BETTER WORLD// ENGINEERING

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RENSSELAER ENG INEER ING

2011

BETTER WORLD//ENGINEERING

Rensselaer’s community of scholars guides future engineers to design a better world

RENSSELAER ENG INEER ING

2011

BETTER WORLD//ENGINEERINGThe School of Engineering launched a new web portal, Better

World Engineering, to showcase our commitment to educating

engineers to design a better world. The website showcases edu-

cational programs to teach students to think about the global impact

of engineering, and highlights the efforts of students, faculty, and

researchers endeavoring to solve the most pressing global challenges.

The new site, with a strong focus on classroom and research projects

related to sustainability, emerging communities, and humanitarianism,

is located at: http://eng.rpi.edu/bwe

Better World Engineering features student projects with a focus on

sustainability, the environment, and innovating local solutions to global

challenges. The site provides information about the student chapter of

Engineers Without Borders, who are planning a trip to a remote town

in Panama to develop and deploy a water purification system. Other

projects include the all-electric car built by Rensselaer’s Solar Racing

Team, in addition to the members of the Engineering for a Sustainable

World chapter who developed novel solar power systems to jump-start

a new dairy industry in rural Peru.

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CONTENTS

School of EngineeringRensselaer Polytechnic Institute110 8th StreetTroy, NY 12180-3590 USA(518) 276-6203eng.rpi.edu

Opinions expressed in these pages do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the policies of the Institute.

BETTER WORLD//ENGINEERINGeng.rpi.edu/bwe

“ Engineers working across our society are creating technologies, science, and infrastructure to improve the

quality of life for everyone. Some work directly on solutions, others help define needs, and still others are

engaged in preparing the next generation of engineers and engineering scientists. What binds us—beyond

just our academic preparation, mathematic aptitude, or a passion for tinkering and building—is our com-

mon charge. Engineers are being called upon, during this rare moment in human history, to address what

the National Academy of Engineering has termed the ‘Grand Challenges.’ These are the most pressing,

broad-reaching, and serious predicaments we face as a society, a people, and a planet. The Grand

Challenges touch the most basic and vital necessities in our lives, including food, water, energy, and health.

The scholars who work, study, teach, and conduct research at Rensselaer are deeply committed to

engineering solutions to these Grand Challenges.”

— David V. Rosowsky, Ph.D., P.E., F. ASCE, Dean of Engineering

4 14 15 18R E S E A R C H FA C U LT YA L U M N I S T U D E N T S

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©2011 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

4 | Rensselaer Engineering

Now in its third year, the NSF-Funded Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center (ERC) at Rensselaer, led by director Rob-ert Karlicek (pictured) has enlisted 21 key industrial partners to help guide the center’s leading-edge research programs and hasten the transition of important innovations from the lab bench to the marketplace.

Launched in 2008, Smart Lighting ERC is dedicated to developing new light-emitting diode (LED) technologies and applications for smarter, better-performing lighting devices and systems.

“The rapidly growing industry membership in the Smart Lighting ERC is a testimony to the quality of the transformative re-search being conducted on future lighting systems by the ERC faculty and students,”

said ERC Director Robert Karlicek. “It is also firm support for the ERC’s vision of smart lighting systems, which are poised to revolutionize lighting by creating im-mersive lighting systems that can sense their environment to provide new levels of energy efficiency, health and safety benefits, and enhanced workplace productivity.”

Among the center’s industrial partners are leading LED companies including Osram Sylvania and Taiwan-based Epistar.

“Riding on the backbone of energy-efficient improvements in materials and performance, the Smart Lighting ERC is providing a state-of-the-art center in which we from industry engage academia to prove concepts at platform levels, ahead of indus-try acceptance and uptake,” said Matthew

Stough, director of engineering, materials and processes, and research coordinator at Osram Sylvania.

“Epistar is pleased to join the Smart Light-ing Engineering Research Center. Their work on transformative LED and lighting technology is of critical importance to the development of advanced solid state lighting systems, and we look forward to supporting those efforts as a member of the ERC,” said Steve Hong, director of research and development at Epistar.

While the promise of LEDs as a long-lived, energy-efficient heir to light bulbs is undeniable, the true promise of LED and solid-state lighting technology transcends illumination. LEDs offer the potential to control, manipulate, and use light in

Energy@Rensselaer: Moving Smarter LEDs From the Laboratory to the Marketplace

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entirely new ways for a surprisingly diverse range of areas.

Along with Rensselaer, core ERC university partners are Boston University and the University of New Mexico. ERC university outreach partners are Howard University in Washington; Morgan State University in Baltimore; and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute.

The ERC’s industry partners help guide strategic planning and provide university students with first-hand experience in entrepreneurship. This summer, four ERC graduate students have taken internships with ERC industrial partners, and three ERC students have started a new company based on ERC technology and will be supported this summer by a Boston-based venture capital firm.

Mobile Studio in AfricaProfessor Kenneth Connor stood in a crowded room in Ghana in November, demonstrating how — with a notebook computer and a customized plug-and-play circuit board — Rensse-

laer’s Mobile Studio (above) could transform almost any space into an engineering laboratory.

Connor, a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering, and director of education for the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center, had been invited to the 4th International Conference on Appropriate Technology to conduct a workshop on the Mobile Studio. Thanks to the generosity of alumni Doug Mercer ’77 and Sean O’Sullivan ’85, Connor was able not just to demonstrate the technology but to donate it to two Ghanaian universities. Mercer covered the cost of the trip; O’Sullivan paid for the six notebook comput-ers, Mobile Studio circuit boards, and other components that Connor brought with him and left behind.

As a result, starting this semester, students at University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah Uni-versity of Science and Technology (KNUST) will be able to conduct experiments that histori-cally have required prohibitive investments in laboratory equipment.


New Nanoengineered Batteries Developed at Rensselaer Exhibit Remarkable Power Density, Charging More Than 40 Times Faster Than Today’s Lithium-ion Batteries

An entirely new type of nanomaterial developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could enable the next generation of high-power rechargeable lithium (Li)-ion batteries for electric automobiles, as well as bat-teries for laptop computers, mobile phones, and other portable devices.

The new material, dubbed a “nanoscoop” because its shape resembles a cone with a scoop of ice cream on top (right), can withstand extremely high rates of charge and discharge that would cause conventional electrodes used in today’s Li-ion batteries to rapidly deteriorate and fail. The nanoscoop’s success lies in its unique material composition, structure, and size.

The Rensselaer research team, led by Professor Nikhil Koratkar, demonstrated how a nanoscoop elec-trode could be charged and discharged at a rate 40 to 60 times faster than conventional battery anodes, while maintaining a comparable energy density. This stellar performance, which was achieved over 100 continuous charge/discharge cycles, has the team confident that their new technology holds significant potential for the design and realization of high-power, high-capacity Li-ion rechargeable batteries.

“Charging my laptop or cell phone in a few minutes, rather than an hour, sounds pretty good to me,” said Koratkar, a professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer. “By using our nanoscoops as the anode architecture for Li-ion rechargeable batteries, this is a very real prospect. Moreover, this technology could potentially be ramped up to suit the demanding needs of batteries for electric automobiles.”

Batteries for all-electric vehicles must deliver high power densities in addition to high energy densities, Koratkar said. These vehicles today use supercapacitors to perform power-intensive functions, such as starting the vehicle and rapid acceleration, in conjunction with conventional batteries that deliver high energy density for normal cruise driving and other operations. Koratkar said the invention of nanoscoops may enable these two separate systems to be combined into a single, more efficient battery unit.

“Nanoscoops” Could Spark New Generation of Electric Automobile Batteries

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The nanoscale size of the scoop is also vital since nanostructures are less prone to cracking than bulk materials, according to Koratkar.

“Due to their nanoscale size, our nanoscoops can soak and release Li at high rates far more effectively than the macroscale anodes used in today’s Li-ion batteries,” he said. “This means our nanoscoop may be the solution to a criti-cal problem facing auto companies and other battery manufacturers—how can you increase the power density of a battery while still keeping the energy density high?”

Along with Koratkar, authors on the paper are Toh-Ming Lu, the R.P. Baker Distinguished Professor of Physics and associate director of the Center for Integrated Electronics at Rensselaer; and Rahul Krishnan, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer.

Researchers have developed an entirely new type of nanomaterial that could enable

the next generation of high-power rechargeable lithium (Li)-ion batteries for electric

automobiles, laptop computers, mobile phones, and other devices. The material,

called a “nanoscoop” because it resembles a cone with a scoop of ice cream on

top, is shown in the above scanning electron microscope image. Nanoscoops can

withstand extremely high rates of charge and discharge that would cause today’s

Li-ion batteries to rapidly deteriorate and fail.


“Liquid Pistons” Could Drive New Advances in Camera Lenses and Drug Delivery

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Researchers have developed liquid pistons, which can be used to precisely pump small volumes of liquid. Comprising the

pistons are droplets of nanoparticle-infused ferrofluids which can also drive liquid lenses that vibrate at high frequencies

and scan a range of focal distances as they change shape. These liquid pistons could enable a new generation of mobile

phone cameras, medical imaging equipment, implantable drug delivery devices, and possibly even implantable eye lenses.

Versatile Liquid Pistons Have No Solid Moving Parts, Essentially Eliminating Wear

A few unassuming drops of liquid locked in a very precise game of “follow the leader” could one day be found in mobile phone cameras, medical imaging equipment, implantable drug delivery devices, and even implantable eye lenses.

Engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed liquid pistons, in which oscillating droplets of ferrofluid precisely displace a surrounding liquid. The pulsating motion of the ferrofluid droplets, which are saturated with metal nanoparticles, can be used to pump small volumes of liquid. The study also demonstrated how droplets can driveliquid lenses that constantly move, rapidly bringing objects into focus.

These liquid pistons are highly tunable, scalable, and — because they lack any solid moving parts — suffer no wear and tear. The research team, led by Professor Amir H. Hirsa, is confident this new discovery can be exploited to create a host of new devices ranging from micro displacement pumps and liquid switches, to adaptive lenses and advanced drug delivery systems.

“It is possible to make mechanical pumps that are small enough for use in lab-on-a-chip applications, but it’s a very complex, expensive proposition,” said Hirsa, a professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer. “Our electro-magnetic liquid pistons present a new strategy for tackling the challenge of microscale liquid pumping. Additionally, we have shown how these pistons are well-suited for chip-level, fast-acting adaptive liquid lenses.”

Results of the study are detailed in the paper “Electromagnetic liquid pistons for capillarity-based pumping,” recently published by the journal Lab on a Chip. The paper was featured on the cover of the journal’s February 2011 issue.

Hirsa’s team developed a liquid piston that is comprised of two ferrofluid droplets situated on a substrate about the size of a piece of chewing gum. The substrate has two holes in it, one hosting a pair of ferrofluid droplets and the other holding the driven droplets (e.g. liquid lens). The entire device is situated in a chamber filled with water.

Amir H. Hirsa, Lead Researcher,

Professor, Department of Mechanical,

Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering


Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Deanna Thompson (pictured) is utilizing more than $300,000 in New York state funding as part of the state stem cell research program, NYSTEM, to study adult neural stem cells. The NYSTEM program is New York’s $600 million publicly funded grant program to advance scientific discovery in the area of stem cells.

Working at the interface of engineering and neuroscience, her research is helping scientists and doctors develop new stem cell therapies and research tools utilizing these important cells. The adult stems cells she is investigating could play an important role in understanding and treating a variety of brain illnesses, from cancer and Alzheimer’s to traumatic brain injury and stroke.

“Dr. Thompson is a young, rising star in her field and has come up with a highly innovative approach to direct, cause, and control nerve regeneration through stem cell bioengineering,” said Rensselaer Biomedical Engineering leader Deepak Vashishth. “The results of her NYSTEM-funded research will provide unique insight into the stem cell niche and help develop new tools and therapies for regenerative medicine.”

Neural stem cells are a specialized type of stem cell that can be found in the adult nervous system. These stem cells have the potential to

repair or replace damaged nerve cells. For researchers, the ability to generate new cells or repair damaged nerve cells would be exception-ally helpful to heal a traumatic brain injury following an accident or reverse the cellular death caused by an illness like Parkinson’s disease. Thompson’s research is working to understand exactly how neural stem cells proliferate or differentiate into new nerve cells in the brain so that ability can be replicated to develop new medical treatments.

An element of the stem cell niche that Thompson is studying with this round of NYSTEM funding is endothelial cells. These cells line the interior of blood vessels, which are highly concentrated in the regions of the brain where neural stem cells reside. In particular, Thompson is looking at how materials produced by endothelial cells during their development influence neural stem cells’ fate. According to Thomp-son, such control could allow for the development of stem cell thera-pies grown from an individual patient’s own neural stem cells.

Her work with brain cells has several other important implications beyond stem cell therapies. Another facet of her research as a member of National Science Foundation-funded Rensselaer Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures involves the use of nanotechnology to repair damaged nerves in the brain and spinal cord.

Using Adult Stem Cells To Develop New Treatments for Brain Injury and Illness

photo: Mark M

cCarty

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Nuclear criticality safety and reactor safety are at the heart of a new initiative led by Yaron Danon.

The five-year funding plan calls for $1.5 million to be invested at Rensselaer by the U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP), managed by the National Nuclear Security Administra-tion (NNSA). The funds will support a new nuclear engineering research program and laboratory at Rensselaer, dedicated to the careful measurement and analysis of high-accuracy nuclear interaction data. This data is used by researchers and engineers around the globe in a wide variety of nuclear physics ap-plications, including nuclear criticality safety of fissionable material processing, the design of new and safer nuclear reactors, and many other applications of interest to the NNSA and the broader international nuclear safety and nuclear reactor community.

Led by Yaron Danon (pictured below right), professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, the new program will study basic nuclear interactions that enable more accurate predictions of energy production and shielding effective-ness in a working nuclear reactor. Results of the study will also enable better prediction of heat production in emergency and emergency shutdown situations, such as the recent crisis at the Fukushima reactors in Japan.

“To store nuclear material safely, you abso-lutely need to know the probability that the neutrons will interact with materials they come into contact with. Will the neutrons be absorbed? Would they scatter? Or cause fission?” said Danon, who is director of the Gaerttner Linear Accelerator Laboratory (LINAC) at Rensselaer. “If you’re writing computer code or building a computer model to represent uranium being stored in

a concrete structure, for example, these prob-abilities are critical. For many years, our team has built a reputation as one of the world’s premier nuclear data laboratories accurately measuring these probabilities.”

The goal of the new research program at Rensselaer is to provide high-accuracy nuclear data for the international nuclear community. In any nuclear technology application— including commercial power generation, na-val propulsion, medical devices, and process-ing and storage of nuclear materials – neutron interactions are of paramount importance, Danon said. To design ways of storing nuclear fissile materials for these products, devices, and systems, engineers require the ability to accurately calculate and predict how the fissile material will behave.

$1.5 Million in Funding Supports the Launch of a New Nuclear Safety Research Program and Lab

Above: Peter Brand, Technical Manager at the Gaerttner Linear Accelerator Laboratory (LINAC), demonstrates the control system to students. Right: LINAC Director, Yaron Danon.


/ / R E S E A R C H

Energy@Rensselaer: Taking on Challenges Related to Wind Energy, Aircraft Design, Smart BuildingsImagine the day when jets merely sip expensive jet fuel and air-travel is quiet and turbulence-free. Or the day when individuals can afford to significantly reduce their house-hold energy costs with a small wind turbine. Green airplanes and smart buildings are just part of the tangible results from advances in flow control.

Flow control is a rapidly emerging field of significant technological importance to the design and capability of the forthcom-ing air-vehicles, wind turbines, and many other mechanical systems. Michael Amitay (pictured), associate professor in the Depart-ment of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, and his colleagues, are at the forefront of this exciting and rapidly emerg-ing field of study.

Amitay and his research team are well on their way to finding answers to fundamental

questions in fluid systems while developing new, application-driven solutions for enhanc-ing fluid system performance. From designing smarter blades for wind turbines to develop-ing new techniques for reducing aircraft drag, the multidisciplinary team is poised to make an important impact in the rapidly emerging field of active flow control.

“The ability to manipulate a flow field to affect a desired change is of immense practi-cal importance. As a scientific discipline and as technological curiosity, flow control is a hot topic in both science and engineering,” Amitay said. And both the public and private sector have taken notice.

By its very nature, active flow control demands an interdisciplinary team to inves-tigate flow physics, prediction models, and control schemes. This entails a combination of basic research aimed at developing and

verifying theories for fluid dynamic behavior, and the modeling and application of these theories toward controlling flows. In addition to Amitay, researchers hail from several de-partments and schools on campus, including the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering; Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineer-ing; Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Math-ematical Sciences; and School of Architecture.

Funding for Amitay’s work include federal agencies: Air Force Office of Scientific Research; Office of Naval Research; National Science Foundation (NSF); and Air Force Research Laboratory; state agencies includ-ing the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA); and industrial partners Boeing, Northrop Grum-man, AeroCity, and Infoscitex.


Over the last two years, Amitay and his team have tackled no less than 17 major projects including a three-phase project on “Distrib-uted Conformal Actuation with Electro Ac-tive Polymers,” “Exploratory Investigation of Active Vibration and Flow Control in Wind Turbine Blades,” and “Control of Transonic Flow in a Inlet Ducts,” just to name a few.

Today, Amitay and his colleagues are focusing on the following areas in their research: •Flow Physics: 2-D, 3-D, and unsteady flows•Flow Control: Fundamental experimental,

numerical, and theoretical investigations of flow control in macro and micro systems

•Actuators: Design, optimization, and mod-eling of actuators for flow control

•Flow Sensing: Flow sensors and controls to enable autonomous systems

•Aviation: Manned and unmanned aerial vehicles

•Wind Energy: Smart wind turbine blades•Building-Integrated Wind: Smart

buildings

“It’s exciting to see Rensselaer play a leading role in the rapidly emerging field of active flow control. The breakthroughs and novel solutions in flow control echo Rensselaer’s rich history in aerospace and mechanical engineering, and build on our growing repu-tation in computational sciences and energy systems,” said David Rosowsky, dean of the School of Engineering.

Amitay follows in a long line of engineering pioneers and innovators hailing from Rensse-laer. Alumni include: former Rensselaer Presi-dent George Low ’48, who took charge of the redesign for the Apollo spacecraft following the Apollo I fire, during his term as the depu-ty administrator of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA); Robert

Loewy ’47, who at the age 38 became chief scientist of the United States Air Force, mak-ing a powerful impact on the field of vertical flight; and Robert Widmer ’38, who created and designed the B-58, the world’s first long-range aircraft capable of sustained supersonic flight, and was vice president of science and engineering for all engineering activities at General Dynamics Corp.

“Professor Amitay’s work is creating exciting new opportunities for our students— already highly sought-after by major aero-space engineering firms—and for our faculty researchers,” Rosowsky said. “We are excited about the progress being made in this important new field and look forward to continued success and advances under Miki’s research leadership.”

For more information, visit the Flow Control Research Lab at: www.rpi.edu/~amitam/

Michael Amitay (previous page), associate professor in the Department of

Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer. Top left:

Graduate student Nick Rathay demonstrates a wind-tunnel model. Graduate

student Ed DeMauro (lower left) presents his work during a tour with execu-

tives from Boeing Company.

Recently a team of distinguished executives from Boeing Company (above) toured Rensselaer’s Research Wind Tunnel facility, (l to r) Philippe Spalart, Senior Technical Fellow, Boeing Commercial Airplane; Mark Goldhammer, ’70, Chief Aerodynamicist, Boeing Commercial Airplanes; Bill Bower, Senior Technical Fellow, Boeing Engineering, Operations and Technology; Bob Dowgwillo ’75: Aerodynamics Engineer, Boeing Engineering, Operations and Technology.

Recently, Rensselaer was awarded the 2010 Boeing Performance Excellence Award - Silver Level (right). Rensselaer received the award from Boeing for “demonstrating their dedication to the high-performance standards necessary to meet customer expectations and remain competitive in the global economy.”


/ / A L U M N I Meet Mark Goldhammer ’70, Chief Aerodynamicist, Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Mark Goldhammer ’70 has spent over 40 years in aircraft design—leading key engineering teams for the Boeing 777 and 787.

By now, you might think, seeing the final product in action would be routine for him. Not even close.

“It is still a thrill for me to watch our airplanes make their first flights, fly on them during flight test, and then experience them as a member of the traveling public,” said the Chief Aerodynami-cist for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “To have had a meaning-ful impact on our industry has given me a tremendous sense of satisfaction.”

Goldhammer’s career launch coincided with a watershed in air-craft design. “I began just as the digital computer was starting to compete with trial-and-error wind tunnel testing,” he recalled. “I think I played a significant role in transforming our design pro-cess to use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools, especially for designing transonic airplane wings.”

That he did. CFD dramatically reduced the design cycle and cost of aircraft testing at Boeing. CFD was used to make the 777 the most aerodynamically advanced Boeing aircraft in service today. Building on the success of the 777, Goldhammer and his team are pushing CFD tools beyond aerodynamics to other disci-plines, including aircraft structures. Take the 787, the first large commercial craft made primarily with composites. In addition to improved performance, said Goldhammer, the new plane car-ries several advances: “a better cabin environment, more storage space, less noise, and fewer emissions.”

Reflecting on his studies as an aeronautical engineering student at Rensselaer, Goldhammer notes, “My education served me well in that I learned the fundamental engineering principles in my field,” he said. “Those have not materially changed, even as the practical tools to implement them have.”

Mark Goldhammer ’70, Chief Aerodynamicist, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, has made advances in many areas

including; aerodynamic design, technology development, wind tunnel and flight testing, certification, in-service safety,

and conceptual design.


Xuegang (Jeff) Ban, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engi-neering, has won a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Ban will use the five-year, $400,000 award to study how mobile devices including GPS and cellular phones can help monitor and optimize traffic systems, and reduce roadway congestion.

Ban’s CAREER program, titled “Using Mobile Sensors for Traffic Knowledge Extraction and Dynamic Network Management,” seeks to develop the foundations for a new area of trans-portation science, based on mobile sensors. He aims to tackle the key challenges of using cell phones, GPS, and other devices to provide data that can be incorporated into next-generation traffic monitoring and management systems. Current systems rely on fixed data collection points, which suffer from limited coverage and are slow to adapt to traffic congestions, accidents, and emergencies. Ban’s vision is to actively learn traffic system states and better man-age the system based on “crowd sourcing” mobile device data that protects a driver’s anonymity while actively responding to changing traffic conditions.

This new paradigm of mobile devices-based, real-time, and dynamic traffic system manage-ment holds the potential to improve traffic congestion and safety while addressing emissions and sustainability issues related to transportation, Ban said. His group is currently testing and refining an experimental prototype system in the Rensselaer Technology Park, near the Rens-selaer Troy campus.

Cynthia Collins, assistant professor in the Department of the Chemical and Biological Engi-neering, has also won the prestigious award.

Collins will use the five-year, approximately $536,000 award to develop systems for coordi-nating the behaviors of microbes in entirely new types of engineered microbial communities. In the future, Collins envisions the use of such microbial communities as a platform for the production of pharmaceuticals and other important products.

/ / FA C U LT Y

Daniel Lewis

Cynthia Collins

Xuegang (Jeff) Ban

Three Professors win the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF)


Mattheos Koffas Joins the Faculty at Rensselaer

Mattheos Koffas joins Rensselaer as the Career Development Chair in the Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering Constellation and associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

A metabolic engineer, his research looks at ways to im-prove naturally occurring cells for use as new medications or medical therapies. A current focus of his work looks at understanding and improving chemotherapy drugs.

Koffas joins Rensselaer from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he served as a member of the faculty since 2002.

Tarek Abdoun Named Associate Dean in School of Engineering

Tarek Abdoun, the Judith and Thomas Iovino ’73 Professor in Civil Engineering, is known internationally for his work in geotechnical earthquake engi-neering. Abdoun also serves as the associate director of the Rensselaer NSF-NEES Geotechnical Centrifuge Research Center.

Abdoun’s primary research interests include centrifuge modeling, soil-structure interaction, soil remediation, field advanced sensing, and data visualization.

In 2007, he received the Com-mander’s Award for Public Ser-vice with accompanying medal from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for his outstanding contributions to the rebuilding of the New Orleans levees

ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) awarded Abdoun the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize.

James Lu Garners Award, Fellowship for Research on 3-D Computer Chips

Associate Professor James Jian-Qiang Lu was recognized recently for his innovative research and technical achievements toward the design and realization of 3-D integrated computer chips.

Lu, associate professor in the Department of Electri-cal, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE), received the prestigious William D. Ash-man Achievement Award for 2010 from the International Microelectronics and Packag-ing Society (IMAPS).

This award recognizes an indi-vidual who “has provided sig-nificant technical contributions to the electronics packaging industry, while participating and demonstrating support of activities to enhance the electronics packaging profes-sion as a member,” according to IMAPS.

James Lu Named IEEE Fellow

Associate Professor James Jian-Qiang Lu was recently named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

In elevating him to a fellow, the IEEE cited Lu’s contribu-tions to three-dimensional integrated circuit technology.

Mattheos Koffas

Faculty Awards

Tarek Abdoun

Collins’ CAREER program, titled “Engineering Interspecies Communication and Synthetic Microbial Consortia,” will work to develop components and tools for engineering specialized microbial communities that can be used as a generic platform for diverse biotechnology applications, such as chemical synthesis, drug discovery, and bioremediation.

“The project is focused around the concept that a community comprised of different types of microbes can do much more than a community comprised of a single organism,” said Collins. “By combining different types of organisms in the same community, you can utilize the strength of each organism to achieve outcomes that are more than the sum of the individual parts.”

The first step in this process is commu-nication. As with humans, in order to have a community of different types of microbes work together effectively, they must be able to communicate with each other. Collins will use this new funding to get two very different and widely used types of microbes to communicate with each other—Escherichia coli and Bacillus megaterium. Such interspecies commu-nication, which involves the sending and receiving of chemical signals, has yet to be engineered between these two very different organisms.

Daniel Lewis, assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has also won the prestigious award and will use the projected five-year, $630,000 award to understand how materials behave at high temperatures.

With his CAREER project, titled “Grain Growth and Topological Evolution of Polycrystals,” Lewis will use a new approach to investigate the long-standing problem of grain growth in metallic and ceramic materials. Certain properties of these materials are strongly dependent on the size of the grains, or crystallites, that make up the bulk material. Environmental factors, such as exposure to high temperatures, can impact the grain size over time. In some cases, this change in grain size can lead to extensive damage or failure in metals or ceramics. Lewis is seeking to conduct simulations using the Rensselaer supercomputing center, the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI), and physical experiments to characterize and better understand the kinetics and thermody-namics of grain growth in metallic materials.

“ We are exceptionally

proud of Drs. Ban,

Collins, and Lewis for

being named NSF CAREER

Award recipients. This

award is reserved for the

most promising and in-

novative faculty—currently

the School of Engineering

has 34 faculty who have

received this award, eight

in the last two years.”

— David V. Rosowsky, Ph.D., P.E., F. ASCE Dean of Engineering


Jian Sun Named Director of Center for Future Energy Systems

Power electronics expert Associate Professor Jian Sun has been named director of the Center for Future Energy Systems (CFES).

As director of CFES, Sun is responsible for overseeing and developing the center’s research programs, as well as facilitating strategic growth and securing new industrial partnerships. The center, funded by the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), aims to connect the expertise of academic researchers with forward-thinking companies to develop and commercialize new, innovative renewable energy technologies.

Sun, associate professor in the Department of Electri-cal, Computer, and Systems Engineering, is a well-known researcher in the areas of power electronics and electric energy conversion.

Daniel Walczyk Named Fellow of ASME

Advanced manufacturing expert Daniel Walczyk ’91, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engi-neering and associate director of the Rensselaer Center for Automation Technologies and Systems (CATS), has been named a fellow of the Ameri-can Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

The ASME applauded Walczyk for his “significant contributions to the fields of rapid tooling, manufacturing processes, and biomedical device design.”

Walczyk holds five U.S. patents, plus two pending patents, for his manufacturing innovations and inventions.

Jose Holguín-Veras Named William Howard Hart Professor at Rensselaer

Transportation engineering expert Jose Holguín-Veras has been named the William Howard Hart Professor at Rensselaer. An endowed professorship is among the highest honors bestowed on a Rensselaer faculty member.

A professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Jose Holguín-Veras is also director of the Institute’s Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment.

The National Science Founda-tion (NSF) recognized Holguín-Veras in 2001 with a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.

Bioseparations Expert Georges Belfort Named Institute Professor

World-leading biosepara-tions expert Georges Belfort has been named Institute Professor, one of the most prestigious honors bestowed upon a faculty member at Rensselaer.

Belfort is a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Recently, Belfort received the 2011 Alan S. Michaels Award in the Recovery of Biological Products from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Biotechnology Division.

Belfort is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

White House Honors Matthew Oehlschlaeger With Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

The White House has recog-nized Associate Professor Matthew Oehlschlaeger with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The award is the highest honor be-stowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their inde-pendent research careers.

The PECASE award recog-nizes Oehlschlaeger’s U.S. Air Force-funded research on the combustion chemistry of aviation fuels.

Oehlschlaeger, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, is one of 85 PECASE recipients in the nation.

Jonathan Dordick Named ACS Fellow

Director of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdis-ciplinary Studies (CBIS) and the Howard P. Isermann ’42 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Jona-than Dordick was recognized by the ACS for his “outstand-ing achievements in and contributions to the science, the profession, and service to the society.”

Dordick’s research interests are in the areas of biocataly-sis, bioengineering, and nanobiotechnology.

Dordick is a fellow of both the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Robert Linhardt Wins American Chemical Society’s Wolfrom Award

Professor Robert Linhardt has won the 2010 Melville L. Wolfrom Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Carbohy-drate Chemistry.

Linhardt, the Ann and John H. Broadbent Jr. ’59 Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic

Engineering at Rensselaer, has made significant contribu-tions in boosting the safety of the blood thinner heparin.

Richard W. Siegel Elected Fellow of Materials Research Society

Nanotechnology pioneer Professor Richard W. Siegel, the Robert W. Hunt Professor of Materials Science and En-gineering and director of the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center, has been named a fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS).

Siegel was cited for his seminal contributions and leadership in developing the field of nanomaterials and for outstanding profes-sional and public service.

Glass Science Pioneer Minoru Tomozawa Recog-nized for His Innovations

For more than 40 years, Professor Minoru Tomozawa has been pioneering new innovations in a field that most people take for granted: glass.

The American Ceramic Society (ACerS) honored Tomozawa with the George W. Morey Award for his devel-opment of a new technique for determining the fictive temperature of glasses.

Jian Sun

Jonathan Dordick Robert Linhardt Richard SiegelMatthew Oehlschlaeger Minoru Tomozawa

Jose Holguín-VerasDaniel WalczykJames Lu Georges Belfort


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Benjamin Clough (above) is dedicated to making the world a safer place for emergency first responders, police and mili-tary personnel, chemical plant employees, and many others. Clough has developed a novel method for extending the distance from which powerful terahertz technology can remotely detect hid-den explosives, chemicals, and other dangerous materials.

A doctoral student in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer, Clough has demonstrated a promising, cost-effective technique that employs sound waves to boost the effective distance of terahertz spectroscopy from a few feet to several meters. For this innovation, Clough was named the win-ner of the 2011 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize. Tristan Lawry and Sevan Goenezen were named this year’s finalists.

Clough is the fifth recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Stu-dent Prize. First given in 2007, the prize is awarded annually to a Rensselaer senior or graduate student who has created or improved a product or process, applied a technology in a new way, redesigned a system, or demonstrated remarkable inventiveness in other ways.

“The Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize winners have shown their potential to invent broadly and bring new innovations into the world,” said Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. “These inventive achievements, and the students’ creativity, persistence, and overall collaboration, must be celebrated at the collegiate level.”

Eavesdropping on Terahertz WavesClough found a new method for using sound waves to remotely “listen” to terahertz signals from a distance. Focusing two laser beams into air creates small bursts of plasma, which in turn create terahertz pulses. Another pair of lasers is aimed near the target of interest to create a second plasma for detecting the terahertz pulses after they have interacted with the material. This detection plasma produces acoustic waves as it ionizes the air. Clough discovered that by using a sensitive microphone to “listen” to the plasma, he could detect terahertz wave information embedded in these sound waves. This audio information can then be converted into digital data and instantly checked against a library of known terahertz fingerprints, to determine the chemical composition of the mystery material. Clough works in the Rensselaer Center for Terahertz Research, one of the most active groups worldwide researching how terahertz waves can solve security and defense challenges.

Using Sound Waves, T-Rays for Safer Detection of Bombs and Other Dangerous Materials


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L E M E L S O N - M I T R E N S S E L A E R S T U D E N T P R I Z E

Transmitting Data and Power Wirelessly Through Submarine Hulls. Steel walls are no match for Tristan Lawry. The doctoral student developed and demonstrated an innovative new system that uses ultrasound to simultaneously transmit large quantities of data and power wirelessly through thick metal walls, like the hulls of ships and submarines.

Presently, to install critical safety sensors on the exterior of ships and submarines, the U.S. Navy is forced to drill holes in the hull to run cables for data and power transmission. Each hole increases the risk of potentially serious issues, including leaks and structural failure.

Lawry’s invention solves this problem. Unlike conventional electro-magnetic wireless systems, which are ineffective at transmitting power and data through vessel hulls because of the “Faraday cage” shielding effects they present, his patent-pending system uses ultra-sound to easily propagate signals through thick metals and other solids. Piezoelectric transducers are used to convert electrical signals into acoustic signals and vice versa, allowing his system to form wireless electrical bridges across these barriers.

Sevan Goenezen holds the promise of a powerful new weapon in the fight against breast cancer. His complex computational research has led to a fast, inexpensive new method for using ultra-sound and advanced algorithms to differentiate between benign and malignant tumors with a high degree of accuracy.

Goenezen’s research offers the hope of dramatically reducing the need for invasive, uncomfortable, and stress-inducing biopsies, and perhaps even replacing mammograms. It uses a new technique to analyze images captured with a noninvasive, radiation-free ultra-sound device, locate tumors, and determine if the tumor is malig-nant. The only required equipment is a specific type of ultrasound machine – which generally costs around $10,000, far less than X-ray equipment – and a common personal computer. Thanks to these new algorithms, results can be computed in less than five minutes on a high-end PC.

The 2011 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize was awarded during a live multi-university broadcast. Above on screen, Dorothy Lemelson, President and Board Chair of the Lemelson Foundation recognizes the outstanding work submitted by all the student finalists and winners.

Sevan Goenezen

Tristan Lawry


Students Use Solar Power to Improve a Haitian School

As members of the campus group Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), the students are applying what they have learned in the classroom and laboratory to real-world problems with im-portant repercussions for developing nations. ESW projects have a strong sustainability focus and are carefully designed to serve as platforms that encourage and enable long-term future growth for the host communities.

“What we learn in classes is great, but traveling to another country and applying what I’ve learned is an excellent challenge,” said Alex Worcester, currently a junior electrical engineer-ing major. “I love being able to take the project from start to finish, from sitting around the table talking about it, to designing the system, going there and installing it, and seeing how it helps people. This is what reminds me why I want to be an engineer.”

Solar-Powered Laptops in HaitiWith fellow ESW members and Rensselaer classmates Andrew Chung, Casey McEvoy, Gloria Condon, and ESW faculty adviser Michael Jensen, Worcester visited Lascahobas, Haiti. After about a year of planning, designing, building, and testing, the group installed 2.4 kilowatts of solar panels on the roof of a local school—enough to power 10 HP tablet laptop computers donated by Rensselaer, plus additional laptops the school and other nearby schools received from the One Laptop Per Child program.

The power system includes 32 large backup batteries that can store enough electricity to power all of the laptops for three days without sunlight. Worcester and Chung said the group designed the system to be as efficient and effective as possible, easy to repair, and require only minimal maintenance. In fact, they removed the power supplies from the laptops to further improve efficiency, replacing them with DC/DC converters so the laptops could run on DC power straight from the solar panels.

The project was a collaboration between Rensselaer, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Troy, N.Y., and General Electric.

Hydroponics for Haiti

Students Andrew Chung, Alex Worcester, Gloria Condon, and Erin Lennox received funding from the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGIU) Outstanding Commit-ment Award grant for their “Hydroponics for Haiti” project—a low-cost, effective way to grow food. Using Aquaculture, a sub-branch of hydroponics, people in Lascahobas now have a low-cost approach to growing a wide variety of common veg-etables using locally composted nutrients. The low-maintenance system produces high-density vegetable growth with mini-mal water usage—all with local items such as coconut fibers. This, instead of tradition-al hydroponics, which are often time- and energy-intensive, and typically use chemi-cally formulated nutrients. Ultimately, the project will benefit the local area beyond providing food for schoolchildren who might not otherwise have consistent access to food. The system not only provides farmers with compost and an improved water capturing system, there are future plans for a training program whereby chil-dren can learn about and practice sustain-able agriculture.

Photo credit: Andrew Chung

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Student Makes Key Contributions to NASA’s First Human-Like Robot

Sophomore Nathaniel Quillin Helped Develop “Robonaut 2,” Which Launched Into Orbit Aboard Space Shuttle Discovery

Quillin, a sophomore dual majoring in computer science and computer and systems engineering, spent two semesters and two summers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) outside Houston. He is a member of the research team that developed the first human-like robot sent to space. The robot, called Robonaut 2, or R2, launched into orbit aboard Space Shuttle Discovery and became a permanent resident of the International Space Station (ISS).

At JSC, Quillin wrote the computer code used to help debug R2’s hardware. Additionally, Quillin helped write code for the graphical user interface that NASA researchers use to control R2. This control software creates 3-D visualizations that allows researchers to see how R2 will carry out their commands, prior to sending the actual commands for the robot to execute.

“It’s pretty cool, and pretty scary, to know code that I wrote is going to launch on Discovery and be used in space,” said Quillin, a native of League City, Texas. “It will be a few months before R2 is set up and operational, but I can’t wait to see some actual video footage sent down from the space station, and see R2 installed and moving around in space.”

School of Engineering Hosts Exploring Engineering Day

In celebration of National Engineers Week, the School of Engineering hosted its annual Exploring Engineering Day. Falling eggs, candy neurons, engineering against oil spills, gum drop bridges, fantastic water filters, and uncovering the secrets of light were some of the engineering activities that more than 450 elementary school students and their parents explored.

“Exploring Engineering Day activities are designed to spark young childrens’ interest in science and technology, and to help them learn what engineers do,” said Barbara Ruel, director of diversity and Women in Engineering programs in the School of Engineering and program director for Exploring Engineering Day. “Over the past 10 years, the program has increased in both size and diversity. The program includes children from Girls Inc., Boy and Girl Scouts organizations, local area private and public schools, and home-schooled children.”

Rensselaer student Nathaniel Quillin. (Photo credit: NASA) Photo credit: Travis Cano


The African Connection:Engineering NewPossibilities in Energyand Education

Engineering students Lauren Spinelli and Jeff Quackenbush

use a modified hair pin to fix a flow meter.

Engineering students meet with faculty at the Kwame Nkrumah

University of Science and Technology in Ghana, Africa.

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Photo credit: Ron Eglash


Biofuels and Corn Cobs

Members of the Spring 2011 Biomass Capstone Group, (above l to r) Tony Nguyen, Lauren Spinelli, Mike Cieszko, Patrick McCarthy, Brad Walker, Adam Bross, Noah Zenker, Chris Perra, Ron Eglash, Casey Goodwin, Ho-Zhen Chen, are working on a biofuels project, converting agricultural waste into energy, in connection with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana, Africa.

Since agricultural wastes generally create pollutants, the goal is to burn these wastes without oxygen, creating biochar that can be used as a soil additive, and according to the project director in Ghana, Dr. Lawrence Darkwah, it’s a win-win scenario. Dr. Darkwah proposed the use of corn cobs saying, “Presently corn cobs are just burned off, and they can create dangerous brush fires. We can turn that danger into useful energy.”

Currently Ghana has problems with reliable energy in many locations, and an abundance of agricultural waste. This project focuses on both problems by designing reliable systems, supporting the conversion of agricultural waste into energy with equipment constructed from local materials—making future repairs/replacements easier. Further, students con-sidered cultural, environmental, and socio‐economic impacts including profit, religion, and politics in their solution.

This multi-semester project includes student trips from both universities. Last semester a group of Rensselaer students traveled to Ghana and created, on-site, an apparatus to measure the energy potential of agricultural waste as biofuels. The design, which was conceived in Troy, was more challenging than originally thought. Materials for the appa-ratus that were thought to be universally available (such as copper pipe) were not found, and alternative parts needed to be scavenged at a local market. At one point work on a flow meter was halted by the lack of a needle-nosed pliers or tweezers. But the students fashioned a tool from a spare hair pin (shown left).

KNUST students will be returning to Rensselaer this summer to conduct more testing.

Engineering students Lauren Spinelli and Tony Nguyen adjust

the solar panel.

This multi-semester project is made possible in part through the gener-

ous support of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance

(NCIIA) and The Boeing Company.

The collaboration between

Rensselaer and Kwame Nkrumah

University of Science and Technology

supports the over-arching objective—

bringing students together from both

institutions on projects promoting a

greater awareness of the develop-

ment challenges facing Africa today,

and discovering ways to solve them.

Photo credit: Kris Qua

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Forget all about KITT, Doc Brown’s DeLorean, and Herbie the Love Bug.

There’s a new car in town: Photon.

Photon is the result of ample hard work and dedication from the Rensselaer Solar Racing Team. The Solar Racing Team took Photon to race against other all-electric student-built vehicles in the 2011 Shell Eco-Marathon. In Texas, they raced the car as an all-electric vehicle, undergoing different endurance and performance tests. A key metric in the competition is Photon’s km/kWh—kilometers per kilowatt hour, the all-electric vehicle equivalent of mpg or km/L for gas vehicles.

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