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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded an interdisciplinary team of five Stevens Institute

of Technology researchers a four-year, $1 million grant to develop “smart,” self-assembling nano-biomaterials that can control whether bacteria will adhere to synthetic surfaces, allowing for carefully targeted control over microscopic processes that occur within the human body.

“Technically speaking, this project centers on the design and self-assembly of nanohydrogels that will either be adhesive to cells or repul-sive to cells,” said Professor Matthew Libera, Principal Investigator on the project, which was funded under the umbrella of the NSF’s Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Teams (NIRT) initiative. “We are making families of different polymer nanoparticles and develop-ing new ways to coat these onto surfaces.”

“The real challenge is to create so-called dif-ferentially adhesive surfaces, ones that will be adhesive to certain types of cells in the body but which will simultaneously repel bacteria,” said Libera. “Practically speaking, successful development of these materials will enable us to create biomedical implants that are more resistant to infection and, hence, more able to do the job for which they were designed.”

Joining Libera as Co-Investigators in the NIRT project are Professor Woo Lee, who directs the New Jersey Center for MicroChem-ical Systems at Stevens; Professor Svetlana Sukhishvili of Stevens’ Department of Chem-istry & Chemical Biology; Professor Hongjun Wang of Stevens’ Department of Chemical, Biomedical & Materials Engineering; and Mercedes McKay of Stevens’ Center for In-novation in Engineering & Science Education, a highly respected K-12 outreach organization, which will bring ideas and activities related

to infection control and biomaterials into high-school chemistry and biology curricula as part of the NIRT project. “This is a great group of people with impressive abilities,” said Libera, “and they bring to the NIRT project a substantial portfolio of research related to developing infection-resistant biomaterials and new ways to study how infection occurs on synthetic surfaces.”

The Stevens NIRT team held a kick-off meet-ing and presentation about the research project in November. They were joined by Stevens’ Dean of Engineering & Science Michael Bru-no, as well as Stryker Orthopaedics representa-tives Joseph Zitelli and Marc Long. Stryker has partnered with Stevens to provide support through board participation and internship opportunities for students at its manufacturing and corporate facility in Mahwah, N.J.

NSF awards Stevens team $1 million for research on smart, bacteria-repellent nanohydrogels

Successful development of these materials will enable us to create biomedical implants that are more resistant to infection and, hence, more able to do the job for which they were designed.” — Professor Matthew Libera

Stevens held its inaugural Founder’s Day event on February 13, to celebrate the university’s founding on February 15, 1870. Hosted by Provost and University Vice President, George P. Korfiatis, and the Stevens Community, the event centered around a panel discussion on two focus questions:

• WhatmakesStevensa“hot”school?

• HowcaneveryoneintheStevenscommunitycontribute tomakingStevensabetter,or“hotter”school?

The panel of undergraduates, graduate students, alumni, faculty and administrationexploredwhatmakestheuniversitydesirabletopoten-tialstudents,whatmakesalumniproud,howtheschoolmaycreatefuture partnerships and what will create buzz about Stevens. It also examined the school’s current direction in the context of its history and development.

Stevens celebrates Founder’s Day

Contents 3 TECHNOGENESIS TODAY

4 LATEST NEWS

6 FEATURE STORY Stevens Institute of Technology to lead national research effort in Port Security

8 STEVENS PEOPLE

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T he first buoy of the New York Harbor Observing and Prediction System (NYHOPS) was deployed in December.

The buoy is located at an offshore location, on the west bank of the Hudson River in a water depth of approximately 25 feet off of Castle Point.

“The present observation system, although one of the most extensive and robust of its kind in the world, does not provide surface current mea-surements necessary to rigorously validate the surface current nowcast/forecasts provided by the forecast model that is operational in the region. In order to address this deficiency, the existing NYHOPS observation system is being expanded by funds provided by DARPA and ONR by adding three buoy-based comprehensive monitoring systems,” said Alan Blumberg, George Meade Bond Professor and Director of the Center for Maritime Systems.

NYHOPS is a real-time, web-based estuarine and coastal ocean observing and modeling system for the waters of the New York Harbor region. It is designed to monitor and forecast the current state of the estuarine environment. Its website imports and serves all available real-time data and produces 48-hour forecasts of water levels, waves, tempera-tures, salinities and currents for the Hudson River, the East River, New York Harbor, Raritan Bay, Long Island Sound and the offshore waters of the

New York Bight. NYHOPS observations consist of shore-based and mobile platforms at strategic locations inside the harbor and at three sites along the coast of New Jersey, each with in-situ ocean and air-sea interaction measurements.

The near-shore sensors are sampled every 15 minutes and data are transmitted on a half hourly basis via a 467.8 MHz and 900 MHz series radio link. The mobile,

vessel-mounted, sensors sample continuously and transmit data every 30 seconds via a cellular connection. Once the data have passed

quality assurance tests they are entered in the Stevens Oceanographic and Meteorological Data Repository (OMDR). The observation network provides very large spatial coverage of the region of interest at sufficiently high resolution to provide a real-time “mosaic” of the oceanographic conditions.

“It is moored near the gazebo, just north of the river lot. The buoy is configured to have a full complement of ocean and weather sensors and will form the basis of our vision of overwater instruments deployed throughout the harbor. This type of buoy and the data will take our technologies into 2008 with much strength. We have worked for two years to get this buoy in place. Credit goes to Michael Bruno for help with grant writing and to the outstanding field group here at the Center for Maritime Systems,” said Blumberg.

Another buoy will be deployed in early spring. It will be mounted on a US Coast Guard Aid-to-Navigation (ATON) buoy located in the main shipping channel just south of the island of Manhattan. The third buoy to be deployed in the summer of 2008 will be located in the Lower Harbor, just south of the Narrows.

Stevens’ Castle Point buoy deployed

Green Engineering minor approvedA new Green Engineering minor has been approved in Stevens’ Charles V. Schaefer Jr. School of Engineering & Science, and is open to engineering undergraduates from all majors. The new minor’s first core course, EN 301 Sustainable Engineering, was offered in the spring 2008 semester. This course can alsobetakenforgeneralelectivecreditbystudents not planning to complete the Green Engineering minor.

Issues of environmental sustainability are of increasing concern for both developed and developing nations of the world. In the design, implementation and use of products, processes and systems that impact all facets of our lives, fundamental decisions are made by engineers. The application of the principles by which engineers can have a positive impact onsustainabilityisknownassustainableengineering, or more colloquially as green engineering.Whileelementsofsustainableengineering are permeating the broad-based Stevens undergraduate engineering pro-grams, the new minor helps students explore sustainable approaches to engineering more in-depth.

The Green Engineering minor consists of six courses and provides a two-course technical core–sustainable engineering and sustainable energy. These courses are followed by two technical electives which can also provide a sustainable engineering focus area. Two additional courses are intended to allow students to explore ethical, social, economic and political contextual issues associated with sustainability.

A hand-held biomedical device by SPOC (Stevens Proof of Concept), developed jointly by students at Stevens and pain-

management expert Dr. Norman Marcus, has just received FDA 510K clearance for manufac-ture and marketing as a clinical device.

The SPOC device itself, which began life as a Stevens undergraduate Senior Design Team project in 2004, has also spawned a start-up company, SPOC, Inc., which is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. Several young alumni from Stevens are employed by the company, whose tagline reads, “A Revolution in Pain Management.”

“This is a huge step forward for SPOC’s device, SPOC the Technogenesis® Company and Stevens Institute of Technology as a wellspring of great ideas, especially in the area of products that emerge from our Biomedical Engineering program,” said Dr. Helena S. Wisniewski, Stevens’ VP for University Research & Enterprise Development, who is the presiding chair of the SPOC board. “This is a testament to the entrepreneurial education environment at Stevens that we call Technogenesis, where ideas are taken the full cycle, from laboratory innovation to marketplace realization, all the while promoting undergraduate student collaboration in research and development.”

SPOC, Inc. was formed in July 2005 at Stevens by its University Research & Enterprise Develop-ment office along with Dr. Marcus, and three Stevens undergraduate students in the Biomedical Engineering program. SPOC’s mission is to develop a proprietary point-of-care medical diagnostic system, consisting of a medical device and methodology that pinpoint the specific myofascial (muscle) trigger points causing pain. SPOC’s diagnostic system will benefit patients by helping to eliminate treatments that prove to be ineffective, such as surgical procedures, and by allowing physicians to locate more effectively and to treat muscles that generate pain.

Since approximately 100 million people in the United States suffer from chronic pain and approximately 80 percent of Americans suffer

from some form of pain in their lifetime, the potential market for such a system is enormous.

“Connecticut Innovations is proud to be the lead investor in SPOC. This important technol-ogy was spun out of the Stevens Institute of Technology by a team of young undergradu-ate students. Connecticut Innovations took a risk when it provided start-up financing to the team,” said Peter Longo, president and executive director of Connecticut Innovations, Inc. “This technological milestone is significant in that it contributes greatly to the company’s ability to raise additional capital and ensure continued growth.”

“This is an important milestone,” Dr. Vikki Hazelwood, chief executive officer of SPOC, commented. “We are pleased that SPOC has been given a 501(k) clearance by the FDA, and we look forward to the next goals in our plan. Dr. Marcus, Dr. Wisniewski, Stevens and the

alum team of Jeckin Shah, founding student, and Rebecca Apruzzese –

a recent Stevens graduate in Biomedical Engineering who joined the SPOC team in 2007 – all deserve the highest praise for their

continuing efforts to bring such a needed disruptive-technology product to the

American market.”

Dr. Hazelwood also served as faculty advisor to the original

undergraduate design team of Jeckin Shah, Ryan Stellar and

Daniel Silva.

SPOC has received consistent national media attention during its development and

testing phases, most recently on the March 20, 2008, edition of NBC’s “Today,” where Dr. Marcus displayed and discussed the potential of the device.

“What we have today is further confirmation of the success of Stevens’ educational environment of Technogenesis, where creativity and inventive-ness are emphasized in finding solutions to critical problems of industrial and national significance,” said Stevens’ Provost & University Vice President George P. Korfiatis. “We are especially proud today of our young Biomedical Engineering program, whose students have given the world this powerful biomedical tool that will ultimately make its mark in the clinical marketplace.”

SPOC pain-locator device, featured on “Today,” receives FDA 510(k)

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LATEST NEWS LATEST NEWS

The buoy is configured to have a full complement of ocean and weather sensors and will form the basis of our vision of overwater instruments deployed throughout the harbor.”

— Alan Blumberg

“

ThenewStevensbuoy,locatedonthewestbank of the Hudson River in a water depth of approximately 25 feet off of Castle Point.

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The five new Centers of Excellence, located across the country, will study border security and immigration; explosives detection, miti-gation, and response; maritime, island and port security; natural disasters, coastal infra-structure and emergency management; and transportation security.

Stevens and The Universi-ty of Hawaii in Honolulu , Hawaii, will co-lead a new Center of Excellence for Maritime, Island and Port Security, responsible for conducting research and developing new ways to strengthen maritime domain awareness and safeguard populations and properties unique to US islands, and remote and extreme environments. Stevens will lead research and education in port security and the University of Hawaii will lead research and education for maritime and island security.

“Congratulations to the Dean of Engineering & Science Michael S. Bruno and the entire team at Stevens who have

achieved this recognition, and who will make significant contributions to research that will benefit the nation’s maritime and port security infrastructure,” said Stevens’ Provost & University Vice President, George P. Korfiatis. “This recognition is the

result of a highly selective national competition among research universities. Stevens’ long history of maritime engineering and pre-eminence in the realm of port and harbor security will guarantee for years to come a steady flow of

technology advances of national significance as part of the DHS program.”

“Investments in long-term, basic research are vital for the future of homeland secu-rity,” said Jay M. Cohen, Under Secretary for Science and Technology. “These colleges and universities are leaders in their fields of study. They will provide scientific expertise, high-quality resources, and independent thought – all valuable to securing America.”

The winning proposal led by Stevens in-volves other universities including Rutgers University, the University of Miami, MIT, the University of Alaska, and the University of Puerto Rico.

“We look forward to initiating a range of leading-edge research projects to address the complex security issues facing our nation’s ports and Marine Transportation System (MTS),” said Dr. Bruno. “Together with our partners, we will break new ground in the integrated use of multi-scale sensors and computer simulation and forecasting models to equip our port security and first-responder communities with the technologies and processes needed to ensure the safe and efficient operation of the MTS, which is responsible for the vast majority of the nation’s international commerce. True to the Stevens tradition, we will weave these research activities into our education and professional training programs, to ensure that our students are equipped to contribute immediately to the solutions to these very complex problems.”

US Department of Homeland Security selects Stevens Institute of Technology to lead national research effort in Port Security

T he US Department of Homeland Security has announced the selection of Stevens Institute of Technology as one of 11 universities to serve as important partners

for conducting multi-disciplinary research and creating innovative learning environments for critical homeland security missions. These universities will partner to lead one of five new Centers of Excellence and each will receive a multi-year grant of up to $2-million per year, over a period of four to six years.

This recognition is the result of a highly selective national competition among research universities.

FEATURE STORY FEATURE STORY

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McClellan elected full-member of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des SciencesJames E. McClellan III, Professor of History of Science and Dean of the College of Arts & Letters, has been elected a full-member (membre effectif ) of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences. McClellan had been a corresponding member of the Académie Internationale since June of 2002.

The Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences is honorary organization that recognizes distinguished achievement in the scholarly field of the history of science. It was founded in Oslo and Paris in 1928. It is legally headquartered at the Sorbonne in Paris with a secretariat at the Centre d’Histoire des Sciences et Techniques at the University of Liège in Belgium.

The Académie is composed of approximately 350 members and correspondents worldwide. The Académie is an organ of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science. It holds quadrennial general meetings and biennially awards a prize for younger scholars and the Alexandre Koyré medal for lifetime achievement in the history of science. The Académie publishes the distinguished review, the Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences, in six official languages, and a series of scholarlyworks,DeDiversisArtibus.

A paper co-authored by David Naumann, Associate Professor of Computer Science, was recently named the “Best Student Paper” at the ACM International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA). The paper, “Modular Verification of Higher-Order Methods with Mandatory Calls Specified by Model Programs,” was co-authored by Professor Gary Leavens of Florida Central University, and graduate student Steve Shaner of Iowa State University. The paper introduces a precise and modular technique for specifying and verifying so-called callbacks, which are a critical feature of most object-oriented software frameworks such as web and networking middleware for Java and C#.

The 22nd annual OOPSLA Conference was held from October 20-25, 2007 in Montreal, Canada. It is billed as the premier conference for innovative and thought-provoking ideas, where industry experts and their academic peers gather to improve programming languages and refine the practice of software development. This year’s keynote speakers included two Turing Award winners, Frederick Brooks and John McCarthy. Professor Leavens is an academic grandchild of McCarthy.

A total of 33 research papers were accepted out of 156 submissions. Besides the Best Student Paper there was also a 10-year anniversary award for most influential paper from 1997.

Naumann wins best paper award at ACM International Conference

Professor David Vaccari, the Director of Stevens’ Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering,

has been appointed Chair of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AAEE) Education Committee for a three-year term.

The committee develops educational policy for the Academy and recommends representatives to the commissions of the Accreditation Board for Engineering & Technology (ABET). The AAEE is also the lead society for environmental education program accreditation, in partnership with ABET, Inc.

“Congratulations to Dr. Vaccari,” said Michael Bruno, Dean of the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science. “The AAEE Education Committee will certainly profit from David’s vast and distinguished expertise as an engineer, researcher and educator, and Stevens and the Schaefer School are proud to count him among our most distinguished faculty members.”

Vaccari’s areas of research interest and expertise in Environmental Engineering include Biologi-

cal Processes, Physicochemical Processes, and System Modeling. He has taught numerous courses at both the undergraduate and gradu-ate levels. He is also the author or co-author of many papers for refereed journals, and co-authored a book with Jim Alleman of Iowa State University and Peter Strom of Rutgers University, titled, “Environmental Biology for Engineers and Scientists.”

A licensed Professional Engineer in the State of New Jersey, Vaccari also holds four degrees from Rutgers University, including a doctorate

in Environmental Science (1984), a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering (1983), a Master of Science degree in Environmental Science (1979), and a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science (1974).

Dimitri Donskoy elected Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America Dimitri Donskoy, Associate Professor of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering, and Associate Director of the Davidson Laboratory, was elected a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America at the November 2007 meeting in New Orleans. Donskoy received the honor for his contributions to physical, structural and underwater acoustics.

Donskoy has accumulated a great deal of theoretical and experimental experiences in nonlinear and structural acoustics, sensing and diagnostics, and instrumentation develop-ment. Since his arrival to the United States in 1990, he has been a principal investigator for numerous multi-disciplinary projects, such as mine detection, non-destructive testing and characterization of materials and structures, medical diagnostics, noise and vibration miti-gation, sensor design, and others. Donskoy’s research programs have been supported by US government agencies (US Army and Navy, NOAA and NASA) as well as various industrial enterprises. He has more than 50 publications in the field and holds 11 US and international patents.

Donskoy holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Gorky State University in Russia, and a doctorate from the Institute of Applied Physics USSR Academy of Sciences in Russia.

The Acoustical Society of America (ASA), organized in 1929, has about 7,000 members who work in acoustics throughout the US and abroad. This diversity, along with the opportu-nities provided for the exchange of knowledge and points of view, has become one of the

Society’s unique and strongest assets. From the beginning, the Acoustical Society has sought to serve the widespread interests of its members and the acoustics community in all branches of acoustics, both theoretical and applied.

Vaccari appointed Chair of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers Education Committee

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www.StevensNewsService.com/views8 9

Professor James E. McClellan III

Associate Professor David Naumann

AssociateProfessorDimitriDonskoy

StevensViews SPRING 2008

Sukhishvili elected Fellow of the American Physical SocietySvetlana Sukhishvili, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Co-Director of the Nanotechnology Graduate Program, has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

Sukhishvili was elected a Fellow for her fundamental contributions to the science of polymer monolayers and multilayers adsorbed at water/solid interface, and for understanding the correlations of polymeric self-assembly in solutions and at surfaces.

Sukhishvili holds a bachelor’s degree in Polymer Science and a doctor-ate in Polymer Chemistry from Moscow State University in Russia.

The APS was founded in 1899 and has more than 40,000 members. The APS Fellowship Program was created to recognize members who have made advances in knowledge through original research and publication, made significant innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology or made significant contributions to the teaching of physics or service and participation in the activities of the Society. Each year, less than one percent of the Society membership is recognized by their peers for election to the status of Fellow.

Stefan Strauf, Assistant Professor in the Depart-ment of Physics & En-gineering Physics, along with colleagues from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Le-iden University (Nether-lands), has authored the article, “High-frequency

single-photon source with polarization con-trol,” the cover article of the December 2007 issue of Nature Photonics.

The article reports on important advances in high-performance single-photon sources that bring such possibilities closer to reality. In particular, single photons can be used to imple-ment absolutely secure optical communication, also known as Quantum Cryptography. With this new source, recording a single-photon signature that took eight hours five years back can now be achieved on a millisecond time scale. This remarkable progress was achieved by developing a novel type of microcavity

structure which strongly enhances the light extraction from the optically active material. Moreover, with the help of embedded electrical gates, the researchers demonstrated suppres-sion of unwanted dead-times in the emission process itself resulting in a net single photon generation rate of 100 MHz into an optical fiber.

As described in the News & Views section of the issue, “More futuristic applications of single photon states include photonic networks designed to achieve scalable quantum computation, which one day will hopefully solve problems exponentially faster than classi-cal computers.”

Strauf also was interviewed by the publication regarding his work on the project.“ The traditional approach to generating single photons is to use weak laser pulses. In order to reach the single-photon level, you have

to attenuate the light very strongly, limiting the efficiency of the device. Also, the photons emitted are governed by statistics. What we need is a high-efficiency source where we can generate photons one by one. Luckily, nature provides a solution in the form of the two-level system, just like the one we use: self-assembled quantum dots,” said Strauf.

Strauf ’s coauthors on the paper are Nick G. Stoltz (Materials Department, University of

California, Santa Barbara); Matthew T. Rakher (Depart-ment of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara); Larry A. Coldren (Materi-als Department and the ECE department, University of Cali-fornia, Santa Barbara); Pierre M. Petroff (Materials Depart-ment and the ECE department, University of California, Santa Barbara); and Dirk Bouw-meester (Department of Phys-ics, University of California,

Santa Barbara and Huygens Laboratory, Leiden University, the Netherlands).

www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v1/n12/abs/nphoton.2007.227.html

Professor Strauf’s research is Nature Photonics’ cover article

Luftman’s research published in MIS Quarterly Executive

Professor Jerry Luftman has published the article, “An Update on Business-IT Align-ment: ‘A Line’ Has Been Drawn,” in MIS

Quarterly Executive’s September 2007 issue. Luftman serves as a Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for the Master of Science in Information Systems in Stevens’ Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management.

Luftman’s article presents positive correla-tions between the maturity of the information technology (IT)-business alignment and IT’s organizational structure, the CIO’s reporting structure and firm performance. With the assistance of Rajkumar Kempaiah, a Ste-vens graduate student, Luftman focused his research on understanding the persistent prob-lem of attaining alignment between IT and business and found there is no single cause for this problem. He proposes that the alignment is best understood by measuring six different components—communications, value, gover-nance, partnership, scope and architecture and

skills—and then placing these components on a five-level maturity model, where Level 5 is the highest maturity. After measuring these six components for global organizations in the United States, Latin America, Europe and India, it was found that most organizations today are at Level 3 on the five-level maturity model. It was also found that federated IT organizational structures are associated with higher alignment maturity than centralized or decentralized structures, and that companies with CIOs reporting directly to the CEO, president or chairman have significantly higher alignment maturity than those where the CIO reports to a business unit executive, the COO, or the CFO. Furthermore, higher alignment maturity correlates with higher firm performance.

For more information on the IT-business alignment, please refer to Luftman’s article in MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 6 No. 3 / Sep 2007, 165.

T he Edwin A. Stevens Society honored the Dean of Stevens’ School of Systems and Enterprises, Dr. Dinesh Verma,

with the President’s Leadership Award at its annual Gala, held at the Park Avenue Club in Florham Park, N.J., in November. Attendance at the black-tie event was by invitation only.

The President’s Leadership Award is presented to a distinguished individual who has rendered exceptional service to Stevens and for his or her significant achievements and dedication to his or her field. The recipient will have dem-onstrated eminent commitment to advancing the students at the Institute through his/her engineering or scientific expertise and achieve-ments. The award is given to an individual who demonstrates, by example, a commitment to advancing Stevens’ global standing in the educational and research community and has personally reached beyond campus to build alliances that raise the public’s appreciation for the resources needed to enhance the mission at Stevens.

In 2007, Stevens launched the new School of Systems and Enterprises to focus on interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary academics and research, rooted in systems think-ing. The founding of the school was the result of the tremendous success of the Department of Systems Engineering & Engineering Manage-ment, founded in 2000, which grew rapidly to be the largest program of its kind in America. Verma served as Founding Director of the System Design & Operational Effectiveness program within the depart-ment, which has achieved a constituency of partners throughout the world in academia, industry and government, helping to advance the Stevens brand as the outstanding provider of high-level training in enterprise systems for

aerospace, defense and other major areas of endeavor. Verma also served as an Associate Dean of the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering from 2002-2007.

Currently, Verma also serves as the Scientific Advisory to the Director of the Embedded Systems Institute in Eindhoven, Holland.

Dinesh Verma honored with President’s Leadership Award at EAS Society Gala

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SvetlanaSukhishvili,AssociateProfessor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Professor Jerry Luftman

Stefan Strauf

Stevens President Hal Raveché presents Dr. Dinesh Verma with the President’s Leadership Award at the Park Avenue Club in November.

StevensViews SPRING 2008

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Undergraduate Katherine Freed won first place at the International ISPE Under-graduate Poster Contest in Las Vegas in

November 2007. Freed was the first competitor from New Jersey to win this ISPE award. Her winning poster, “Impedance Mammography,” was based on a project she created with her Senior Design team at Stevens.

Freed’s winning poster illustrated an imaging system that was designed to create three-dimensional images of biological tissue according to electrical impedance properties. The system takes advantage of the differences in electrical conductivity between healthy and abnormal cells. In addition, the design is aimed at improving mammographic screening in women under the age of forty, who are not regularly screened.

In April 2007, the New Jersey Regional ISPE Poster Contest was hosted by the Stevens ISPE Student Chapter, and Freed was one of two first place winners at the contest. Her team members included Megan Caldeira, Rachel Ostroff, and Esther Rodriguez. The team’s faculty advisors were Dr. Vikki Hazelwood, Industry Professor in the Chemical, Biomedical and Materials Engineering Department, and Dr. Rainer Martini, Assistant Professor of Physics and Engineering Physics.

The New Jersey Regional contest was hosted by Dr. Richard S. Berkof, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens, Director

of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Engineering Program, and Faculty Advisor for the Stevens Student Chapter of ISPE. The contest was attended by students and faculty from New Jersey Institute of Technology (Dr. Piero Armenante, Faculty Advisor), Rutgers University (Dr. Henrik Pedersen, Faculty Advisor) and Stevens, as well as pharmaceutical industry executives, some of whom served as judges for the posters and presentations. The ISPE New Jersey Chapter’s Tom Malone, Joe Manfredi, Leonid Shnayder, and Lorraine Gallo helped make the April event a success.

Twenty posters were submitted at that com-petition, of which six were chosen to go on to compete in Las Vegas in November. The other finalists included the “Automatic Pill Bottle Opener” by Jorge DaSilva (Stevens), “Effect of Dry Particle Coating on Packing Density” by Lauren Beach (NJIT), “Physics Based Modeling of Tablet Dissolution” by Dan Braido (Rutgers), “Experimental and Computational Determina-tion of the Hydrodynamics in a Stirred Tank Reactor Provided with a Retreat Blade Impeller” by Giuseppe DiBenedetto (NJIT), and “Examin-ing Feeding Systems for Continuous Mixing” by Warren Schmidt (Rutgers).

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Katherine Freed wins first place at the International ISPE Undergraduate Poster Contest

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Katherine Freed next to her winning poster.

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