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from there investing in the student experience became a priority for worsham he has since given to the zachry engineering education complex renovation and established other scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students across the university these have included the aerospace engineering department the hagler institute for advanced study and a volleyball scholarship through the 12th man foundation his most recent gift will support the department as it expands both in students and opportunities under the new leadership of dr ivett a leyva the aerospace engineering department head if there was one phrase or word that dr leyva used that really resonated with me it was community said worsham whether that is the sense of community in the facilities that we have and provide to the students or the sense of community in the types of instructors professors and advisors that were able to hire worsham hopes his gift will help kickstart the next phase of the aerospace engineering department as it evolves this gift is my way of leading by example to take the department to the next level as it ironically faces the challenges of its success said worsham im always looking for win-wins so its very gratifying for me to see that perhaps my gift would make a difference and i trust dr leyvas direction for our aerospace community practice makes perfect since 2019 worsham has also given his time to this community as a professor of practice in the department for him it goes back to that chance encounter with mcelmurry during his nsc after worsham took a few of his classes mcelmurry went on to become his mentor and even taught him how to fly during his last semester i got my pilots license right out of college with professor mcelmurrys help and having that hands-on experience helped me build a better picture of an airplane in my mind in terms of the natural physics and physiology of how it flies said worsham that prepared me to talk to students about cause and effect and get them to look at an airplane as an entity as opposed to a collection of equations worsham is an instructor for aero 401 and 402 which are design courses where the students build and fly an aircraft he always had an interest in teaching since both of his parents and some of his grandparents were educators but mcelmurry was his inspiration to come back and teach in the department now worsham is making his own impact on the students and investing in the resources the department is able to provide them looking back at my career i strongly recommend that students keep an open mind and just never stop being a student of engineering said worsham theres any number of things you could have asked me as a freshman that i would have told you were certainties but in the end i worked in software not hardware i worked with satellites not aircraft i worked in virginia not texas so keeping an open mind allows you to accept and seize opportunities that you might not otherwise recognize he may have traded in his tricycle but his excitement for aerospace is still leading him to new opportunities right now thats helping to create a learning environment for the next generation of engineers
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a gift to the aerospace engineering excellence fund has an immeasurable impact on students and a lasting impact on the department if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact anna norville senior director of development
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during the first week of may the we vex-u robotics team from texas a&m university supported by the women in engineering (we) program was awarded the science division's design award in the vex-u world championship the most distinguished award the competition itself had 3 000 teams from 36 nations competing this year "it's important that our students gain a well-rounded experience by both working toward a goal and competing where they can learn from other teams " said dr shawna fletcher director of the we program this is the second time the team has qualified for the world championship but it is the first time they have been able to go due to the covid-19 pandemic "it's been really great as a senior to see everything we've worked for over four years and all the work that i've put into the team be visible and acknowledged " said the captain of we vex-u maddie foster from the department of computer science and engineering
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this year's challenge tipping point required the robots to put pringle chip-shaped rings onto the base of a mobile goal move portable goals and elevate on platforms this was similar to a game of horseshoe but instead of throwing the rings the robots carried them to the goal and the goal was moving we vex-u had two robots one big and one small the goal for each robot was to hold at least one mobile goal and be able to pick up the rings "the design award is specifically for building a good program; it's something that's going to last " said foster "having that quality of design that we've come up with together it was really great to see our team come together and be recognized for all the work that we've done" the team consisted mostly of first- and second-year students with little coding experience but foster implemented a developmental method she had learned in her computer science classes: teach implement and test throughout the year peer mentors first taught the new members how to operate the programs used to design the robots how the robots are manufactured and how to use the c++ coding language next they implemented what they had learned into different projects finally they tested each component to see what worked and what needed to be worked on "when students participate you see the learning curve " fletcher said "they quickly learn and grow as team members and leaders" the we program thanks its industry sponsors chevron l3harris bp lockheed martin and others for making project teams possible visit here for more information on supporting we or project teams
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dr jn reddy will receive the 2022 international association of computational mechanics congress medal also known as the gauss-newton medal later this year it is the highest award bestowed by the organization the honor recognizes individuals who have made outstanding and sustained contributions to the computational mechanics field among reddy's many contributions include serving as a prominent member and contributor to the computational and applied mechanics community his authoring of the classic and highly popular textbook "introduction to the finite element method " and developing a number of novel mathematical models and computational approaches that others have followed applied and advanced for more than 40 years reddy serves as the odonnell foundation chair iv professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he is also a university distinguished professor a regents professor director of the center of innovation in mechanics for design and manufacturing and a member of the national academy of engineering "significant honors and awards are important to a person and the institution the person serves because they signify the esteem in which the honoree is held by the members of his or her scientific community " reddy said "this is another of the highest international honors i have received in my professional life for the works i have done with this award i am being recognized as one of the most accomplished people in the field of computational mechanics around the world" the medal itself features the images of isaac newton and johann car friedrich gauss recognizing the connection between mathematics numerical analysis and mathematical modeling of physical events all of which are deeply rooted in the broad field of computational mechanics reddy will be honored at the 15th world congress on computational mechanics set to be held in yokohama japan on aug1
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funded by the exxonmobil chemical company researchers at texas a&m university and exxonmobil are developing a method to reprocess petroleum coke a byproduct of refining crude oil into a sustainable high-value alternative using a chemical process called electrochemical exfoliation they have converted petroleum coke into graphene a nanomaterial with applications in electronics medicine and energy storage this study was published in npj 2d materials and applications crude oil is a mixture of many different hydrocarbons with light portions going to natural gas while the heaviest portions form viscous or even solid materials one of the many products that comes from refining crude oil is solid petroleum coke although there are many ways to utilize petroleum coke such as electrodes for steel and aluminum production this process releases harmful carbon emissions for this reason the industry is looking for low-emissions high-value materials that can be derived from crude oil a possible solution is repurposing the carbon-rich petroleum coke to generate graphene a versatile sheet-like material composed of a single layer of carbon atoms conventionally graphene is exfoliated from graphite the researchers investigated whether any chemical processes would facilitate graphene production from fossil fuel-derived materials we know that petroleum coke contains graphene-like materials said dr micah green professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m our challenge was to isolate the graphene from the starting material to accomplish this task the researchers turned to electrochemistry they placed coke into an electrolyte solution with a working electrode and a counter electrode when they applied voltage to the working electrode the ionic species or negative ions from the electrolyte migrated in between the graphene sheets in a process called intercalation think of the coke as a book and the graphene as each individual sheet of paper said green when the book is laid flat on its spine the pages fan out and have more gaps between them the process of electrochemical exfoliation is similar when the coke is expanded the graphene separates negative ions are created and move into the spaces between the graphene sheets completing the coke byproduct and graphene separation many graphene applications require high conductivity but whether the graphene from petroleum coke could achieve such performance was unknown the graphene created from the coke had a conductivity of 50 siemens per meter compared to a typical lithium-ion battery whose electrical conductivity is about 150-160 siemens per meter with a heat treatment called annealing the researchers could boost the conductivity even higher making it comparable to electrodes in lithium-ion batteries with these findings graphene applications that have been in development for years could come to fruition the future of nanomaterial scaleup is directly tied to existing streams in the petrochemical industry and i anticipate many more cases where petroleum-derived chemicals are converted to high-value carbon materials like graphene said green other contributors to the research include postdoctoral researcher dr sanjit saha; doctoral students pritishma lakhe kailash arole and xiaofei zhao; undergraduate students matthew j mason and bryan j coleman; and exxonmobil researchers sergey yakovlev sundararajan uppili and rohan a hule
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lyn and jeffrey vogt 94 have recently established the vogt family endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university following his grandfather harry vogt 36 and his father harry lee vogt 66 jeffrey was among many in his family to attend texas a&m he always appreciated the tradition and culture found in aggieland and was especially drawn to the quality of the engineering program texas a&m offered jeffrey graduated with his bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and began working as a project manager for dynamic systems inc a national mechanical and process construction firm since then he has continued to demonstrate excellence in his work and has assumed various leadership positions within the company he now leads the company as its president though lyn graduated from baylor university family roots at texas a&m have inspired the vogts to give back to the future generations of students who will walk the campus i've always wanted to help future-generation aggies to be a little less burdened by the cost of getting a degree from a&m jeffrey said texas a&m university is a special place and an easy choice to give back to the vogt family endowed scholarship mirrors the familys love for the university hannah vogt 20 and madison vogt who will transfer in as a sophomore this summer carry on the family legacy as fourth-generation aggies
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endowments supporting texas a&m university college of engineering students have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact steve labrutta director of development
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many former students give back to the departments from which they received their degrees however for trisha and doug sheffield encountering texas a&m university as parents is what inspired them to establish the trisha 91 and doug 92 sheffield endowed scholarship in biomedical engineering the couple found their way to texas a&m for different reasons while they pursued separate passions trisha was not considering coming to aggieland until she made a campus visit then she decided it was the only school she would apply to meanwhile doug attended texas a&m for graduate school while trisha obtained a bachelors degree in marketing doug received his masters degree in industrial engineering it was their shared experience as parents of aggie students however that left a lasting impact on the sheffieldsdoug and i both have fond memories of our time at texas a&m but seeing and experiencing it as parents deepened our love of the university so much more trisha said the experiences opportunities and even challenges developed both of our kids in meaningful waysboth of the sheffields children attended and graduated from texas a&m lauren sheffield 19 studied communication and mason sheffield 20 studied biomedical engineering when masons senior design professor james jim machek passed away suddenly he asked trisha and doug to consider donating to the design space created in macheks honorhaving seen firsthand the deep and positive impact of masons senior design project in biomedical engineering we decided to make a memorial gift but also wanted to learn more about the design space trisha saidcommitted to learning more about the initiatives of the biomedical engineering program trisha and doug set up a meeting with department head dr mike mcshane to tour the design space confident in and inspired by the vision and leadership for biomedical engineering at texas a&m they decided to establish an endowed scholarship for students in the departmentdistributions from their endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students pursuing an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at texas a&m the scholarship will be given to students of sophomore classification or higher who have demonstrated financial need and graduated from a public high school in texasthe expense of a college education can create financial stress for many families trisha said we simply hope that it lifts a small portion of that burden and helps encourage students as they pursue their academic dreams furthering and enabling the achievements of other aggies is important to trisha and doug as they have been impacted so greatly by texas a&m themselves it's a great privilege to play even a small role in student success trisha said we are so proud to be part of the aggie network and that our kids also are aggies so it was a natural fit for giving backsupport from friends and former students of the department is critical to our success and is deeply appreciated said mcshane we are particularly grateful to doug and trisha sheffield for their support of our students in multiple ways and are excited to mark their endowed scholarship as the first contribution in this campaign for 50 biomedical engineering scholarships
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scholarship endowments reward high-performing students with recognition of their individual accomplishments and provide valuable financial support that allows them to focus on their studies as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the program we will simultaneously launch a campaign to establish 50 new scholarships for biomedical engineering students this will scale our scholarships more appropriately to the size of the student body and allow us to recognize more of our outstanding students with scholarships if you are interested in supporting the departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact ryan nichols assistant director of development
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although widely used polymers bring with them challenges often determined by the processing conditions in which they are made with the ability to understand the factors of how these materials are influenced in their creation researchers at texas a&m university could unlock great control and customization of polymer performance dr anastasia muliana professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is working with her team to discover how these processes impact the performance of polymers polymers are materials consisting of very large molecules also known as macromolecules and are composed of many repeating patterns they are used in daily life and have wide-ranging applications from the automotive industry aerospace and infrastructure to packaging agriculture and biomedicine however a major challenge is that often the same types of polymers can show significant variations in the properties they exhibit an effect caused by differing processing conditions that can alter the chemical and physical properties of cured polymers "in these applications various types of polymers and processing conditions are considered and the processed polymers are often exposed to a multitude of external stimuli " muliana said "investigating the link between processing structure property and stimuli on the time-dependent responses of polymers is necessary to design and process polymers with the desired performance for their applications and also to provide a long-term solution for recyclability or biodegradation" the team's focus has centered on better understanding the time-dependent mechanical responses of polymers when exposed to various environmental conditions and processing conditions their new approach links the processing structure property and stimuli information to the time-dependent responses of the polymers allowing the researchers to further consider physical mechanisms and relevant macromolecular information "polymer processing and characterization of polymer properties are usually done separately and independently where investigations on short- and long-term responses of polymers are often performed without incorporating knowledge of processing histories nor information on basic chemical properties " muliana said "for the same type of polymers large variations in the properties are often found in literature which makes it challenging to use this information for designing with polymers it is often necessary to experimentally characterize the properties of a polymer after each processing condition" the benefits of muliana's approach to discovering the influence of processing conditions on the properties of polymers could be three-fold: to permit the design of polymers with desired life performance to reduce the number of experimental characterizations required to determine the polymer properties to support future digital twin concepts in polymer processing predicting life performance of polymers during their service and designing the afterlife of polymers ultimately thanks to these potential results muliana and her team hope their research will lead to highly customizable polymer devices or structures with tighter controls over their performance and durability the team is now looking ahead to collaborations with polymer chemists and experimentalists "we expect to have more robust models and simulation tools to incorporate a wider range of processing conditions including 3d printing more detailed information about the polymers' macromolecular networks and more complex mechanical loading histories " muliana said
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automation uses various technologies that minimize human intervention in processes and control systems including factory production lines chemical processes and self-driving vehicles human interaction within these systems is reduced by using the outcomes of mathematical models to program systems to be more efficient and precise dr aldo j munoz-vazquez instructional assistant professor in the department of multidisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university alongside an international team of researchers is using sophisticated mathematics to predict the behavior of a larger class of dynamic systems more accurately and efficiently this study was published in the journal of computational and applied mathematics the researchers analyzed generalized control structures or control-loop mechanisms utilizing feedback by relying on the recently proposed integrodifferential operators in future studies they will consider the accuracy of these models by analyzing the response of complex dynamical systems including robot motion or even rehabilitation tasks where the case of a human-in-the-loop is considered modern systems and industrial applications demand more stringent operating conditions like more varied requirements on the task and system specifications in turn more flexible tools are needed to reflect the dynamic model characteristics in the real-system response the researchers found new methodologies to extend the fundamental theorems of calculus to novel and generalized integrodifferential operators and establish interesting inequalities that allow the stability analysis and the synthesis of newer control methodologies volterra integral equations of the second kind allow the mathematical modeling of a larger class of dynamic systems said munoz-vazquez given that the systems under study are more general these equations are expected to obtain more accurate models and control strategies that can aid in precise motion control of robotic systems the stabilization of electrical networks that have energy storage devices with low and ultra-slow responses or the regulation of chemical processes involving viscoelastic fluids this research is in a very early stage in the future it will be possible to develop general dynamic models of real-world systems and control algorithms which can be employed in either the understanding of nature or in the synthesis of novel technologies such as robotics rehabilitation chemical processes and other applications i hope these new tools will increase potential interest in the research and industrial communities said munoz-vazquez other contributors to the research include dr oscar martinez-fuentes and dr guillermo fernandez-anaya
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mack cleveland an undergraduate student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university is a crew member of the 2022 astronaut scholar class as one of the students selected he was awarded the prestigious astronaut scholarship for use in future research endeavors the astronaut scholarship foundation (asf) provides the scholarship to a handpicked group of students each year who are pursuing advances in science technology engineering or mathematics asfs mission is to continue the united states legacy in innovation by developing world-class researchers the scholarship will help me with the last year of undergraduate studies and offers me an amazing opportunity to network with other students who are passionate about research said cleveland now a senior in the department cleveland chose to study materials science and engineering because of the overlap between physics and chemistry that gives rise to materials critical to solving outstanding engineering problems his research uses atomistic simulations to study the formation energies of point defects in amorphous silicon which can be used in solar cells and liquid crystal displays he conducted this research under dr michael j demkowicz associate professor in the department for several semesters and they recently published their findings on amorphous silicon in physical review materials in addition to his research cleveland is the editor-in-chief of explorations: the texas a&m undergraduate journal through this medium he promotes outstanding and creative undergraduate research publications while cultivating a diverse community of young scholars i am interested in research because i enjoy the thrill of discovering the beautiful way nature works he said i am driven to research because i hope that the knowledge my research creates can help safeguard our national security and prevent disastrous engineering failures by providing more resilient materials cleveland is also a university scholar and vice election commissioner for the student government association as a recipient of the scholarship he will receive an expense-paid trip to orlando florida for the innovators week and gala featuring the neil armstrong award of excellence an opportunity to present and represent texas a&m at the scholar technical conference extensive access to renowned mentors membership in the astronaut scholar honor society and several other benefits as cleveland commences takeoff from his undergraduate studies he plans to work toward a doctoral degree in materials studies while continuing his research on developing new materials for harsh environments and improving degradation prediction he would like to eventually pursue a career in materials science and engineering i am looking forward to graduate school where i can get experience tackling more challenging scientific problems and paving the way for technologies that will shape the future he said the astronaut scholarship is a key step along that path enabling me to continue my current research and connecting me with a community of scholars who are inventing game-changers in the materials science and engineering field
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a team made up of a texas a&m university professor and students in the college of engineering teamed up to address vision loss due to diabetes by creating an ocular camera and artificial intelligence (ai)-powered imaging system to assist primary care physicians in diagnosing diabetic retinopathy the organization ai-ris was founded by biomedical engineering doctoral students daniel kermany and tj falohun civil engineering graduate student uthej vattipalli and biomedical engineering research assistant professor dr amir zavareh the ai-ris journey officially began in 2017 with kermany when he started accumulating more skills and knowledge surrounding ai-based disease diagnoses ai-ris became a reality after winning a national competition presented by sling health a student-run biotechnology incubator providing solutions resources and mentorship to student teams tackling clinical problems the team spun out from a medical entrepreneurship student organization called sling health in the fall of 2019 zavareh said we started as an interdisciplinary group of individuals with backgrounds in engineering business and medicine from there ai-ris was officially incorporated in july 2020 ai-ris is utilizing a particular machine-learning algorithm to help physicians detect retinopathy with 99% accuracy and sensitivity this ai system powers their retinal imaging device and assists primary care providers with accurately screening patients for diabetic retinopathy without a specialist present this clarifier can also detect signs of pathologies from five different conditions including age-related macular degeneration diabetic retinopathy retinal vein occlusion glaucoma and high myopia a rare form of high-degree nearsightedness
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vision loss due to diabetes known as diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the us the condition affects up to 80% of adults who live with diabetes for longer than 15 years which puts approximately 34 million american adults at immediate risk zavareh said to prevent blindness diabetic retinopathy must be caught early the team presented a solution consisting of a portable ocular camera and a machine-learning algorithm while the camera captures images of the patients retina without dilating the pupil the algorithm classifies images of the patients retina through the identification of diabetic retinopathy indications like microaneurysms small dot hemorrhages and exudates due to the lack of access to eye care in underserved communities individuals living in rural areas often go undiagnosed and eventually suffer from vision loss and blindness currently these individuals must visit ophthalmologists to conduct their eye exams however improvements on software and hardware technology that is currently available will eventually allow all individuals suffering from diabetes to get eye exams at their primary care providers office while underserved patient populations in the united states provide the strongest use-case for our device diabetics of all socioeconomic classes need to regularly check their vision to monitor early signs of diabetic retinopathy zavareh said this will increase access to retinal exams by tenfold and the impact of our technology will be revolutionary
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a plan from texas a&m university researchers to 3d print new resilient buildings using hempcrete has the potential to lower the environmental impact of traditional construction methods and make housing more affordable and availablethe project will be funded by a $374 million grant from the us department of energy advanced research projects agency-energy (arpa-e) harnessing emissions into structures taking inputs from the atmosphere (hestia) programdr petros sideris assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering will lead the project as principal investigator to develop residential and potential commercial construction designs his team consists of assistant professor dr maria koliou department head and professor dr zachary grasley and professor dr anand puppala from the department and associate professor dr manish dixit and professor dr wei yan from the texas a&m college of architecturehempcrete is made by mixing hemp powder fibers or shives with lime and water creating a lightweight green building material
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"while production of conventional construction materials such as concrete requires large amounts of energy and releases large amounts of co2 (carbon dioxide) hempcrete is a net carbon-negative material which can provide major environmental benefits " sideris saidsustainability will be further promoted by designing hempcrete structures more resilient to natural hazards than commonly used lightweight wood frame construction"resilience to natural hazards is intertwined with environmental sustainability because building damage and subsequent repairs due to extreme events such as hurricanes result in major environmental impacts " sideris said
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hempcrete has already been used globally in residential construction and prefabricated modular construction"hempcrete has excellent fire resistance and thermal insulating properties that can reduce heating and cooling energy demands " he said "it is water-resistant and offers good acoustic properties"as part of the project building designs will be printable and created to achieve structural and energy performance that will comply with modern design codes sideris said digital designs of printable hempcrete buildings will facilitate adoption by the construction industry "the advancements of this project will contribute to the us maintaining its worldwide leadership in advanced construction methods and infrastructure sustainability and resilient technologies " he saidthe funding is part of hestia which prioritizes overcoming barriers associated with carbon-storing buildings including scarce expensive and geographically limited building materials the hestia program aims to increase the total amount of carbon stored in buildings to create carbon sinks which absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than released during construction
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texas a&m university will be hosting robomaster north america a strategic robotics competition founded by da-jiang innovations (dji) from june 25-27 2022 robomaster is a seven-versus-seven robotics competition that features a university students ability to design robots and meet different criteria to engage with the opposing teams robots the criteria requires that robots are able to launch 17-millimeter projectiles and golf ball projectiles and can pick up field elements there will also be robots created by students such as a drone that is able to shoot projectiles while in the air as well as an autonomous robot that uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to track different robots and shoot at them as well
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texas a&ms robotics organization tamu robomasters will be competing in this competition with their premier robotics team the texas aimbots the team consists of many engineering students across multiple departments such as mechanical engineering computer science and engineering aerospace engineering and more eighteen universities will be making their way to aggieland in hopes of taking home first place six of the 18 teams are from international universities in italy and canada the university of texas at austin will also be attending continuing the friendly rivalry with texas a&m
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the robomaster competition will be streamed online is open to the public and can be attended in person at the memorial student center in room 2300 it will begin with two full days of competition on june 25 and 26 from 9 am to 7 pm the final matches for the top four teams and the award ceremony will be held on june 27 from 10 am to noon for more details visit robomaster north americas website
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millions of shipments of nuclear and other radiological materials are moved in the us every year for good reasons including health care power generation research and manufacturing but there remains the threat that bad actors in possession of stolen or illegally produced nuclear materials or weapons will try to smuggle them across borders for nefarious purposes texas a&m university researchers are making it harder for them to succeed if border agents intercept illicit nuclear materials investigators need to know who produced them and where they came from fortunately nuclear materials carry certain forensic markers that can reveal valuable information much like fingerprints can identify criminals for instance when scientists examine the concentration of certain key contaminant isotopes in separated plutonium samples they can determine three different attributes of the samples history: the type of nuclear reactor that produced it how long the plutonium or uranium was contained in the reactor and how long ago it was produced with current statistical methodologies they can determine these three attributes utilizing a generated database that stores the required information as a mathematical variation of these attributes for various nuclear reactor types and emerge with a good idea of who made the material but what if investigators are presented with a mixed plutonium sample said dr sunil chirayath author of a new study on nuclear forensics recently published in the journal nuclear science and engineering suppose the adversary is mixing materials from two nuclear reactors at two different times and that material is cooled for different times a bad actor might do this intentionally to disguise it mixed samples of nuclear material are significantly more challenging to identify with traditional methodologies in a real-world situation the extra time required could have a catastrophic impact on the global community to improve the process chirayath associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives along with his research team has developed a methodology using machine learning a type of artificial intelligence he can produce identifying markers through simulations and then store that data in a 3d database each attribute is one level of the database and a standard computer can quickly process the data and lead investigators to the reactor type that produced the plutonium sample and potentially the suspects by joining other pieces of the puzzle gathered through traditional forensics three experiments of irradiating uranium using three different reactor types and post-irradiation examinations have been conducted at texas a&m to date without knowing the samples origins doctoral student researcher patrick oneal successfully identified where each of the plutonium samples was produced by using machine learning the work is being done through a consortium of national labs and universities funded by the us department of energys national nuclear security administration the consortium focuses on development of new methods of detecting and deterring nuclear proliferation and to educating the next generation of nuclear security professionals chirayaths team will soon run one more irradiation and the corresponding post-irradiation examination with funding already in place the next step is to take this machine-learning methodology to high-level government labs where researchers can work with much larger samples of nuclear materials university labs are constrained by more restrictive irradiation safety limits chirayath is confident efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation are working the international treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons arose from concern about atomic weaponry and all but four countries india israel pakistan and south sudan signed it north korea signed it but walked away from it later chirayath also notes that with the rise in nuclear energy production comes an increased risk that the technology will be used to make weapons capable of mass destruction we have to make sure materials are not diverted from peaceful use he said we need to double-up our tools and methodologies but its not just technical tools we also have to double-up on policies and agreements to prevent proliferation from happening
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millions of shipments of nuclear and other radiological materials are moved in the us every year for good reasons including health care power generation research and manufacturing but there remains the threat that bad actors in possession of stolen or illegally produced nuclear materials or weapons will try to smuggle them across borders for nefarious purposes texas a&m university researchers are making it harder for them to succeed if border agents intercept illicit nuclear materials investigators need to know who produced them and where they came from fortunately nuclear materials carry certain forensic markers that can reveal valuable information much like fingerprints can identify criminals for instance when scientists examine the concentration of certain key contaminant isotopes in separated plutonium samples they can determine three different attributes of the samples history: the type of nuclear reactor that produced it how long the plutonium or uranium was contained in the reactor and how long ago it was produced with current statistical methodologies they can determine these three attributes utilizing a generated database that stores the required information as a mathematical variation of these attributes for various nuclear reactor types and emerge with a good idea of who made the material but what if investigators are presented with a mixed plutonium sample said dr sunil chirayath author of a new study on nuclear forensics recently published in the journal nuclear science and engineering suppose the adversary is mixing materials from two nuclear reactors at two different times and that material is cooled for different times a bad actor might do this intentionally to disguise it mixed samples of nuclear material are significantly more challenging to identify with traditional methodologies in a real-world situation the extra time required could have a catastrophic impact on the global community to improve the process chirayath associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives along with his research team has developed a methodology using machine learning a type of artificial intelligence he can produce identifying markers through simulations and then store that data in a 3d database each attribute is one level of the database and a standard computer can quickly process the data and lead investigators to the reactor type that produced the plutonium sample and potentially the suspects by joining other pieces of the puzzle gathered through traditional forensics three experiments of irradiating uranium using three different reactor types and post-irradiation examinations have been conducted at texas a&m to date without knowing the samples origins doctoral student researcher patrick oneal successfully identified where each of the plutonium samples was produced by using machine learning the work is being done through a consortium of national labs and universities funded by the us department of energys national nuclear security administration the consortium focuses on development of new methods of detecting and deterring nuclear proliferation and to educating the next generation of nuclear security professionals chirayaths team will soon run one more irradiation and the corresponding post-irradiation examination with funding already in place the next step is to take this machine-learning methodology to high-level government labs where researchers can work with much larger samples of nuclear materials university labs are constrained by more restrictive irradiation safety limits chirayath is confident efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation are working the international treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons arose from concern about atomic weaponry and all but four countries india israel pakistan and south sudan signed it north korea signed it but walked away from it later chirayath also notes that with the rise in nuclear energy production comes an increased risk that the technology will be used to make weapons capable of mass destruction we have to make sure materials are not diverted from peaceful use he said we need to double-up our tools and methodologies but its not just technical tools we also have to double-up on policies and agreements to prevent proliferation from happening
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dr xuejun zhu assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was awarded a welch foundation grant to help uncover and characterize enzymes involved in modifications that lead to pharmaceutical ineffectiveness in turn this could help medical professionals prescribe medications based on an individuals gut characteristics in the futurecertain bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract can decrease the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals potentially causing treatment delays and adverse impacts on individuals physical and mental health despite research that suggests bacterial enzymes are responsible for modifying the structures and properties of small-molecule pharmaceuticals these enzymes remain poorly understoodthere are many pharmaceuticals that are becoming increasingly ineffective said zhu they can even have side effects partly due to certain modifications of the pharmaceuticals by some gut bacteria the key player in these modifications are enzymes a kind of protein found in bacteria our goal is to determine which enzymes are involved in these changes however there are hundreds of enzymes making it difficult to decipher which enzymes are responsible for causing modifications to help determine these specific enzymes zhu and her team will expose substrate specificities the feature of an enzyme to select the kind of substrate to allow a chemical reaction once they uncover which enzymes are responsible for modifying pharmaceuticals they will use the information to help predict the enzymes unique sequence fingerprints which determine the substrate specificity and will ease future enzyme discovery moving forward this research could potentially change the way medicines are prescribed to enhance the effectiveness of medications based on the enzymes in an individuals gutfor example if we have a fecal sample we can sequence the dna or rna to see which enzymes could be abundant said zhu based on that information we will be able to determine whether an enzyme will degrade the medication or will likely be more effective this will hopefully help ensure that what is being prescribed is the most effective treatment for an individual the welch foundation is one of the largest private funding resources for chemical research in texas the grant supports researchers within the state of texas who are making significant contributions to chemistry
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blood pressure is one of the most important indicators of heart health but it's tough to measure outside of a clinical setting frequently and reliably for decades cuff-based devices that constrict around the arm to give a reading have been the gold standard researchers at texas a&m university and the university of texas at austin are working to change that enabling continuous monitoring that can provide a more comprehensive look at blood pressure than the single snapshot that comes with the cuffs the researchers developed an electronic tattoo that can be worn comfortably on the wrist for hours and deliver continuous blood pressure measurements at an accuracy level exceeding nearly all available options on the market today this research has received $5 million in awards and funding from the national institutes of health (nih) "taking infrequent blood pressure measurements has many limitations and it does not provide insight into exactly how our bodies are functioning " said dr roozbeh jafari professor of biomedical engineering computer science and electrical engineering at texas a&m and the co-leader of the project blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of arteries as blood flows to the arteries they expand to let it through hypertension or high blood pressure happens when the force is too great or the arteries don't expand enough high blood pressure can lead to serious heart conditions if left untreated it can be hard to capture with a traditional blood pressure check because it only measures that exact moment in time a single data point "blood pressure is the most important vital sign you can measure but the methods to do it outside of the clinic passively without a cuff are very limited " said dr deji akinwande a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at ut austin and one of the co-leaders of the project which is documented in a new paper published on june 20 2022 in nature nanotechnology the continuous monitoring of the e-tattoo allows for blood pressure measurements in all kinds of situations: at times of high stress while sleeping exercising etc it can deliver hundreds and thousands of measurements more than any device thus far mobile health monitoring has taken major leaps in recent years primarily due to technology like smartwatches these devices use metallic sensors that get readings based on led light sources shined through the skin "all this data can help create a digital twin to model the human body to predict and show how it might react and respond to treatments over time " akinwande said however leading smartwatches aren't yet ready for blood pressure monitoring that's because the watches slide around on the wrist and may be far from arteries making it hard to deliver accurate readings and the light-based measurements can falter in people with darker skin tones and/or larger wrists the e-tattoo makes sense as a vehicle for mobile blood pressure monitoring because it resides in a sticky stretchy material that is comfortable to wear and doesnt slide around the is a very thin layer of carbon named graphene similar to what we see in graphite or pencils but the atoms are precisely placed next to each other to form one to a few atomic layers "the sensor for the tattoo is weightless and unobtrusive; you place it there you don't even see it and it doesn't move you need the sensor to stay in the same place because if you happen to move it around the measurements are going to be different " jafari said the device takes its measurements by shooting an electrical current into the skin and then analyzing the body's response which is known as bioimpedance there is a correlation between bioimpedance and changes in blood pressure that has to do with blood volume changes however the correlation is not particularly obvious so the team had to create a machine-learning model to analyze the connection to get accurate blood pressure readings in medicine cuff-less blood pressure monitoring is the "holy grail " jafari said but there isn't a viable solution on the market yet it's part of a larger push in medicine to use technology to untether patients from machines while collecting more data wherever they are allowing them to go from room to room clinic to clinic and still get personalized care the term that we often use is called ‘medicine in the wild which was coined by dr david paydarfar professor of medicine at dell medical school jafari said the fundamental science on medical e-tattoos has advanced rapidly in the last few years but the next step toward fda-approved monitoring devices that people can use will take a lot of technological integration that means working to integrate these sensors with smartphones smart watches and other mobile devices that people can use to get routine continuous readouts of data other team members on the project are dr dmitry kireev and neelotpala kumar from electrical and computer engineering at ut austin; kaan sel and bassem ibrahim from electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m; and dr ali akbari from biomedical engineering at texas a&m the research was supported by grants from the office of naval research the national science foundation and nih realizing unobtrusive and passive technologies for the frequent recording of blood pressure to address the worldwide problem of hypertension is among the most important global challenges in health care i am pleased to see the progression of technology development following the initiation of the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering (nibib)/nih-india collaboration for the development of such technologies a decade ago said dr roderic pettigrew first director of nibib chief executive officer of engineering health and inaugural dean for engineering medicine at texas a&m
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according to the national spinal cord injury statistical center approximately 18 000 new spinal cord injuries occur each year in the united states spinal cord injuries often lead to serious constipation or incontinence which can lead to decreased quality of life and may even be life-threatening after a spinal cord injury 41% of patients rated bowel dysfunction as a severe life-limiting problem to address these challenges dr hangue park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is looking into the utilization of closed-loop electrical stimulation on the colon to promote the natural rhythm of the digestive system this would ultimately negate the adverse effects caused by spinal cord injury and promote functional recovery although the effect of electrical stimulation on promoting effective colon movement has been previously investigated no previous study has yet investigated the result of closed-loop electrical stimulation on promoting colon movement park said traditional open-loop electrical stimulation has been previously proven successful in triggering colonic peristalsis which is the natural constriction and relaxation of the muscles in the digestive tract however park is looking into closed-loop e-stim because of its unique offering to regulate stimulation closed-loop stimulation occurs at a strategic time that allows researchers to work with the colon at a specific time during the digestive process and is regulated whereas open-loop stimulation occurs at random times and is not regulated leading to inconsistent benefit closed-loop stimulation allows park and his team to work with the intrinsic movement of the colon and augment the naturally occurring processes just at a decreased rate due to the patients injury
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park and his team are still researching that strategic timing they are investigating when the colons sensory or motor signal is ready for augmented stimulation which can be a very complex answer as the colon is still a mystery to researchers in many ways
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the motivation of this work is to offer spinal cord injury patients as well as their caregivers a higher quality of life park said park is a member of the texas a&m spinal cord initiative which fosters collaborative research to discover new treatments that promote recovery after spinal cord injury this work funded by the craig h neilsen foundation provides significant insight into the analysis of neural manipulation of the colon and improved quality of life for those affected by spinal cord injury it also shows great promise for largely impacting future research collaborators for this project include dr cedric geoffroy from the texas a&m college of medicine and dr byung-jun yoon from the texas a&m electrical and computer engineering department
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dr james hubbard jr is the 2022 recipient of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) adaptive structures and materials systems award the recognition highlights a lifetime of achievement and sustained impact of significant contributions to the sciences and technologies associated with adaptive structures or materials systems according to the asme hubbard said the award further validates his research's positive impact and value on the engineering field over the last 40 years he views this award as further motivation to use his skills in engineering to improve the world through his work hubbard has made valuable contributions across a broad spectrum of engineering thus far in his career he particularly takes pride in having mentored young engineers and faculty across the country built patented new technology for practical applications and started several commercial ventures based on adaptive structures technology "i have really enjoyed my journey in this field and am very grateful to all those who have encouraged and believed in me " said hubbard who serves as oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair i professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering "i have tried hard to give back to my field and have been rewarded beyond my hopes i am grateful" he is a member of the national academy of engineering and a fellow of several organizations including the asme the national academy of inventors the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics and the international society for optics and photonics
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dr miroslav begovic was honored by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) power and energy society (pes) with the organizations top energy award the 2022 ramakumar family renewable energy excellence award this award recognizes researchers with outstanding contributions in the field of developing utilizing and integrating renewable energy resources in the national and global energy scenarios begovic the moore professor and department head in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was presented with this prestigious award for his leadership in the education and development of tools and protection techniques for the integration of renewable generation in electric power systems he was the project director for the design and construction of the photovoltaic (pv) system at the georgia institute of technology aquatic center built for the 1996 olympic games which was the largest roof-mounted pv system in the world at the time of its commissioning he was also one of the founding members of the brook byers institute for sustainable systems at georgia tech currently he is involved in the us-india collaborative for smart distribution system with storage (ui-assist) program which is a $75 million five-year project sponsored by the department of energy to advance the development of the power grid the ui-assist program includes us universities such as washington state university and the massachusetts institute of technology among the participating indian universities are the indian institute of technology (iit) kanpur iit delhi and iit bhubaneswar his work has resulted in about 50 projects for government and industrial sponsors and over 250 publications he is a life fellow of ieee and recipient of the 2019 ieee pes meritorious service award he has also previously served as a member and chair of the ieee pes governing board as well as president of ieee pes
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throughout the spring semester 39 student teams in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering worked with government industry and individual sponsors to address their project needs the teams recently presented their work at the engineering project showcase at texas a&m university where several teams were recognized dr michael do professor of practice and director of the capstone program said the program enables students to apply everything they've learned from their undergraduate academic program to projects "i strongly believe our capstone course gives students a true understanding and appreciation for what it takes to engineer a system from a design process perspective which will be important as they graduate and begin their professional careers do said first place in the department was awarded to dylan choate lacey hawthorne michael whittaker and rafael ramos who worked with sponsor baylor scott and white health to address lab wait times at the rock prairie clinic location the team developed several diagrams and designed solutions to make the lab services more efficient and reduce wait times theyre seeing an average wait time of up to about 30 minutes whittaker said with the pandemic it's just an increase in sick patients a large increase of people coming in with or without covid they want to reduce that down to about 10 to 15 minutes based on what it used to be prior to covid-19 and also increase patient satisfaction ratings
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the team was able to make many trips to the clinic location to observe firsthand and traced paths that nurses must make for each patient which can include unnecessary trips to the front window of the labs to explain to lost patients that they have to check in at a different desk choate said the team calculated that there was approximately six minutes of non-value-added time for each patient after reviewing historical data provided by the clinic the team found that mondays were the busiest days at the lab and the longest wait times occurred between 10 am and noon hawthorne said another technique students used was a lean audit which is used in industry to identify different problem areas within a current system and translate those audits back to identifying waste areas including excess motion over processing and transport the team presented 10 solution options to baylor scott and white the primary concept involved hiring a patient service specialist at the lab to reduce the amount of time nurses get redirected from their main duties another proposed option was to add a tv and text alert system that would allow patients to see their expected wait time and be notified when they can enter the lab our solutions reduce the average wait time to about 11 minutes for each patient ramos said overall the top five solutions we presented would help decrease the waiting time and increase patient satisfaction second place was awarded to morgan roberts bryana moya joaquin cieri and lukas featherstone who worked with sponsor rochester gauges third place was awarded to james chung melanie beattie dhakshin subbaiah and lissete sillas who worked with sponsor aggieland coffee dr mike graul associate professor of practice said the students arent just given a problem and then left to figure things out on their own engineering design is performed systematically and emphasis is placed on the definition of the requirements and viable solutions driven by those requirements the teams are responsible for a formal technical argument that spans the entire design process covering: problem definition needs analysis requirements definition development of alternative solution concepts analysis of these alternatives selection and the final design itself said graul who also served as associate department head for undergraduate affairs in industrial and systems engineering until summer 2022 the final designs are analyzed with respect to the risk performance and cost for more information on the departments capstone program visit the design website
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extrusion-based 3d printing/bioprinting is a promising approach to generating patient-specific tissue-engineered grafts however a major challenge in extrusion-based 3d printing and bioprinting is that most currently used materials lack the versatility to be used in a wide range of applications new nanotechnology has been developed by a team of researchers from texas a&m university that leverages colloidal interactions of nanoparticles to print complex geometries that can mimic tissue and organ structure the team led by dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor and presidential impact fellow in the department of biomedical engineering has introduced colloidal solutions of 2d nanosilicates as a platform technology to print complex structures 2d nanosilicates are disc-shaped inorganic nanoparticles 20 to 50 nanometers in diameter and 1 to 2 nanometers in thickness these nanosilicates form a house-of-cards structure above a certain concentration in water known as a colloidal solution these colloidal solutions have appealing properties when studying the deformation of a material such as increased viscosity and yield stress as well as shear thinning where viscosity reduces under strain and thixotropic behavior where a material deforms in response to applied forces the gaharwar laboratory leverages the rheological properties of these nanosilicates for extrusion-based 3d printing the results of the teams research were published in the journal bioprinting the research was supported by the national institute of biomedical imaging bioengineering of the national institutes of health and the president's excellence fund (x-grants and t3) some major challenges in extrusion-based 3d printing are the inability to print tall and complex structures as soft materials flow under gravity and cannot form self-supporting structures to overcome these challenges researchers used colloidal nanosilicates and demonstrated them as a platform technology for bioprinting using three different approaches in the first approach satyam rajput a biomedical engineering graduate student in the gaharwar laboratory and the lead author of the paper designed a shear-thinning ink composed of nanosilicates and water-soluble polymers such as agarose alginate kappa-carrageenan gelatin gelatin methacryloyl polyethylene glycol and n-isopropyl acrylamide the printable ink formulation showed good shape fidelity in the second approach the team demonstrated the use of nanosilicates as a sacrificial ink an instrument designed to fail and be removed to design microfluidic devices for in vitro disease modeling these perfusable devices can be used for various applications to emulate and study vascular physiology and fluid mechanics disease models tissue organization and function therapeutic tissue engineering and 3d-cell culture models and screen drugs in the third approach the researchers utilized a colloidal nanosilicate gel as a support bath for 3d printing by nullifying the surface tension and gravitational forces a range of complex structures such as a bifurcated vessel femur meniscus dna double helix heart and trileaflet valve were printed inside the support bath the versatility of nanosilicates could be widely adopted in the fields of additive manufacturing tissue engineering drug delivery and medical devices gaharwar said other authors who contributed to this study are biomedical engineering graduate students kaivalya deo tanmay mathur giriraj lokhande and kanwar abhay singh; dr yuxiang sun associate professor in the department of nutrition; dr daniel alge associate professor in biomedical engineering; dr abhishek jain assistant professor in biomedical engineering; and dr tapasree roy sarkar assistant professor in the department of biology
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three generations of petroleum engineers in the family have inspired the establishment of the lovingfoss family – classes of 52 87 18 23 petroleum ventures program endowed scholarship at texas a&m university the lovingfoss aggie legacy started with the late warren j lovingfoss 52 who received a bachelors degree in petroleum engineering in 1980 after obtaining over 25 years of experience in the oil and gas industry he founded and was president of lovingfoss & bowman petroleum consultants in ventura california warrens son donald p don lovingfoss 87 was the next family member to receive his degree in petroleum engineering from texas a&m after graduation he was a petroleum engineer for plains exploration & production and seneca resources corporation and then was vice president of petroleum engineering for union bank following in his fathers footsteps donald established his own company lovingfoss energy consultants inc the most recent lovingfoss family graduate in petroleum engineering is connor lovingfoss 18 who graduated with a bachelors degree and a petroleum ventures certificate the certificate sets aggie petroleum engineers apart by giving them unparalleled exposure to business concepts entrepreneurship industry leaders and case-based learning opportunities through the graham petroleum ventures program where they work together with mays business school students to solve problems and study real-world energy companies distributions from the lovingfoss family – classes of 52 87 18 23 petroleum ventures program endowed scholarship will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering and participating in the petroleum ventures program at texas a&m this scholarship will both honor the lovingfoss familys ongoing contribution to the petroleum industry and promote the further success of students who like the lovingfoss family have proven their dedication to solving problems in the energy field
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endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact alex moreno director of development
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a white mineral ring as tall as the statue of liberty creeps up the steep shoreline of lake mead a colorado river reservoir just east of las vegas on the nevada-arizona border it is the countrys largest reservoir and its draining rapidlywith much of the country experiencing above-normal temperatures below-average rainfall and a changing climate it is vital that water management decision-makers have accurate informationled by dr huilin gao associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university researchers created the global lake evaporation volume (glev) dataset it leverages modeling and remote sensing to provide the first long-term monthly time series for 142 million individual natural lakes and artificial reservoirs worldwidethe researchers published their findings in nature communicationsabout 87% of fresh surface water in liquid form is stored in natural and artificial lakes (ie reservoirs) while the evaporation volume from these global lakes is substantial little is known about its spatial distribution and its long-term trend
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from 1985 to 2018 researchers discovered that long-term average lake evaporation volume has increased at a rate of 312 cubic kilometers per year the trend attributions include an increased evaporation rate of 58% decreased lake ice coverage of 23% and increased lake surface area of 19%the results from the study underline the importance of using evaporation volume (rather than evaporation rate) as the primary index for assessing climatic impacts on lake systems we found that the long-term lake evaporation is 1500 plus or minus 150 cubic kilometers per year which is 154% larger than previous estimates said first author dr gang zhao a texas a&m former student who is now a postdoctoral fellow in the department of global ecology at the carnegie institute for science this suggests that lake evaporation plays a larger role in the hydrological cycle than previously thought
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according to glev 6 715 reservoirs only account for 5% of the water storage capacity and 10% of the surface area of all lakes (both natural and artificial) however reservoirs contribute 16% to the evaporation volume this quantity of reservoir evaporative loss is equivalent to 20% of the global annual consumption of water use in the last 33 years evaporative water loss from reservoirs has been increasing at a rate of 54% per year outpacing the global trend of 21% for all lakes"with regard to evaporation loss this study will be an invaluable venue to serve water resources researchers and decision-makers " gao said "our findings have significant environmental societal and economic implications as the global evaporative loss will be accelerated and further exacerbated in the future under global warming"from a global perspective the total reservoir evaporation can be larger than the combined use of domestic and industrial water however even in the united states very few lakes/reservoirs have reliable evaporation data"
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without accurately quantifying the magnitude and trend of volumetric evaporation loss individually for the millions of global lakes researchers say reliable water and energy resources projections can't be made this freely available dataset can benefit decision-makers and the wider science community"with results for individual water bodies glev can really help improve reservoir management decision-making all over the world especially under increasing drought events and population growth " gao said "this dataset helps the science community better understand the role that these water bodies play in earth systems from global weather forecasting flood and drought modeling to earth system modeling under climate change"for future work texas a&m researchers the desert research institute and the us bureau of reclamation recently started a nearly $1 million nasa applied science project that focuses on developing satellite-assisted operational daily reservoir evaporation monitoring and forecasts for the western united states the team will also expand an ongoing daily reservoir monitoring project for texasother contributors to this research are dr yao li a postdoctoral research associate in the civil and environmental engineering department at texas a&m and dr liming zhou a professor in the atmospheric and environmental sciences department at the state university of new york at albanythis research is funded by nasa the department of energy and the national science foundation
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kenneth w pecot 85 and kristin l pecot have recently established the ken and kristin pecot endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university additional selection preferences will be given to students who are pursuing a degree in electrical engineering who graduated from a texas high school and who have demonstrated academic dedication and success through a gpa of 35 or greater kenneth graduated from texas a&m with his bachelors degree in electrical engineering now he gives back as a trusted member of the departments external advisory and development council he is currently the chief operating officer for the 20 msp group a business development group for the it industry based in plano texas kenneth and kristin pecot reside in southlake texas their sons jake 12 benjamin 14 and john 21 both followed in kenneths footsteps and received their degrees from texas a&m now the ken and kristin pecot endowed scholarship will continue to build on the familys legacy at texas a&m by enabling electrical or computer engineering students to pursue their educations and careers
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endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact true brown director of development
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despite more than a century of studies the origin and effects of mental fatigue are still under debate in the research community mental fatigue is associated with reduced effort on demanding tasks causing performance and efficiency to decline researchers in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university in collaboration with the department of psychological and brain sciences and the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution are working to develop a mathematical way to investigate the impact of mental fatigue on effort exertion and decision-making industrial and systems professor dr alfredo garcia directs this research and works with doctoral student zhide wang wang said one obstacle in researching mental fatigue is its subjectivity its effects and symptoms can vary widely across different people he said a better understanding of mental fatigues influence could have both academic and economic impacts as a building block of psychological research insights about mental fatigue may help explain why people sometimes get bored or distracted in a short time but in other cases people can maintain a state of high efficiency without feeling tired wang said on the economic side understanding the mechanism of mental fatigue may help improve the overall efficiency of a system wangs model is unique from existing ones because it adopts a framework that relates mental fatigue to the value of decision-making the perceived value of deciding to complete a task the researchers hypothesized that mental fatigue discounts the value of a task making that task not as attractive which explains why people tend to quit when tired we proposed a method to determine the value of the task from the subjects behaviors and decisions wang said our model embraced the nature of mental fatigue treating objective measurements as an indicator of subjective fatigue rather than treating the measurement as mental fatigue itself one unexpected observation during the research was a phenomenon wang called a learning effect when subjects faced a difficult task their ability to master it through multiple rounds of practice gradually helped increase the task performance regardless of the subjects mental fatigue over time these observations urged wangs team to revise and refresh their approach for a better and more comprehensive understanding of mental fatigue we can peek into the difficulties faced by mental fatigue researchers wang said in addition to mental fatigue many hidden unobservable factors may be responsible for human decision-making and those factors may be highly heterogeneous among people and hard to control the team published their findings recently in the american psychological associations journal psychological review wang said the next goal is to apply the theory and methods by conducting a series of experiments to examine the validity of the proposed model this work results from a close collaboration between engineering experts and psychologists wang said i appreciate my team members for being open to new ideas from different domains and contributing in their own unique ways the willingness of different communities to talk to each other pushed the project forward and made courageous exploration in the study of mental fatigue
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dr tillie mcvay wants every one of her students to walk away from her classroom confident in knowing they can become successful engineers even when the material is challenging and it takes work to achieve that goal "even if something looks difficult at first they can approach problems in different ways and figure it out " said mcvay instructional associate professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university "it's a way of thinking about technical problems in the world" mcvay who has been with the department for more than 16 years teaches statics and dynamics mechanical measurements and numerical methods primarily for sophomore mechanical engineering students she said one of her favorite parts of teaching is working through challenging concepts and seeing the moment when students begin to understand "teaching is my passion " mcvay said "you can tell by someone's eyes and their reactions if they truly understood what you said" mcvay said she is thankful to be a part of nurturing successful college careers watching students knowledge and confidence grow with each subsequent course until graduation this journey to successful graduation faced new hurtles with the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic and the necessity of online learning both for teachers and students the new challenges made adaptation necessary as students had to work harder to engage with their courses and complete assignments while dealing with new distractions from being at home on the other hand instructors pivoted their teaching styles to help encourage interactions and engaged attendance through methods like using in-class polls break-out rooms requiring students to have their cameras turned on and implementing classwork due at the end of the period "i had to change the way i taught in zoom to engage more students and to make sure they attended class " mcvay said "this academic year i am so grateful to be back in front of the students in person i think the students are grateful to attend in person as well the teaching experience is so much better for all of us"
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texas a&m university is leading the second stage of a widely collaborative science mission to better understand elements of hypersonic flight bolt ii a suborbital sounding rocket was designed to provide information about boundary layer turbulence (bolt ii) during hypersonic flight the flight experiment managed by the air force research laboratory (afrl)/air force office of scientific research (afosr) launched on march 21 from the nasa wallops flight facility in virginia the successful 10-minute flight brings in new scientific data to further our understanding of drag and heating at hypersonic conditions dr rodney bowersox professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m served as the lead principal investigator (pi) for this effort drs helen reed and edward white professors in the aerospace engineering department were co-pis on the projects aerospace engineering graduate students heather kostak bryan morreale john wirth daniel mullen and eric swinny all played integral roles in the three phases of the experiment this project provided a great opportunity for the students and faculty to better understand the steps teaming and attention to detail required for a successful flight experiment said bowersox this team interacted on a weekly basis with the air force calspan-university of buffalo research center (cubrc) nasa and nasa sounding rocket operations contact the result was a successful hypersonic flight experiment and i am incredibly proud of the entire team mapping out dynamics one of the most important questions that needed to be answered before launch day was will the rocket fly straight according to bryan morreale a doctoral student in the aerospace engineering department that's a harder question to answer than one might think especially because of the unique geometry of bolt ii "my main contribution was looking at the external aerodynamics of the whole flight system " said morreale "myself and another graduate student eric swinny generated aerodynamic databases to determine the flight performance of the rocket" morreale and swinny worked closely with experts from nasa wallops and the johns hopkins university applied physics laboratory (jhuapl) to determine the flight stability for bolt ii "one of the most important things about bolt ii is that it's an unclassified problem for the community to all work on together " said morreale "i came into this with limited knowledge but i left knowing unbelievable amounts more from having access to the nation's best and brightest engineers working on these problems" morreale was also a key player in helping to determine where to place the more than 400 sensors and instruments on the vehicle "we have the rocket and at the end of the rocket we have the bolt ii payload which has these swept leading edges " he said "the edges cause the air to rush in and create a very complicated flow pattern so what the instrument designers want is to get a rough idea of what the air will do at a specific moment in flight"
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to help them determine the best way to capture information during the flight he developed higher fidelity fluid dynamics simulations that could explain what the flow over the vehicle's surface would look like laying the groundwork the placement of those 400-plus sensors was critical to the success of the flight mission to create a wealth of data from this experiment the vehicle had two different instrument layouts one side of the vehicle was designed to capture the natural breakdown to turbulence during flight the other side served as a trip side that captured data from forced transition and turbulence during hypersonic flight heather kostak 16 20 22 a former student from the aerospace engineering department was in charge of instrumenting the natural side which would be equipped with the majority of the sensors she looked at ground test data and simulations to inform the instrumentation layout "we first tested in the wind tunnels at texas a&m and on just a rough 3d-printed model we saw breakdown " said kostak "this breakdown informed us that we need to place instruments in that region to see what modal growth and instabilities are present" she also relied on the data from morreale and mullens simulations for laminar and turbulent flow along with results from jhuapl and her knowledge from previously working on bolt after instrumenting the entire vehicle kostak and their team traveled to new york to test the full-scale vehicle at cubrc "we tested the entire flight vehicle with all of the instrumentation which has not been done before so that was a really unique opportunity to be a part of " said kostak because of their ability to replicate expected bolt ii flight conditions in cubrc's facilities researchers now have the opportunity to compare more precise data between the flight experiment and ground tests "that's the whole picture all together " said kostak "how did the flight data compare to our simulations and ground test work are we predicting what actually caused transition to turbulence on the flight vehicle that's what i'm curious about because that will impact the aerospace industry"
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drumming up the data the successful launch of bolt ii brings in unprecedented data for the teams to begin processing and breaking down air force 1st lt john wirth a doctoral student in the aerospace engineering department is one of the first to look at this information "we have some excellent data and i'm really excited to see how it all lines up " said wirth "you have this complicated 3d geometry with a lot going on so step number one is just to look at the flight trajectory" wirth's role is to take the exponential amount of data from the flight test and reduce it to usable information he is working with partners at afrl nasa and cubrc to determine the angle of attack mach and altitude his role is to put the flight data through the 3d heat flux analysis he developed as part of his doctoral research "if we can validate our theories and actually understand what's happening with the physics then we can make better engineering decisions and enable the next generation of hypersonics " he said the data from bolt ii gives the hypersonics community real-world information that provides long-awaited answers and opens the door for new discoveries for wirth the opportunity to work directly with the flight experiment data alongside a collaborative team has been a uniquely rewarding experience "it feels good being a part of a nationwide team doing something that's important for our whole country " said wirth "that definitely gives you a lot of satisfaction at the end of the day" texas a&m is the first university to lead a flight test key collaborators on the science mission included cubrc nasa university of minnesota united states air force academy university of maryland university of arizona and jhuapl "it is amazing to watch the students rise to the occasion and take the lead on critical elements of the bolt ii flight experiment said sarah popkin who oversees the project as afosrs program officer for high-speed aerodynamics the computational fluid dynamic simulations sensor placement to chase the science and data post-processing have all proven to be so important to our success these students and this project are a prime example of how afosr contributes to workforce development capacity building and creating the next generation of scientists and engineers"
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managed by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) under the leadership of bowersox the university consortium for applied hypersonics (ucah) is a five-year $20 million-per-year us department of defense initiative for modernizing hypersonic flight capabilities for more information about texas a&ms hypersonic research and events visit the ucah website
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high-frequency wireless communication systems such as 5g millimeter wave (mmwave) and beyond are of particular interest to consumers as they can deliver data with extremely high speed and provide an upgraded experience to existing wireless communication systems despite the many advantages of mmwave communication there are several basic challenges associated with using it santosh ganji a computer engineering doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is working with his faculty advisor dr pr kumar to design novel beam management practices for 5g wireless technology to address these issues and provide a reliable solution for mmwave communication current mmwave communication devices use narrow directional beams to maintain connection which means that the transmitter and the receiver must continuously adapt their beam direction to maintain alignment as the user moves or walks around additionally the human body blocks the mmwave communication link from the cell tower to the wireless device to combat this both the transmitter and receiver must maintain a backup non-line of sight beam reflected off any ambient surfaces to preserve link during blockage beam management which encompasses this beam adaptation and blockage recovery is vital to keep high-frequency communication systems working efficiently
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ganji has developed two separate protocols for mmwave beam management his first beamsurfer continuously aligns the beams used by the cell tower and wireless device so that they point at each other with minimal overhead and without requiring any special sensors it also circumvents pedestrian blockage by maintaining a backup non-line of sight beam that reflects off of interior walls to preserve a link during blockage terra his other developed tool does the same but is specifically designed for outdoor environments instead of maintaining a non-line of sight beam that reflects off of interior walls ganji utilizes the ground as a reflective surface if a user moves far away from a cell tower or is permanently blocked from it then terra also seamlessly does handover ie switches the user through a different cell tower current research to address this problem utilizes cameras or sensors to monitor a users location which then allows the beams to be pointed toward each other but ganjis technology is able to take measurements within the signal without any additional equipment these protocols are designed to be usable in current 5g and future cellular technologies he said we anticipate our work can be utilized in any future directional communication system architecture ganji has a pending invention disclosure for this work in addition this project is funded by the us department of homeland security the us office of naval research the us army research office and the us army research lab
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rebecca and paul griffin 95 have established the rebecca and paul griffin 95 endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to full-time students involved in student organizations and pursuing an undergraduate degree in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university in college station or galveston texas paul griffin began his college career at texas a&m in 1991 as a first-generation aggie the first time paul stepped on campus; he immediately knew there was something special about the culture i was positively impacted by the students on campus when i was walking around paul said i remember specifically many people stopping and asking us if we needed any help which was a very welcoming environment along with an exceptional campus culture the reputation of the engineering program at texas a&m made pauls decision to attend an easy one his experience in the ocean engineering department was highlighted by the many professors and mentors who helped him start his career these experiences not only influenced his career but inspired him to give back i had a tremendous experience as a student at texas a&m paul said i wanted to give back to the department that helped form my technical base which has helped me have a successful career while in school paul was fortunate to be involved in various student organizations including the marine technology society and society of naval architects and marine engineers the omega epsilon chapter and the ocean engineering honor society paul gives credit to his involvement in these organizations for his successful career student organizations play a huge role in helping students develop their leadership capabilities and also provide a connection with the professional folks in the industry which ultimately helps students find jobs and successful careers paul said paul understands firsthand the amount of time effort and dedication it takes to participate in these organizations and wants to reward those who choose to be involved there is so much for students to gain through organizations but committing to them sometimes does not come easily i want to recognize the extra effort involved in volunteering for these student organizations paul said the ability to help shape the future of inspiring ocean engineers is very important to paul he understands the legacy he is responsible for leaving behind to help students who are in the same position he once was i am excited to create a legacy of support that will enhance the educational experience of ocean engineering student leaders he said paul currently works for chevron as an offshore engineer and resides with his wife rebecca and their two boys jacob and patrick in katy texas
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endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown director of development at mbrown@txamfoundationcom
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dr ali erdemir was elected to the 2022 class of the european academy of sciences and arts (easa) members academy members are elected for their outstanding achievements in science arts and governance and hold exceptional standing in society as a result of their scientific work publications or leadership erdemir noted the 35 years he has focused on enhancing the efficiency reliability and environmental sustainability of mechanical systems as key to his recognition by easa "being elected to the european academy of sciences and arts is a great honor " said erdemir "it reflects my achievements in science and engineering through advancing the frontiers of surface engineering tribology materials and mechanical engineering fields aimed at reducing the energy and carbon footprints of all moving mechanical systems thus helping with global sustainability" erdemir serves as the halliburton chair in engineering professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he is a member of the national academy of engineering the world academy of ceramics and the science academy of turkey he is a fellow of numerous organizations including the american society of mechanical engineers the american association for the advancement of science the society of tribologists and lubrication engineers the american vacuum society and asm international "i am very grateful to my friends peers and leadership at texas a&m and in our department for their unwavering help and support and for providing me the great opportunities to further excel in my field " erdemir said founded in 1990 easa has greater than 2 000 members including more than 30 nobel prize laureates erdemir was officially inducted as a member on july 2 at the organization's annual inauguration ceremony in salzburg austria
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dr tracy hammond professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university received the 2022 distinguished achievement award for teaching from texas a&m and the association of former students since 1995 the award has been presented to recognize faculty and staff achievements in research individual student relationships continuing education/extension graduate mentoring staff and administration and is one of the highest university honors hammond was one of five faculty members in the college of engineering to be honored this year i am incredibly honored to receive this award and am grateful for my exceptional students who have been active collaborators in creating an inclusive classroom " said hammond through her innovative work she has made significant contributions to improving engineering education at texas a&m her engineering education research has been implemented at high schools and universities including texas a&m georgia tech texas state university san jose state university and letourneau university hammond is an international leader in artificial intelligence data science activity recognition (focusing on eye body and sketch motions) machine learning haptics intelligent fabrics smartphone development and computer-human interaction research her publications on these subjects have been widely cited hammond also serves as director of the institute for engineering education and innovation and the sketch recognition lab at texas a&m
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dr guofei gu professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is the lead principal investigator of a research team that has received a $1 million grant from the national science foundation's (nsf) resilient and intelligent next-generation systems (rings) program to enhance the security of future wireless and mobile network systems the rings program seeks to ensure the security and resiliency of next-generation (nextg) wireless and mobile communication sensing computing and networking systems that will support essential services nextg systems are expected to connect billions of internet of things devices and users and provide personalized computational and storage resources for highly critical data in real time with little delay in order to host so many application services nextg will use edge computing which refers to computing services that are physically located near the user or source of the data instead of miles away at the core of a traditional cloud data system this way the corresponding device can provide quick responses for example future autonomous vehicles may require nextg to support application services to perform computations store and process critical data from their various sensors manage vehicle-to-vehicle communications and run their deep-learning algorithms to ensure that the billions of nextg-supported services remain scalable and reliable it will feature microservice architecture which is composed of a single application or service divided into smaller independent processes (microservices) that each has a specific purpose they are reusable and can be made quickly to meet demand in addition if a single microservice fails it will not cause the entire application or service to crash however existing microservice architecture is not typically developed and deployed with built-in security measures while basic security patches are available on demand to add after the fact they are not enough to support the large volumes of critical services that nextg hosts to address these issues the team has proposed to develop a new framework nextsec to transform the microservices into self-protecting entities that can do security enhancement protection on their own using the concept of security transformation in addition to security transformation nextsec also provides new primitives for supporting a software-defined way of enforcing user-to-edge-to-cloud security and offers efficient scalable verification of complex security properties across microservices nextsec is an ambitious attempt to build revolutionary capabilities for securing critical services in nextg as well as generic edge and cloud computing said gu this project will provide a solid foundation and collaborative community for future system and network security research the co-principal investigators on the project include associate professor dr jeff huang and assistant professor dr chia-che tsai from the computer science and engineering department and dr walter magnussen director of the texas a&m internet2 technology evaluation center for the rings program the nsf partners with the us department of defenses office of the under secretary of defense for research and engineering the national institute of standards and technology and several industry partners such as apple ericsson google ibm intel microsoft nokia qualcomm and vmware
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like many aggies carter burke 90 was drawn to texas a&m university by its strong alumni network outstanding education and of course its time-honored traditions as a student carters favorite tradition was standing with the 12th man in kyle field where he witnessed the beginning of college football hall of famer rc slocums head coaching career with the aggies carters experience as a student in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution has been foundational in developing his career the department provided him with an excellent education with real-world training that coupled with a network of passionate former students has given him a leg up in his professional pursuits the department does an outstanding job of preparing students for life and work after texas a&m making sure that they get in front of as many prospective employers as possible carter said my degree did a great job of preparing me to have an immediate positive impact in my first job out of college more than 30 years into his career carter and his wife chris have decided to establish the burke 90 industrial distribution endowed scholarship to give back to the university and department he graduated from distributions from this endowment will be used to provide one or more scholarships to students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in the industrial distribution program in the engineering technology and industrial distribution department at texas a&m carter and chris hope their support will help other aggies achieve their dreams to support their community specifically the burkes have specified that this scholarship be awarded to a student from the san antonio or austin area where they are from and now live i feel fortunate to have been relatively successful in my career this has much to do with texas a&m and the benefits of being an aggie carter said no one can discount the power of the aggie network i see it all the time aggies help aggies
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endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact hannah simonds assistant director of development
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texas a&m universitys society of automotive engineers (sae) aero design team has won first place for the third consecutive year in the regular class at the sae aero design east competition they also took a second team to compete in the micro class bringing home fourth place this is the first time since the 2010s that texas a&m has competed in two classes sae aero design is a competition that challenges students to design build and fly a radio-controlled airplane optimized to meet specific configurations and mission requirements the experience exposes students to real-world engineering situations and builds on their classroom knowledge better preparing them for their future careers the competition also allows students to practice their communication skills with a design report and technical presentation farmers flight this year the objective for the regular class was to design an aircraft that could take off within 100 feet while carrying a payload of steel and soccer balls knowing that the soccer balls had a higher point value texas a&ms team farmers flight began experimenting with a design to place them in the wing of their aircraft each team takes a completely different approach to maximizing their flight score said isabel short an aerospace engineering student and team member we were one of two or three teams that had the idea to put a soccer ball in a wing and our plane had the capability to hold 26
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it was an ambitious design and their 14-foot-long aircraft with a 7-foot wingspan raised eyebrows at the competition once they hit the runway though farmers flight cemented their first-place win by carrying a total of 120 soccer balls over three flights with the second-place team carrying a total of 24 we were writing on the back of napkins at last years competition already messing around with designs said josue corleto an aerospace engineering student and team director we had a lot of historical knowledge to play off of we understood the rule set well and we were confident that we had the skills and the ability to create such a different design a total of 22 teams from around the world competed in the regular class and farmers flight pulled away with first place overall and first place in mission performance farmers flight lite interest in texas a&ms sae aero design team has grown with their success over the last few years which has created more opportunities for students to be involved this year they formed a second team farmers flight lite to compete in the micro class the objective for the micro class was to take off from an 8-foot table and travel 300 feet while carrying as much payload as possible in steel and pizza boxes in the past teams at the competition have struggled to take off from the table so farmers flight lite put emphasis on a lightweight wing area and chose to go with a biplane design we were a first-year team so the fact that we were able to get off the table multiple times successfully at competition is an achievement in and of itself said jeremy ringwood a mechanical engineering student and team member even being a young team and experiencing build and competition for the first time they found success in their design and pushed for the podium to the very end only being short by about five points in flight theres almost a sense that no matter what happens youre proud because you harken back to the idea that youve done all this work and that work isnt for nothing said ewan gill an aerospace engineering student and team director farmers flight lite competed against 19 other teams from around the world and placed fourth overall and fourth in mission performance beyond competition while the competition itself is a rewarding opportunity for the students its the trial-and-error and coming together as a team that has had the biggest impact
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ive never seen a team come together in the way that we did and other teams were coming up to us at competition and talking about how our team seems so close said short just seeing everything that we had done throughout the year come together was special sae gives students a unique introduction to the real world as theyre able to take the theoretical knowledge they learn in the classroom and apply it to the whole design process of prototyping testing validation and verification youre never going to get anything as close to putting a plane that you designed on the flightline and trusting that its going to work said ringwood and the experience gives you great things to talk about in interviews and put on your resume preparing students for their future when they leave sae and texas a&m is the reason the teams advisors commit so much of their time to support them throughout the year brad worsham and scott mcharg both from the aerospace engineering department have advised texas a&ms team for the last few years and the students have found an invaluable resource in them theyre just great people theyre awesome to work with and our team as a whole would not be where it is without them said gill brad has been teaching at texas a&m because thats what he wanted to do he wanted to teach and see people go through this process of becoming better engineers the advisors invested many weekends and hours after work helping the students test their designs and learn from practice flights scott our pilot puts in hours with us behind the scenes at rellis before competition said corleto as soon as it takes off you know that its in good hands even with some of the worst planes that weve thrown at him he figures them out which still allows us to get feedback and information from our designs the students plan to compete in both the regular and micro classes again at next years competition with short directing the regular class and ringwood directing the micro class learn more about texas a&ms sae aero design team and the annual sae aero design competition
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what started as a small company outside of chicago has transformed into a global industry leader dedicated to bolstering the education of future ocean engineers by establishing the fund for dredging and coastal studies great lakes dredge and dock company llc (gldd) will continue to revolutionize the education of aggie engineers for years to come this fund will be used for renovating and renaming the great lakes dredge and dock laboratory for dredging and coastal studies in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university gldd is the largest dredging company in the united states with a 132-year-old-history both domestically and internationally first founded in 1890 gldd started its legacy in oak brook illinois working with the chicagos shore infrastructure and lock system since then the company has expanded its reach globally taking on dredging projects in bahrain qatar and brazil in recent years gldd moved its headquarters to houston to be closer to new markets and customers near the gulf coast and mississippi river since moving to houston gldd has been able to have a closer relationship with the texas a&m department of ocean engineering we have had a long-term relationship with texas a&m particularly with the ocean engineering department gldd ceo lasse petterson said by establishing the great lakes dredge and dock laboratory for dredging and coastal studies we hope to grow the relationship for further research and introduction of the dredging and coastal industry to students originally from norway petterson lived in houston for over 20 years and has been involved with the oil and gas industry before joining gldd in 2017 as a result he has been able to see firsthand the type of students the ocean engineering department at texas a&m produces we hire a lot of texas a&m engineers and are very familiar with the school petterson said when we moved our corporate headquarters to houston from illinois two years ago we noted more active participation with texas a&m as one of the benefits of being based in houston in addition to their gift gldd has also been deeply involved in the departments industry advisory council the texas a&m engineering experiment stations advisory board and the annual dredging short course offered by texas a&m engineering both as students and teachers gldd has shown its commitment to not only the department but to the students of ocean engineering as well we intend for our donation to be just part of the future relationship as we expect active engagement with researchers students and professors at both ocean engineering campuses in college station and galveston and the maritime academy in galveston petterson said gldd also values texas a&ms role in helping them stay competitive in an ever-growing market they are among the first companies to make major investments in the united states offshore wind market the relationship between gldd and the department of ocean engineering will not only help them grow in global markets but bolster the education of all aggie ocean engineers the ocean engineering department is very pleased to partner with great lakes in seeking novel solutions for a variety of coastal issues including dredging offshore wind and marshland/wetland resiliency said dr sharath girimaji ocean engineering department head together great lakes and texas a&m can elevate the ocean and coastal engineering professions to new heights
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endowments supporting students in the texas a&m university college of engineering have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact meredith brown director of development at mbrown@txamfoundationcom
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the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is home to renowned faculty who impact society through research several faculty received prestigious awards and honors this year many of which are highlighted below dr jodie lutkenhaus professor received the 2022 edith and peter odonnell award in engineering in addition she was honored with the arthur k doolittle award for her outstanding talk on flexible mxene coatings dr stratos pistikopoulos professor received the 2021 sustainable engineering forum research award the distinguished achievement award presented by texas a&m and had three members of his research group accept faculty positions dr xuejun zhu assistant professor was awarded a welch foundation grant to help uncover and characterize enzymes that can decrease the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals she also recently received a national institutes of health maximizing investigators research award dr faruque hasan associate professor was named division director of the american institute of chemical engineers computing and systems technology division dr qing sun assistant professor was awarded the stephen i katz early stage investigator research project grant to develop thermally stable vaccines and relax the stringent conditions needed for vaccine preparation storage and distribution dr pushkar lele associate professor received a national institute of general medical sciences r01 grant totaling over $13 million to research how h pylori invade and cause infections dr joseph sang-ii kwon associate professor received the 2021 premium award for best paper from the institution of engineering and technology in systems biology dr jeetain mittal professor received a welch foundation grant that will be used to develop computational methods for generating new knowledge on the material properties of biomolecular condensates and how these relate to their assembly and function dr emily pentzer an affiliate faculty of the chemical engineering department was selected as a finalist for the 2022 blavatnik national award for young scientists in physical sciences & engineering these award highlights are among many others the department has received within the past year as our faculty continue to strive for excellence in chemical engineering
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the texas aimbots texas a&m universitys premier robotics team from the tamu robomaster organization won second place in the three-versus-three main category at the annual robomaster north america competition texas a&m hosted this years robotics competition at the memorial student center from june 25-27 2022 robomaster is a university-level robotics competition powered by dji a technology company that features a students ability to design robots based on an extensive set of game rules while completing the engineering task of designing the robot for combat for robots to compete effectively they must be able to launch both paintball-sized and golf-ball-sized projectiles at enemy robots at the same time they also must coordinate with their teammates and manipulate field elements to gain advantages over the enemy team before the competition students go through a long process of designing manufacturing and testing their robots for competition
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sophomore engineering student elizabeth crumrin a driver for texas a&ms robot the standard at the competition said everything before the competition required engineering while everything after was like an ea sports challenge the drivers are not allowed to physically see the robots while they control them and are only allowed to see the competition from a first-person point-of-view through a webcam on the robot like a video game the texas aimbots has a team dedicated to those interested in learning how to drive the robot known as the stratcom drive team crumrin reflected on the anxious feeling she had when the team was not able to test drive the robot until weeks before the competition not allowing as much practice time as other teams may have had despite the late arrival of the robot the texas aimbots remained undefeated until the finals where they placed second and the advanced robotics at the university of washington placed first
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it was a really cool experience said crumrin the entire competition leading all the way up to the field is a complete engineering competition it is design-focused and we go through the entire engineering process from conceptualization to adding up our ideas to prototyping and even manufacturing there is also the entire software side which looks so difficult and they did so much just to get the robots to move that itself is a hard design challenge we experienced to see all of that come together in the last month leading up to the competition was super exciting due to multiple stages of preparation for this competition tamu robomasters is filled with engineering students across all departments dillan gay junior in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering said his biggest takeaway from participating in robomaster north america was that implementing and executing ideas well is best accomplished with a team of people who are not afraid to rebuild and test as much as possible for crumrin the teamwork and communication required to succeed in this organization and competitions have created a community of lifelong friends
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dr pr kumar regents professor distinguished professor and o'donnell foundation chair i in computer engineering and dr srinivas shakkottai professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university are working on a collaborative project on resilient information networks in this demonstration the research team utilized multiple sensors that track a moving target in this case a vehicle though multiple cameras and sensors were tracking the moving vehicle only one image was streamed or transmitted over the air at any time preventing the team from clogging up the bandwidth using multiple streams the network itself utilizing machine-learning techniques seamlessly switched the video through the cell tower to the end target so that the stakeholder could view the moving target at any time this was done with zero human interference this demonstration falls in the general scheme of microservices architectures where you divide your job into individual elements or services and then these services are attached together over a network to get your output shakkottai said the goal of this project is to not only enable a smart network that can transmit the necessary information to the consumer over a 5g network but also to make it resilient to disruptions in communication computation sensing and other challenges that arise in any situation the microservices architecture can leverage all available resources to place and migrate the services to ensure such resilience the research team will now continue their efforts at the new texas a&m rellis campus 5g testbed facility other collaborators for this project include dr woo-hyun ko and doctoral student jaewon kim
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how is golf equipment made what is it made of and why does it matter you can head to engineering student katie calderon's viral tiktok page to find answers to these questions whether you watch her unveil the insides of golf balls compete in long-drive tournaments or follow her journey to develop a 3d-printed putter calderon's page continually showcases the overlap between golf and engineering
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now a junior in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and a national champion long-drive competitor calderon started golfing at age four when she received a free lesson offered at a hotel since that moment golf has remained a constant in her life at age 16 she began working at a golf course where she fell in love with golf club repairs and fittings although she always imagined playing golf in college she was also interested in working in the research and development of golf clubs she then reached out to the callaway golf company for direction "i asked someone i followed on instagram who worked at callaway if they could put me in contact with the team who builds golf clubs " calderon said "when i was able to speak with a person on the development team they immediately told me engineering was the way to go"
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at the same time that she decided to pursue engineering she began her tiktok page after gaining hundreds of followers from a video of her attempting to make a table out of golf balls she discovered she could use the platform to showcase how golf clubs are engineered making use of the 3d printers at texas a&m calderon began developing and testing a 3d-printed putter the first ever to be produced "i wanted to start exploring more within golf engineering and my professors encouraged me that i needed to try designs out myself " she said "i created my first 3d-printed putter and it blew up on tiktok i started posting more videos of my design process engineers in the industry began commenting giving me bits of information to improve my putters professional golfers have asked to try it out this help and encouragement from experts inspired me to keep working" through her practical 3d printing experience and her previous jobs in golf she understood how golf clubs were made from a mechanical aspect but what were her golf clubs made of and how does the clubs material makeup affect its abilities these questions inspired her to pursue materials science and engineering "with a degree in this field i actually have a cooler angle on how to produce golf clubs " she said "i can learn the material aspects of wedges or putters and understand how different metals come into play when creating a club" the summer of her freshman year calderon began an internship with ctrl an aggie-founded engineering company that uses sensors to help improve golfers swings calderon said she gained many valuable tools from the internship that have helped her in school on the green and in gaining a social media following
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when she's not making putters from scratch or cutting video clips she's using a driver to crush balls down the fairway as a professional long-drive competitor calderon is among the country's top five best women in the sport her success is partially due to her ability to understand the makeup of a golf club and how this can affect her power speed and distance her knowledge was showcased when she partnered with a company to create her driver for the national long-drive competition as she conveyed her interest in golf club design the company asked calderon if she'd like to participate in the development process when she received the first model of the club and put it to use she noticed a problem with her spin she hypothesized it was likely caused by a steel weight on the club's top "they had used 303 steel in the weight the same steel used in putters " she said "i knew from repairs fittings and materials classes that tungsten would be a better option it's lighter so the head will move faster and the tungsten will provide a better balance factor when i would hit the ball it would theoretically come off faster when i put the tungsten in it fixed all the issues i had with spin" after two years of making putters posting tiktok videos and keeping up with her studies calderon landed a summer internship at callaway she is currently in san diego california at the callaway headquarters where she tests and reviews putters for the design team once she is back on the college station campus she plans to advance her 3d printing putter technology using what she has learned throughout her internship after graduation she hopes to continue her career in golf club development while growing her tiktok page which has over 175 000 followers and over 101 million likes "throughout my time at texas a&m i have never been afraid to take a chance and ask questions " she said "i realized that what i wanted to do was something i could achieve if i just kept trying i've played golf competitively my whole life so it's amazing to be a part of the sport in a different way"
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brannon veal 11 a former student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university enjoyed a busy and successful college career his time at texas a&m helped prepare him for his dream job of serving others by working for icon a company that builds 3d-printed houses for underprivileged groups middle class families and space exploration veal grew up in cedar hill texas just south of the dallas/fort worth metroplex he had always heard about texas a&m from his great uncle dr ed childs 89 a former professor at the texas a&m health science center and graduate of the college of medicine once veal saw aggieland for himself he was struck by the sense of family that existed on campus and knew that texas a&m was the place for him while attending school veal was involved in century singers the texas a&m jazz band and other on-campus christian organizations he also worked at the space engineering institute a work-study program led by dr magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships in the college of engineering and dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of the college of engineering he also spent time working on the dark energy camera calibration system at texas a&ms astronomical instrumentation laboratory and spent two summers interning with nasas ames research center as a part of the nasa motivating undergraduates in science and technology program veal also met his wife dr raven (cunningham) veal 10 while at texas a&m learning about the challenges faced by underprivileged and minority populations around the globe the pair felt the need to help for veal it was addressing homelessness using his engineering degree
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veal later met evan loomis 03 alex le roux and jason ballard 05 founders of icon a start-up with the mission to re-imagine the approach to homebuilding and construction to make affordable dignified housing available to everyone throughout the world they explained to him that over 1 billion people in the world do not have adequate shelter and they intended to help solve the inefficient and unsustainable process of homebuilding by 3d-printing homes that the average person could afford immediately veal knew he was on board and joined icon full time in 2019 as an senior electrical control engineer veal works with a next-generation robotic 3d printer that is capable of producing homes and structures the technology cuts down on the cost time and materials needed to create homes built to the international building code these homes are expected to last longer than standard concrete masonry-built homes and consist of "lavacrete " a proprietary cementitious material which makes the structure resilient and energy efficient
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in 2018 icon completed the first permitted 3d-printed home in the us since then theyve collaborated to create 3d-printed home communities benefiting underprivileged groups in tabasco mexico and austin texas in 2022 icon will break ground on a community of 100 3d-printed homes near austin in partnership with lennar the largest neighborhood of its kind in the world veal is excited by what theyve accomplished at icon which has even led to work with both the department of defense and nasa to research and develop autonomous additive construction systems for future exploration of the moon and long-duration human habitats on mars his proudest accomplishment is serving underprivileged communities and doing his part to help solve the housing crisis experienced by people in his own backyard and around the world veal and his wife reside in austin
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the college of engineering is proud of the work that our former students do to ignite change and pursue excellence in the service of others if you know an engineering former student who is changing their industry for the better contact the office of alumni relations
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dr manish shetty assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is the recipient of the oak ridge associated universities (orau) ralph e powe junior faculty enhancement award "when i look at previous years' awardees and their career trajectory it gives me promise " said shetty "i thank everyone associated with my work for the confidence in my abilities background and potential to participate in groundbreaking science" the orau awards are presented to young faculty members furthering the advancement of science and engineering-related fields as a competitive research award the orau will provide a $5 000 grant that the university will match shetty will use the grant to progress his research ventures which focus on using catalysts in sustainable applications and green energy solutions he is currently developing a novel catalyst inside microporous materials capable of converting carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels this process could potentially limit the number of necessary chemical reactions and limit separations "i will use this award to further my vision of a greener world in the energy transition industry " he said "i hope to positively influence my research group here and texas a&m as a whole"
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kristina and billy classen recently established the kristina 91 and billy classen 93 civil engineering endowed scholarship distributions from this endowment will provide one or more scholarships to full-time students in good standing who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in civil engineering in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university additional selection preferences have been made to award this scholarship to students from kendall comal guadalupe wilson atascosa medina or bandera counties in texas kristina received her bachelor of business administration in accounting from texas a&m she continued her education and received her master of business administration from the university of texas at san antonio kristina remained in san antonio and worked for harland clarke for 23 years holding various positions within the financial services company billy graduated from texas a&m with his bachelors in civil engineering after working as a project manager for several engineering firms he joined kfw engineers & surveying in 2013 where he now serves as a partner his leadership ensures that the firm accomplishes its mission of maintaining a client-first attitude and providing the best services to public and private clients across south texas the classens can now give back to the next generation of civil engineers through their generosity in establishing the kristina 91 and billy classen 93 civil engineering endowed scholarship their investment in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering will help to alleviate financial barriers and open doors of opportunity for current and future scholarship recipients
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endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact patrick wilson director of development
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with the record-breaking heat and drought weather conditions texas is currently facing finding a solution to the growing need for reliable power from the electric grid is at an equally all-time high dr thomas overbye professor and odonnell foundation chair iii in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center is investigating a novel way that historical weather can play a crucial role in benefiting the grid today in particular he is researching the outlier weather conditions such as the extreme heat texas is currently experiencing or very low temperatures such as those experienced in february 2021 during winter storm uri according to the world meteorological organization the number of recorded disasters in north america central america and the caribbean has increased from a disaster occurring every 30 days on average in the 1970s to every seven days for the three decades between 1990 and 2019 while these extreme weather events used to be relatively infrequent their incidence is growing making it vital to include this historical data in the power flow to better safeguard the grid of tomorrow
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weather information has been used in electric grid planning and operations since the 1880s however no one has yet introduced the idea of incorporating this information into the power flow or load flow of the grid which is a system used to determine how the power flows from the generators through the transmission system to the distribution system (which is then used by consumers) this project funded by the power systems engineering research center introduces the inclusion of historical weather data in the power flow which will provide more context for power engineers and grid operators to effectively manage the electric grid during these extreme weather events and a chance for more informed decisions the power flow is one of the most common tools used to study and design large-scale high-voltage electric grids and includes several algorithms models data and the associated human-machine interface used by power engineers in order to include weather information in a power flow model there is a need for adequate weather data and models of how the weather impacts the grid components as well as the ability to map the weather information to relevant electric grid components overbyes approach to including weather data in the power flow is demonstrated on several electric grids ranging in size from 7 000 to 82 000 buses or nodes that connect several lines and components using weather data over several different years his findings conclude that with little changes to existing models the weather can be easily incorporated into the power flow algorithms to provide vast benefits to the power industry and energy consumers it is widely recognized that weather impacts human activity and subsequent power usage and operations further wind and solar generation continue to grow currently providing more than 14% of the united states electric energy in turn increasing the grids dependence on these sources overbye has been pursuing research related to the power flow for over 40 years but his interest in the integration of weather information began as a result of winter storm uri in order to prevent situations like what was experienced during winter storm uri you have to get a good feel for how likely these weather events are and if you know how likely they are then you can take that into account in your planning said overbye
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the graduate program in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university is ranked fifth among public institutions by us news & world report several of the students who make up this program received awards and recognitions this academic year many of which are highlighted below renee abbott received the nasa space technology graduate research opportunities award this award recognizes graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to nasa's goal of creating innovative new space technologies for the nation's science exploration and economic future students receive a grant to support their research are matched with a nasa subject matter expert to serve as a collaborator and have the opportunity to perform their research at nasa facilities among leading engineers and scientists pawan chaugule received the best oral presentation award for his paper titled "coupling between phase-transformation and viscoplasticity in high-temperature shape memory alloys" the award is presented at the international conference on martensitic transformation maison clouatre received the department of defense national defense science and engineering graduate fellowship the fellowship lasts for three years and pays for full tuition and mandatory fees it also includes a monthly stipend and a travel budget for professional development he also received an award from the national science foundation (nsf) graduate research fellowship program which recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in nsf-supported science technology engineering and mathematics disciplines the fellowship provides a three-year annual stipend a cost-of-education allowance for tuition and fees and access to professional development opportunities from texas a&m clouatre received the dr dionel avilés '53 and dr james johnson '67 fellowship which seeks to increase diversity in the graduate and professional student population at texas a&m the fellowship provides four years of funding he also received a tau beta pi fellowship which finances a year of graduate study for members chosen for merit kyle craft received the john v breakwell student travel award from the american astronautical society's (aas) space flight mechanics committee the award encourages and promotes research activity in space flight mechanics and astrodynamics by financially supporting students presenting papers at aas/american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) space flight mechanics meetings and astrodynamics conferences sai sandeep dammati received the george h markstein best paper award for his paper titled "numerical investigation of the accuracy of particle image velocimetry technique in high-speed turbulent flows" this award is presented by the eastern states section of the combustion institute and recognizes the best paper based on the final extended abstracts submitted to the eastern states technical meeting jeppesen feliciano received the aggie green fund award a competitive grant-making program for sustainability projects at texas a&m university it empowers students to bring their different perspectives and creative environmental improvements to texas a&m's campus the award supports students through navigating the grant writing process working with administration and campus entities implementing projects and monitoring impacts to complete reporting requirements feliciano focuses on hydration stations for the harvey r "bum" bright building maddie haas received the nasa space technology graduate research opportunities award this award recognizes graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to nasa's goal of creating innovative new space technologies for the nation's science exploration and economic future students receive a grant to support their research are matched with a nasa subject matter expert to serve as a collaborator and have the opportunity to perform their research at nasa facilities among leading engineers and scientists haas also placed second at the 51st international conference on environmental systems student poster competition the program aims to stimulate student participation and provides a forum for students to present their work in an informal and interactive setting posters are judged based on technical rigor poster format and the student's ability to convey the poster content to the judges through an oral presentation poonam josan received the nasa pathways internship awarded to students who demonstrate curiosity team orientation excellence passion for exploration agility and resilience pathway interns are assigned challenging meaningful work aligned with their academic or career interests providing students with life-long learning and growth opportunities interns are also considered for full-time employment with nasa as they near graduation jadon kaercher received third place at the 51st international conference on environmental systems student poster competition the program aims to stimulate student participation and provides a forum for students to present their work in an informal and interactive setting posters are judged based on technical rigor poster format and the student's ability to convey the poster content to the judges through an oral presentation roshan suresh kumar received a deutscher akademischer austauschdienst german academic exchange service research internship in science and engineering this award offers summer research internships in germany at companies and institutions with strong relations to industry students receive a scholarship and an additional stipend from their host company/institution for living expenses waylon lee received the nasa pathways internship awarded to students who demonstrate curiosity team -orientation excellence a passion for exploration agility and resilience pathway interns are assigned challenging meaningful work aligned with their academic or career interests providing students with life-long learning and growth opportunities interns are also considered for full-time employment with nasa as they near graduation david lont received the aerospace engineering academic excellence fellowship the award from texas a&m's aerospace engineering department supports outstanding graduate students and supplements research assistant and fellowship stipends kaushik prabhu received the john v breakwell student travel award from the american astronautical society's space flight mechanics committee the award encourages and promotes research activity in space flight mechanics and astrodynamics by financially supporting students presenting papers at aas/aiaa space flight mechanics meetings and astrodynamics conferences amir rad received the aerospace engineering academic excellence fellowship the award from texas a&m's aerospace engineering department supports outstanding graduate students and supplements research assistant and fellowship stipends vishala received the john v breakwell student travel award from the aas space flight mechanics committee the award encourages and promotes research activity in space flight mechanics and astrodynamics by financially supporting students presenting papers at aas/aiaa space flight mechanics meeting and astrodynamics conferences patrick walgren received the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine's national research council research associateship program award this award offers students research opportunities at sponsoring federal laboratories and affiliated institutions students have the opportunity to devote full-time effort to conducting independent research and publication collaborate with leading scientists and engineers and work in excellent facilities
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dr pushkar lele and a team of researchers from texas a&m university conducted a study to see how indole an organic compound and a significant component of the bacterial exometabolome impacts the energy levels and protein function in bacteria indole can promote antibiotic resistance so understanding the metabolites diverse effects on bacterial physiology is critical this study was recently published in pnas nexus microorganisms release metabolites substances capable of breaking down food chemicals or other products these metabolites as a collective make up what is referred to as the exometabolome indole is abundant in the exometabolome and is understood to have significant effects on the functions of bacteria however the mechanisms remain poorly understood in this work the researchers attempted to understand the fundamental principles of indoles action on escherichia coli (e coli) to do this rachit gupta a doctoral student in leles group led a set of experiments to probe the energy levels in bacterial cells in the presence of indole bacterial cells require energy to perform major functions such as cell division or motility which the abundance of indole can alter however measuring energy in single cells is difficult as bacteria are incredibly small we combined several different techniques such as fluorescent dyes that make a cell appear brighter or dimmer dependent on the magnitude of its electric potential which is a major source of its energy said lele associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering in particular we focused on cell motility and molecular motor activity which indirectly track the energy levels in this work the researchers attempted to understand the fundamental principles of how indole influences such a wide variety of applications from the function of the chemotaxis (movement due to a chemical response) to protein synthesis the teams single-motor measurements revealed that indole impacted energetics only at high concentrations by dissipating e colis electrochemical proton gradient gupta then performed computational simulations of protein interactions based on statistical mechanics models and compared predictions with experiments comparisons suggested that indole at low concentrations interferes with protein-protein interactions to increase the noise in enzymatic activity and alter function at low concentrations indole affects inter- and intra-protein interactions and at high concentrations it dissipates the membrane potential which potentially explains indoles wide-reaching effects on cell behavior said lele these studies could provide insights into how pathogens invade our bodies for example indole appears to have differential effects on pathogens and beneficial bacteria in the gut which might help pathogens subvert defenses posed by good bacteria in the stomach under certain conditions on the other hand indole appears to promote colonization by beneficial bacteria as per the groups earlier work much work remains to be done to delineate indoles precise effects on bacterial physiology bacteria that lack sufficient energy to perform key functions targeted by antibiotics often survive in those lethal conditions thus the dissipation of energy by indole could underlie the failure of antibiotic treatment in the presence of the metabolite as metabolite production is linked to dietary intake such discoveries could guide personalized treatments based on diet the next thing we want to do is to determine why indole acts differently on pathogens and beneficial bacteria because then we can develop predictive models of the vulnerabilities of bacterial communities in the host said lele besides understanding the role of energy disruptors in modulating the structure of nascent microbial communities will be helpful in engineering communities with desirable properties this study was funded by the national institute of general medical sciences
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texas a&m university and arizona state university (asu) are collaborating on a $48 million multidisciplinary project funded by the defense advanced research projects agencys (darpa) biological technology office to create artificial intelligence (ai) for detecting fatigued states using human breath the project aims to better understand sleep deprivation mental and physical fatigue in humans by measuring breath volatile organic compounds (voc) biomarkers and how they can affect performance especially in high-stakes environments understanding the breath vocs will enable researchers to create a set of ai algorithms to detect a persons fatigued state fatigue is an important topic for the us department of defense and many other sectors in our society yet it is very challenging to quantify fatigue i am pleased to see the darpas investment in our rigorous scientific approach and its trust in our world-class team said dr roozbeh jafari tim and amy leach professor in texas a&ms college of engineering and the projects principal investigator dr steven riechman associate professor of kinesiology in texas a&ms school of education and human development said the insights may lead to new opportunities for monitoring and predicting fatigue by using wearables to prevent catastrophic failures he also said there may be new ways to intervene against fatigue to improve resilience in challenging environments and circumstances comprehensively examining the change in breath vocs during the progression from rest to fatigue will provide valuable insights into the transitions in metabolic states riechman said according to the projects proposal these compounds have been used before to detect other health issues such as bowel inflammation and asthma they will be key resources of chemical information from all body systems the project will be phased from a highly controlled environment leading to less-controlled real-life settings texas a&m researchers will collect participants breath voc samples at different states of fatigue with machines that can detect vocs in the breath samples they will use wearable monitors and sensors to measure heart rate body temperature and other biometrics dr ranjana mehta associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering and director of texas a&ms neuroergonomics laboratory will lead the creation and execution of fatigue protocols with riechman by inducing fatigue in a highly controlled environment this project will not only enable us to develop breath and physiological biomarkers of fatigue in general and military populations but also expand our understanding of the interactions between fatigue due to a variety of sources mehta said dr arul jayaraman executive associate dean of the texas a&m college of engineering and chemical engineering professor and dr heather bean asu associate professor in the school of life science and the biodesign center for fundamental and applied microbiomics will measure vocs in the breath samples bean says the volume and combination of breath samples at different stages of fatigue protocols will help to advance the understanding of breath vocs beyond the ability to predict fatigue this study will generate more than 3 000 breath samples which is an order of magnitude larger than any breath voc study published to date said bean the team will use pattern recognition and statistical modeling to identify vocs that can detect and discriminate the types of fatigue studied during the course of the project said dr ivan ivanov clinical professor of physiology and pharmacology at the school of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences jafari will lead the project alongside co-investigators mehta jayaraman riechman bean and ivanov
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access to global information has resulted in an increasing demand for technical skills required for handling complex data and extracting information and knowledge from it a new major at texas a&m university aims to fill that demand the bachelor of science in data engineering program housed in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering will train students in state-of-the-art techniques needed for modern data-driven systems the skillsets theyll gain are sought after by several different industry sectors including manufacturing defense health care and finance "the college of engineering continues to be a leader in engineering education by offering degree programs that meet current industry demand " said dr john e hurtado interim vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m "data engineering is a field that has seen significant growth over the past few years creating the need for qualified engineers with this new program we will fill that need by producing future aggie data engineers" the bureau of labor statistics (bls) indicated there were 63 200 data scientists and mathematical science positions in 2020 with a median annual salary of $98 230 the bls projects that this sector will have 83 000 positions by 2030 corresponding to a 314% growth between 2020 and 2030 this sector features in the top 10 list of fastest growing jobs from 2020 through 2030 understanding data can guide decision-making in business science and engineering settings among others said dr lewis ntaimo industrial and systems engineering department head our program is one of few nationally with a data-driven focus graduates of this program will be in demand for various employment opportunities including data analysts data scientists information system analysts systems analysts and systems engineers the 128-credit hour programs curriculum includes techniques in data analytics such as artificial intelligence machine learning reinforcement learning and related areas it integrates them with other science and engineering topics to train students to make data-driven informed decisions the program was developed through a task force started by ntaimo that included representatives from programs at texas a&m including computer science electrical and computer engineering and the texas a&m institute of data science there is a critical need to capture and securely store and manage data said dr amarnath banerjee associate department head for undergraduate affairs and chair of the task force for companies to remain competitive they must efficiently mine the data to visualize and extract the information and knowledge needed for optimal decision-making initially approved by the texas a&m university system board of regents on may 19 2022 the texas higher education coordinating board followed with formal approval on july 28 2022 for the college to begin program delivery in fall 2023
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dr qingsheng wang associate professor and george armistead ‘23 faculty fellow in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university and his team of researchers have spent over three years finding more efficient ways to manufacture metal-organic framework (mof)-based composites for industrial applications such as flame retardants mofs are a class of crystalline materials with permanent porosity and wide applications including gas purification gas separation water remediation catalysis and drug delivery however process improvement is required to produce mofs at a higher capacity in industry as the use and applications of mof-based composites expand to produce mofs requires a deep understanding of process engineering stringent conditions and even with that only a small amount can be produced at a time said wang many alterations are needed to improve the process if we want to mass-produce mofs wangs group published four studies in acs publications regarding their discoveries on mof stability mof development processes manufacturing mof-based composites and their applications in flame retardancy currently most mof-polymer composites are prepared by a discretely bottom-up principle that requires complex chemical reactions blended within different polymers in solutions this multistep process entails significant time energy and money to produce minimal quantities by combining parts of the mofs development process wangs team has discovered a one-step method using reaction extrusion to produce mof-based composites on a larger scale safely and effectively together with the heating condition applied shear and compressive forces mofs can meet the required reaction conditions for mechanochemical synthesis in addition the findings provide new insights into creating mof-based polymer systems for polyolefins reducing their smoke emissions and enhancing flame retardancy during combustion the method also improved safety and efficiency by enhancing the thermal stability and mechanical properties of the mof while decreasing its flammability this work was recently published in acs sustainable chemistry & engineering if we use reactive extrusion manufacturing we can take the starting material combined with a polymer to produce mofs and directly mix it with plastics by neglecting several reaction steps in conventional hydrothermal methods said wang using this process each day we can get around kilogram scale compared to the traditional method which usually can produce only in gram scale they hope to see this method used in industry for progressing sustainability efforts process improvement and process safety in their study published in industrial & engineering chemistry research wang showed the use of mof as a flame retardant a commercially available mof was incorporated into an intumescent flame retardant/polypropylene (ifr/pp) composite system the results show that the additives exhibit a strong synergistic effect between them for improvement of the formation and stability of the intumescent char layer to prevent the intensive burning of pp these findings could improve ifr systems for polyolefins reducing their smoke emissions during combustion considering that all the raw materials are commercially available and the preparation method is compatible with current industrial processes the methodology presented in this study can be expanded for industrial applications we can use mofs in so many ways from water treatment to carbon capture wang said i would like to continue improving this process so that industry can use mofs on a larger scale in various useful applications
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millions of barrels of oil are produced daily from shale reservoirs yet a significant amount remains untouched trapped in molecular-sized pores on a nanoscale current reservoir models cant predict oil behavior or recovery at this scale so companies cant accurately estimate production amounts for financial investors texas a&m university researchers built and tested (potentially) the smallest nanopore-scale glass-topped lab-on-a-chip (loc) research platform to investigate complex fluid behaviors at the nanoscale so they could calculate them the crisman institute for petroleum research funded the project dr hadi nasrabadi dr debjyoti banerjee and their graduate students qi yang and ran bi co-designed the ultra-tiny loc and had it manufactured in texas a&m facilities such as the aggiefab nanofabrication facility and the microscopy and imaging center the device allows them to visually study and record the liquid to vapor and back to liquid phase changes oil and other elements go through on a scale similar to the conditions in a shale reservoir this was the first time i did a project where the company representatives were more interested in the equations we uncovered rather than the experimental data we produced said banerjee the james j cain 51 faculty fellow i in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering its a bizarre example of how thermodynamic equations can affect the stock price of a company the equation goes into estimating how much oil reserves a company owns or can produce and this affects their value on wall street or if they can get a financial loan at a particular interest rate why phase change matters self-contained tiny fluid volume locs are common nowadays such as home covid-19 antibody test kits or blood sugar monitors however applying locs to petroleum research is rare and took several stages for this project nasrabadi and banerjee started with 50-nanometer (nm) diameter test channels in their locs before working down to 2-nm diameter channels which are slightly smaller than the width of a dna strand at this scale matching tight shale layering oil reacts to temperature pressure and confinement fluctuations by vibrating with quirky thermodynamic flips of fluid to gas and back again phase changes because producing oil from unconventional shale reservoirs is still a learning process these changes are largely unexplored yet they impact oil recovery and affect financial investor confidence industry is currently not delivering the oil they are estimating and this is unintentional in my opinion said nasrabadi the aghorn energy career development professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering our research shows nanopore behavior does influence production which explains the recovery discrepancy
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issues with sensitivity the research also had delivery issues because three challenges ran hand in hand with doing experiments on such a small scale first the researchers had to learn about and implement atomic force microscopy to characterize the locs channel since 2 nm is smaller than the wavelength of visible light and the channel needed to be inspected and accurately measured second they quickly learned that certain conditions such as the humidity in the air or a car passing by the building could cause enough disturbance or vibrations to throw off the results of the experiments third getting images of the quirky phase-change reactions proved difficult because the camera needed a certain number of photons or fundamental light particles present tiny adjustments were constantly needed to improve the experiment recordings it took about two years for the research to yield direct digitally captured images that aided observation studies of liquid to vapor to liquid transitions on a scale that had never been explored before nasrabadi banerjee yang and bi wrote a paper on the work which was published by langmuir in august 2022 the experiments were done at pressures up to 100 pounds per square inch (psi) but the researchers hope to increase levels to match actual reservoir conditions which can range from 1 000 to 5 000 psi they also hope to increase the temperatures to over 300 degrees fahrenheit these higher parameters were possible with locs containing 10-nm scale channels but the 2-nm chip will need a few design modifications first we also want to vary the loc design to replicate shale formation conditions such as using etched channels that mimic the irregularities within the rock said nasrabadi applications beyond petroleum banerjee once worked in silicon valley where he was awarded 17 patents and commercialized loc platforms for a variety of biotechnology and nanotechnology startup companies he noticed irregular flows of fluids confined on a nanoscale then but didn't have a way to pinpoint why they happened years later conversations banerjee had with nasrabadi on the interesting fluid confinement issues in shale reservoirs sparked a long collaboration that led to their project for the crisman institute the success of the project has led to other conversations and ideas banerjee believes the research has come full circle because the modifications they made to decrease the loc scale below the size of a single dna strand mean better genome or genetic material research is now possible but the potential doesnt stop there at the 2-nm scale even under normal pressure and temperature conditions a nano-confined liquid can display properties similar to supercritical behavior said banerjee and that has important implications for our understanding of supercritical fluids such insights could have deep implications for power production space exploration and biotechnology applications its truly remarkable
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dianna stanger has recently established the stanger endowed graduate fellowship distributions from this endowment will be used to provide multiple fellowships to full-time students in good standing pursuing a phd in aerospace engineering at texas a&m university although stanger is not an aggie herself she has been impacted by many throughout her career inspiring her to give to texas a&m stanger moved to the texas coast in 1997 where she has encountered many people encompassing the texas spirit there is no mistaking texan pride and spirit but whatever i did and wherever i went in the state the people who impacted me the most were graduates of texas a&m said stanger one texan that she in turn inspired was a high schooler by the name of darren hartl who would go on to become an associate professor at texas a&m dianna stanger represents the pure joy of aviation and aerospace better than anyone ive ever met it means so much to me to have her connected to our department said hartl stanger is the owner of darkstar air racing where she and a group of pilots compete in the reno air races in nevada a few years ago stanger and her team made a trip to visit the department of aerospace engineering to discuss ways to improve the performance of their newest jet for the 2019 reno air races other visits followed with the sole purpose of being updated on the latest research throughout the department each time i visit the aerospace engineering department it leaves me wanting more stanger said the excitement challenges and vision of the students are what drive me in my aerospace manufacturing company stanger hopes this gift will empower the future of aerospace engineering by giving students the confidence they need to pursue their dreams regardless of the obstacles that are in their way she believes in the aerospace engineering department here at texas a&m and wants to aid in continuing greatness far into the future this gift will empower the future of aerospace in varying degrees by allowing a student to pursue their dreams regardless of cost as our fate is indeed in their hands she said stanger has a heart for helping others which has been her motivation throughout her career each and every one of us should have the opportunity to hear the words ‘you are the reason i am who i am she said i have always been dedicated to helping others achieve however it was a texas a&m graduate now a texas a&m professor who gave me a small credit that became the highest praise
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endowments supporting students in the college have an immeasurable impact on their education if you are interested in supporting the college of engineering and its departments or would like more information on how you can give please contact anna norville senior director of development
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due to human activity including the use of organic pollutants from pharmaceuticals and personal care products water systems are becoming increasingly polluted dr garrett mckay assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university received an early career program grant from the us army research office to research the role of photochemistry (light-driven chemical reactions) on the fate of environmental pollutants in lakes rivers and streams"the driving force for this research is the need to understand the mechanisms and rates by which pollutants degrade in the environment " he saidnatural organic matter which is present in all water bodies and comes from the decomposition of plant material governs photochemical reactions in natural waters photochemical reactions convert light energy into chemical energy that can degrade pollutants"our research seeks to measure the concentrations of reactive oxidants surrounding natural organic matter macromolecules which help us better predict the importance of photochemistry to the fate of environmental pollutants " mckay saidthese photochemical reactions are also an important driver of carbon cycling in aquatic systems natural organic matter undergoes photochemical reactions to form carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide which are then exported from the aquatic environment to the atmosphere"because natural organic matter photochemistry is incompletely understood uncertainties exist regarding carbon fluxes from aquatic systems which impacts the ability to incorporate photochemistry into global climate models " he saidanother issue relates to global climate change a recent observation is that lake waters are "browning" due to elevated concentrations of natural organic matter due to climate change"the increased concentrations of natural organic material will increase the importance of photochemical degradation pathways " mckay saidthe early career program aims to attract outstanding early-career university faculty to army-relevant research questions it supports their research and encourages their teaching and research careersmckay was also recently honored by the environmental science & technology journal with an excellence in review award established in 2003 by the american chemical society to recognize multiple high-quality contributions during a single year he has reviewed more than 50 environmental science & technology papers since 2017 and his research group the aquatic chemistry lab has recently published two articles in the journal relationships between the physicochemical properties of dissolved organic matter and its reaction with sodium borohydride and quantifying hydrated electron transformation kinetics in uv-advanced reduction processes using the re– uv method
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dr judy amanor-boadu a former student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2022 distinguished new engineer award and the patent recognition award from the society of women engineers (swe) the distinguished new engineer award is a prestigious honor given to an swe member who has demonstrated outstanding technical performance and leadership in swe engineering organizations and the community the award recognizes amanor-boadus continuing dedication to swes mission to highlight the impact and importance of women in engineering across the globe to lead by example and to demonstrate that a career in engineering can be a fulfilling rewarding pursuit for women of any background it is all about paying it forward and helping people said amanor-boadu i went through challenges that i would not want others to go through so i try as much as possible to be the best mentor i can be and to accelerate people in their career and professional development she also received the patent recognition award for being a swe member who had been awarded a patent within the last three years in october 2021 she was awarded a united states patent us 11 159 036: systems and methods for flexible power topology for display assembly in an information handling system amanor-boadu pursued her undergraduate degree in ghana at the kwame nkrumah university of science and technology she later received her masters and doctoral degrees from texas a&m during her time as a graduate student she was heavily involved in the women in engineering (we) program and was the first graduate student who assisted with its revival i was one of the first graduate assistants hired by dr shawna fletcher the director of we she said it was the beginning of the program after its hiatus and our goal was to make it successful i will say it was one of the best times i had at texas a&m because i learned so much from the program she credits we for helping her with professional and personal development she noted that we taught her confidence emotional intelligence her strengths and how to respond to unconscious bias in her life we taught me highly valuable skills that i still use today and teach to others said amanor-boadu these are things i would not have known about but we gave me the opportunity to gain that knowledge dr fletcher was a great boss and mentor to me amanor-boadu is now a staff analog engineer for intel corporation she is involved in the women at intel (win) and intel network of african ancestry (nia) employee resource groups and mentors recent college graduates that are underrepresented minoritiesher awards will be presented at the society of women engineers conference 2022 in october it is a great honor to have been chosen for this award she said i am thankful to everyone who has been a part of my career so far and i hope to continue motivating others by paying it forward
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the covid-19 pandemic exposed the inability of national supply chains to quickly shift production and reconfigure their logistics networks to meet customer demand surges during major disruptive events the desperate scramble for items such as ventilators face masks and even toilet paper wont soon be forgotten but the recent baby formula shortage points to a larger underlying problem with a supply chain model that prioritizes being efficient and cost-effective without accommodating the additional needs for resilience and robustness but what if it was possible to proactively plan and reactively respond and recover as quickly as possible following a supply chain disruption by further employing automation and robotics at key stages of the supply chain in response to recommendations outlined in the report of the defense critical supply chain task force the secureamerica institute (sai) and the advanced robotics for manufacturing (arm) institute are partnering with industry leaders like general electric (ge) to make targeted supply chain improvements the robotics and automation decision framework for agility and resilience (radar) which is funded by the us department of commerces national institute of standards and technology (nist) plans to demonstrate the power of strategically adopting robotic and automation solutions across the supply chain led by dr lefteris iakovou sais manufacturing supply chain director and the harvey hubbell professor of industrial distribution in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university radar will demonstrate two-way visibility into and across critical supply chains to determine where the most impactful suppliers vulnerabilities and interventions could exist following black swan disruptions like covid-19 since over 98% of suppliers in the us are small and medium-sized manufacturers (smms) according to the us census bureaus 2018 county business patterns survey establishing an understanding of what makes them more agile and cost-competitive is key to realizing the vision of this program the utilization of flexible and collaborative robotics technologies to automate factory operations in the radar program has the potential for significant return on investments across multiple product lines regardless of the size of the company said dr prabhakar pagilla professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and associate dean for research in the texas a&m university college of engineering the radar program can uncover which characteristics and attributes companies should incorporate to increase their likelihood of successfully adopting robotics and automation in collaborative (human and robot) manufacturing environments an imperfect understanding of existing constraints incentives opportunities and risks that can impact supply chains currently prevents many smms from fully embracing their technical innovation capabilities and contributes to end-to-end supply chain resilience for instance during some of the darkest days of the covid-19 pandemic large automobile manufacturers were able to pivot their production lines to produce ventilators however many smms lack the scale know-how and support to fully explore their ability to be similarly agile radar aims to productize the agile operational models of larger organizations so smms are also able to pivot as needed during the covid-19 pandemic ge researchers developed a robust pandemic simulation of the supply chain volatility our industries experienced we think that simulation can be applied in the radar project to enable more intelligent production management for future pandemics said walter yund senior scientist in enterprise operations research at ge research by merging ge researchs pandemic simulation with existing hospital and covid-19 supply chain data this model could offer key insights for manufacturers to anticipate future demand and determine which elements of their supply chain are most at risk of a material shortage formalizing that decision-making process for smms also opens up more opportunities for cross-collaboration not just in times of crisis but for innovation overall sai successfully demonstrated this idea on a small scale for rapid product development with the covid-19 breathalyzer kiosk which connected several seemingly disparate organizations and people to create a unique new technology during a time of need radar also seeks to redesign supply chains critical to the security of the nation without reverting to pre-pandemic practices bolstered by a framework of dynamically resilient data-driven supply chain networks radar will support the quick detection of disruptive events efficient increasing of manufacturing capacity where needed and reduction of manufacturing capacity once recovery has been attained the defense industrial base looks holistically at the united states true manufacturing capabilities so improving the resilience and competitiveness of the domestic supply chain will have national security implications radar is on track to improve the resiliency flexibility and competitiveness of smms and is envisioned to enhance the resilience of the us manufacturing industrial base when the next supply chain disruption materializes this research is supported by a $5 million grant from nist the funding is provided by the american rescue act and is part of a larger $54 million initiative by nist to award high-impact projects for pandemic response research and development across eight manufacturing institutes in the manufacturing usa network
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flexible electronics have enabled the design of sensors actuators microfluidics and electronics on flexible conformal and/or stretchable sublayers for wearable implantable or ingestible applications however these devices have very different mechanical and biological properties when compared to human tissue and thus cannot be integrated with the human body a team of researchers at texas a&m university has developed a new class of biomaterial inks that mimic native characteristics of highly conductive human tissue much like skin which are essential for the ink to be used in 3d printing this biomaterial ink leverages a new class of 2d nanomaterials known as molybdenum disulfide (mos2) the thin-layered structure of mos2 contains defect centers to make it chemically active and combined with modified gelatin to obtain a flexible hydrogel comparable to the structure of jell-o the impact of this work is far-reaching in 3d printing said dr akhilesh gaharwar associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering and presidential impact fellow this newly designed hydrogel ink is highly biocompatible and electrically conductive paving the way for the next generation of wearable and implantable bioelectronics this study was recently published in acs nano
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the ink has shear-thinning properties that decrease in viscosity as force increases so it is solid inside the tube but flows more like a liquid when squeezed similar to ketchup or toothpaste the team incorporated these electrically conductive nanomaterials within a modified gelatin to make a hydrogel ink with characteristics that are essential for designing ink conducive to 3d printing these 3d-printed devices are extremely elastomeric and can be compressed bent or twisted without breaking said kaivalya deo graduate student in the biomedical engineering department and lead author of the paper in addition these devices are electronically active enabling them to monitor dynamic human motion and paving the way for continuous motion monitoring in order to 3d print the ink researchers in the gaharwar laboratory designed a cost-effective open-source multi-head 3d bioprinter that is fully functional and customizable running on open-source tools and freeware this also allows any researcher to build 3d bioprinters tailored to fit their own research needs the electrically conductive 3d-printed hydrogel ink can create complex 3d circuits and is not limited to planar designs allowing researchers to make customizable bioelectronics tailored to patient-specific requirements in utilizing these 3d printers deo was able to print electrically active and stretchable electronic devices these devices demonstrate extraordinary strain-sensing capabilities and can be used for engineering customizable monitoring systems this also opens up new possibilities for designing stretchable sensors with integrated microelectronic components one of the potential applications of the new ink is in 3d printing electronic tattoos for patients with parkinsons disease researchers envision that this printed e-tattoo can monitor a patients movement including tremors this project is in collaboration with dr anthony guiseppi-elie vice president of academic affairs and workforce development at tri-county technical college in south carolina and dr limei tian assistant professor of biomedical engineering at texas a&m this study was funded by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering the national institute of neurological disorders and stroke and the texas a&m university presidents excellence fund a provisional patent on this technology has been filed in association with the texas a&m engineering experiment station
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for years the nucleus within a cell was thought to be elastic like a rubber ball deforming and snapping back into shape as the cell navigated through pores and between fibers inside the human body researchers at texas a&m university and the university of florida have discovered that the nucleus is more complex than originally believed behaving more like a liquid drop than a rubber ball the discovery that the nucleus deforms like a liquid drop calls for a fresh look at how the nuclear shape becomes abnormal in diseases like cancer said dr tanmay lele unocal professor in the department of biomedical engineering lele a cancer prevention & research institute of texas (cprit) scholar is co-leading the team that uncovered the surprising mechanical behaviors of the nucleus their findings were published in advanced science in june 2022 the genetic material governing a cells function and behavior called the genome is safely stored in the nucleus nearly 150 years of looking through microscopes has taught pathologists and researchers that misshapen nuclei are warning signs of diseases like cancer cancer cells with such abnormal nuclei are able to migrate to other parts of the body in a process called cancer metastasis a spreading that can be lethal nuclear shape observations are used in cancer diagnosis even today but why nuclei become abnormal has remained unclear understanding how nuclei become misshapen may help uncover a way to aid cell nuclei in regaining their normal shapes leading to new approaches for treating cancer the findings from this study are critical to understanding how a protective layer surrounding the nucleus called the lamina helps preserve nuclear shape while cells crawl through the tortuous paths through pores and around tissue fibers
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lele and his fellow researchers began their exploration of nuclear behaviors by placing fibroblasts the most common type of connective-tissue cells in animals into a miniature obstacle course of tiny flexible pillars 1/100th of the width of a human hair in order for the cells to crawl through this obstacle course their nuclei had to squeeze in between the pillars the researchers observed the movements with an advanced high-resolution microscope that could image the 3d shapes of the nuclei imaging revealed that the pillars created deep indentations into the nuclear surface yet the overall nuclear shape was preserved allowing the nucleus to successfully pass like a liquid drop and unlike a springy elastic rubber ball through the obstacles the research also revealed that a depletion of lamin a/c one of the normal protein components of lamina caused the nuclei to get entangled in the obstacles the discovery suggests that lamin a/c helps maintain the surface tension of the nuclear drop our work points to a fundamental mechanism by which the nucleus preserves its shape and protects its genome lele said our discovery also helps us better understand how misshapen nuclei arise in cancer and how to potentially make them normal again we are now studying the implications of the drop model for the abnormal nuclear shapes commonly observed in cancer the work is financially supported by a grant from the national cancer institutes physical sciences oncology network to lele along with additional support from the national science foundation to co-principal investigator dr richard b dickinson professor in the department of chemical engineering at the university of florida the research is also partially funded by a cprit established investigator award to lele facilitated through the texas a&m engineering experiment station aside from lele and dickinson principal investigators and researchers on this project include drs pushkar p lele cynthia a reinhart-king kyle j roux and nathan j sniadecki students include aditya katiyar (lead author on the paper) jian zhang jyot d antani yifan yu and kelsey l scott
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datagration solutions inc recently donated software to the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university former student george w voneiff '83 coordinated the contribution which will provide current students and instructors with a cutting-edge educational experience voneiff a senior vice president of datagration is making the companys premiere software package petrovisor available to the department at no charge the donation also includes training for relevant faculty instructors and two completion optimization datasets for teaching and training the contribution is worth more than $250 000 and will be renewed every year a long-time supporter of texas a&m voneiff and his wife joan value education they fund professorships and other support for those instructing the next generation of petroleum engineers voneiff is a professor of practice in the department donating his time to teach graduate and undergraduate students the concepts of project evaluation and management and probabilistic petroleum economics and reserves
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according to datagration data is an asset increasingly seen as a form of currency for oil and gas companies and there is a competitive advantage for those that merge this type of economic thinking into their operation and business strategies voneiff understands this advantage having nearly 40 years of experience in oil and gas exploration and production he is an expert in data analytics and economics and is extremely well versed in risk management uncertainty analysis and completion and development optimization in unconventional reservoirs he said that petrovisor is able to integrate disparate data quickly perform sophisticated multidiscipline analytics and create visualizations this can greatly enhance students understanding of the data-to-decision quality control process workflow requirements and impact on operating capital and overall financial efficiencies for graduate students and their professors petrovisor can also help with research through greater data utility data analytics machine-learning applications and application-oriented economic evaluations voneiff said the petroleum engineering department at texas a&m is the first to use petrovisor in higher-education classrooms datagration is training professors on how to teach with the program and apply the datasets in classroom instruction the department can also tailor the application to its specific needs while the software comes with prebuilt workflows and visualizations faculty and students can edit them or even create their own for specific courses and research projects this versatility is a key factor in the programs educational value petrovisor applies petroleum economics to optimize a variety of problems artificial lift general operations acquisition and divestiture and development optimization that typically don't have sophisticated economics applied to them said voneiff voneiff explained that the software enhances a decision-maker's ability to take good technical work and use that as the basis for good economic analysis the automation capabilities of the program mean students will spend less time gleaning information from the datasets to make graphs and tables and spend more time deciding on an approach to a problem analyzing the workflows and interpreting the results to see if they were on the right track this will put the texas a&m petroleum department at the forefront of advanced data analytics and sophisticated evaluations said voneiff petrovisor shortens evaluation timelines from years or months down to weeks or days without sacrificing technical accuracy it is a tool and skill set that gives our students a meaningful advantage in the job and research markets we are very appreciative of professor voneiff and datagrations gift and service said dr akhil datta-gupta university distinguished professor and interim head of the petroleum department the donation allows our students to differentiate themselves when entering the job marketplace and allows our faculty to stay current on state-of-the-art technologies employed in the software
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the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university welcomes dr chelsea hu hu will enter as a visiting assistant professor as part of the accountability climate equity and scholarship (aces) fellows program which recognizes researchers who are committed to enhancing equality and fostering inclusion on campus hu received her doctoral degree at cornell university in chemical engineering and conducted her postdoctoral studies at the california institute of technology hus research focuses on the interdisciplinary field of synthetic biology systems biology and control theory through a hybrid approach of experimentation and computational simulations she studies the system dynamics of synthetic genetic networks and their control strategies in synthetic microbes in addition hu aims to enable the design and engineering of safe robust and reliable diagnostic and therapeutic applications to improve human health it was very important for me to join an institute with a diverse research landscape so i can fit in and serve the community as a bridge said hu being trained as a hybrid researcher in both computation and experimentation i hope that my background can play a role in facilitating new collaborations between research fields at texas a&m in addition to research hu says she looks forward to teaching and providing mentorship to students a critical initiative she would like to spur is providing more resources for students transferring from junior or community colleges to texas a&m i would like to advocate for community college transfer students because i was one myself and i remember how overwhelming it can be she said there's a great shock when transferring and there are many ways that we can improve these students experiences throughout the aces program hu will have access to state-of-the-art facilities a network of skilled faculty and research opportunities as she transitions into a tenure-track faculty position
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gas turbines are widely used for power generation and aircraft propulsion according to the laws of thermodynamics the higher the temperature of an engine the higher the efficiency because of these laws there is an emerging interest in increasing turbines operating temperature a team of researchers from the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university in conjunction with researchers from ames national laboratory have developed an artificial intelligence framework capable of predicting high entropy alloys (heas) that can withstand extremely high temperature oxidizing environments this method could significantly reduce the time and costs of finding alloys by decreasing the number of experimental analyses required this research was recently published in material horizons under prolonged high-temperature conditions turbine blades can result in catastrophic failure from melting or oxidizing unfortunately current turbine blade materials have already reached their operational limit engineering advancements such as coatings and cooling channels have delayed the need for changing the materials used for turbines however air travel is expected to double in volume over the next decade and gas turbines are becoming an increasingly dominant technology for power generation therefore turbines require higher efficiency to reduce fuel usage and limit carbon dioxide emissions gas turbines function by converting chemical energy into mechanical motion but are limited by their temperature threshold said dr raymundo arroyave professor in the department of materials science and engineering the next step of revolutionizing turbine technology is to change the material that is used to fabricate components such as the blades so that they can operate at higher temperatures without oxidizing catastrophically when looking at different types of alloys for turbines there is significant attention around heas heas are concentrated alloys that do not have a clear majority element a unique characteristic of heas is that these alloys become more stable at higher temperatures offering the potential for use in extreme environments despite their ability to withstand high temperatures heas are susceptible to rusting (oxidizing) heas can have many compositions exponentially expanding the types of oxides that can form finding a composition that could resist oxidation would require extensive experimentation at very high costs to circumvent the drawbacks and costs of hea discovery the researchers developed an artificial intelligence framework capable of predicting the oxidation behavior of heas this framework combining computational thermodynamics machine learning and quantum mechanics can quantitatively predict the oxidation of heas of arbitrary chemical compositions the time necessary to computationally screen the alloys is drastically reduced from years to mere minutes very fast and efficient screening in turn results in a reduced need for resource-intensive experimental trials when searching a large compositional space experimentalists would have to take hundreds of variations of a very complex material oxidize them and then characterize their performance which could take weeks months or even years said daniel sauceda a graduate student in the materials science and engineering department our research significantly shortened the process by creating a roadmap of the oxidation of heas showing researchers what you can expect from different compositions using the framework the researchers predicted the oxidation behavior of multiple alloy compositions they then sent the predictions to ames national laboratory's scientist gaoyuan ouyang and his team to test their findings and verify that the framework accurately demonstrates if an alloy would or would not resist oxidation the ability of the framework to accurately pinpoint detrimental phases will enable the design of improved oxidation-resistant materials said ames national laboratory scientist prashant singh who co-led the framework development the approach presented in this study is general and applicable to understanding oxidation behavior of heas as well as provide insights into oxidation and corrosion-resistant materials for other applications the tools developed in this study could potentially alter the process by which scientists discover materials for extreme environments by using artificial intelligence tools to rapidly siphon through astronomical numbers of alloys in a very short time this tool will help screen out alloys that will not work for our application needs while allowing us to spend more time and create a more detailed analysis of alloys that are worth investigating said arroyave while our predictions are not 100% accurate they still provide sufficient information to make informed decisions on what materials are worth investigating at a speed that would have been unthinkable before this framework was developed the heas found through this framework have potential applications such as gas turbines for propulsion and power generation heat exchangers and many others that require materials to withstand extreme operating conditions by enabling the discovery of materials capable of withstanding extreme environments this work directly contributes to the department of energys goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 said singh the joint work by texas a&m and ames national laboratory was supported by the ultrahigh temperature impervious materials advancing turbine efficiency program of the advanced research projects agency-energy the national science foundation and the us department of energy (basic energy science and fossil energy program) also supported this work
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dr kumbakonam rajagopal is the 2022 recipient of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) worcester reed warner medal the honor recognizes seminal contributions to the permanent literature of engineering through the formats of single papers treatises books or series of papers and digital media according to asme rajagopal serves as jm forsyth chair professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university he also holds the prestigious titles of university distinguished professor and regents professor his research focuses on continuum mechanics and its applications to non-linear materials dr rajagopal is greatly deserving of this recognition from the american society of mechanical engineers said dr guillermo aguilar mechanical engineering department head at texas a&m his extensive research and expertise in the field continue to enrich not only our department but the greater engineering community as well the worcester reed warner medal was established in 1930 in honor of its namesake worcester reed warner who served as a charter member of asme and its 16th president
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