houck2040/tees huggingface dataset:
dr matthew yarnold assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been chosen to deliver the 2021 robert j dexter memorial award lecture the award was given by the steel bridge task force oversight council of the american iron and steel institute the national steel bridge alliance and the american association of state and highway transportation officials t-14 technical committee for structural steel design yarnold will present a lecture on his past and current research findings at the next meeting of the steel bridge task force on aug 12 2021 in philadelphia pennsylvania the robert j dexter memorial award lecture program provides an opportunity for individuals early in their careers in structural engineering to present a lecture on their steel bridge research activities to the steel bridge task force and participate in its semiannual three-day meeting recipients become invited guests of the steel bridge task force comprised of leading steel bridge experts the program was instituted in 2005 in memory of robert j dexter an associate professor of civil engineering at the university of minnesota who was an internationally recognized expert on steel fracture and fatigue problems in bridges yarnolds research includes structural steel behavior bridge engineering the experimental assessment of structural systems novel techniques for structural health monitoring and engineering education he has extensive experience with the experimental testing of structural systems and has led research projects for the national science foundation state departments of transportation and private engineering firms he is an active member of several national committees through the american society of civil engineers and the transportation research board yarnold has more than 17 years of structural engineering research and design experience he began his career at lehigh university where he received his bachelors and masters degrees following graduation he accepted a position with the engineering firm ammann & whitney where he contributed to more than 15 bridge design and rehabilitation projects while also obtaining his professional engineering license after a successful career as a consultant he returned to academia and completed his doctoral degree at drexel university he joined the civil and environmental engineering department at texas a&m in 2017 yarnold is also an affiliated faculty member and researcher at the structural and materials testing lab at the center for infrastructure renewal
the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) a joint center between the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the texas a&m transportation institute is a leading global source for the development of transformative infrastructure solutions through cross-industry and government agency collaboration the cir facilitates the creation of state-of-the-art methods technologies and solutions that society needs for infrastructure renewal the cir houses researchers who are developing advanced and sustainable materials and structural systems that will reduce cost and extend infrastructure life safety resiliency and durability
the texas a&m university system board of regents today named dr m katherine banks as the sole finalist for the position of president of texas a&m university this is a tremendous honor banks said the core values of texas a&m its rich traditions unique culture and commitment to the greater good is the very foundation of this great university and resonates deeply with me i hope to build upon that framework in our pursuit of preeminence without losing what makes texas a&m so special texas a&m is one of a kind and theres nowhere else id rather be banks is currently director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station dean of the texas a&m college of engineering and vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories for the a&m system in those roles she spurred unprecedented growth in the college of engineering while also being a pivotal leader in some of the a&m systems greater accomplishments including recruiting the army futures command to the rellis campus and winning a federal contract to help manage los alamos national laboratory on wednesday chancellor john sharp recommended banks as sole finalist and the board approved under state law regents name a finalist for at least 21 days before making the appointment at a subsequent meeting the board was excited to know the search yielded tremendous interest and many qualified candidates said elaine mendoza chairman of the board of regents this speaks to the stellar reputation credibility and positive momentum of texas a&m university the board is confident that dr banks will lead the university to even greater heights while celebrating the traditions and spirit that make texas a&m unique for more information see the full press release about banks being named sole finalist
texas a&m university researchers have recently shown superior performance of a new oxide dispersion strengthened (ods) alloy they developed for use in both fission and fusion reactors dr lin shao professor in the department of nuclear engineering worked alongside research scientists at the los alamos national laboratory and hokkaido university to create the next generation of high-performance ods alloys and so far they are some of the strongest and best-developed metals in the field ods alloys consist of a combination of metals interspersed with small nanometer-sized oxide particles and are known for their high creep resistance this means that as temperatures rise the materials keep their shape instead of deforming many ods alloys can withstand temperatures up to 1 000 c and are typically used in power generation and engines within aerospace engineering as well as cutlery the nuclear community has a high need for reliable and durable materials to make up the core components of nuclear reactors the material must be high strength radiation tolerant and resistant to void swelling (materials develop cavities when subjected to neutron radiation leading to mechanical failures) nuclear researchers like shao are consistently seeking to identify quality creep-resistant and swelling-resistant materials for their use in high-temperature reactors in general ods alloys should be resistant to swelling when exposed to extreme neutron irradiation said shao however the majority of commercial ods alloys are problematic from the beginning this is because almost all commercial ods alloys are based on the ferritic phase ferritic alloys classified by their crystalline structure and metallurgical behavior have good ductility and reasonable high-temperature strength however the ferritic phase is the weakest phase when judged by its swelling resistance therefore making the majority of commercial ods alloys fail in the first line of defense shao known internationally for his pioneering work in radiation materials science directs the accelerator laboratory for testing alloys under extreme irradiation conditions shao and his research team collaborated with the japanese research group at hokkaido university led by dr shigeharu ukai to develop various new ods alloys we decided to explore a new design principle in which oxide particles are embedded in the martensitic phase which is best to reduce void swelling rather than the ferritic phase said shao the resulting ods alloys are able to survive up to 400 displacements per atom and are some of the most successful alloys developed in the field both in terms of high-temperature strength and superior-swelling resistance details of the complete project were published in the journal of nuclear materials along with the most recent study the team has since conducted multiple studies and attracted the attention from the us department of energy and nuclear industry the project resulted in a total of 18 journal papers and two doctoral degree dissertations
dr paul gratz and dr jiang hu in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university are utilizing machine-learning models to detect performance bugs within processors and create a more efficient method to combat this real-world problem as consumers we upgrade to a new phone gaming system or smart device for the home because the newer model offers better battery life graphics performance and overall capabilities when these bugs go undetected and are released into ‘the wild in our homes and into our everyday lives – the performance we lose out on as a result can have a greater long-term effect than we might realize when it comes to computer bugs there are two main types: functional and performance a functional bug means an error within a processor creates a computing result that is simply wrong for example if a processor is asked to solve three plus two and its result is seven there is clearly an issue with that result a performance bug is not as simple to detect suppose you want to drive from college station to houston said hu professor in the department at one point you somehow make a mistake and drive toward dallas thats a big mistake and its pretty easy to tell but there are different paths to houston some are shorter some are longer – that difference is hard to tell because you still arrived at your desired destination performance bugs can fly under the radar and remain unnoticed forever – ultimately diminishing the progress to be made in all facets of modern technology fortunately gratz and hu are working with collaborators at intel corporation on a promising answer
by utilizing machine-learning models and automating the process gratz and hu are hopeful that the effort currently spent on performance validation can be drastically reduced ultimately leading to technologies that reach their full potential more efficiently and effectively this is the first application of machine learning to this kind of problem said gratz associate professor its the first work we have really found that actually tries to tackle this problem at all gratz and hu explained that their procedure allows them to do in a day with one person what currently takes a team of several engineers months to accomplish the first hurdle in detecting these bugs is defining what they might look like the computing industry faces this challenge during initial performance analyses when a new technology shows a performance somewhat better than the previous generation it is hard to determine if that processor is running at its full potential or if a bug is reducing the outcomes and they should expect better results if you have a 20% gain between one generation to the next how do you know that the 20% gain couldnt have been 25% or 30% gratz said this is where the teams machine-learning models come into play the models are able to guess what the performance of the new machine will be based on these relationships so that the team can see if there is a divergence because chips are more compact and complex than ever before there is a higher chance for such bugs to appear as the complexity of chip design grows the conventional method to detect and eliminate bugs manual processor design validation is increasingly difficult to maintain thus a need for an automated solution became apparent intel contacted hu in june 2019 with hopes of collaboration to solve this critical issue this work has been supported by a grant from the semiconductor research corporation the researchers published their current findings in a paper that was accepted into the 27th institute of electrical and electronics engineers international symposium on high-performance computer architecture a top tier conference in computer architecture
as humankind steps into new frontiers in space exploration satellites and space vehicles will need to pack more cargo for the long haul however certain items like dish antennas used for wireless communication pose a challenge since they cannot be very densely packed for flight because of their signature bowl shape now researchers at texas a&m university have used the principles of origami the ancient japanese art of paper folding to create a parabolic structure from a flat surface using a shape-memory polymer when heated the researchers showed that the shape-memory polymer changes its shape in a systematic way that mimics folds this reshaping lifts the material into the shape of a dish further they also showed that their origami-engineered dish antennas performed as efficiently as conventional smooth dish antennas initially we were largely focused on self-folding origami structures: how would you make them how would you design them into different shapes what material would you use said dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering having answered some of these questions we turned to some real-world applications of origami engineering like adaptive antennas for which there has been very little work done in this study we combine folding behavior and antenna performance and address that gap the researchers have described their antenna design in the journal smart materials and structures antennas come in various designs and their major function is to transmit or receive information in the form of electromagnetic waves some antennas like the ones for communicating between a television and a space-bound satellite are curved in the shape of a parabola this ensures that the electromagnetic waves hitting the bowl-shaped antenna are reflected and converge to a small point of focus by extension when these antennas transmit electromagnetic waves they do so in a narrow direction a feature known as directionality
thus parabolic reflectors are a natural choice for space applications since they either pick up or send information in a specific direction however their shape makes them inconvenient to store in space vehicles where there is limited room this problem is exacerbated when many antennas need to be stored onboard one way to address this hurdle is origami engineering using this technique flat 2d structures can be folded into elaborate 3d shapes if parabolic antennas can be made flat using origami they can be stacked or rolled up inside of a rocket and when ready for deployment be unrolled and folded into a parabolic shape however hartl explained that folding a piece of flat material into a smooth bowl is difficult and nonintuitive conventional origami design entails folding thin sheets of material at sharp creases engineering structures on the other hand have a thickness and the choice of material can make it hard to get these sharp creases he said consequently we need to create folds that exhibit smooth bending to facilitate paper-like folding at the creases the researchers turned to shape-memory composites that change their shape when heated in addition these materials are inexpensive lightweight flexible and capable of being stretched multiple times without being damaged first they built a flat 2d surface using strips of shape-memory composites and cardstock simply put pieces of stiff cardstock which formed flat facets were held together by the shape-memory composites similar to how the ribs of an umbrella hold the fabric in place further at the vertices where the composites meet they cut out tiny holes to serve as corner creases when the assembly folds into a 3d parabola the researchers showed that the composites changed their shape by bending systematically when heated eventually lifting the cardstock pieces into a parabolic bowl-like shape they also tested if their multifaceted parabolic reflector worked as efficiently as a smooth parabolic antenna and found that the two antennas performed comparably hartl said this research is an important step toward using the principles of origami to make highly functional engineering structures that can be stowed compactly and easily deployed when needed in addition to other applications future advances based on this research will likely result in morphing reflector antennas for military and space telecommunication applications he said this research is funded by the national science foundation and the air force office of scientific research
dr nick duffield the royce e wisenbaker professor i in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2020 fellow by the association for computing machinery (acm) for his contributions to network measurement and analysis acm is the world's largest and most prestigious society of computing professionals the acm fellows program recognizes the top 1% of acm members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to acm and the larger computing community fellows are nominated by their peers with nominations reviewed by a distinguished selection committee duffield is director of the texas a&m institute of data science (tamids) at which he and his collaborators pursue new approaches to data science research education operations and partnership the work conducted within tamids spans multiple disciplines and connects researchers from across texas a&m to bring together elements of data science from engineering technology science and the humanities and inform wider social challenges duffield also holds a courtesy appointment in the department of computer science and engineering duffields research focuses on data science and computer networking with current projects concerning algorithms for data streaming and machine learning computer network measurement and resilience and applications of data science to urban science transportation agriculture and hydrology
the texas a&m institute of data science (tamids) serves and fosters collaborations across the university and its affiliated agencies it is a joint undertaking of texas a&m university with the texas a&m engineering experiment station and texas a&m agrilife research tamids is an inclusive umbrella organization for data science and facilitates interactions between researchers in diverse application areas and those with expertise in core methodologies promotes education in data science across the university and pursues outreach to commercial and governmental organizations in the wider data science ecosystem
the national academy of inventors (nai) has named two engineering faculty members from texas a&m university to its 2021 class of nai senior members the two new senior members are from the college of engineering: dr saurabh biswas associate professor of practice department of biomedical engineering and executive director for commercialization and entrepreneurship texas a&m engineering experiment station dr roozbeh jafari tim and amy leach professor department of biomedical engineering department of computer science and engineering and the department of electrical and computer engineering nai senior members are active faculty scientists and administrators from nai member institutions with success in patents licensing and commercialization they have produced technologies that have brought or aspire to bring real impact on the welfare of society the 2021 class includes 63 accomplished academic inventors who are named on 625 issued us patents and who represent 37 nai member institutions research universities governmental entities and nonprofit institutes worldwide the title of nai senior member was established in 2019 the selection of biswas and jafari brings the number of current texas a&m faculty members who are nai senior members to 11 in addition 13 current texas a&m faculty members are nai fellows congratulations to dr biswas and dr jafari for earning this distinction said vice president for research dr mark a barteau an nai fellow also thank you to the nai for recognizing the innovations of our outstanding a&m faculty members in the ongoing quest for solutions that better the human condition and address our worlds most challenging problems nai is a member organization comprising of us and international universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes with more than 4 000 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide
finding effective covid-19 vaccine formulas alone is not enough to put the global pandemic behind us thats why the texas a&m university system is collaborating with fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies texas to train the workforce that is mass producing two covid-19 vaccine candidates for the federal government for the past nine months a dedicated team of texas a&m university scientists at the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) has been training workers on the biomanufacturing basics needed to produce the covid-19 vaccine candidates the nctm is a joint research center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and texas a&m with just four instructors and a handful of support staff the team has trained more than 200 new employees of fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies texas the company is the texas a&m systems biomanufacturing subcontracting partner in the national emergency manufacturing program texas a&m is doing a great public service said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system by collaborating with fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies texas to increase the vaccine supply our team is helping save a bunch of lives chancellor sharp recently visited the nctm to learn more about its success the nctm employee training is arranged through the center for innovation and advanced development and manufacturing (ciadm) in college station a texas a&m system program established in 2012 by the federal government for just this kind of national emergency
to meet fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies texas aggressive hiring pace in recent months our team has delivered nearly nonstop training said dr zivko nikolov director of nctm and a professor of bioprocess engineering at texas a&m im so honored to lead such a dedicated team the training is a customized intensive seven-day hands-on curricula of various aspects of cell culture and basic molecular biology aseptic processes and microbiology and upstream and downstream processing of biological materials the team worked quickly to build the program within weeks of the federal request last july the training began almost immediately and has continued ever since the ability to respond rapidly to an emergency is the main original goal of the ciadm program said dr william jay treat director of ciadm and chief manufacturing officer for the texas a&m health science center since its creation nctm has been critical to developing training programs to meet the manpower required for an emergency such as this pandemic the nctm has more than 25 000 square feet of dedicated instructional space with several million dollars worth of traditional stainless and single-use systems for upstream and downstream bioprocessing it has contracted with more than 80 subject-matter experts to build a catalog of training programs that serve industry government and academia in the past eight years nctm has trained nearly 1 600 students including new hires and employed professionals undergraduate/graduate students military veterans and others transitioning careers and even high school students interested in stem careers we have never been more proud of our work than in the past nine months said jenny ligon nctm assistant director for workforce development who has been with nctm since its creation in 2012 im so proud of our small but mighty team we are happy to do our part in getting everyone vaccinated as a center of excellence for science manufacturing and engineering we are pleased to closely collaborate with texas a&m to train new hires to support the manufacture of life-impacting medicines and vaccines at our college station facility said dr gerry farrell chief operating officer of fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies texas it is critical that we continue to train local talent to feed this growing and vibrant texas biotech community
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dr valerie g segovia has been named associate director of outreach and education for the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear engineering and science center (nesc) and associate director of the nuclear power institute (npi) in her new role segovia will work with the nesc director and staff to manage expand and direct all nesc outreach and education programs as npi associate director she will manage expand and direct the statewide workforce development mission and supervise all npi staff i have such great feelings of satisfaction gratitude and appreciation segovia said in regards to her new roles at nesc and npi every day is challenging inspiring and intellectually stimulating in working with our students educators and partners while meeting our missions segovia began her career with npi over a decade ago and has created novel programs that have been implemented across the state of texas including the npi flagship program the workforce industry training program traditionally only 15%-17% of us high school graduates pursue a stem (science technology engineering and mathematics) college degree however through segovias leadership an average of 75%-80% of graduating high school students who participated in npi programs have pursued a stem degree over the past decade segovia is a gulf coast workforce board member and has worked in the public school system as an elementary teacher high school counselor high school assistant principal and high school principal she was recognized as a texas association of secondary school principals (tassp) region iii principal of the year and tassp texas principal of the year finalist and she also won the joseph b whitehead educator of distinction award for exemplary dedication to the field of education additionally she was named a kavu channel 25 hometown hero under her leadership and management palacios high school was named a top performing school by us news & world report segovia holds a bachelors degree in interdisciplinary studies and masters degrees in counseling and administration and supervision and a doctorate in educational leadership this article originally posted by the nuclear power institute (npi)
the texas a&m engineering experiment station and texas a&m university have a demonstrated history of strong leadership and excellence in fields that affect everyday life like supply chain management the thomas and joan read center for distribution research and education applies both advanced research skills and a thorough understanding of distribution to every project their experts who merge long-standing industry experience with the latest developments in academia conduct both primary and secondary research for manufacturers distributors professional associations and publications texas a&ms global supply chain laboratory teaches students the importance of a dynamic end-to-end supply chain vision as well as cutting-edge solutions for wholesale and industrial distribution channels
dr tim davis and dr roozbeh jafari were recently named recipients of the texas a&m engineering experiment station's research impact award the award recognizes research that has had an impact broadly defined as leading to outcomes that extend beyond conventional boundaries including opening new lines of research solving a long existing problem or producing tools or products that have become widely adopted in practice by industry and/or government davis received the award for developing novel methods for solving graph problems using linear algebra and creating widely used algorithms and software for sparse matrix computations jafari was recognized for pioneering context-aware physiological monitoring devices based on wearable computers davis is a professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university his research is focused on two main areas: sparse linear algebra on graphics processing units (gpus) and methods for solving graph algorithms in the language of sparse linear algebra over semirings gpus provide the promise of high performance and lower energy use but they work best on very regular problems the challenge is to map the irregular nature of sparse matrix algorithms to perform well on gpu architectures davis many honors include receiving the 2018 walston chubb award for innovation and a dean of engineering excellence award from the college of engineering he was elected as a fellow of the society for industrial and applied mathematics for "contributions to sparse matrix algorithms and software including the university of florida sparse matrix collection" he also is a fellow of the association for computing machinery and the institute of electrical and electronics engineers dr davis work on sparse matrices and graphblas is extremely impactful and found in a variety of products and tools said dr scott schaefer department head and holder of the lynn ‘84 and bill crane ‘83 department head chair in computer science and engineering the interest from industry in his recent work has been extraordinary jafari is a professor with joint appointments in the department of biomedical engineering the department of computer science and engineering and the department of electrical and computer engineering he is also the director of the embedded signal processing lab his research focuses on wearable computer design and signal processing with applications in health care wellness and enhancing productivity and safety of the users he has received numerous honors and awards including several best paper awards and is a presidential impact fellow at texas a&m a recipient of the national science foundation career award and a fellow of the american institute for medical and biological engineering the potential for dr jafaris work on wearable computers to monitor health status and predict infections or other negative events is tremendous said dr mike mcshane department head and holder of the james cain professorship ii in biomedical engineering of course the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has heightened interest in developing such advanced tools for the welfare of all
dr satish bukkapatnam director of the institute for manufacturing systems has been awarded the george l smith international award for excellence in the promotion of industrial engineering this award given by the institute of industrial and systems engineers (iise) is presented to an individual who has made significant contributions to the discipline and exemplifies being a goodwill ambassador for the profession bukkapatnam has traveled to various educational institutions and developed many programs and formal partnerships particularly in france and india after assuming the role of the director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) institute for manufacturing systems in 2014 he also worked with contacts from the technocentre henri-fabre on the am2 transatlantic partnership led by texas a&m university and tees and the arts et métiers institute of technology to develop a vigorous research portfolio in smart manufacturing with the main focus on smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence for the fourth industrial revolution or industry 40 it is an honor to be chosen for this award i see this as a recognition of the bonds of friendship and partnership our colleagues from france and india had forged with us bukkapatnam said in particular i wish to thank arts et metiers and professor el mansori for the untiring efforts to build the am2 partnership i also wish to thank professors tiwari ramesh babu and satyanarayana for enabling vigorous interactions with our colleagues from indias premier institutions especially the indian institutes of technology and national institute of industrial engineering over the span of 14 years bukkapatnam offered internships to 14 undergraduate students hosted two bose scholars recruited five graduate students (one of whom is a current faculty member at arizona state university mentored both students and early-career faculty and co-organized three major workshops to promote emerging topics in smart manufacturing "dr bukkapatnam is the most deserving of this recognition by the iise it is a testimony to his great efforts in promoting research and education in smart manufacturing globally said dr eyad masad executive director of global initiatives for tees his impact encompasses the full spectrum: joint research programs exchange of students workforce development and development of unique infrastructure for manufacturing in collaboration with other institutions"
the institute for manufacturing systems (ims) serves as the focus of manufacturing research outreach and education for the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the ims embodies texas a&m universitys land-grant mission by providing direct access to the manufacturing and technology expertise of the texas a&m university system by texas industry and the texas engineering community
artificial intelligence (ai) continues to be a growing part of our everyday lives as we become more accustomed to seeing autonomy replacing even the most mundane tasks the military is no exception as they continue to prioritize the safety of soldiers in combat dr thomas ferris associate professor in the wm michael barnes department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university is working with the crew optimization and augmentation technologies (coat) program a project under the us army futures command (afc) to support human crew members in future ground vehicle systems in addition to developing and testing advanced driver displays and interfaces coat research seeks to integrate automation with ai properties into the vehicle cockpit in order to help reduce the size of manned crews this means fewer soldiers put in harms way but brings unique challenges to balancing workload across system elements and maintaining necessary performance levels this project looks at sharing jobs between humans and autonomy this requires knowing which jobs are best suited for humans and which for the ai agents and how to ensure mission effectiveness of the human-vehicle system as responsibilities and roles change ferris said if there is a just a driver and that is his only job thats easier to understand and study now we need to think about what else does the driver do when hes not driving because the ai agent can take over at times and when and how does the human know to regain responsibility of the driving
the afc focuses on the modernization of the us army and longer-term future technologies and systems one aspect of this project focuses on providing sensor data so onboard soldiers can maintain awareness of their surroundings or situation awareness but in a way that minimizes safety risks in the past soldiers would typically pop their head out of the top of the vehicle to visually survey their surroundings in real time which exposes the soldiers to enemy fire going forward and with the help of this research soldiers will have the ability to see all external activity from inside the vehicle and be protected by its armor thus making their missions substantially safer some technologies being investigated include video cameras that capture surroundings in real time and feed that data back to the soldiers inside the vehicle soldiers inside the vehicle cockpit could be using these feeds to drive the vehicle they are currently passengers in or drive a completely separate remote-controlled vehicle ultimately the soldiers task responsibilities need to be flexible in order to support flexible management of the vehicle and thus safer and more effective mission performance
the next steps in the research include incorporating more automation into the task flow for soldiers operating the vehicle in order to allow them to focus their efforts on other tasks and ultimately optimize the safety and performance of the system then the question becomes for the human crewmembers how can we optimize performance on the tasks that theyre responsible for ferris said can we bring in artificial intelligence and can we bring in automation to make some tasks easier without sacrificing overall mission objectives so that the humans can essentially handle the responsibilities of an entire vehicle with a reduced crew size ferris role in this research began when he connected with chris mikulski the principal investigator and coat test lead as part of conversations to connect researchers at texas a&m and the afc he has since enjoyed a collaboration with a broad group of distinguished engineers and scientists in the military and academic sectors his long-term goal in working with coat is to develop reliable means of assessing soldier cognitive workload during vehicle operations and using that assessment to inform which and how mission-relevant data are displayed to soldiers what is interesting to me about this is that this is a program where theres all of the depths of resource that the us military can offer to explore the future of ground transportation ferris said i always want to make sure that where my contributions are going are toward safer and better systems for soldiers and i feel this is both an exciting and noble research effort
dr r stanley williams hewlett packard enterprise company chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and director of the hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research is ranked in the top tier of scientists in the world in the field of computer science and electronics from the guide2research 2021 top scientists ranking out of 1 000 scientists and researchers williams who ranked 115th in the world and 80th in the united states is the director of the center for computer architecture research at texas a&m williams has performed research in nano-electronics -ionics and -photonics and how to utilize the nonlinear dynamical properties of matter to perform computation efficiently before joining texas a&m in 2018 he was a senior fellow and senior vice president at hewlett-packard labs where he led the group that developed the first intentional solid-state version of leon chua's memristor prior to this he was a member of the technical staff at bell labs before joining the faculty at the university of california los angeles where he served as a chemistry professor for 15 years he was named one of the top 10 visionaries in the field of electronics by ee times and has received awards in chemistry applied physics and nanotechnology williams has been issued more than 230 us patents published more than 450 peer-reviewed papers and presented hundreds of invited plenary keynote and named lectures at international scientific technical and business events the guide2research 2021 top scientists ranking is based on the h-index metric provided by google scholar and dblp and includes only leading scientists with an h-index of at least 40 williams has over 67 000 citations an h-index of 116 i am gratified that so many researchers have found my work to be sufficiently interesting and useful to be cited in their publications williams said
batteries are a part of everyday modern life powering everything from laptops phones and robot vacuums to hearing aids pacemakers and even electric cars but these batteries potentially pose safety and environmental risks in a study recently published in cell reports physical science researchers at texas a&m university investigated the components of a different kind of battery a metal-free water-based battery which would reduce the flammable nature of standard batteries and decrease the number of metal elements used in their production most batteries are li-ion and contain lithium and cobalt which are globally strategic elements meaning they are located only in certain countries but essential to the global economy and united states battery manufacturing "this work enables the future design of metal-free aqueous batteries " said dr jodie lutkenhaus professor and axalta coating systems chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m "by going metal-free we can address the pressing global demand for strategic metals used in batteries and by going aqueous we replace the flammable volatile electrolyte with water" using a very sensitive measurement technique called electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring researchers were able to determine how electrons ions and water transfer in the electrode as it is charged and discharged "with this information we showed that enhanced electrode-water interactions lead to improved energy storage performance " she said the energy storage capacity was lower than that of traditional li-ion batteries but this paves the way for a more sustainable and less volatile battery in the future
the research is in its initial stages and there's opportunity for various applications in the real world one particular potential is implantable batteries for medical devices lutkenhaus' interest began when she learned about the strain on strategic elements such a lithium and cobalt due to increased battery manufacturing by using completely different materials such as we do with polymers here we remove metals from the picture completely " she said "my favorite aspect of this work is our ability to deeply characterize the molecular transport processes associated with this redox polymer only in the last few years have we been able to resolve such effects on this time and mass scale" for the future lutkenhaus said they will need to identify more polymers that are compatible with the design once we have that we can produce a high-performance full-cell for practical use she said this project is supported by the us department of energy-basic energy sciences program
the introduction of lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries has revolutionized technology as a whole leading to major advances in consumer goods across nearly all sectors battery-powered devices have become ubiquitous across the world while the availability of technology is generally a good thing the rapid growth has led directly to several key ethical and environmental issues surrounding the use of li-ion batteries current li-ion batteries utilize significant amounts of cobalt which in several well-documented international cases is mined using child labor in dangerous working environments additionally only a very small percentage of li-ion batteries are recycled increasing the demand for cobalt and other strategic elements a multidisciplinary team of researchers from texas a&m university has made a breakthrough that could lead to battery production moving away from cobalt in an article published in the may issue of nature dr jodie lutkenhaus axalta coating systems chair and professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and dr karen wooley distinguished professor in the department of chemistry and holder of the wt doherty-welch chair in chemistry in the college of science outline their research into a new battery technology platform that is completely metal free this new battery technology platform utilizes a polypeptide organic radical construction by moving away from lithium and working with these polypeptides which are components of proteins it really takes us into this realm of not only avoiding the need for mining precious metals but opening opportunities to power wearable or implantable electronic devices and also to easily recycle the new batteries said wooley recently honored as the 2021 sec professor of the year they [polypeptide batteries] are degradable they are recyclable they are non-toxic and they are safer across the board the all-polypeptide organic radical battery composed of redox-active amino-acid macromolecules also solves the problem of recyclability the components of the new battery platform can be degraded on demand in acidic conditions to generate amino acids other building blocks and degradation products one of the major breakthroughs in this research according to lutkenhaus the big problem with lithium-ion batteries right now is that they're not recycled to the degree that we are going to need for the future electrified transportation economy lutkenhaus added the rate of recycling lithium-ion batteries right now is in the single digits there is valuable material in the lithium-ion battery but it's very difficult and energy intensive to recover the development of a metal-free all-polypeptide organic radical battery composed of redox-active amino-acid macromolecules that degrade on demand marks significant progress toward sustainable recyclable batteries that minimize dependence on strategic metals as a next step wooley and lutkenhaus have begun working in collaboration with dr daniel tabor assistant professor in the department of chemistry through a 2020 texas a&m triads for transformation (t3) grant that aims to utilize machine learning to optimize the materials and structure of the battery platform
the lead authors on the paper are tan nguyen a current postdoctoral associate at the university of michigan and former doctoral student from the texas a&m department of chemistry and alexandra easley a doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m this work was financially supported by the national science foundation the welch foundation and the us department of energy office of science
dr jeyavijayan jv rajendran assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is partnering with intel corporation for the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) structured array hardware for automatically realized applications (sahara) project the three-year partnership enables the design of custom chips that include advanced security countermeasure technologies for widespread applications including government security there are two well-understood processor technologies in the semiconductor industry first are field-programmable gate arrays (fpgas) which provide basic functionality that can be modified post-production while this means better security in the supply chain because the manufacturer has no glimpse into the design being implemented it comes at the cost of lower performance and higher power consumption second are application specific integrated circuits (asics) which provide fixed functionality meaning the design cannot be modified post-manufacturing unlike in fpgas the manufacturers of asics are provided the design that is being implemented while this may pose security risks in the supply chain it allows for superior performance less power consumption and less area overall the sahara project which began in december 2020 is facilitating the automated conversion of fpga designs into secure asics to not only strengthen the security but also improve overall processor performance what intel is doing with this asic technology is they are taking the best of both worlds where you can have the configurability of fpga style but close to asic-like performance rajendran said intels structured asics are called easics an intermediate technology between fpgas and standard-cell asics