exception as the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering prepares to return for the fall semester students like aaron cozart are ready to return even if things are different from a typical semester "im still really looking forward to this the fall semester particularly classes and the career fair " said cozart a sophomore in the department "while the majority of classes are in an online or hybrid format the spring and summer classes ive taken have shown that these formats are still a great environment for learning and interacting with others so im eagerly waiting for those to start" cozart added that while the student engineers' council virtual career fair will also be different from its traditional in-person format he is excited for the opportunities and experience it will provide learn more about how texas a&m is preparing for safety as the fall semester kicks off
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dr vergil eugene stover who served on the faculty of the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university and was a researcher at the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) passed away on wednesday july 29 2020 he was 87stover a professor emeritus in the department was recognized as an international expert on access management and roadway design and was co-principal investigator for the first national access management manual as an engineer and economist he served as a consultant on major development projects was an expert witness on access and site development cases and assisted numerous state and local agencies in developing access management programs and standardshe worked at tti in the roadway safety program for 28 years from 1966-94 he was a consummate professional who was highly respected leaving a legacy that spanned several decades and many organizationsstover was an emeritus member of the transportation research board committee on access management and a life fellow of the institute of transportation engineers he authored many influential publications in the field of urban planning transportation and land development and received numerous highly influential citations over his long and distinguished career this included serving as the principal author of the institution of transportation engineers manual transportation and land developmentafter retiring from teaching at texas a&m in 1991 stover began a second career as an expert in transportation and site development as a partner in s&k enterprises he provided consulting services for transportation and urban planning for clients worldwide and served as consulting chair for the florida center for urban transportation research at the university of south florida he also worked for the national highway institute teaching professional development courses for city planners and traffic engineers across the nationin 1955 stover earned his undergraduate degree from ohio university and earned his phd in transportation planning and economics from purdue university in 1960stover will be laid to rest in the college station cemetery alongside his wife of 53 years mary sue stover who preceded him in death he is survived by his brother eddie; sons and daughters-in-law ken and becky stover; terry stover; and curt and susan stover; four grandchildren rob jon lauren and leah stover; and great-grandson therin stover
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the built environment where someone lives (private) or works (public) influences a persons daily life and can help or hinder their mental health this is especially true for those with mental health conditions such as ptsd or post-traumatic stress disorder researchers in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university are working to determine which elements of built environments affect veterans with ptsd the most and how they can be altered to help veterans thrive we have already established collaborations with veteran support groups to develop veteran-centered tools for monitoring and self-management of ptsd said dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor principal investigator of the project and 2020 texas a&m engineering experiment station research impact award winner through interactions with hundreds of veterans diagnosed with ptsd we realized the need to also investigate the context in which these tools are used and became interested in the design of built environments the researchers looked at three themes: architectural design features interior design features and ambient features as part of the project researchers interviewed veterans with ptsd about their triggers in public and private spaces from their interviews the researchers categorized and provided suggestions for each theme area that would provide the greatest positive impact for veterans alarmingly we learned there is a general gap in built environments design guidelines for mental health habitants in general and ptsd patients in particular so we leveraged our wide network of veterans to study their preferences sasangohar said architectural design features architectural design features are permanent features of a building or space that would be difficult or expensive to change after construction is completed like the entrance and exit locations in the study veterans identified six areas that made a difference toward their comfort: windows – large windows located closer to the ground made veterans feel safer in a space they also preferred to have multiple windows in a space so they could see what was going on outside entrance and exit location – veterans liked to easily see the entrance and exit to a room or building this helped keep them from feeling trapped in a space walkways/hallways – larger hallways that allowed for increased maneuverability and reduced the chance of touching other people were preferred by veterans open floor plans – open spaces allowed veterans to see their surroundings and provided them with feelings of security sharp turns and blind corners caused stress due to the inability to see what was around the bend green space – open spaces with vegetation made the veterans feel calmer and gave them more visibility interior design features interior design features are parts of a built environment that are easier to change and could be accommodated in spaces that are already built veterans preferred spaces with fewer pieces of furniture and walls that were painted in brighter more vivid colors instead of muted colors ambient design features ambient design features are the easiest features to change in a space and include lighting and air quality overall veterans preferred natural light some said that poor light including too much artificial lighting could trigger stress air and sound quality was important also including ventilation odor and noise levels many veterans said that certain odors could trigger fear or bad memories and that loud unexpected noises were particularly startling for them they felt that soundproofing was important in spaces they visited or lived in what can be done while this research addressed an important gap in research and practice the research team identified the need for more work to understand issues related to the design of built environments for those with ptsd further research should include a wide range of stakeholders including veterans veterans affairs architecture and housing regulatory bodies we hope that this research contributes to the curriculum codes and standards regulatory documents and general practice of designing built environments including health care facilities which are sensitive to the needs of veterans who are affected by ptsd and others with mental health conditions sasangohar said this research article veteran-centered investigation of architectural and space design considerations for post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) is featured in the health environments research & design journal
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petroleum engineering graduate student eliza ganguly recently received a society of petrophysicists and well log analysts foundation grant for her research in petrophysics – the study of the physical and chemical properties of rocks and rock-fluid interaction
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this area of study focuses on how pores in the subsurface are interconnected and how these connections control the storage transport and recovery of hydrocarbon gangulys research supervised by her advisor dr siddarth misra specifically focuses on quantifying fluid phase connectivity from whole-core images of a carbonate sample after various fluid injection scenarios she has created a machine learning-based workflow that uses the segmentation of the microscopic images of the rock by dividing them into distinct components followed by computation of fluid phase connectivity the developed metrics can standardize and speed up the measurement of connectivity to facilitate the characterization of properties and processes of the rock material in petroleum engineering one of the most important parameters governing the production of oil is porosity which quantifies the pore space present in a sample whereas connectivity is an important petrophysical property that directly controls the recovery of fluid from pore space ganguly said
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in order to see how the fluid components are connected the workflow uses multiple microscopic images maps or scans of the rock sample to create a three-dimensional volume by breaking the component up into multiple parts it is easier to see each component the connectivity metrics are then applied to obtain the connectivity values for oil water and gas components the results from the metrics help identify the parts in the rock where there is maximum fluid recovery we quantify many things in our day-to-day lives ganguly said from age height temperature and speed comparing the different parameters of each gives us valuable insights and helps us make decisions like avoid speeding tickets with the funds from the grant ganguly will make her machine learning-based workflow accessible to petrophysicists across the world by using her workflows and testing them for accuracy they will be improved and lead to a better understanding of connectivity
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dr bimal nepal professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has been elected fellow of the american society for engineering management (asem) the asem fellow is the highest membership level with the society and the honor is maintained for life candidates must have eight years of continuous membership in asem with significant service to the engineering management profession demonstrated engineering management accomplishments and continuing distinguished service and contributions to the society no more than five new fellows are elected in a given year nepal has held several leadership roles within asem including conference technical chair board of directors member and associate editor of their flagship journal engineering management journal he is also the associate director for the industrial distribution undergraduate program in the department and teaches at both undergraduate and graduate levels his research interests include distribution logistics and supply chain management new product development manufacturing systems and engineering education he has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal and conference proceedings articles in these areas his research work has been recognized with numerous local national and international awards his previous awards include holleran-bowman faculty fellow phillips 66 first-year faculty fellow william keeler memorial award herbert h richardson fellow and corrie and jim furber '64 faculty fellow nepal joined the texas a&m faculty in 2009 he received his phd from wayne state university a master of engineering from the asian institute of technology and a bachelor of engineering from the malaviya national institute of technology
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