Brown Engineering News

Brown School of Engineering to Host a One-Day Planetary MicroRover Workshop

2012-01-09T11:17:00.000-05:00

On February 16, 2012, MicroRover will be hosted by the Brown University School of Engineering (Barus and Holley Room 190). MicroRover continues our Space Horizons series of intense one-day workshops, this year bringing planetary researchers together with engineering innovators to discuss the design and application of microvehicles to planetary science missions.

The majority of rovers sent to other planets have offered significant mission utility by deploying multiple-instrument packages. On the other hand, rovers are becoming increasingly large and complex with longer development times and higher engineering costs. This leads directly to greater risk-aversion that easily spirals into even higher costs and increasing risk-aversion. With so much riding on each mission, 'safe' landing sites must be selected with exceeding care and ongoing operations undertaken with ever-greater caution at every juncture -- thereby limiting exploration opportunities.

Smaller rovers may offer less capability individually, yet may also provide this utility with far less cost and risk exposure, particularly if large numbers are deployed. In particular, advantages may include:

Unit costs that are lower due to simpler designs and the economies of higher production volumes.
More than one point of interest can be studied simultaneously.
Instruments may be distributed among specialized vehicles that work together.
Spare rovers can be kept in reserve during a mission, allowing consideration of higher risk operations.
A larger rover might act as a "mother ship" to transport families of microrovers to new sites of interest.

Through formal presentations, presenter Q & A, expert panels and informal venues, our workshop will stimulate a wide variety of discussions on topics relevant to the subject of microrover development and mission applications.

Participation is limited to 50. There is no formal registration process or fee for students and faculty of Brown University, and we ask only that you contact us ahead of time to ensure that there will be sufficient space. Planetary researchers and robotics engineers from other institutions are invited to register online. Student sponsorship for overnight accommodation is available to student from other universities with sponsorship from the NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Consortia.

For additional information, please contact: Kenneth_Ramsley@brown.edu or visit the workshop website at:
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Engineering/Workshops/Microrover

Christian Franck wins Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grant from ASME Applied Mechanics Division

2012-01-03T10:12:00.000-05:00

Christian Franck, an assistant professor in the School ofEngineering at Brown University, has received a Haythornthwaite ResearchInitiation Grant, a new divisional award presented by the Applied MechanicsDivision (AMD) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

This new grant targets university faculty that are at thebeginning of their academic careers engaged in research in theoretical andapplied mechanics. Professor Franck was one of three recipients of the 2011awards, along with Dennis Kochmann of CalTech and Xuanhe Zhao of Duke.

“This is a well deserved award for Professor Franck,” said DeanLarry Larson, “and this grant reflects the potential impact of his researchprogram. The mechanics program has been an area of historic strength at Brownand it is one that continues to remain vibrant with bright, young professorssuch as Professor Franck.”

Professor Franck specializes in biomechanics and newexperimental mechanics techniques at the micro and nanoscale. He received hisB.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Virginia in 2003, and hisM.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2004 and 2008.His doctoral research was on the development of a quantitativethree-dimensional experimental technique for applications in soft biomaterialsand cellular traction investigations. Dr. Franck held a post-doctoral positionat Harvard investigating brain and neural trauma before beginning hisappointment at Brown in 2009.

The Robert M. and Mary Haythornthwaite Foundation has been agenerous supporter of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division (AMD). TheFoundation supports scientific research, primarily research in the field oftheoretical and applied mechanics. Robert Haythornthwaite was founder and firstPresident of the American Academy of Mechanics.

Robert Haythornthwaite, who grew up in England, also had aBrown connection. In 1950, he was award a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship andspent a year studying at Brown. After obtaining his Ph.D. from LondonUniversity in 1952, he returned to Brown in 1953 to join the Division ofEngineering at Brown before moving on to positions at Michigan, Penn State, andTemple.

23 Students Inducted in Tau Beta Pi at Brown

2011-12-20T15:48:00.000-05:00

Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society, inducted 23 newmembers into the Rhode Island Alpha chapter at Brown University on Saturday,December 3. Fourteen juniors were inducted along with nine seniors.

Among the 14 juniors elected were: Ross J. Browne ’13, Derek Croote ’13, Eric C. Greenstein ’13, KaanT. Gunay ’13, Mia M. Helfrich ’13, Steven I. Klurfeld ’13, Max Y. Liberman ’13,Visarute Pinrod ’13, Patipan Prasertson ’13, Rebecca R. Reitz ’13, Sahar Shahamatdar’13, Jeremy R. Wagner ’13, Kasey A. Wagner ’13, and Adam D. Wyron ’13.

The eight seniors elected included: Anastassia Astafieva ’12, Natalie E. Bodington-Rosen’12, Karine Ip Kiun Chong ’12, Kelsey J. MacMillan ’12, Henry H. Mattingly ’12,Emir V. Okan ’12, Alejandro Rivera Rivera ’12, Pablo L. Sanchez Santaeufemia ’12,and Reid T. Westwood ’12.

Tau Beta Pi, founded in 1885, is the second oldest Greek-letter honor societyin America; the oldest is Phi Beta Kappa. While Phi Beta Kappa is restricted tostudents in the liberal arts, Tau Beta Pi is designed to “offer appropriaterecognition for superior scholarship and exemplary character to students inengineering.”

In order to be inducted into the prestigious honor society,juniors must rank in the top eighth of their class and seniors must rank in thetop fifth of their class. Graduate students who have completed at least 50% oftheir degree requirements and who rank in the top fifth of their class are alsoeligible to become candidates for membership.

The Rhode Island Alpha chapter is not only an honor society to pay tribute tooutstanding students, it also provides a vehicle for these students to assume arole of leadership at Brown and to be of distinctive service. Tau Beta Pimembers are active in engineering student publications, the engineeringrecruiting project, and in a variety of other organizations.

Professor Huajian Gao to Receive Rodney Hill Prize from IUTAM

2011-12-19T16:01:00.000-05:00

Huajian Gao, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Engineering at Brown University, willreceive the 2012 Rodney Hill Prize from the International Union of Theoretical andApplied Mechanics (IUTAM). The prize, which consists of a plaque and a checkfor $25,000, is awarded in recognition of outstanding research in the field ofsolid mechanics and is awarded only once every four years in conjunction withthe International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM). Theinitial prize was awarded at ICTAM 2008 in Adelaide, Australia. Professor Gaowill receive his award during ICTAM 2012 which will be held in Beijing, China, fromAugust 19-24, 2012.

Professor Gao receives the prize for his deep and broad scientific achievements in basicsolid mechanics and its bridge to other fields, which has re-defined the modernfrontiers of mechanics research. His work includes fundamental theory as wellas applications to materials science, nanotechnology, and bioengineering. Hishighly cited publications appear not only in the major solid mechanics journalsbut also in many high-profile, cross-disciplinary journals.

"I want to warmly congratulate Professor Gao on this prestigious and well deserved award," said Dean Larry Larson. "His groundbreaking work shows how the field of solid mechanics - an area of historic national leadership at Brown - can have an impact on fields as diverse as health care, the environment and information technology."

Professor Gao received his B.S. degree from Xian Jiaotong University of China in 1982, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering science from Harvard University in 1984 and 1988, respectively. He served on the faculty of Stanford University between 1988 and 2002, where he was promoted toassociate professor with tenure in 1994 and to full professor in 2000. He wasappointed as Director and Professor at the Max Planck Institute for MetalsResearch in Stuttgart, Germany between 2001 and 2006. He joined BrownUniversity in 2006. Professor Gao has a background in applied mechanics andengineering science. He has more than 25 years of research experience and morethan 300 publications to his credit.

Professor Gao’s research group is generally interested in understanding the basic principles that control mechanical properties and behaviors of both engineering and biological systems. His currentresearch includes studies of how metallic and semiconductor materials behave inthin film and nanocrystalline forms, and how biological materials such asbones, geckos, and cells achieve their mechanical robustness through structuralhierarchy.

About IUTAM and its Congress
The International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) is an internationalnon-governmental scientific organization belonging to the International Councilof Scientific Unions (ICSU), which was formed in 1946 and founded in 1948, withthe objectives to form a link between persons and organizations engaged inscientific work in mechanics and related fields, and to promote the developmentof mechanics, both theoretical and applied, as a scientific discipline.

IUTAM achieves this aim mainly by organizing international meetings to deal with scientificproblems. An International Congress on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics(ICTAM), including mini-symposia and pre-nominated sessions, is held every fouryears. It is organized by the Congress Committee, established by the IUTAMGeneral Assembly.

Novel device removes heavy metals from water

2011-12-19T09:43:00.000-05:00

Engineers at Brown University have developed a system that cleanly and efficiently removes trace heavy metals from water. In experiments, the researchers showed the system reduced cadmium, copper, and nickel concentrations, returning contaminated water to near or below federally acceptable standards. The technique is scalable and has viable commercial applications, especially in the environmental remediation and metal recovery fields. Results appear in the Chemical Engineering Journal.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — An unfortunate consequence of many industrial and manufacturing practices, from textile factories to metalworking operations, is the release of heavy metals in waterways. Those metals can remain for decades, even centuries, in low but still dangerous concentrations.

Ridding water of trace metals “is really hard to do,” said Joseph Calo, professor emeritus of engineering who maintains an active laboratory at Brown. He noted the cost, inefficiency, and time needed for such efforts. “It’s like trying to put the genie back in the bottle.”

That may be changing. Calo and other engineers at Brown describe a novel method that collates trace heavy metals in water by increasing their concentration so that a proven metal-removal technique can take over. In a series of experiments, the engineers report the method, called the cyclic electrowinning/precipitation (CEP) system, removes up to 99 percent of copper, cadmium, and nickel, returning the contaminated water to federally accepted standards of cleanliness. The automated CEP system is scalable as well, Calo said, so it has viable commercial potential, especially in the environmental remediation and metal recovery fields. The system’s mechanics and results are described in a paper published in the Chemical Engineering Journal.

A proven technique for removing heavy metals from water is through the reduction of heavy metal ions from an electrolyte. While the technique has various names, such as electrowinning, electrolytic removal/recovery or electroextraction, it all works the same way, by using an electrical current to transform positively charged metal ions (cations) into a stable, solid state where they can be easily separated from the water and removed. The main drawback to this technique is that there must be a high-enough concentration of metal cations in the water for it to be effective; if the cation concentration is too low — roughly less than 100 parts per million — the current efficiency becomes too low and the current acts on more than the heavy metal ions.

Another way to remove metals is through simple chemistry. The technique involves using hydroxides and sulfides to precipitate the metal ions from the water, so they form solids. The solids, however, constitute a toxic sludge, and there is no good way to deal with it. Landfills generally won’t take it, and letting it sit in settling ponds is toxic and environmentally unsound. “Nobody wants it, because it’s a huge liability,” Calo said.

Novel device removes heavy metals from water from Brown PAUR on Vimeo.

The dilemma, then, is how to remove the metals efficiently without creating an unhealthy byproduct. Calo and his co-authors, postdoctoral researcher Pengpeng Grimshaw and George Hradil, who earned his doctorate at Brown and is now an adjunct professor, combined the two techniques to form a closed-loop system. “We said, ‘Let’s use the attractive features of both methods by combining them in a cyclic process,’” Calo said.

It took a few years to build and develop the system. In the paper, the authors describe how it works. The CEP system involves two main units, one to concentrate the cations and another to turn them into stable, solid-state metals and remove them. In the first stage, the metal-laden water is fed into a tank in which an acid (sulfuric acid) or base (sodium hydroxide) is added to change the water’s pH, effectively separating the water molecules from the metal precipitate, which settles at the bottom. The “clear” water is siphoned off, and more contaminated water is brought in. The pH swing is applied again, first redissolving the precipitate and then reprecipitating all the metal, increasing the metal concentration each time. This process is repeated until the concentration of the metal cations in the solution has reached a point at which electrowinning can be efficiently employed.

When that point is reached, the solution is sent to a second device, called a spouted particulate electrode (SPE). This is where the electrowinning takes place, and the metal cations are chemically changed to stable metal solids so they can be easily removed. The engineers used an SPE developed by Hradil, a senior research engineer at Technic Inc., located in Cranston, R.I. The cleaner water is returned to the precipitation tank, where metal ions can be precipitated once again. Further cleaned, the supernatant water is sent to another reservoir, where additional processes may be employed to further lower the metal ion concentration levels. These processes can be repeated in an automated, cyclic fashion as many times as necessary to achieve the desired performance, such as to federal drinking water standards.

In experiments, the engineers tested the CEP system with cadmium, copper, and nickel, individually and with water containing all three metals. The results showed cadmium, copper, and nickel were lowered to 1.50, 0.23 and 0.37 parts per million (ppm), respectively — near or below maximum contaminant levels established by the Environmental Protection Agency. The sludge is continuously formed and redissolved within the system so that none is left as an environmental contaminant.

“This approach produces very large volume reductions from the original contaminated water by electrochemical reduction of the ions to zero-valent metal on the surfaces of the cathodic particles,” the authors write. “For an initial 10 ppm ion concentration of the metals considered, the volume reduction is on the order of 10⁶.”

Calo said the approach can be used for other heavy metals, such as lead, mercury, and tin. The researchers are currently testing the system with samples contaminated with heavy metals and other substances, such as sediment, to confirm its operation.

The research was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, through the Brown University Superfund Research Program.

Philippe Fauchet ScM '80 named dean at Vanderbilt School of Engineering

2011-12-13T09:14:00.000-05:00

Philippe Fauchet ScM '80 will be the new dean of the school of engineering at Vanderbilt University.

Fauchet, currently chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Rochester, begins work at Vanderbilt July 1, pending approval by the Vanderbilt Board of Trust.

He graduated from Brown University in 1980 with a master’s in engineering. Fauchet earned his Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University in 1984.

“This is an important moment of transition for the School of Engineering,” said Vanderbilt Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos. “Philippe Fauchet is already well-known and respected at Vanderbilt because of his accomplishments at the University of Rochester, and we anticipate great success as he brings his dynamic leadership to our campus.”

Fauchet will succeed Dean Kenneth Galloway, who is returning to the faculty at the end of the current academic year after serving as dean since 1996.

“The engineering school is getting a visionary leader in Philippe Fauchet to build on the impressive contributions of Dean Ken Galloway,” said Richard McCarty, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Philippe has broad experience as a researcher and he is a dedicated teacher and university citizen. I look forward to his arrival on campus with great excitement.”

Galloway disclosed to members of the engineering faculty last spring that the 2011-2012 academic year would be his last as dean. Fauchet was named his successor after a national search by a provost-appointed committee.

During Galloway’s tenure, research expenditures from external sources grew from less than $10 million to more than $60 million annually, according to Art Overholser, senior associate dean and professor of biomedical engineering and chemical engineering. The school has also experienced a steady rise in national rankings, facilities have been upgraded and outstanding faculty have been retained and recruited.

“I intend to build on the strong foundation laid by Dean Galloway and help the School of Engineering become a national leader that attracts the very best minds from the United States and abroad,” Fauchet said. “I think Vanderbilt can have important impact on issues including improving health for our aging population, energy production, the environment and security.”

Fauchet, 56, is the founder of Rochester’s Center for Future Health, where engineers and physicians work to develop affordable technology that can be used in the home. He is also the founder of the Energy Research Initiative, a university-wide effort at Rochester to coordinate and expand the university’s research and educational activities in all areas related to energy.

“With his considerable administrative experience and leadership skills, Philippe Fauchet will be a great fit for our School of Engineering and Vanderbilt University,” said M. Douglas LeVan, the J. Lawrence Wilson Professor of Engineering at Vanderbilt and chair of the committee that recommended Fauchet. “The range of his research interests is extraordinary.”

Fauchet has been the primary adviser of Ph.D. students in six different academic disciplines and is the author of 400 technical articles. He became the chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rochester in July 2010.

“I have known Philippe for some 27 years,” said Dennis Hall, vice provost for research and dean of the Graduate School at Vanderbilt. “His collaborative style, his record as a fine classroom teacher, and his history of personal engagement with productive research related to energy, health care, nanoscience and more, make him an excellent match and catch for Vanderbilt.”

Fauchet and his wife, Melanie, a nurse practitioner, have 13 children ranging in age from 2 to 22. Eight of their children are adopted and five are biological.

The Vanderbilt School of Engineering, founded in 1886, is celebrating its 125^th anniversary. It ranks No. 34 in U.S. News and World Report’s evaluations of engineering programs nationwide. While retaining its strong focus on teaching, leaders at the school have dramatically expanded its research component, with an emphasis on the development of technology that is useful and accessible to the general public.

“I am especially looking forward to working with other academic units at Vanderbilt and also with the federal and state government, industry and our alumni,” Fauchet said. “Together we can develop research and educational initiatives that will contribute to solve the most pressing societal problems the United States and the world are facing.”

- by Jim Patterson/Vanderbilt University News

Kipp Bradford ’95 ScM ’96 Wins Elevator Pitch Contest

2011-12-09T12:51:00.001-05:00

Brown alumni and students had another strong showing at the sixth annualRhode Island Elevator Pitch contest. The event, sponsored by the Rhode IslandBusiness Plan Competition, was held at the Rhode Island Center for Innovationand Entrepreneurship (RI-CIE) and included 48 presenters.

The winner was Kipp Bradford ’95 ScM ’96, a Brown engineering alumnusand current faculty member, who pitched the KippCool Medical Cooling System, anambulance-based emergency cooling system that could help improve the chance ofsurvival for heart attack and stroke victims. According to Bradford,research has shown that cooling the body could reduce mortality by 50 percent. Thedevice is currently in production and could be deployed in more than 35,000ambulances across the country. Bradford and his company Kippkitts LLC took homethe $300 first prize. Bradford described Kippkitts as a company thatinvents products that “solve problems that matter” in medical, engineering anddesign fields.

In total, four of the nine finalists had Brown connections. Twostudents from Steve Petteruti’s Entrepreneurship I class, Engineering 1930G,were also finalists. James McGinn ’12, a biomedical engineering concentrator, pitched JCD Wind, which aims to make seamless, high strength lightweight carbon fiber turbine blades. Han Lee ’12, a commerce,organizations, and entrepreneurship (COE) concentrator, pitched GLS Mobile Board, a solar-powered mobile display that will project on location-specific billboards, including the backs of trucks. Both of themwon $50 each. In addition Brown student Brielle Friedman pitched BodyRox Fitness, a dance fitness company.

The contest required the competitors to pitch their business idea to a panel of sixexpert judges from the Rhode Island business community in 90 seconds. Thecontest is a prelude to the annual Rhode Island Business Plan Competition,which features more than $200,000 in cash and prizes. Applications for thebusiness plan competition close on April 2. Winners will be announced on May 3.Please go to www.ri-bizplan.com formore details.

For the official RI Business plan release on the competition, please go to:

http://www.ri-bizplan.com/tabid/251/Default.aspx

For the Providence BusinessNews story on the event, please go to:

http://www.pbn.com/adasdd,63073

Extreme Gingerbread Competition a Success

2011-12-05T15:45:00.001-05:00

The Brown University Society for Women Engineers held its fifth annual "Extreme Gingerbread House Competition" on Friday, December 2. Twenty-one teams of three to five students participated. The designs rangedfrom the traditional to the modern, and included a rugby stadium and a house with a windmill.

This year, the teams were challenged to build earthquake resistant gingerbreadhouses out of graham crackers, icing, candy canes, pretzels, gummy bears andother supplied materials in a one-hour time period. Houses were required to behollow with a maximum wall thickness of one inch, and had to exceed 6” x 6”x6”. The houses were judged both for aesthetics, and amount of time withoutbreaking on a shake table.

Team six, the Band (Rebecca Corman ’13, Rebecca Reitz ’13, David Emanuel ’13, Yukun Gao ‘13), won the competition with a score of 64.67 (20.67 appearance score and 44 structure score), while team ten, the Competition (Dingyi Sun ’12, Bao-Nhat Nguyen ’12, Lingke Wang ’12, Mike Caron ’12, Anand Desai ’12),was close behind with a total score of 63 (13 for appearance plus 50 for structure). Team 17, who built a replica rugby stadium, (Emily Hsieh ’12, Zuleyka Marquez ‘15, Natalie Klotz ‘14, Marissa Reitsma ‘14, Blair Station ‘12), finished in third with a score of 62 (20.67 for appearance and 41.33 for structure). In all, onlyone of the 21 teams, team ten, survived the maximum time on the shake table.

Ares Rosakis Receives Eringen Medal from Society of Engineering Science

2011-12-05T15:31:00.001-05:00

Ares Rosakis Sc.M.’80 Ph.D.’83 was awarded the 2011 A. CermalEringen Medal of the Society of Engineering Science (SES) in recognition of hissustained contributions to dynamic fracture mechanics and methods to determinestresses in thin film structures. Medalists for 2011 were announced at therecent 48th Annual Technical Meeting of SES at Northwestern University.

Rosakis is the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronauticsand Professor of Mechanical Engineering at California Institute of Technology.He is presently Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Scienceat Caltech, where he previously served as Director of the Graduate AerospaceLaboratories between 2004 and 2009. He is a member of the US NationalAcademy of Engineering and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hereceived his BA and MA degrees in engineering science from Oxford University,and his Sc.M. and Ph.D. degrees in solid mechanics from Brown University.

Rosakis has received numerous honors including the Hetényi Award (1991, 2008), the B.L. Lazan Award (1996), the Frocht Award (2003), the Murray Medal and Lecture (2005) and the Harting Award (2007) fromthe Society of Experimental Mechanics, the Brown University Engineering Alumni Medal and the Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award from ASME (2010).

Professor Thomas Webster Elected to College of Fellows of AIMBE

2011-11-30T16:30:00.001-05:00

Thomas Webster, associate professor at the School of Engineering and the Department of Orthopaedics at Brown University, has been elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Located in Washington D.C., AIMBE is the leading advocacy group for medical and biological engineering and is comprised of some of the most important leaders in science and engineering, the top 2% of medical and biological engineers.

The College of Fellows of AIMBE is comprised of an exemplary group of approximately 900 medical and biological engineers. Founded in 1991, AIMBE has earned a reputation as a prestigious public policy leader on issues impacting the medical and biological community and is regarded as the preeminent voice in the field.

Webster received his bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and his master’s degree and and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Professor Webster directs the Nanomedicine Laboratory which designs, synthesizes, and evaluates nanophase materials for various implant applications. Nanophase materials are central to the field of nanotechnology and are materials with one dimension less than 100 nm. Materials investigates to date include nanophase ceramics, metals, polymers, carbon fibers, and composites. Organ systems evaluated to date include orthopedic, cartilage, vascular, bladder, and the central and peripheral nervous systems.

His lab group has generated four books, 33 book chapters, 85 invited presentations (including tutorials), 215 literature articles and/or conference proceeding, and 245 conference presentations. Professor Webster has been awarded 11 full patents plus four provisional patents in his 11 years in academics (five years at Brown and six years at Purdue). His technology has resulted in one start-up company. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Nanomedicine and is on the editorial board of ten other journals. He has organized over 25 symposia at academic conferences. Dr. Webster was the 2002 recipient of the Biomedical Engineering Society Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award, the 2004 recipient of the Outstanding Young Investigator Award for the Schools of Engineering at Purdue University, the 2004 finalist for the Young Investigator Award of the American Society for Nanomedicine, and the 2005 recipient of the Wallace Coulter Foundation Early Career Award.

Anastassia Astafieva ’12 and Karine Ip Kiun Chong ’12 Win Halpin Prize

2011-11-29T11:19:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the generosity of Doris M. and Norman T. Halpin,the Brown University School of Engineering Executive Committee providesresearch awards for exceptional undergraduates. Projects are awarded based onhow well they demonstrate the power of interdisciplinary thought in engineeringscience and design. This year's winners of the Halpin Prize forInterdisciplinary Senior Capstone Projects are Anastassia Astafieva’12 (advisors Christian Franck and Domenico Pacifici) and Karine Ip KiunChong ’12 (advisor Shreyhas Mandre). Each winner will receive a $750 studentprize and a $2500 research fund.

From Ana’s Nomination:

Right from the start, Ana showed a strong interest in theinterdisciplinary nature of a biomedical engineering design project that liesat the intersection of electrical, mechanical and biomedical engineering. Afterseveral discussions and conversations with Professor Pacifici and ProfessorFranck, Ana began the groundwork on her project to measure hydrogel and tissuescaffold deformations under spatially controlled applied electromechanicalforces. Her project builds upon concepts from chemistry, cell biology, materialsscience and mechanical and electrical engineering, and is a genuinely innovativeand interdisciplinary project.

The design of her senior capstone project features an in-vitrotest bench or assay to apply spatially controlled forces to tissue mimickinghydrogels and scaffolds in all three dimensions. The mechanical properties oftissues and synthetic implant materials are extremely important in achievingproper physiological homeostasis in the human body, which requires experimentaltechniques to quantify them. The last decade has urged the scientific communityto develop in-vitro methodologies that are able to measure quantities ofinterest in three dimensions thus representing a more realistic in-vivo or body-likesetting. While three-dimensional measurements are intrinsically more challengingthat traditional two-dimensional data collection and experimental design, Anahas accepted the challenge to do just that.

She is in the process of developing an electromagnetic fieldassay to generate physical forces inside tissue-mimicking hydrogels. Byapplying a magnetic field similar to that in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)scanner to micron-sized magnetic particles inside a hydrogel, Ana willdetermine the three-dimensional displacements that these magnetic particlesundergo. Utilizing her Newtonian mechanics and electrostatics and magnetismprinciples, Ana will be able to determine the mechanical properties of thesegels and tissues at micron and nanometer length scales in all three dimensions.Thus, through her capstone project she will be able to deliver a powerfulcharacterization tool to the biomedical and engineering communities to aid inthe development of improved implant materials and artificial tissues.

From Karine’s Nomination:

Karine is a talented mechanical engineer interested in avariety of subjects with sound understanding of mathematics, physics andengineering. She came up with her own research program about six months ago,and has since not only demonstrated successful technical expertise in executingthe research but also has managed to disseminate the results.

Karine’s project is about bio-inspired desalination. The largest source of fresh water on this planet comes from natural desalination of ocean water through rain. Artificial desalination using various technologiesalso provides a small portion of the fresh water humans use. Karine askedherself, how do we create rain in a small container in our living room, and cameup with quite interesting ideas. Her first idea was the observation that plantsare very efficient at evaporating water from the soil. Is it possible to designan engineering process that mimics plants in transporting and evaporatingwater? Karine's second idea for condensing the water was to mimic Namibianfog-harvesting beetles. Tiny bumps on the backs of these fog-harvesting beetleshave a special surface chemistry that facilitates the condensation of water,and moreover forms structures that channels the condensed water straight to thebeetle’s mouth. Karine brought both these ideas to her advisor as a proposalfor her 2011 summer Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA). Karine’sproposal secured the summer UTRA and she demonstrated her technical expertiseduring the summer research. She carried out a computational simulation of a toymathematical model to demonstrate the principle reason behind the efficient evaporationthrough plant leaves. This result has increased her confidence in the researchprogram and she has now designed a set of microfluidic devices to test herresult experimentally. These devices mimic the properties of the leaves,especially the distribution of stomata on a leaf surface, to assistevaporation.

Karine actively participates in the scientific community anddisseminates her research discoveries. She presented a poster on this in theUndergraduate Summer Research Symposium at Brown, and is scheduled to present aposter at the New England Workshop on Mechanics of Materials and Structures.She acquired a partial travel grant from the American Physical Society topresent a poster of her results at the annual meeting of the Division of FluidDynamics in Baltimore in November. The prize funds for the project will be usedto experimentally test the principle Karine has discovered. The experimentessentially consists of subjecting the microfluidic devices Karine designed toair flow in a small wind tunnel and measuring the evaporation rate througheach. Her prediction is that the evaporation rate will increase with the airflow but reach a state of marginal returns as the air speed is increased beyonda critical value, and this critical value is different for each of Karine’sdevices. The results from these experiments can be directly compared withevaporation from leaves to check if the leaves are optimized for particularwind speeds.

Fifth Annual SWE Extreme Gingerbread House Competition

2011-11-28T14:36:00.001-05:00

The Brown University Society for Women Engineers will be sponsoring its fifth annual "Extreme Gingerbread House Competition" on Friday, December 2, from 5:00 - 7:00 in the lobby of the Barus and Holley building on 184 Hope Street.

Twenty-two teams of 3-5 students and professors will be allowed to pre-register for the competition. Any additional teams that express interest will be placed on a waitlist in the event that a team does not arrive. If the team has not arrived within five minutes of the beginning of the event, their spot will be given to a team on the waitlist or a team that has shown up at the event without registering.

Each team will be supplied with two boxes of graham crackers, two Ziploc bags of royal icing, and a tray on which to construct their house. Additionally, all teams will be provided with an empty sandwich size Ziploc bag for taking the communal supplies. Foods such as candy canes, M&Ms, teddy grahams, shredded coconut, etc., will be kept on a central table. At the start of the one hour time slot of building, one member of each team will be allowed to take the empty Ziploc bag to the communal table and fill the bag with whatever supplies they feel are most valuable for their team’s house. All food items will be provided by SWE at the event; teams are NOT allowed to bring any of their own food.

The teams will have one hour to construct their houses out of the provided food. Houses should be designed to follow the criteria listed below:
- The house must fit on the provided tray and not cover the drilled-in holes.
- House dimensions must exceed 6”x6”x6”.
- The house must be hollow.
- The maximum wall thickness is 1”.
- The house must be glued/pasted to the tray; the house may not slide around the tray.
- The house should be designed to withstand earthquakes.

Teams are allowed to bring any tools that they think will be helpful such as knives, drills, etc. Teams are responsible for bringing the necessary power connections/extension cords. If you plan on using tools, please ensure you know how to use them safely and plan on bring the necessary personal protective equipment, such as safety glasses. No chemicals can be used during the manufacturing of the house; the house and all its contents must remain edible at all times.

After exactly one hour, the teams will be forced to stop construction on their houses. The houses will initially be judged before a panel of three faculty judges on (1) Attractiveness of the House [1-10 points] (2) Novel use of Building Materials [1-5 points] (3) Use of Available Space (ie decorations other than the house) [1-5 points]. Additionally, judges will have the option to select one “wildcard” house after viewing all the completed houses. Judges will award a bonus of three points to the house if they feel that one house was exceptional in a way that was not represented in the other scores; this is optional and at the judges discretion. The sum of these components will be used as the team’s aesthetic score.

The second portion of judging will be on the ability of the house to withstand a simulated earthquake. The tray will be attached to a shake table and cycled through a regimen moving from a low frequency to a high frequency. After every 15 seconds, the frequency will increase. Time will start when the shake table is turned on, and will be stopped when part of the house falls off the main structure; this includes decorations attached to the house, but not “environmental decorations” that are simply on the tray. The final call on whether a house has "failed" will be at the judges' discretion. Houses will not be judged until tables and floors are clean.

After all the houses have been tested, the maximum amount of time on the shake table to make a gingerbread house break will be used to calculate the scores, as shown below:

GroupTime
----------------------- x 50 = Total
Maximum Group Time

Total group scores will be calculated by combining the aesthetic score (out of 25 points) and the stability score (out of 50 points) for a total score out of 75 points. The team with the most points will be considered the winner. The team with the second highest number of points will be given second place and so forth. The top three teams will be awarded a prize.

When registering, each team will be asked to pay a registration fee of $6.00 to enter the event.

Nanowrinkles, nanofolds yield strange hidden channels

2011-11-28T13:28:00.001-05:00

Wrinkles and folds, common in nature, do something unusual at the nanoscale. Researchers at Brown University and in Korea have discovered that wrinkles on super-thin films have hidden long waves. The team also found that folds in the film produce nanochannels, like thousands of tiny subsurface pipes. The research could lead to advances in medicine, electronics and energy. Results appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Wrinkles and folds are ubiquitous. They occur in furrowed brows, planetary topology, the surface of the human brain, even the bottom of a gecko’s foot. In many cases, they are nature’s ingenious way of packing more surface area into a limited space. Scientists, mimicking nature, have long sought to manipulate surfaces to create wrinkles and folds to make smaller, more flexible electronic devices, fluid-carrying nanochannels or even printable cell phones and computers.

A subsurface system of nanopipesResearchers at Brown University and in Korea used focusedion beams to extract a cross-section of compressed goldnanofilm. When tips of regular, neighboring folds touched,nanopipes were created beneath the surface.Credit: Kim Lab/Brown University

But to attain those technology-bending feats, scientists must fully understand the profile and performance of wrinkles and folds at the nanoscale, dimensions 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair. In a series of observations and experiments, engineers at Brown University and in Korea have discovered unusual properties in wrinkles and folds at the nanoscale. The researchers report that wrinkles created on super-thin films have hidden long waves that lengthen even when the film is compressed. The team also discovered that when folds are formed in such films, closed nanochannels appear below the surface, like thousands of super-tiny pipes.

“Wrinkles are everywhere in science,” said Kyung-Suk Kim, professor of engineering at Brown and corresponding author of the paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A. “But they hold certain secrets. With this study, we have found mathematically how the wrinkle spacings of a thin sheet are determined on a largely deformed soft substrate and how the wrinkles evolve into regular folds.”

Wrinkles are made when a thin stiff sheet is buckled on a soft foundation or in a soft surrounding. They are precursors of regular folds: When the sheet is compressed enough, the wrinkles are so closely spaced that they form folds. The folds are interesting to manufacturers, because they can fit a large surface area of a sheet in a finite space.

Kim and his team laid gold nanogranular film sheets ranging from 20 to 80 nanometers thick on a rubbery substrate commonly used in the microelectronics industry. The researchers compressed the film, creating wrinkles and examined their properties. As in previous studies, they saw primary wrinkles with short periodicities, the distance between individual wrinkles’ peaks or valleys. But Kim and his colleagues discovered a second type of wrinkle, with a much longer periodicity than the primary wrinkles — like a hidden long wave. As the researchers compressed the gold nanogranular film, the primary wrinkles’ periodicity decreased, as expected. But the periodicity between the hidden long waves, which the group labeled secondary wrinkles, lengthened.

“We thought that was strange,” Kim said.

It got even stranger when the group formed folds in the gold nanogranular sheets. On the surface, everything appeared normal. The folds were created as the peaks of neighboring wrinkles got so close that they touched. But the research team calculated that those folds, if elongated, did not match the length of the film before it had been compressed. A piece of the original film surface was not accounted for, “as if it had been buried,” Kim said.

Indeed, it had been, as nano-size closed channels. Previous researchers, using atomic force microscopy that scans the film’s surface, had been unable to see the buried channels. Kim's group turned to focused ion beams to extract a cross-section of the film. There, below the surface, were rows of closed channels, about 50 to a few 100 nanometers in diameter. “They were hidden,” Kim said. “We were the first ones to cut (the film) and see that there are channels underneath.”

The enclosed nano channels are important because they could be used to funnel liquids, from drugs on patches to treat diseases or infections, to clean water and energy harvesting, like a microscopic hydraulic pump.

Contributing authors include Jeong-Yun Sun and Kyu Hwan Oh from Seoul National University; Myoung-Woon Moon from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology; and Shuman Xia, a researcher at Brown and now at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The National Science Foundation, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy of Korea, and the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology of Korea supported the research.

Qunyang Li ScM ’07 PhD ’08 and Jin Qian ScM ’09 PhD ’10 Recognized by Chinese Government

2011-11-18T13:33:00.000-05:00

Dr. Qunyang Li and Dr. Jin Qian, who received their Ph.D. degrees in Engineering (Solid Mechanics) in 2008 and 2010, respectively, from Brown University have been selected among 143 Young Scholars (younger than 40 inScience and Engineering) of 2011 by the Chinese government. Their selection is part of the "Thousand Young Talents Program" of the Chinese government, in which only 25 engineers were selected from all areas of engineering. The program was created by the Chinese government and aims to attract the best global young researchers to work in China. According to the program, each selected awardee will be awarded 500,000 RMB of living subsidies and up to 3,000,000 RMB for scientific research funding.

Qunyang Li

Li also received his master’s degree (2007, Applied Math) from Brown Universityand had been a post doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania since2008 until he was appointed as an associate professor at Tsinghua Universitythis summer. Li received his bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree fromTsinghua University. During his time at Brown, Li won numerous awards,including the prestigious William N. Findlay Award in 2006 and the OutstandingThesis Award in 2008.

Jin Qian

Qian had been a post doctoral fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology since September 2009 until he was appointed as an associate professor at Zhejiang University a month ago. Qian received his bachelor’s degree from Beijing University and a master’s degree from Institute of Mechanics of Chinese Academy of Sciences in addition to a master’s degree from Brown (Applied Math).

Erik Taylor Wins BMES Graduate Student Award

2011-11-09T16:10:00.000-05:00

At the annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society,Brown University graduate student Erik Taylor won the Graduate Student ExtendedAbstract Award for outstanding research. His submission, “SuperparamagneticIron Oxide Nanoparticles Could Be Better than Antibiotics at Reducing BiofilmProduced by Staphylococcus Aureus” was considered by the committee strongenough to be only one of ten such awards presented.

This award consists of a certificate, a stipend of $500, andcomplimentary registration for the 2011 BMES Annual Meeting. The certificatewas presented at the awards ceremony at the BMES Business Meeting on Thursday,October 13, 2011, in Hartford, Conn. The award has been presented each yearsince 1992 in recognition of outstanding biomedical engineering research.

Taylor, who was selected for a Fulbright Fellowship, will beleaving for India next semester to work on biofilm research and anti-infectionstrategies at IIT-Bombay in Mumbai for nine months. He will be working with Dr.Rinti Banerjee from IIT-Bombay through the Indo-U.S. Center for Biomaterialsfor Healthcare, co-directed by professors Bikram Basu and Thomas Webster.

Brown University and University of Rhode Island Team Wins $6.17 Million DOE EPSCoR grant

2011-11-09T13:43:00.001-05:00

Brown University and University of Rhode Island researchers led by principal investigator Pradeep R. Guduru, James R. Rice Associate Professor of Engineering at Brown, have won a three-year, $6.17 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The project, “Fundamental Investigations of Mechanical and Chemical Degradation Mechanisms in Lithium Ion Battery Materials” will also involve Brown professors Allan Bower and Vivek Shenoy from the School of Engineering and Li-Qiong Wang from the Department of Chemistry; and Professors Brett Lucht, William Euler and Arijit Bose from the University of Rhode Island.

Electron microscopy images of the phase boundary between crystalline
silicon and amorphous lithiated silicon, revealing its atomic structure.
The sharp jumps in stress, composition and atomic structure across the
phase boundary play an important role in determining the mechanical
damage that results in silicon crystals during the initial charge cycle.

“This award represents a truly interdisciplinary research effort that brings together solid mechanics, chemistry and materials science,” said Guduru. “The research effort presents an opportunity for Brown and URI researchers to contribute to a technological area of national importance andforge strong collaborations with national labs and industry.”

“This new award contributes to the growing portfolio of engineering research at Brown in the energy and nanoscience fields,” said Dean Larry Larson. “These new fields are changing the way we live in thousands of different ways. Congratulations to all the faculty, post-docs, staff and students involved in these successful efforts.”

Despite the rapid advances in lithium ion battery (LIB) technology in recent years, major obstacles remain for vehicular applications of LIBs. It is widely recognized that further critical breakthroughs in the science and technology of lithium ion battery materials are necessary to develop the next generation of low-cost, long-life, higher energy density batteries for extended range electric vehicles.

The objective of the reserach funded under the DOE EPSCoR grant is to establish a comprehensive research program at Brown University and University of Rhode Island to develop fundamental and quantitative understanding of degradation mechanisms that limit the performance and cycle life of LIBs; and use the insights gained to help develop materials and architectures with significantly improved performance.

The research program encompasses critical challenges in the three major battery components: anodes,electrolytes and cathodes. Mechanical and chemical degradation of electrodes associated with large volume changes during charging and dischargingis a critical factor that limits their capacity and lifetime. However, the degradation mechanisms are not well-understood quantitatively, which is a critical obstacle in developing the nextgeneration of LIBs. The research team will address the fundamental issues ofmechanical behavior & performance, controlling electrochemicalside-reactions, formation and stability of solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI)layers. Through a combined experimental and computational approach, the teamplans to develop the necessary quantitative understanding, which can help makebattery materials design a well-controlled, principle-based process withpredictable outcomes, in contrast to the largely trial and error basedempirical approach being followed currently. The PIs will work with collaborators in national laboratories andbattery industry in addressing the relevant problems of highest impact fordeveloping the next generation of higher energy density battery systems.

Brown University Wins $6.25 Million MURI grant from Army Research Office

2011-11-03T15:26:00.000-04:00

Brown and Cal State Northridge are teaming up on a $6.25 million Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the Army Research Office (ARO) to study “Stress Controlled Catalysis via Engineering Nanostructures”. The five-year project will be led by principal investigator Bill Curtin, with collaborators Pradeep Guduru and Sharvan Kumar in the School of Engineering, Shouheng Sun in Chemistry and Engineering, and Gang Lu in Physics at Cal State Northridge. Four graduate students and six postdocs will join the faculty in executing the research.

Professor Bill Curtin '81

“This new award contributes to the growing portfolio of engineering research at Brown in the energy and nanosciences fields,” said Dean Larry Larson. “These new fields are changing the way we live in thousands of different ways. Congratulations to all the faculty, post-docs, staff and students involved in these successful efforts.”

The goal of the research is to demonstrate that macroscopic applied mechanical loading can be used to actively control and tune catalytic reactions through the use of innovative nanoscale material systems.

The challenge lies in obtaining stresses in the catalytic metal materials that are large enough to significantly influence the rates of selected chemical reactions in an overall catalytic process.

Associate Professor Pradeep Guduru

Professor Sharvan Kumar

Brown researchers will accomplish this by creating ultra-strong nanostructured materials in novel geometries where the mechanical load can be controlled and varied, also serving to isolate strain as the only experimental variable.

If the principle is demonstrated, then it may be possible to increase catalytic efficiencies by using time-varying stresses to actively control the reactionsduring operation, opening up the field of catalysis to an entirely new space of materials design.

Nanomaterials Studies Advance Cancer Research

2011-11-02T15:35:00.000-04:00

Graduate student Lijuan Zhang and associate professor Thomas Webster have conducted research with nanomaterials that may lead to a potential breakthrough in cancer research. Their recent research, "Decreased lung carcinoma cell functions on select polymer nanometer surface features" was published in Journal of Biomedical Materials Research A.

Behind the purple doors of a sixth-floor Barus and Holley Lab, Thomas Webster, associate professor of engineering, works small but thinks big. His work with nanomaterials, tiny devices implanted into the human body, has led to a potential breakthrough in cancer research.

Webster, director of the University's NanomedicineLaboratory, has been studying and developing nanotech implants for the past 11 years. His team had created rough implants covered in tiny "nano-features"— microscopic bumps — to "mimic the natural roughness of healthy skin," he said. "Current orthopedic implants are flat and smooth, but healthy skin and bone have bumps."

Two years ago, graduate student Lijuan Zhang approached Webster with a radical idea — exploring how nano-features would interact with cancer cells.

"Being the adventurous person I am, I said, ‘Let's try it,'" Webster said. It was completely new territory for Webster, but he said he was excited to see what would happen.

Within a year of research, a blink of an eye in lab time, Zhang approached Webster with results they both found fascinating. The addition of 23nm nano-features to a petri dish with both cancerous and healthy cells caused a significantly lower density of cancer cells over time.

Webster said he was pleased and intrigued by the results, but he knew the tests needed to be run at least three more times to verify any findings.

Zhang ran another trial and again found a lower density of cancer cells, but she also found something new — the nano-features inhibited the synthesis of a protein that aids in tumor growth.

The tests had initially been conducted with lung cancer cells, but later tests used breast cancer and bone cancer cells. Both reacted in the same manner — the nano-features lowered the density of cancer cells and decreased the synthesis of the tumor growth protein.

The next step is finding real-world applications, Webster said. "In order for any of this research to be useful, we need a company. We need to transition from the lab bench to a real product."

Webster said he hopes to apply their discovery to animal models and eventually human trials. "If all goes well, a product could appear in five years," he said.

By Hannah Kerman/BDH

Rick Fleeter ’76 PhD ’81 Publishes Third Book

2011-10-25T13:24:00.000-04:00

Rick Fleeter ’76 PhD ’81, a Brown University engineering alumnus and an adjunct associate professor in the School of Engineering at Brown, has recently published his third book, Love Is Strong As Death. Written with his late wife Nancy, the book discusses their 15-year battle with cancer.

“This book is our experience, two innocent novices, in dying, death and rebuilding one life where once there had been two,” said Fleeter. “It offers no advice, only a window into this most personal, and at the same time universal, of human experiences.”

Rick and Nancy were both professionals whose work took them all over the world. He founded and managed the aerospace engineering company AeroAstro, while Nancy managed arts organizations including American Ballet Theater and the J.F. Kennedy Center. Rick also wrote books and taught aerospace engineering as an adjunct professor, while Nancy continued to practice and teach ballet.

They lived at various times, sometimes simultaneously, in suburban Washington, D.C., Manhattan, Charlestown, R.I., Rome, Tokyo, and Gold Coast, Australia.

In addition to this book written with Nancy, Rick has written several books and book chapters on the engineering and management of miniature spacecraft and on cycling, triathlon and living nomadically for business and pleasure.

Rick now writes and is a professor in Rome and Rhode Island, teaching at The University of Rome La Sapienza and Brown University.

Rick also blogs at: http://rfleeter.wordpress.com

Brown University Engineering Ranked Among Top 50 Engineering Universities in the World; Top 3 in Ivy League

2011-10-21T11:43:00.000-04:00

Times Higher Education has released its 2011-12 top 50 world university engineering and technology rankings, and Brown was ranked No. 45 in the world. There were a total of 22 U.S. universities on the prestigious list, including three Ivy League universities: Princeton, Cornell and Brown.

For the full list of the engineering and technology rankings, please go to:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/engineering-and-it.html

“We are proud to have been recognized as among the top engineering schools in the world,” said Associate Dean Eric Suuberg.“Considering that we have had the status of a School of Engineering for only a few months, and particularly noting that virtually all of the institutions thatranked ahead of us have much larger programs than do we at Brown, we are very pleased with the result.”

“It is particularly gratifying to see that we are one of the three top-ranked engineering schools among our Ivy League peers, a group that is somewhat distinct from many of the other highly ranked schools,” said Dean Larry Larson.

For the full list of the overall college rankings, please go to:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400.html

Brown Engineer Nathanial Cooper ’12 Finishes Third at AIChE Competition

2011-10-19T14:16:00.002-04:00

Students in the Brown chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attend the national AiChE meeting and compete in a student poster competition.

In the environmental category, Nathanial Cooper ’12 won a third place award. His poster was entitled, “Agricultural Waste Based Bio-CharSorption Potential”. Last year, Cooper finished second in the poster competition.

Four students represented Brown at this year’s competition, including: Henry Mattingly ’12 (supervisor Robert Hurt), William Trinh ’12 (supervisorIndrek Kulaots), Cooper (supervisor Indrek Kulaots), and Ellison Kandler ’13 (supervisors Steve Greenbaum of the City University of New York and Eric Suuberg).

“As I've attended these student conferences over many years, and I do carefully review most of these posters presented, I must say that this year was even beyond what I have seen before,” said Kulaots. “The competition has gotten more and more competitive every year, and the level of science presented by undergraduates is remarkable.”

Ancient Lamps, Earrings Yield Their Secrets Under Neutron Imaging

2011-10-14T14:39:00.001-04:00

“Neutron imaging gives researchers new tools for exploring artifacts and ancient technology”

Brown University School of Engineering Professor Brian Sheldon is the co-principal investigator on an exciting colloborative project that also includes Brown's Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

For the first time at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), neutron images in three dimensions (3-D) have been taken of rare archaeological artifacts. Bronze and brass artifacts excavated at the ancient city of Petra, in present day Jordan, were recently imaged in 3-D using neutrons at the High Flux Isotope Reactor’s CG-1D neutron imaging instrument.

The neutron imaging technique gives eager archeologists and ancient historians significant, and otherwise wholly inaccessible, insight into the manufacturing and lives of cultures that once occupied settlements within the Roman Empire, Middle East, and Colonial-Period New England.

The samples imaged in 3D in August came from the collections of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. They include an elaborate hanging bronze oil lamp, a large Roman coin, and—most charmingly—a standing dog figure, which might have been either a religious dedication or perhaps a toy. Although their original provenance is unknown, they are all excellent examples of common metal finds from antiquity.

Principal investigator (PI) Krysta Ryzewski, an assistant professor of anthropology at Wayne State University, and her co-PI Brian W. Sheldon, professor of engineering at Brown University, were loaned the artifacts for study from professor Susan E. Alcock, director of Brown’s Joukowsky Institute.

In earlier work, the team conducted two-dimensional imaging of copper alloy (bronze and brass) artifacts both from Petra and from Greene Farm, a colonial-period plantation in Rhode Island. The samples include artifacts from daily life: a clothing buckle, a knife, and some building hardware.

Top: photo of ancient Greek lamp. Bottom: neutron radiograph of the same lamp.

One circular object from Petra was so corroded that it was unidentifiable. But when it was imaged with neutrons, underneath was a piece of jewelry, probably an earring. Petra is most famous as a trading center in ancient times, connecting the Mediterranean world with places as far away as India and China. It was the capital of an independent kingdom of the Nabataeans, until the emperor Trajan incorporated it into the Roman Empire in the early second century A.D.

The earlier imaging and analysis resolved some questions of object identity and raised many new ones about the techniques and materials that crafts people in the past used to make these objects. “We can also examine certain objects (such as the knife or the bronze lamp) to look for trace residues of the oil once burned in the lamp or what the knife was used to cut,” says Ryzewski.

“I first learned of the developing neutron imaging instruments at Oak Ridge in my conversations with Hassina Bilheux (lead instrument scientist for CG-1D). At the time I was a postdoctoral fellow in archaeology and engineering at Brown. I attended a neutron imaging workshop at SNS in November 2008, and became the only archaeologist to be part of the VENUS instrument development team. Brian Sheldon at Brown also joined then. We have been collaborating on all of the experiments with Hassina at SNS and HFIR,” she says.

The neutron imaging beam line is a huge step forward for these scholars. “Archaeologists and scientists can obtain relatively little information about the manufacture of archaeomaterials, ancient objects, and the materials from which they are constructed from external surfaces alone,” says Ryzewski. “Very few historical accounts describe the construction of such objects and archaeomaterials, ancient bronzes, or ceramic vessels. The only source of information about how these objects were constructed comes from their material properties and composition.”

Archaeological objects are reviewed as unique cultural resources. Earlier analysis often entailed extracting a sample from such an object, which meant damage and sometimes even wholesale destruction of an artifact so it could be mounted effectively for analysis. Analysts’ necessarily conservative treatment of archaeomaterials left many questions unanswered.

Imaging archaeological objects comprehensively and systematically with neutrons only became possible with the development of the CG-1D prototype beam line. Neutron activation analysis and neutron imaging at Oak Ridge means scholars can now conduct detailed, nondestructive analysis of samples. “There currently exist a vast array of archaeological objects and research questions about ancient and historical technological development that can now be posed,” says Ryzewski. “The CG-1D beam line has offered us an invaluable alternative for performing nondestructive, noninvasive analysis.”

CG-1D data can reveal the raw materials used, the manufacturing techniques, the historical development of alloys and composite materials and the geological origins of ores and clay. On the cultural side, researchers can learn about the activities of ancient people’s daily lives that such objects served.

“Archaeologists can now begin to precisely reconstruct past networks and patterns of resource extraction, trade and exchange, environmental impacts of industrial activities on ancient landscapes, and the transmission of craft production traditions over time,” Ryzewski says. “These are some of the sorts of questions that our current research and experiments are designed to address.“

The 3-D neutron imaging and quantitative analysis occurs at an instrument that is a time-of-flight beam line, with a chopper for producing pulses of neutrons to take noninvasive images. Neutrons, rather than x-rays, do the work.

“Part of our early work was to test the parameters of the instrument and how we might need to adjust the instrumentation to suit the artifacts, which tend to vary in composition, size, and density,” Ryzewski says.

“We anticipated that we would be able to see beneath the surface and find evidence of manufacturing steps (mold seams), impurities or other organic inclusions in the metals, residue from the objects’ use, and microstructural or compositional elements,” she says.

Their data are still being processed, but preliminary results from the bronze lamp suggest that they will be able to see and examine aspects of all of these areas of interest once the 3-D data are compiled.

“Our work is still in its early stages. We hope to reexamine these objects in further rounds of testing in 2012. We will expand our sample base to other types of metal artifacts, perhaps some excavated from shipwrecks. We hope to examine ceramic artifacts as well, Ryzewski says.

More broadly, the scholars may be in a position to offer information to scientists who specialize in the conservation and stabilization of museum collections. Other findings may provide insights into materials behavior of interest to materials science. “Each round of experiments raises many more questions about the materials in the object and about the instrumentation itself,” Ryzewski says.

This fall the researchers will return to HFIR to image some of the bronze objects for Bragg-edge peaks in the materials. Collaborating with Ryzewski and Sheldon are Bilheux and Lakeisha Walker of SNS and Susan Herringer, a doctoral student in materials science engineering at Brown and the Joukowsky Institute.

The group will publish their results in both archaeological and neutron sciences academic publications. In addition, they will present their initial findings at the annual Society for American Archaeology meetings in Memphis in April 2012.

Courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Written by Agatha Bardoel

Professors Kenny Breuer and Eric Suuberg Named Associate Deans of Engineering

2011-10-14T11:11:00.000-04:00

Brown University School of Engineering Dean Larry Larson has announced that Professor Eric Suuberg has agreed to accept an appointment asAssociate Dean of Engineering for Research and Graduate Initiatives and Professor Kenny Breuer has agreed to accept an appointment as Associate Dean of Engineering for Academic Programs. Both will serve three-year terms.

“I want to thank them both for their willingness to servethe School of Engineering, and for the commitment of their time and energy inmoving the School forward in the coming years. Professors Suuberg and Breuerbring decades of experience and wisdom to the Schoolleadership.” said Larson.

The Associate Dean of Engineering for Research and Graduate Initiatives will be responsible for enhancing and expanding the research and graduateenterprise and profile of the School of Engineering, including development ofan enhanced master’s program for the School of Engineering and development of aplan for improved engineering research laboratory and instructional space.

The Associate Dean of Academic Programs will be broadly responsible for theacademic mission of the School of Engineering, and will work closely with theDirector of Undergraduate Programs, Director of Graduate Programs and theCurriculum Committee on curriculum development, educational outreach, studentcareer development and instructional technology.

Professor Breuer received his Sc.B. from Brown and his M.Sc.and Ph.D. from M.I.T. He spent nine years on the faculty of M.I.T. indepartment of Aeronautics and Astronautics, before returning to Brown in 1999. Hisresearch interests are in fluid mechanics, covering a wide range of topics,including the physics of flows at micron and nanometer scales, animal flight (batflight in particular), and the physics and control of turbulent flows. He isauthor of over one hundred refereed technical publications, has edited andco-authored several books, including “Microscale Diagnostic Techniques”, “AGallery of Fluid Motion”, and “Multimedia Fluid Mechanics”. Breuer was electeda fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010.

Professor Suuberg has been at Brown since 1981, when he wasone of the founding members of Brown's Chemical Engineering program. Hisresearch interests have been in the areas of energy and environmentalengineering. He has served as Associate Dean of the Faculty (2002-2005), asChair of the Psychology Department (2004-5) and as a member of the ExecutiveCommittee of the Division of Engineering. He is currently Co-Director of theSuperfund Basic Research Program, and a co-founder of the Commerce,Organizations and Entrepreneurship concentration as well as a co-founder of thePRIME master’s program. He is a principal editor of the journal Fuel. He waselected fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2011.

Professor Suuberg's research interests center on energy and environmentalareas, involving study of fuel chemistry (coal, oil shale, biomass), activatedcarbons (production and properties), materials reuse (automobile tires, coalfly ash), fire safety and, most recently, the characterization and cleanup oflands and sediments contaminated with mixed pollutants with a focus onthermodynamics of mixtures of high molecular weight organic compounds and therelated problem of vapor intrusion.

He received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from M.I.T., amaster’s degree in management science from M.I.T., and an Sc.D. in chemicalengineering from M.I.T.

Brown Engineering Alumnus Michael Escuti wins Presidential Award for Young Scientists and Engineers

2011-10-06T15:02:00.002-04:00

Dr. Michael Escuti ScM '99 PhD '03, who received both his master's degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Brown University and is now a North Carolina State University engineering professor has won the U.S. government's top award for early-career scientists and engineers.

Escuti, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State, will receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers later this fall, the White House announced. The awards program, established by President Bill Clinton in 1996, honors researchers for working at the frontiers of science and technology and serving the community through scientific leadership, public education or outreach.

Winners receive research grants of up to five years to support their work.

Escuti was honored for his pioneering development of liquid crystal "polarization gratings," which consist of a thin layer of liquid crystal material on a glass plate. The White House also recognized him for educating students through collaborations with international academic teams and industries, as well as for outreach work in underserved communities.

Escuti's research has shown how polarization gratings, as well as devices and applications based on them, can solve problems in optics that had been previously thought unsolvable. One result of the work is a very energy-efficient way of steering laser beams that is precise and relatively inexpensive. The research has potential applications in laser radar and free space communication, which uses lasers to transfer data between platforms – such as between satellites or between aircraft and soldiers on the battlefield. Escuti's team, consisting of NC State students along with partner Boulder Nonlinear Systems Inc., has already delivered prototypes of the technology to the U.S. Air Force and is working on other applications.

Another result is a low-loss light switch, which inherently acts on all components of light rather than just the correctly polarized half, meaning that it is very transparent when it is open and very dark when closed. Other results include high-resolution spectral/polarization cameras, which enable compact and low-cost imaging beyond what our eyes can see for platforms such as aerial vehicles, satellites and biomedical imaging.

Escuti is commercializing his research through several industrial partnerships, including his own start-up company, ImagineOptix Corp., that has already prototyped a tiny, highly efficient projection display that could revolutionize displays on hand-held and mobile devices.

His work has resulted in a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, three awarded patents and nine pending patents. He has also received $4.3 million in external research funding from NSF, and many other federal, state, and private sources.

After receiving his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Brown University in 2003, Escuti joined the NC State faculty in 2004.

Portions of this release courtesy of North Carolina State University.

Nanoskin Saves Lives and Limbs

2011-10-05T14:28:00.000-04:00

Engineers and Orthopedics Experts Reduce Risk of Infection from Medical Prostheses with Nanotech that Mimics Human Skin

Engineers and orthopedics experts are applying nanotechnology to prosthetic medical devices in order to increase patient safety. By closely mimicking human skin, experts hope to reduce the infection-inducing bacteria that grow on prostheses. Changing the texture of the devices in small ways results in a big reduction in bacteria growth, as well as improvement of skin closures and bone growth.

Nanoskin saves lives and limbs - San Diego, California News Station - KFMB Channel 8 - cbs8.com

Losing a limb can be devastating and in the United States there are approximately 1.7 million people living that way. One of the biggest fears for those who use prosthetic devices is getting an infection. But researchers are working on a way to mimic the human skin to cut down on infections.

“I went to bed and woke up the next morning and my body was swollen and I had blisters all over it,” Anthony Buttaro, a man who suffered limb loss, told Ivanhoe.

That morning Anthony Buttaro rushed to the hospital. Doctors diagnosed him with MRSA the often deadly infection forced doctors to amputate his left arm. Now Anthony uses a prosthetic device but he is still concerned about infections.
“I’m always worried about it,” Buttaro said.

To ease those fears engineers and experts in orthopedics at Brown University are applying nanotechnology to medicine called nanomedicine to mimic the tiniest features and contours of human skin.

“Skin serves as a barrier to keep bacteria out of the body,” Thomas Webster an engineer at Brown University told Ivanhoe.

Screws are often used to attach the prosthetic device to bone, but bacteria can grow on the screws causing an infection.
“We are talking really, really small features that are making a difference,” Webster said.

The difference comes by changing the texture of the screw. First it is dipped into hydrofluoric acid. At the same time voltage is applied to create the tissue like features.

“What we are seeing, we’re reducing bacteria growth, on these implants, we’re improving skin closures around the implants and improving bone growth,” Webster explained.

By mimicking the skin researchers believe it will cut down on infections, saving lives and limbs. The nanoskin technology is still in the study phase, but researchers hope to start human testing in the future.

ABOUT NANOTECHNOLOGY: Nanotechnology is science at the size of individual atoms and molecules -- objects and devices measuring mere billionths of a meter, smaller than a red blood cell. At this size scale, materials have different chemical and physical properties than the same materials in bulk, because quantum mechanics is more important. For example, carbon atoms can conduct electricity and are stronger than steel when woven into hollow microscopic threads. Nanoparticles are already widely used in certain commercial consumer products, such as suntan lotions, "age-defying" make-up, and self-cleaning windows that shed dirt when it rains. One company manufactures a nanocrystal wound dressing with built-in antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties. On the horizon is toothpaste that coats, protects and repairs damaged enamel, as well as self-cleaning shoes that never need polishing. Nanoparticles are also used as additives in building materials to strengthen the walls of any given structure, and to create tough, durable, yet lightweight fabrics.

The Biophysical Society and the Materials Research Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Heat at the Borders

2011-10-03T11:46:00.000-04:00

Brown University School of Engineering professor Vivek Shenoy's work on thermal transport across grain boundaries in graphene (published in Nano Letters last month) has also been featured in the research highlights section of Nature Materials. An abstract of his paper, "Thermal transport across Twin Grain Boundaries in Polycrystalline Graphene from Nonequilibrium Molecular Dynamics Simulations" follows:

Heat at the borders

Fabio Pulizzi

Nature Materials

10,

724

(2011)

Published online: 23 September 2011

Nano Letters http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl202118d (2011)

Graphene exhibits the highest thermal conductivity ever observed. Its thermal transport has been studied theoretically and experimentally, mostly in single-crystalline graphene. Unfortunately, large-scale growth, for example by chemical vapour deposition (CVD), usually yields polycrystalline sheets. Akbar Bagri and colleagues have performed molecular dynamic simulations of the thermal transport across various grain boundary orientations in graphene. They assumed a constant heat flow through the material, calculated the temperature profile and from that estimated the thermal conductivity. Interestingly, they found abrupt jumps in the temperature at the grain boundaries, which depend on the boundary orientation and grain size. The estimated grain boundary thermal conductivity is much higher than in the case of other materials with high thermal conductivity, such as nanocrystalline diamond. The results are particularly important in view of potential applications based on CVD-grown graphene. It will be interesting to see how the experiments will compare with these predictions.

For the full html version from NanoLetters, please go to:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/nl202118d

Brain researchers study high-tech ways to overcome injury

2011-09-21T10:13:00.000-04:00

About a year after winning a major share of a nearly $15-million grant, a team of Brown professors is developing and using new technologies to study the brain. Their goal is to inform the development of therapies that could restore functions lost to injury and stroke.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When six engineering and neuroscience professors took on Brown’s major role in the $14.9-million REPAIR project a little more than a year ago, they also took on a dream. Their goal is to understand the workings of the brain’s circuitry so well that it would be possible to fix a traumatic brain injury.

“The ability to help people who are severely disabled or injured in ways that no current medical treatment can cure is the dream,” said Arto Nurmikko, professor of engineering, who is the co-primary investigator of the project. It’s funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and is shared with Stanford University, the University of California–San Francisco and University College London.

New research to REPAIR the brain

The Brown team, which includes neuroscientists Rebecca Burwell, Barry Connors, John Donoghue, David Sheinberg, and Leigh Hochberg, hopes to ferret out how circuits of brain cells work to perceive the environment, process a physical response to it, and then command the body to act out that plan. For people who’ve suffered brain damage, the scientists’ goal will be to translate knowledge into treatments that can restore impaired functions.

“If there is an injury that leads to some kind of dysfunction in the brain, do we understand enough so as to substitute the missing part or the broken part with some of the kinds of the control technology we are trying to develop and replace that function?” Sheinberg said. “Do we understand how the visual system works well enough so that in the absence of a particular part of the visual system we can deliver signals artificially that might serve as a viable substitute?”

The goal is bold but the team is encouraged by the advent of a new technology called optogenetics. It allows them to genetically engineer brain cell circuits to be controlled with pulses of light. Blue light makes the cells active. Yellow light makes them inactive. The technology, developed by project collaborator Karl Deisseroth at Stanford, therefore allows scientists to control functions within the brain in the millisecond timescale of its natural operation. That technology, coupled with the traditional technique of reading out brain signals electrically, gives the researchers the ability to selectively change how brain cells are working and at the same time observe the response of connected cells.

“The optogenetic methodology is fairly new and it’s promising to revolutionize the experimental tools that we have for exploring how the brain processes information and remaps and reorganizes,” Burwell said. “This will be one way that we can target an individual neuron in order to change its patterns of activity. This would be the way that we write in a signal.”

To make such a read-write interface with the brain feasible, Nurmikko and his lab’s members in the first year have invented a new device they call the “optrode.” The prototype device delivers laser pulses to the brain to control circuits and records the electrical activity of neurons all within a wire comparable in width to a hair.

In experiments with rodents, Connors uses optogenetics to discern how individual cell behavior influences the operation of brain circuits, and Burwell is using optogenetics to study how brain circuits underlying functions such as attention and memory guide decision making and behavior. Sheinberg uses these methods to study visual perception and recognition, and Donoghue and Hochberg study how the brain produces physical movement commands. All together, the work will produce needed new findings in perception, cognition, and movement that can inform new therapies for people who have lost any of those functions to injury.

“There’s an awful lot to be learned,” Nurmikko said. “This paradigm of listening to the brain while actually informing the brain [with] methods that have not been available before, will elevate that understanding to a completely new level.”

By David Orenstein

Why carbon nanotubes spell trouble for cells

2011-09-20T10:17:00.001-04:00

Carbon nanotubes and other long nanomaterials can spell trouble for cells. The reason: Cells mistake them for spheres and try to engulf them. Once they start, cells cannot reverse course, and complete ingestion never occurs. Researchers at Brown University detail for the first time how cells interact with carbon nanotubes, gold nanowires and asbestos fibers. Results are published in Nature Nanotechnology.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — It’s been long known that asbestos spells trouble for human cells. Scientists have seen cells stabbed with spiky, long asbestos fibers, and the image is gory: Part of the fiber is protruding from the cell, like a quivering arrow that’s found its mark.

Something perpendicular this way comesCells ingest things by engulfing them. When a long
perpendicular fiber comes near, the cell senses
only its tip, mistakes it for a sphere, and begins
engulfing something too long to handle. Credit: Gao Lab/Brown University

But scientists had been unable to understand why cells would be interested in asbestos fibers and other materials at the nanoscale that are too long to be fully ingested. Now a group of researchers at Brown University explains what happens. Through molecular simulations and experiments, the team reports in Nature Nanotechnology that certain nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes, enter cells tip-first and almost always at a 90-degree angle. The orientation ends up fooling the cell; by taking in the rounded tip first, the cell mistakes the particle for a sphere, rather than a long cylinder. By the time the cell realizes the material is too long to be fully ingested, it’s too late.

“It’s as if we would eat a lollipop that’s longer than us,” said Huajian Gao, professor of engineering at Brown and the paper’s corresponding author. “It would get stuck.”

The research is important because nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes have promise in medicine, such as acting as vehicles to transport drugs to specific cells or to specific locations in the human body. If scientists can fully understand how nanomaterials interact with cells, then they can conceivably design products that help cells rather than harm them.

“If we can fully understand (nanomaterial-cell dynamics), we can make other tubes that can control how cells interact with nanomaterials and not be toxic,” Gao said. “We ultimately want to stop the attraction between the nanotip and the cell.”

Misrecognition
Receptors on the cell’s surface crowd around the nanotube, effectively standing it upright. The cell mistakes the tube for a sphere and begins to engulf it.
Credit: Gao Lab/Brown University

Like asbestos fibers, commercially available carbon nanotubes and gold nanowires have rounded tips that often range from 10 to 100 nanometers in diameter. Size is important here; the diameter fits well within the cell’s parameters for what it can handle. Brushing up against the nanotube, special proteins called receptors on the cell spring into action, clustering and bending the membrane wall to wrap the cell around the nanotube tip in a sequence that the authors call “tip recognition.” As this occurs, the nanotube is tipped to a 90-degree angle, which reduces the amount of energy needed for the cell to engulf the particle.

Once the engulfing — endocytosis — begins, there is no turning back. Within minutes, the cell senses it can’t fully engulf the nanostructure and essentially dials 911. “At this stage, it’s too late,” Gao said. “It’s in trouble and calls for help, triggering an immune response that can cause repeated inflammation.”

The team hypothesized the interaction using coarse-grained molecular dynamic simulations and capped multiwalled carbon nanotubes. In experiments involving nanotubes and gold nanowires and mouse liver cells and human mesothelial cells, the nanomaterials entered the cells tip-first and at a 90-degree angle about 90 percent of the time, the researchers report.

“We thought the tube was going to lie on the cell membrane to obtain more binding sites. However, our simulations revealed the tube steadily rotating to a high-entry degree, with its tip being fully wrapped,” said Xinghua Shi, first author on the paper who earned his doctorate at Brown and is at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “It is counter-intuitive and is mainly due to the bending energy release as the membrane is wrapping the tube.”

The team would like to study whether nanotubes without rounded tips — or less rigid nanomaterials such as nanoribbons — pose the same dilemma for cells.

“Interestingly, if the rounded tip of a carbon nanotube is cut off (meaning the tube is open and hollow), the tube lies on the cell membrane, instead of entering the cell at a high-degree-angle," Shi said.

Agnes Kane, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Brown, is a corresponding author on the paper. Other authors include Annette von dem Bussche from the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown and Robert Hurt from the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation at Brown.

The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funded the research.

By Richard Lewis

Dean Larry Larson featured in Providence Business News

2011-09-14T11:14:00.000-04:00

New Brown School of Engineering Dean Larry Larson is profiled by the Providence Business News.

Five Questions With: Larry Larson

By Kimberley Donoghue
PBN Web Editor
Twitter: @ kdonog

COURTESY BROWN UNIVERSITY

"A GREAT UNIVERSITY thrives on the quality of its faculty, and the best faculty member is a rare combination of a brilliant and ambitious researcher and an engaged and passionate teacher," said Larry Larson, The new dean of Brown University’s School of Engineering.

Lawrence Larson became the inaugural dean of Brown University’s School of Engineering, which was approved to be elevated from a division to a school last year.

Larson, an expert in microelectronics technology and wireless communications, came to Providence from his role as the chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California-San Diego.Last year, Larson predicted that within a decade wireless devices and sensors will be so inexpensive that they could be embedded into almost any manufactured object and located anywhere thought GPS technology in his presentation “Wireless Everywhere and in Everything.”

PBN: First of all, congratulations on your new role. How do you see your first year going? Do you feel ready for the position? Is this a big leap from your previous roles?

LARSON: Thank you! It is great to be here in Providence – after 30 years in southern California, my family and I are looking forward to the beautiful New England fall.

I’m planning to spend a lot of my first year working with everyone at Brown to build momentum for the growth of the School of Engineering. We’re trying to build a world-class research enterprise in Engineering, which builds on our historic strengths in teaching and research, and on our wonderful students.

Becoming a dean is a huge leap for anyone – there are no “dean schools” – but I’m fortunate to have a wonderful staff and amazing faculty here at Brown to help me. So far, the transition has been just great.

PBN: You’ve said that your primary goal is to recruit new faculty in cutting-edge research areas. Who’s on your dream list?

LARSON: A great university thrives on the quality of its faculty, and the best faculty member is a rare combination of a brilliant and ambitious researcher and an engaged and passionate teacher. My major goal for the next few years will be to find these special people and convince them that Brown is the place they should spend the rest of their careers. We’ll be recruiting in areas of Engineering that have special interdisciplinary connections to the rest of Brown, and are in emerging areas of key societal needs: health care, the environment, energy and entrepreneurship.

PBN: You’ve also mentioned that you’d like to expand on graduate programs and create “groundbreaking” undergraduate programs. What did you have in mind?

LARSON: Most engineers go on to do graduate work at some point in their careers – it’s almost a requirement if you want to do cutting-edge work. One of our goals in the coming years is to expand our offerings of master’s degree programs that are targeted at students who want to take this next step in their careers. At the same time we also intend to expand our Ph.D.-level research, which is a key means for creating the new knowledge and new technologies that create new jobs and benefits all of society.

Life-changing undergraduate education is the heart of Brown University. One of the things I want to expand in the coming years is undergraduate research opportunities. Brown’s undergraduates are just amazing, and I want to make sure that each of them has the opportunity to work in a professor’s lab and have a meaningful research experience.

PBN: How do you plan to lead Brown’s school through the “fundamental transformation” that engineering is undergoing as barriers between traditional disciplines meld? What’s the strategy?

LARSON: One of the reasons I was attracted to Brown is its unique collaborative and interdisciplinary culture. This culture is uniquely well suited to the changes that are going on in the world around us, where traditional barriers between disciplines are breaking down, and great new opportunities lie at the boundaries between disciplines. So, we will look for new faculty members who are well suited to thrive in this new world in which we find ourselves. We already have some great examples of faculty here in Engineering who are leading the way. For example, Professor Arto Nurmikko’s work with John Donoghue and the Warren Alpert Medical School on brain interface technologies unites the disciplines of neuroscience, engineering, biology and medicine.

PBN: Where’s the current weak spot at the school that you’d like to fix?

LARSON: I’ve been amazed by the broad strengths of the Brown program since I arrived. The engineering program at Brown is the oldest in the Ivy League and the third oldest civilian engineering program in the U.S. So, we have a rich and distinguished history. We’re really focused on making it even better and more visible, by recruiting the best faculty, expanding our educational offerings, and building a modern and expanded space for our ground-breaking research.

Bioengineering Professor Leads Research on Head Impacts and Concussions in Football

2011-09-13T10:07:00.000-04:00

Researchers, including biomedical engineering Professor Joseph J. "Trey" Crisco, gathered data on the frequency, direction, and magnitude of head impacts from players who wore sensor-equipped helmets during three football seasons at Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Virginia Tech. The data amount to a measure of players’ exposure to head impacts, which can ultimately help physicians and scientists understand how concussions occur.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Thousands of college football players began competing around the nation this week, but with the thrill of the new season comes new data on the risks of taking the field. A new study reports that running backs and quarterbacks suffer the hardest hits to the head, while linemen and linebackers are hit on the head most often. The researchers measured head blows during games and practices over three seasons at Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Virginia Tech.

The study, led by Joseph J. Crisco, professor of orthopaedics in the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and director of the bioengineering laboratory at Rhode Island Hospital, documented 286,636 head blows among 314 players in the 2007-09 seasons. Crisco said the new data on the magnitude, frequency, and location of head blows amounts to a measure of each player’s head impact exposure. Ultimately it can help doctors understand the biomechanics of how blows to the head result in injury.

“This allows us to quantify what the exposure is,” Crisco said. “It is the exposure that we need to build upon, so that we can then start understanding what the relationships are with acute and chronic head injury.”

The study appears online in advance in the Journal of Biomechanics.

Concussions and other head injuries have become a source of elevated concern in football and other sports in recent years, with various leagues revising policies to protect players better. In part based on seeing this new data, said Robin Harris, Ivy League executive director, league officials announced earlier this year that full-contact practices would be limited to two a week.

Hits by position

The new study documents the nature of head blows by player position. Players on the three teams wore helmets equipped with wireless sensors that measured acceleration in various directions. That data allowed the team of researchers from Brown, Dartmouth, Virginia Tech, and sensor-maker Simbex to discern how hard the hit was, how often each player was hit, and where on the helmet they were hit.

Crisco devised the algorithm that Simbex’s Head Impact Telemetry System uses to measure head impacts. The system’s development and this study were funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment.

The data on head acceleration and hit direction are used to calculate a composite score of exposure called HITsp that researchers believe might be a good predictor of concussion. On average, running backs had the highest HITsp, 36.1, followed by quarterbacks with 34.5 and linebackers at 32.6. Offensive and defensive linemen had the lowest HITsp numbers, with 29.0 and 28.9 respectively, but along with linebackers, they were hit on the head most often. Doctors worry not only about hit severity, but also hit frequency, because repeated head impacts may cause “subconcussive” neurological damage over time.

By analyzing head impacts by position, Crisco said, researchers can help football league officials and equipment designers begin to think about ways to make players safer.

“It will allow us to begin to understand how to control the exposures,” Crisco said. Controlling head impact exposure is critical, he added, because there are currently no treatments for acute or chronic brain injuries, and helmets cannot prevent injuries for all players in all situations.

One possibility could include rule changes. Another could include designing helmets for specific positions.

Crisco and his colleagues are now analyzing data about concussions during the three seasons to determine how and whether head impact exposure is associated with injury. He recently co-authored another paper about male and female collegiate hockey players, which reported that although women were diagnosed with more concussions, they sustained fewer and less severe head impacts.

Although Crisco’s analysis is still underway, his insights into head impact exposure led him and co-author Richard Greenwald, a Dartmouth engineer, to write a commentary earlier this year in Current Sports Medicine Reports, in which they argued that intentional use of the head in sports must be curbed.

“We propose the adoption of rules — or in some sports, we champion the enforcement of existing rules — that eliminate intentional head contact in helmeted sports,” they wrote. “When coupled with education that leads to modified tackling, blocking, or checking techniques, these rules will reduce head impact exposure and have the potential to reduce the incidence and severity of brain injury.”

Crisco, a former college football and lacrosse player, said he is passionate about contact sports and believes they have many benefits.

“Hitting is an essential component,” he said. “But intentional hitting with your head was never part of any sport and is poor technique.”

In addition to Crisco and Greenwald, other authors of the paper are Bethany Wilcox of Brown; Jonathan Beckwith and Jeffrey Chu of Simbex; Stefan Duma and Steve Rowson of Virginia Tech and Wake Forest; and Ann-Christine Duhaime, Arthur Maerlender, and Thomas McAllister of Dartmouth.

By David Orenstein

Brown’s Lei Yang ScM ’11 PhD ’11 Named a Sigma Xi Fresh Face as part of 125th Anniversary Celebration

2011-09-12T16:08:00.000-04:00

Brown University engineering alumnus Lei Yang ScM ’11 PhD ’11has been selected by the 125th Anniversary Planning Committee as a Sigma XiFresh Face. Sigma Xi, as part of its anniversary celebration, is recognizing select“students and early-career members who have shown promise in their respectivefields of study and dedication to Sigma Xi.”

Yang who was elected to full membership in Sigma Xi in 2011,received the Sigma Xi Outstanding Graduate Student Award at Brown in 2011. Atthe 2010 Sigma Xi Northeast Regional Research Poster Conference, Dr. Yang wonthe first place award.

Brian Sheldon, Lei Yang, Thomas Webster

Yang worked with Professors Thomas Webster and Brian Sheldonwhile obtaining his Ph.D. at Brown. His doctoral dissertation was on “NanocrystalineDiamond for Orthopedic Implant Coating Applications”. His work was recognizedwith the outstanding thesis award from the Brown School of Engineering in 2011.He is currently working as a postdoctoral research associate under Sheldon on “ElectricalField Induced Stress Evolution in Anodic Tantalum Oxide Films”.

Yang is already an accomplished researcher with threepatents and one pending patent to his credit. He has published more than 15refereed journal papers, and two book chapters.

He is the founding editor of Nano Bulletin, and has reviewedmanuscripts or proposals for 13 research journals. He has given 25 conferencepresentations and five invited talks.

Meet the Faculty: Andrew Peterson

2011-09-09T11:04:00.000-04:00

Someday, the world will run short of the hydrocarbons it currently uses for energy. Andrew Peterson is searching for a way to catalyze the conversion of renewable resources into hydrocarbon-based fuels.

It’s hard to imagine that society would abandon its use of carbon-based energy sources. So the question now is whether society can find a way to derive the benefits of hydrocarbons without exhausting supply. One answer may lie in producing carbon-based fuels from renewable sources.

“With renewable carbon-based fuels, your only choice is biomass,” said Andrew Peterson, who will join the School of Engineering this January as an assistant professor. “It’s great, but it’s limited. We need other options.”

Peterson’s primary research is devoted to figuring out how other renewable energies — sun, wind, maybe nuclear — can be harnessed to deliver the kick that hydrocarbons so easily provide. Scientists have investigated consummating the conversion by using a twin-electrode system that ultimately splits carbon dioxide molecules into hydrocarbons. The trick, however, is overcoming the steep energy threshold needed to pull off the reaction. “That’s the challenge. You need an electrocatalyst,” Peterson said.

Peterson’s approach is to bring advanced math to the problem. “I use quantum mechanics calculations to understand the reactions at those electrodes and then use that theory to design catalysts to make those reactions go better,” he said.

“At the end of the day, it’s about converting chemicals,” he continued, “and the way to do that is by a catalyst. That field has just hit the point in the last few years to design these catalysts from first principles, from quantum mechanics.”

There was no epiphany for the 35-year-old to enter chemical engineering. His father was a superintendent in the Dilworth, Minn., school district where Peterson grew up. His mother taught special-education and math classes in a nearby school district. He considered himself a “science nerd” — not a dynamite story.

After graduating from the University of Minnesota, majoring in chemical engineering, Peterson earned his master and doctorate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a graduate student, he banded together with a few classmates to form a company, C3 Bioenergy. Working nights and weekends, the young scientists demonstrated that the same feedstock used for ethanol could be transformed into propane through fermentation and treatment by water under high pressure and temperature. The idea got media attention and caught the eyes of investors. The group placed second in MIT’s $100K Business Plan Competition in 2007.

Despite the interest and attention, Peterson decided it wasn’t worth the risk. “It got to the point where we had to choose whether to leave graduate school and leave that path. It was a good choice (not to), I think.”

Even though he decided not to develop his company, Peterson has earned his corporate chops. He worked at the Cabot Corporation in Massachusetts and at British Petroleum and was a research engineer for four years at General Mills, where his innovations led to two patents. (He has three patents pending on separate inventions.)

He said the experience working for companies has helped him appreciate that his research should have a definable application. “Although I’m theoretically based, I don’t want (my research) to be abstract in the real world.”

Peterson moves to Providence with his wife, Alissa, a mechanical engineer who obtained a master’s degree at MIT. He is an avid hiker who has pulled off the Presidential Traverse, which involves summiting peaks named after presidents in the White Mountains in New Hampshire in a day or two.

By Richard Lewis

Meet the Faculty: Pedro Felzenszwalb

2011-09-09T10:12:00.000-04:00

Any small child can see that a truck is a truck and a bridge is a bridge. Computers, not so much. Pedro Felzenszwalb is trying to help computers “understand” the digital world they “see.”

Our ability to pick out objects and immediately characterize them is a trait we tend to take for granted. Even toddlers can distinguish a car from other objects in a given scene, such as a bus, a truck, a tree, a house, or a road.

“What seems simple is actually quite complex,” said Pedro Felzenszwalb, incoming associate professor of engineering. “It’s very subconscious. There’s a lot going on, and we don’t understand what the brain is doing, although we realize that there’s a lot that the brain is doing.”

Much of Felzenszwalb’s research is focused on computer vision, a field that uses algorithms and modeling to teach machines how to see. It’s tremendously complex, requiring the bridging of “semantic gaps,” as Felzenszwalb describes them, to enable computers to properly interpret visual cues in order to understand the content of an image.

“A lot of my work is trying to figure out how to build models that can represent interesting things but at the same time are amenable to computation,” Felzenszwalb said.

Back to the car. How can a computer model successfully describe a car? “These models are difficult to come up with, because there’s a lot going on when the image is formed,” Felzenszwalb said. “There are many different types, many different materials (for cars). You take a picture, and you need to factor in how the car looks based on color, the position of the camera relative to the car, other objects in the image, the light reflected, et cetera.”

Computer vision has important applications, including robotics and artificial intelligence, medical image analysis and computer graphics, as well as aiding our understanding of human perception and intelligence.

Felzenszwalb, 34, comes from the University of Chicago, where he was associate professor of computer science. He said that at Brown, he will be part of a computer-engineering group that will include researchers from applied mathematics, computer science, engineering, and possibly other disciplines. “It’s hard to box in,” he said.

Felzenszwalb grew up in Rio de Janeiro. His father is a mathematics professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, while his mother is a ceramics artist. His interest in computers began to blossom when as a young boy he programmed his own video games and built his own computer from a kit he had ordered. “You had to program it by flipping switches. I really like that kind of stuff,” he said.

He enrolled at Cornell and got involved in the robotics lab. “I’ve always really liked robots. I thought they were cool,” he said.

From there, Felzenszwalb earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty at Chicago in 2004 and was elevated to associate professor four years later.

He and his wife, Caroline Klivans (whom he met at Cornell), have bought a house on College Hill. The couple plan to get outside as often as they can with their children, Aaron, 4, and Audrey, 1.

By Richard Lewis

Meet the Faculty: Axel van de Walle

2011-09-08T09:29:00.000-04:00

Devising and then testing materials for a given application can consume vast quantities of time and effort. Axel van de Walle uses computers to predict how materials will perform under certain conditions. The limits to technological progress, he says, often lie in the materials.

Axel van de Walle is like a modern-day alchemist. Where old-school scientists, searching for a particular compound, mixed elements and noted the results, van de Walle uses computers and quantum mechanics to predict the end products of interactions.

“The idea is that it takes a lot of manpower and man-hours to do something experimentally,” said the incoming associate professor of engineering. “If you want to try thousands of combinations, you can, but you’ll need lots of research assistants, and it will take a lot of time. But if you can program a computer to do it, suddenly it becomes a lot more feasible (in terms of time and money). You don’t have to pay benefits to a computer.”

Of course, it’s nowhere near that easy. Van de Walle is quick to point out that he and others in the field are building on years of experimental work in phase diagrams, the road map in materials science that involves the mixing of elements. What he brings to the table is applying knowledge of the geometric structure of atoms and the dynamics of those interactions to narrow the focus in the hunt for new, exciting materials.

One of van de Walle’s interests is in refractory materials, which resist high temperatures without melting. Discovering materials that can withstand hotter temperatures has obvious potential applications, from turbine engines to rockets — or any fuel-burning device for that matter.

It’s that societal benefit derived from fundamental research that rings true for van de Walle and led him to materials engineering. “It makes you feel better,” he said. “You don’t want to be in your own bubble.”

The 39-year-old van de Walle grew up in Quebec City. His father was a mining geologist contracted to government and industry, and his mother was a librarian. He described his parents as “scientifically curious,” and said he had always been interested in science. As a child, he was fascinated by physics. “But then I realized, maybe I also like things with concrete applications,” he said. “And then I noticed that materials (science) tends to be a pretty general topic. It seemed like there were open questions that were difficult and useful.”

One such question, he noted, revolves around energy. The efficient harnessing or production of energy is not limited so much by ideas, but by the right materials. “If you think about batteries and fuel cells,” van de Walle said, “the limits lie in the materials. People know how to make a battery or a fuel cell. But to make them work even better, you need improvements in the materials.”

Van de Walle earned his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He comes to Brown from the California Institute of Technology, where he was an assistant professor in the Engineering and Applied Science Division. He also comes with substantial grant support. The day he started at Brown, he got official confirmation of the most recent funding, van de Walle happily relayed, thanks to the grant officers at the University who helped write the application before he had stepped on campus.

This fall, he will teach a class on thermodynamics. Beyond teaching and research, van de Walle expects to have little free time, with his second child born less than a month ago.

By Richard Lewis

Meet the Faculty: Nitin Padture

2011-09-07T15:33:00.000-04:00

Ceramics is an engineering field with limitless possibilities and versatility, Nitin Padture says. Ceramics, for example, can be used as an insulator and as a superconductor.

To some, ceramics is the stuff of art, the ingredient for fashioning vases, figures and other pretty objects. To Nitin Padture, ceramics is an engineer’s putty, a material prized for its conductivity and its resistance to heat.

Padture, incoming professor of engineering, has devoted much of his nearly 30-year career to researching the uses of ceramics. He has come up with several innovations, including a thermal coating to optimize the performance of jet engines and to protect the super-hot turbines in power plants.

“Since I was an undergraduate, I’ve always been interested in ceramics,” said Padture, who was the founding director of the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Emergent Materials at The Ohio State University before coming to Brown. “I sensed there were a lot of possibilities. It’s such a versatile field, and it can have such a wide range of properties, from being an insulator to a superconductor. It always attracted me, and so I followed it.”

Padture, born in India, grew up on the industry floor and often accompanied his father, a civil engineer, to the foundries he managed, where workers manufactured castings for big companies. “I would watch these enormous machines melt this steel, white hot sparks everywhere. I’ve always been fascinated by these materials. It was the highlight of our summer.”

When he wasn’t at the factory, he tinkered at home. Padture had his own workshop, building motors, generators and telephones. As a boy of 10 or 11, he built a telephone using old-fashioned shaving blades stuck vertically into a hollow box, with a pencil lead balanced between the blades to convert the vibrations to an electrical signal that corresponds to sound. “I could speak into it, and you could hear it in the room next door,” he said.

He graduated to bigger things at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, an institution with which Brown established a multifaceted partnership in 2010. There, Padture discovered ceramics after learning that the school did not offer materials science.

He worked with ceramics ever since. In 2007, Padture and colleagues published a paper showing that zirconium dioxide — synthetic diamonds — could be used to coat jet engine turbines blades, which meant the engines could run at higher temperatures and more efficiently. In another paper, he discovered a new class of ceramic coatings that could protect jet engines from volcanic ash, a worry to the airline industry after a volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded European air travel for days last year.

The ceramic coatings also could be used by the power industry, where gas turbines generate 23 percent of the country’s electricity. To operate most efficiently, temperatures need to reach 1,400 degrees Celsius. The ceramic coating prevents the two-story-high gas turbines from melting the metallic components within.

Padture also is investigating graphene, the single-atom thick carbon sheets that are the current darlings of materials science for potential uses in electronics and other fields. He has developed a technique to stamp many graphene sheets onto a substrate at once, in precise locations. The method could usher in high-throughput manufacturing of graphene into computer chips.

“We’re still working on it, but it has the potential to become a viable method for making site-specific graphene sheets,” Padture said. He expects to collaborate with engineering professors Huajian Gao, Robert Hurt, Brian Sheldon, and Vivek Shenoy. “That was a draw — people at Brown who work in areas similar to mine — and I can bring something to the table.”

When not teaching or in his lab, Padture likely will be cruising the countryside on his cherished motorcycle, an Aprilia Futura RST 1000. Chances are neither his wife, Sherilyn, nor his son, Siddharth, an undergraduate at Boston University, will be riding along. “She doesn’t mind me doing this, but she’s not that keen on it,” he said.

By Richard Lewis

Meet the Faculty: Lawrence Larson

2011-09-07T14:43:00.000-04:00

Integrated circuits, wireless communications, computer engineering — Larry Larson had a rich research background when he began taking on senior administrative responsibilities at the University of California–San Diego. The chance to be the first dean of Brown’s School of Engineering was an exciting prospect.

Larry Larson comes to Brown University as more than faculty. He comes as the founding dean of the newly created Brown School of Engineering.

Larson started as dean on July 1. After a summer on the job, he has enunciated a vision for the school: Recruit the best faculty; build modern, expanded space for research; in time, move into a new building.

“When really great people come to a place, what are they looking for?” Larson said. “They’re looking for great people to latch onto. They’re looking for space to become world leaders in research. That’s the vision I’m trying to help Brown University realize. I have bought into that.”

In a way, this is the third and final act of a distinguished career for the 53-year-old Larson. For 16 years, he worked at Hughes Research Laboratories. There, he pioneered the development of analog integrated circuits and new generations of low-noise high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs), as well as microwave integrated circuits in SiGe HBT technology.

In a presentation late last year titled “Wireless Everywhere and in Everything,” Larson predicted that within a decade wireless devices and sensors will be so inexpensive that they can be embedded into almost any manufactured object and located almost anywhere through GPS technology. “It’s not implausible to think that pretty much everything we think about in a cell phone is going to be on something the size of the head of a pin,” he said.

After Hughes, Larson entered academia, joining the faculty at the University of California–San Diego in 1996. From 2001 to 2006, he was director of the UCSD Center for Wireless Communications. During his tenure, the center had an annual budget of approximately $2.5 million that supported 25 faculty members and approximately 45 Ph.D. students, as well as partnering with a dozen companies. He also chaired the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering and was the first faculty member to hold the Communications Industry Chair.

Larson said he was quite comfortable at UCSD, with no plans to move, until he heard about the opening at Brown. It was the chance, he recalled, of leading a major research enterprise at an Ivy League school.

“President Simmons gave me a vision of a really excellent university that wants to grow its science research and engineering, while staying true to its excellence in education and the liberal arts,” Larson said.

He continued, “Now, I’m trying to leverage all the things I learned in research to the administrative side. I’m at the point in my life when I really want to make an impact and especially at a place like Brown.”

Although the majority of his time will be on the administrative side, Larson plans to pursue research into low-power microelectronics for brain interface applications and in health. He’s excited to work with peers such as John Donoghue in neuroscience and Arto Nurmikko in engineering, who are involved in a cutting-edge project to repair damaged signals in the human brain.

The move to the East Coast has other benefits as well. Larson’s daughter attends the Rhode Island School of Design, while his son is enrolled at Oberlin College, in Ohio. An exercise enthusiast, he and his wife are looking forward to exploring the bike and walking trails in Rhode Island.

By Richard Lewis

Brown School of Engineering to Host Open House for Prospective Students

2011-09-01T10:18:00.002-04:00

The Brown University School of Engineering will hold an open house on Saturday, September 24, from 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. in room 166 of the Barus and Holley building (184 Hope Street / Corner of Hope and George Streets). The faculty of the School of Engineering and the Office of Admissions invite prospective applicants, parents, teachers, and guidance counselors to attend this open house.

The program will include an overview of the undergraduate programs of study, information about faculty and student research interests, opportunity to meet faculty and undergraduates from the School of Engineering, and a brief overview of admissions and financial aid.

Students are asked to please RSVP online by Monday, September 19. Students may visit our event website or call (401) 863-7930 for further information.

The Brown undergraduate engineering program enrolls 400 students, and is the oldest in the Ivy League and the third oldest civilian program in the nation. Students may earn a bachelor of science degree in one of seven ABET accredited programs: biomedical engineering, chemical and biochemical engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, materials engineering, or mechanical engineering.

For any students arriving on campus early, the admissions office offers regularly scheduled information sessions at 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. and campus tours at 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., and 11:00 a.m. Reservations are not necessary for these sessions. Tours leave from the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center located at 75 Waterman Street.

Brown/IMNI Part of Consortium Awarded $450,000 to Research Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

2011-08-31T15:21:00.000-04:00

The Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation (IMNI) at Brown University is part of a consortium, led by Gulf State partner Tulane University, that has been selected to receive funding as part of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GRI-BP) program to address future large-scale petroleum spills. The Brown / IMNI sub-award is $450,000 and focuses on particle-based alternatives to chemical dispersants.

Media contact: Dr. Robert Gropp
gripress@aibs.org

Reston, VA – Research on the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico took a major step forward today with the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GRI) Research Board’s announcement that eight Research Consortia will be funded for the next three years. A total of $112.5 million over three years will support this portion of the GRI research effort. These teams will investigate the fate of petroleum in the environment, the impacts of the spill, and the development of new tools and technology for responding to future spills and improving mitigation and restoration.

The grant recipients announced today were selected using a competitive merit-review process.

The GRI Research Board is an independent body established by BP to administer the company’s 10-year, $500 million commitment to independent research into the effects of the Deepwater Horizon incident. Through a series of competitive grant programs, the GRI is investigating the impacts of the oil, dispersed oil, and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and the affected coastal States in a broad context of improving fundamental understanding of the dynamics of such events and their environmental stresses and public health implications. The GRI also funds research that improves techniques for detecting oil and gas, spill mitigation, and technologies to characterize and remediate spills. Knowledge accrued will be applied to restoration and to improving the long-term environmental health of the Gulf of Mexico.

“I know the research community has been awaiting this announcement,” said Dr. Rita R. Colwell, Chairman of the GRI Research Board. “The GRI worked aggressively to develop RFP-I to ensure that we stimulate critically important research. The GRI has continued to work relentlessly to receive and review grants in order to make this announcement by the deadline we set last April.”

The grants awarded today were in response to RFP-I, a request for proposals the GRI Research Board issued on April 25, 2011. This request for proposals solicited applications from Research Consortia –
groups of researchers with compatible expertise from four or more institutions – to address one or more of the five intellectual themes established by the GRI Research Board. These themes are: 1) Physical distribution, dispersion, and dilution of petroleum, its constituents, and associated contaminants under the action of physical oceanographic processes, air-sea interactions, and tropical storms; 2) Chemical evolution and biological degradation of the petroleum/dispersant systems and subsequent interaction with coastal, open-ocean, and deep-water ecosystems; 3) Environmental effects of the petroleum/dispersant system on the sea floor, water column, coastal waters, beach sediments, wetlands, marshes, and organisms, and the science of ecosystem recovery; 4) Technology developments for improved responses, mitigation, detection, characterization, and remediation associated with oil spills and gas releases; and 5) Fundamental scientific research integrating results from the other four themes in the context of public health.

“These Consortia establish a research community of great strength with promise of substantial achievement. The results will illuminate the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill, and enable appropriate responses should there be future releases not only in the Gulf of Mexico, but anywhere that oil and gas is produced in ocean environments. They will also assist local, state and federal agencies in their work to remediate the consequences of the oil spill in coastal and marine environments. The long term contribution of this research will be of major benefit to industry, governments, and the people who live along the Gulf of Mexico coast,” said Colwell.

“The GRI received a number of excellent proposals,” said Colwell; “Following a competitive merit review process the Research Board approved funding for eight Research Consortia. These groups will be funded for the next three years and will then be eligible to apply for additional funding.”

The Research Consortia funded are:

Lead Institution: The University of Texas at Austin, Marine Science Institute.
Lead Investigator: Edward J. Buskey, Ph.D.
Project Title: “The Impact of Biological, Physical and Chemical Processes on the Fate of Oil Spills – bridging small scale processes with meso-scale modeling,”
Member Institutions: The Johns Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Minnesota, SINTEF Norway, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Research Applied Technology Education Services (Rates)/Coastal Oil Spill Simulation System (COSS)

Lead Institution: Texas A&M University at College Station.
Lead Investigator: Piers Chapman, Ph.D.
Project Title: “Gulf of Mexico Integrated Spill Response Consortium.”
Member Institutions: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, North Carolina State University, University of Texas at Austin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of Maryland, Georgia Institute of Technology

Lead Institution: Florida State University.
Lead Investigator: Eric Chassignet, Ph.D. Project Title: “Deep-C: Deepsea to Coast Connectivity in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.”
Member Institutions: Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Florida Institute of Oceanography, Georgia Institute of Technology, Naval Research Laboratory, Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Science Applications
International Corporation, University of South Florida, University of West Florida, University of Miami, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Lead Institution: Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
Lead Investigator: Nancy N. Rabalais, Ph.D.
Project Title: “The Effects of the Macondo Oil Spill on Coastal Ecosystems.”
Member Institutions: Brigham Young University, Connecticut College, Florida Gulf Coast University, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, Louisiana State University, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of Maryland, University of Tennessee, Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Lead Institution: University of South Florida.
Lead Investigator: Jacqueline Dixon, Ph.D.
Project Title: “Center for Integrated Modeling and Analysis of the Gulf Ecosystem (C-IMAGE).”
Member Institutions: Eckerd College, University of West Florida, Florida Institute of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, Florida State University, University of Miami, Mote Marine Laboratory, North Carolina State University, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at San Diego, Pennsylvania State University, Leibniz Institute, Hamburg University of Technology, NHL University of Applied Sciences, University of Calgary, Wageningen University

Lead Institution: University of Miami.
Lead Investigator: Tamay Özgökmen, Ph.D.
Project Title: “Consortium for Advanced Research of Hydrocarbon Transport in the Environment (CARTHE).”
Member Institutions: City University of New York, Staten Island, Florida International University, Florida State University, Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Laboratory, Nova Southeastern University, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Tulane University, University of Arizona, University of Delaware, University of Texas at Austin

Lead Institution: Tulane University.
Lead Investigator: Vijay T. John, Ph.D.
Project Title: “The Science and Technology of Dispersants as Relevant to Deep Sea Oil Releases.”
Member Institutions: University of South Florida, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Rhode Island, Princeton University, Auburn University, Louisiana State University, City University of New York, University of Houston, University of Minnesota, University of Buffalo, Arizona State University, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, North Carolina State University, Brown University, University of Michigan, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Southern Mississippi, University of Maryland, Florida International University, Georgetown University, Princeton University

Lead Institution: University of Mississippi.
Lead Investigator: Raymond Highsmith, Ph.D.
Project Title: “Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG).”
Member Institutions: University of Southern Mississippi, University of Georgia, Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Temple University, Oregon State University, Pennsylvania State
University, Columbia University, University of Maryland, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Texas at Austin, J. Craig Venter Institute

This is the second round of funding the GRI has provided this year. On June 30, 2011, the Research Board awarded 17 grants totaling $1.5 million to support the time-sensitive acquisition of critical samples and observations associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico. Funding for these grants was awarded under the terms of an emergency request for proposals, RFP-III. There will be an additional opportunity for researchers to pursue funding from the GRI. Colwell advised, “The GRI is working to develop and issue another request for proposals, RFP-II, which will award approximately $7.5 million a year in smaller grants to individual or small teams of researchers.”
________________________________
The GRI Research Board members are:
Rita R. Colwell, Ph.D., Research Board Chair
Margaret Leinen, Ph.D., Research Board Vice Chair
Debra S. Benoit, M.Ed.
Peter G. Brewer, Ph.D.
Richard E. Dodge, Ph.D.
John W. Farrington, Ph.D.
Kenneth M. Halanych, Ph.D.
David Halpern, Ph.D.
William T. Hogarth, Ph.D.
Jörg Imberger, Ph.D.
Raymond L. Orbach, Ph.D.
Jürgen Rullkötter, Ph.D.
David R. Shaw, Ph.D.
John Shepherd, Ph.D.
Bob Shipp, Ph.D.
Burton Singer, Ph.D.
Ciro V. Sumaya, M.D., MPHTM
Denis Wiesenburg, Ph.D.
Charles Wilson, Ph.D.
Dana Yoerger, Ph.D.

For more information about the GRI or the Research Board, please visit:
www.griresearchboard.org .

Brown University Biomedical Engineering Program Receives Full Six-Year Accreditation

2011-08-31T11:57:00.000-04:00

After a complete review, the undergraduate program in biomedical engineering at Brown University has received ABET accreditation through September 30, 2017.

“This is the best possible result,” said Dean Larry Larson, “and represents a major accomplishment for the Center of Biomedical Engineering, the School of Engineering and the Division of Biology and Medicine.”

The external ABET evaluation team examined all aspects of the curricula, student outcomes and feedback from alumni and students, and determined that the Brown biomedical engineering program met the standards for a full six-year accreditation, the longest possible result.

“This is a well deserved recognition of excellence,” said Edward Wing, Dean of the Warren Alpert Medical School, “and an acknowledgement that Biomedical Engineering brings together faculty from Engineering, BioMed and our affiliated hospitals for an outstanding curriculum.”

The review was led by Professors Anubhav Tripathi and Jeffrey Morgan, co-directors of the Center of Biomedical Engineering with assistance from faculty, staff and students who worked on the preparation of the materials for the review.

“As an Ivy League university competing for today’s brightest students and faculty, Brown biomedical engineering offers an opportunity for scholarship in a burgeoning multidisciplinary context where the synthesis of life sciences and engineering creates new knowledge and real solutions for modern medical care,” said Tripathi.

Nickel nanoparticles may contribute to lung cancer

2011-08-23T11:17:00.000-04:00

Lab experiments find that nickel particles with diameters billionths of a meter wide can trigger a cellular pathway that promotes cancer growth.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — All the excitement about nanotechnology comes down to this: Structures of materials at the scale of billionths of a meter take on unusual properties. Technologists often focus on the happier among these newfound capabilities, but new research by an interdisciplinary team of scientists at Brown University finds that nanoparticles of nickel activate a cellular pathway that contributes to cancer in human lung cells.

When human lung epithelial cells are exposed to equivalent doses of nano-sized (left) or micro-sized (right) metallic nickel particles, activated HIF-1 alpha pathways (stained green) appear mostly with the nanoparticles.

“Nanotechnology has tremendous potential and promise for many applications,” said Agnes Kane, chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. “But the lesson is that we have to learn to be able to design them more intelligently and, if we recognize the potential hazards, to take adequate precautions.”

Kane is the senior author of the study published in advance online this month in the journal Toxicological Sciences.

Nickel nanoparticles had already been shown to be harmful, but not in terms of cancer. Kane and her team of pathologists, engineers and chemists found evidence that ions on the surface of the particles are released inside human epithelial lung cells to jumpstart a pathway called HIF-1 alpha. Normally the pathway helps trigger genes that support a cell in times of low oxygen supply, a problem called hypoxia, but it is also known to encourage tumor cell growth.

“Nickel exploits this pathway, in that it tricks the cell into thinking there’s hypoxia but it’s really a nickel ion that activates this pathway,” said Kane, whose work is supported by a National Institues of Health Superfund Research Program Grant. “By activating this pathway it may give premalignant tumor cells a head start.”

Size matters

The research team, led by postdoctoral research associate and first author Jodie Pietruska, exposed human lung cells to nanoscale particles of metallic nickel and nickel oxide, and larger microscale particles of metallic nickel. A key finding is that while the smaller particles set off the HIF-1 alpha pathway, the larger metallic nickel particles proved much less problematic.

In other words, getting down to the nanoscale made the metallic nickel particles more harmful and potentially cancer-causing. Kane said the reason might be that for the same amount of metal by mass, nanoscale particles expose much more surface area and that makes them much more chemically reactive than microscale particles.

Another important result from the work is data showing a big difference in how nickel nanoparticles and nickel oxide nanoparticles react with cells, Pietruska said. The nickel oxide particles are so lethal that the cells exposed to them died quickly, leaving no opportunity for cancer to develop. Metallic nickel particles, on the other hand, were less likely to kill the cells. That could allow the hypoxia pathway to lead to the cell becoming cancerous.

“What is concerning is the metallic nickel nanoparticles caused sustained activation but they were less cytotoxic,” Pietruska said. “Obviously a dead cell can’t be transformed.”

Although Kane said the findings should raise clear concerns about handling nickel nanoparticles, for instance to prevent airborne exposure to them in manufacturing, they are not all that’s needed to cause cancer. Cancer typically depends on a number of unfortunate changes, Kane said. Also, she said, the study looked at the short-term effects of nickel nanoparticle exposure in cells in a lab, rather than over the long term in a whole organism.

Still, in her lab Kane employs significant safeguards to keep researchers safe.

“We handle all these materials under biosafety level 2 containment conditions,” she said. “I don’t want anyone exposed. We’re handling them as though they were an airborne carcinogen.”

In addition to Kane and Pietruska, other authors on the paper are Ashley Smith, Kevin McNeil, and Anatoly Zhitkovich, a toxicologist; chemist Xinyuan Liu; and engineer Robert Hurt. Kane, Hurt, and Zhitkovich are associated with Brown’s Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation.

Thomas Powers named Director of Graduate Programs for School of Engineering

2011-08-19T10:05:00.000-04:00

Professor Thomas Powers has been named the director of graduate programs at the School of Engineering at Brown University for the 2011-12 academic year.

“Professor Powers was recommended and nominated by several of his colleagues, and I want to thank him for his service to the School of Engineering in filling this vital role,” said Larry Larson, Dean of the School of Engineering.

Professor Powers received an S.B. in physics and an S.B. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Insitute of Technology in 1989. In 1995, he received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania. After Penn, he held postdoctoral positions in the physics departments of Princeton University and the University of Arizona. Then, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. He joined the Division of Engineering of Brown University in 2000 as the first holder of the James R. Rice Term Chair in Solid Mechanics.

Professor Powers' research interests include molecular and cellular biomechanics, the physics of soft matter, and nonlinear dynamics. He is currently an associate editor of Reviews of Modern Physics.

Karen Haberstroh named Director of Undergraduate Programs for School of Engineering

2011-08-18T13:45:00.000-04:00

Professor Karen Haberstroh has been named the director of undergraduate programs at the School of Engineering at Brown University for the 2011-12 academic year.

“As a former undergraduate engineer at Brown and a professor who has excelled at teaching the introductory Engin 3 course to first semester freshmen, Karen is well-suited to this important role,” said Larry Larson, Dean of the School of Engineering.

Haberstroh is the Director of STEM Outreach and an Assistant Professor of Research (Engineering) at Brown. Prior to joining the University, she served as an assistant professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University.

Her degrees are in biomedical engineering from Brown University (Sc.B., 1995) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (M.S., 1996; Ph.D., 2000). Prof. Haberstroh's research addresses the use of novel nano-structured polymeric materials in soft tissue engineering applications.

In addition to her research accomplishments, Dr. Haberstroh is dedicated to engineering and science education, and especially focuses on novel methods of education geared towards increasing the percentages of females and minorities in various physical science fields. Finally, she has worked to build connections between the Providence Public School system and Brown University, so that students in the rising generation might consider futures in science.

Brown Professor Thomas Webster receives Patent for “Nanofibers as a Neural Biomaterial”

2011-08-16T09:51:00.038-04:00

Dr. Thomas Webster, associate professor at the Brown University School of Engineering, has received a patent for "Nanofibers as a Neural Biomaterial," U.S. Patent Number: 7,993,412. Professor Webster has now been awarded 11 full patents plus four provisional patents in his 11 years in academics (five years at Brown and six years at Purdue).

The technology in this patent describes the use of carbon nanotubes/nanofibers to heal a wide range of neurological disorders, from stroke to Parkinson's disease. In this technology, carbon nanotubes and nanofibers, which are tubes and fibers formed from the helical arrangement of carbon, were shown to significantly promote the function of neurons while inhibiting glial scar tissue formation to reverse brain damage. In particular, the unique high conductivity coupled with high strength to low weight ratios of carbon nanotubes were helpful for stimulating functions of nuerons. Carbon nanotubes have even been shown to improve stem cell differentiation into neurons in animal experiments. Currently, this technology is licensed to Nanovis, Inc. (www.nanovis.com)

Webster received his bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and his master’s degree and and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Professor Webster directs the Nanomedicine Laboratory which designs, synthesizes, and evaluates nanophase materials for various implant applications. Nanophase materials are central to the field of nanotechnology and are materials with one dimension less than 100 nm. Materials investigates to date include nanophase ceramics, metals, polymers, carbon fibers, and composites. Organ systems evaluated to date include orthopedic, cartilage, vascular, bladder, and the central and peripheral nervous systems.

His lab group has generated four books, 33 book chapters, 85 invited prestentations (including tutorials), 215 literature articles and/or conference proceeding, and 245 conference presentations. His technology has resulted in one start-up company. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Nanomedicine and is on the editorial board of ten other journals. He has organized over 25 symposia at academic conferences. Dr. Webster was the 2002 recipient of the Biomedical Engineering Society Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award, the 2004 recipient of the Outstanding Young Investigator Award for the Schools of Engineering at Purdue University, the 2004 finalist for the Young Investigator Award of the American Society for Nanomedicine, and the 2005 recipient of the Wallance Coulter Foundation Early Career Award.

Brown Researchers Honored for simulation video

2011-08-11T11:50:00.000-04:00

A scientific simulation video created by a group of Brown researchers, including Professor Emeritus Bruce Caswell from the School of Engineering, is among those honored by the U.S. Department of Energy during its annual program called SciDAC, or Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing. The simulation was created to explore microscopic interactions between healthy blood cells and sickly ones. A second simulation in the video captures how blood-clotting platelets cram into a potentially lethal aneurysm, a weakened cell wall that bulges outward.

Full report online: www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/science-simulation-videos/?pid=1748&page
id=68951&viewall=true

Professor Eric Suuberg Named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society

2011-08-09T13:55:00.000-04:00

Brown University Professor of Engineering Eric Suuberg is the first faculty member at Brown to become a fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The society announced its 2011 class of fellows on Aug. 8. Suuberg, associate director of the Superfund Research Program and co-director of the Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME), said the recognition is an unexpected surprise and honor: “I am quite proud to join a distinguished group of individuals who have made significant contributions in the chemical sciences.” Suuberg joins 212 scientists who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in chemistry and made important contributions to ACS, the world’s largest scientific society. The 2011 fellows will be recognized Aug. 29 during the society’s national meeting in Denver. This is not Suuberg’s first honor from the ACS. The society awarded him the H.H. Storch Award for Fuels Chemistry Research in 1999.

Professor Suuberg has been at Brown since 1981, when he was one of the founding members of Brown's Chemical Engineering program. His research interests have been in the areas of energy and environmental engineering. He has served as Associate Dean of the Faculty (2002-2005), as Chair of the Psychology Department (2004-5) and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Division of Engineering. He is currently Co-Director of the Superfund Basic Research Program, and a co-founder of the Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship concentration as well as a co-founder of the PRIME master’s program. He is a principal editor of the journal Fuel.

Professor Suuberg's research interests center on energy and environmental areas, involving study of fuel chemistry (coal, oil shale, biomass), activated carbons (production and properties), materials reuse (automobile tires, coal fly ash), fire safety and, most recently, the characterization and cleanup of lands and sediments contaminated with mixed pollutants with a focus on thermodynamics of mixtures of high molecular weight organic compounds and the related problem of vapor intrusion.

He received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from M.I.T., a master’s degree in management science from M.I.T., and an Sc.D. in chemical engineering from M.I.T.

Engineering Professor Janet Blume Named Associate Dean of the Faculty

2011-07-22T08:53:00.000-04:00

Brown University Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin has announced that Associate Professor of Engineering Janet Blume has been appointed as associate dean of the faculty for the academic year 2011-12.

“I wanted to congratulate Janet Blume for this wonderful appointment, which is a well deserved recognition of her many contributions to Brown throughout her career,” said Larry Larson, Dean of the School of Engineering. “It is great to know that her remarkable effectiveness and enthusiasm will be assisting the Dean of Faculty in the coming year.”

Blume, whose research is in mathematical aspects of the mechanics of solids, has been on the faculty at Brown since 1986. She teaches courses at all levels in engineering, including the introductory first-year course, and has served as director of undergraduate programs in the School of Engineering.

Blume's contributions have been recognized with the Philip J. Bray medal for Excellence in Teaching in the Physical Sciences (1997), the Tau Beta Pi School of Engineering Dedicated
Faculty Member Award (2009), and the Karen T. Romer Prize for Excellence in Advising (2011).

Blume graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of science degree in engineering from Princeton (1982), and holds a Ph.D. in applied mechanics from Caltech (1986). She will begin her work in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty effective August 1.

Brown Alumna Builds Miniscule Medical Implants to Treat Diseases

2011-07-21T10:04:00.000-04:00

Brown engineering alumna and UCSF bioengineer Tejal Desai builds medical implants – with parts as tiny as human cells – that may be used to treat diabetes, kidney failure and other diseases.

As a Santa Barbara high school student, Tejal Desai got a kick out of making things work. Her father was a chemical engineer, and she thought she knew what engineering was all about.

So, she was startled when a bioengineer visited her class and told the students about research to develop artificial organs and implants.

“I was very excited. I had always thought that engineering was about building bridges and mechanical devices. I didn’t know you could use it to help people.”

The class visit was part of a national program to encourage girls to pursue engineering careers. The revelation about artificial organs started Desai on two paths. She not only became a bioengineer, but also an outspoken advocate for young women entering science and engineering fields.

“Because I was so influenced by that program myself, I’ve always had an interest in mentoring girls of various backgrounds who are interested in science and engineering careers," she said. "I hope that if you can encourage them and make them enthusiastic, it will help them continue. It’s something I believe in.”

As a bioengineering undergraduate at Brown University, Desai (Class of '94) also studied sociology and political science, and after college, she played an active – even activist – role in urging her alma mater to assure that female students and faculty had full opportunity to pursue the sciences and engineering. She ended up writing a 100-page document outlining admission policy changes that would encourage more student and faculty diversity in these fields.

Her other path has led her to develop new ways to make implantable medical devices so small that their individual parts are the size of human cells. Such minuscule implants can overcome the limitations of conventional therapy to treat diabetes, kidney failure and other debilitating diseases.

The new tiny-focused technology ironically goes by a very long name: biomedical micro-electro-mechanical systems (bio MEMS). "Micro" refers to sizes that are thousandths of a millimeter, the size of a human cell. The technology now increasingly focuses on still smaller, "nano" scales – millionths of a millimeter.

Desai directs the Laboratory of Therapeutic and Micro and Nanotechnology at UCSF. Her lab has gained national attention for devising and demonstrating the feasibility of an implantable artificial pancreas to treat type 1 diabetes. People with type 1 diabetes cannot maintain healthy blood sugar levels because their immune systems attack and destroy their precious insulin-producing “beta cells” in the pancreas.

Even with frequent self-monitoring and injections of insulin, the blood sugar levels of those with type 1 diabetes spike and plummet, degrading the body’s crucial ability to regulate many metabolic functions. Though self-treatment is fairly effective in the short-run, type 1 diabetes, if left untreated, can ultimately lead to cardiac complications, poor circulation that threatens limbs, and generally, a shorter life span.

Desai conceived of a kind of micro/nano-scale cage, to protect beta cells in the body. The cage, or biocapsule, contains “nanopores” large enough to allow the vital beta cells to secrete insulin, but small enough to prevent the immune system’s molecular soldiers from entering and destroying the beta cells. The device could be implanted near the abdominal wall, or anywhere in the body where the cells are exposed to the body’s sugar levels.

Unlike self-administered insulin shots, an implantable device maintains and protects the body’s natural insulin control and allows normal regulation of the body’s metabolism. It is a cure.

The micro-parts are made of materials accepted by they body’s immune system, and are fabricated using the techniques developed by California’s microelectronics industry. Desai’s lab has already demonstrated in animals that the artificial pancreas device works as intended.

She expects that this technology could be of use for many other chronic, cell-based diseases, such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, hormone deficiencies – anywhere the body is unable to produce something it needs naturally, she said.

Desai earned her doctorate in the UC Berkeley and UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering – a collaboration between the two UC campuses that draws on Berkeley’s nationally recognized engineering expertise and UCSF’s equally recognized clinical research and treatment programs.

“We’ve always felt that we could be better together than either of us apart, and now it’s one of the highest ranked programs in bioengineering in the country,” she said.

Desai is an active member in two other productive collaborations – UCSF’s bioengineering and therapeutic sciences department, and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, or QB3, which links UC Berkeley, UCSF and UC Santa Cruz scientists with counterparts in the biomedical and biotech industries. The network meets one of Desai’s major goals: Speeding the advance of university discoveries into clinical trials and the real world of patient care.

“The goal of all of this is to help people,” she says.

(See more about Desai’s research and UCSF’s “What’s Next in Science” series.)

Teaming with industry

Desai’s insulin delivery research is only one of several potential therapies her team is working on. Some projects receive partial funding from companies eager to translate life-saving innovations into treatments and products. One promising effort aims to deliver drugs directly to the intestines to treat disorders such as colitis and irritable bowel syndrome.

Desai’s team is creating a kind of microscopic “band aid” so small that hundreds of them can be placed in a normal-sized pill. Each strip is as wide as a human hair. Once ingested, these strips will travel to the small intestine, stick to the intestinal wall and deliver medicine. They contain nano-scale drug reservoirs, as well as projections that create a textured surface that can stick to the body’s cells.

Because of the extraordinarily small scale, the projections mechanically interact with intestinal wall cells, and deliver drugs into openings between the cells. There they remain for at least several hours, providing much-needed medication before they are sloughed off.

Desai’s lab is supported in this research by a company called Zcube srl through a sponsored research agreement aimed to help speed such novel treatments into medical practice. Such collaborations are central to QB3, one of four such institutes throughout the UC system, founded 10 years ago to foster research alliances among different UC campuses and with industry.

Some of Desai’s former students have launched a startup company called Nano Precision Medical that is developing devices such as an implantable drug-delivery pump to treat hepatitis C and other chronic diseases. (See video .) The company is starting its life in the QB3 “garage” on the Berkeley campus. It is one of two QB3 startup incubators – the other is at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus – to support the very early stages of promising new biomedical and biotech innovations.

by Wallace Ravven

Photo by Elisabeth Fall

Four Brown Women Engineering Undergrads Coordinate Free Camp for High School Girls

2011-07-20T15:04:00.002-04:00

Amanda Kautz ’12, Natalie Serrino ’12, Farzanah Ausaluth ’14, and Lizzie Costa ’14, are spending their summer helping inspire future female engineers. The four women, all undergraduate engineering concentrators at Brown are all coordinators for Spira, a free, four week summer camp for rising tenth grade girls interested in engineering. It is run through Brown University and taught by these four women. Associate professor and director of undergraduate programs Janet Blume has been the advisor to the group.

Kautz is a civil engineering concentrator from Los Angeles, while Serrino is a computer engineering concentrator from Chicago. The rising sophomore Ausaluth also plans to concentrate in civil engineering and is from London, while Costa grew up in East Providence, R.I., and will study biomedical engineering.

Spira Engineering Camp aims to inspire the next generation of female engineers by providing a community in which young women with similar interests can be exposed to math, science, and technology in a hands-on, team-based environment. They are able to learn the real world applications of engineering and how they can make a difference in a typically male-dominated field. The goal is for Spira participants to gain confidence in their abilities and to be motivated to pursue math and science in their future studies and careers.

The 18 tenth grade girls, who attend eight different public and private high schools in the greater Providence area, have been able to learn about math and science while completing fun, hands-on, team-based engineering design projects. The camp runs from July 5-29 at Brown.

One of the recent projects the teams worked on was a balsa wood bridge project. In this case, teams of two or three girls applied their recently acquired knowledge of buckling, arches, triangles, trusses, and bridge design to create a bridge made of balsa wood. The bridge is then weighed and tested for strength by attaching a bucket to the bridge and filling the bucket of sand until the point of failure. The winning bridge is the one with the greatest strength to weight ratio.

Kautz and Serrino had the initial vision for Spira. They were inspired to create the program based on the success and logistics of the Artemis Project, a free, five-week summer day camp for rising ninth grade girls in the Providence area who are interested in learning about computer science and technology run by Brown’s computer science department. Artemis has been running at Brown since 1996.

Kautz and Serrino applied for and received funding for Spira from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Brown’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). The camp is free for the students and lunch is provided. For those students who need transportation, RIPTA bus passes are provided.

Ausaluth and Costa were recruited as coordinators in the fall and since that time all four have shared equal responsibility in planning and running the camp.

Brown Engineering Graduate Student Wins NASA Jenkins Fellowship

2011-07-12T09:26:00.000-04:00

Eduardo Almeida ScM’10, a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering at Brown University, has been selected to receive a 2011 NASA Harriett G. Jenkins Pre-doctoral Fellowship Project (JPFP) award. The JPFP is sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and administered by the UNCF Special Programs Corporation (UNCFSP).

As a NASA JPFP fellow, Almeida will receive up to three years of stipend and tuition offset support as he pursues his graduate education. Ph.D. level fellows receive annual stipends of $24,000.

He has been assigned to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and his tenure will begin on September 1, 2011, under the supervision of his NASA mentor, Curtis Padgett. Almeida will also be required to spend 10 weeks each summer working with Padgett at JPL during the fellowship.

Almeida is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in the School of Engineering at Brown University under the supervision of Professor David Cooper. During the course of his graduate studies, he received a dual master of science degree in engineering and applied mathematics in 2010. His interests are computer vision, machine learning and pattern recognition. His research at Brown involves 3D surface reconstruction, probabilistic 3D scene understanding and automatic change detection from arbitrary viewpoints and under arbitrary illumination.

In addition, Almeida worked in collaboration with NASA through summer internships at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in 2009 and 2010. The center develops and manages spacecrafts for interplanetary exploration, such as the Mars Rovers. At NASA/JPL, the group Almeida worked on conducts research and development of algorithms for automatic data interpretation from a variety of imaging sensors. Almeida worked on two projects: i) developing an automated 3D terrain generation process from aerial images (summer 2009); ii) performing refinement of zoom lens camera calibration with unknown and time varying internal camera parameters (summer 2010). The summer internships efforts resulted in a software award and a certificate of recognition from NASA Inventions and Contributions Board.

In addition to his NASA Jenkins Fellowship (JPFP 2011), Almeida was a NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Fellow (RISG 2009-10), and is a member of the IEEE. The RISG fellowship was a key element supporting the pursuit of his goals of combining engineering and applied mathematics skills in solving real-world problems through JPL. As a RISG fellow and JPL intern, Almeida had the opportunity to network with NASA scientists and to develop tools that helped the engineers on proposed missions. Furthermore, he has shared his experiences with local RI elementary and middle schools through community outreach motivating young scientists to also pursue their dreams.

Before coming to Brown, Almeida graduated magna cum laude from Federal University of Ceara (Brazil) in 2004 with bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and was a master’s student at Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil) where he took several graduate level courses with focus on signal processing. At that time, Almeida’s studies were sponsored by the Brazilian National Research Council, CNPq.

Brown alumnus Glenn Donovan ScM'09 Wins Arthur S. Flemming Award

2011-06-13T11:09:00.003-04:00

Brown engineering alumnus Glenn Donovan ScM '09 won a prestigious award for creating a cutting-edge navigation system for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

BRISTOL, R.I.—Three torpedo-like vessels lay in sections on wheeled carts inside a security-tight warehouse in Newport, tagged with the words “Property of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center — if found please return,” in case the vessels get lost during underwater trials. But, if the navigation system developed by NUWC engineer Glenn T. Donovan of Bristol continues to perform as it has, these vessels will become property of the U.S. Navy.

In engineering circles, Mr. Donovan has developed a technology so cutting-edge he received the 2010 Arthur S. Flemming Award for Applied Science, Engineering and Mathematics, presented for excellence in the federal service by the Arthur S. Flemming Awards Commission and George Washington University.

For NUWC, which has been developing military weapons and systems for 140 years, Mr. Donovan is the first employee to receive the award. It’s an achievement he accepts with honor and humility, placing the importance of his work on how it will help the soldiers who use it.

“I was caught off-guard,” Mr. Donovan said of the award. “I didn’t expect it.”

Mr. Donovan holds a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a master’s in engineering from Brown University. During his graduate studies, he worked in robotics, using technology similar to autonomous systems used in military applications.

He began working in the Autonomous and Defensive System Department at NUWC, on autonomous underwater vehicles (unmanned AUVs) used by the military to collect data or complete other missions. First, he worked in systems maintenance for NUWC’s Manta program, an earlier version of the Navy’s unmanned vehicle efforts, terminated due to its size and difficulty to transport. Then he began work in 2002 on efforts to make AUVs more autonomous and undetectable. His new navigational tool would replace the reliance on a global positioning system (GPS).

“Once the vehicle is underwater, the signal can’t reach the satellite,” said Mr. Donovan. In order to communicate, it has to surface, making it susceptible to discovery and interception. “The big challenge is to be unseen.” The problem he faced, he said was, “How could it find its way without surfacing?”

In order to accomplish this, the AUVs need two things: an adequate power supply to keep them moving, and the ability to keep them on course over greater distances.

Using mathematics and map-matching, Mr. Donovan assembled a new system. With maps of the sea floor, he converted the terrain into mathematical data points and programmed it into an on-board computer. Sensors that measure the speed of the AUV, along with its elevation and direction, provide additional data to calculate bearings as it moves through the water. Comparing algorithmic equations against data collected from sensors, the technology developed by Mr. Donovan pinpoints the AUV through its last-known location and where it thinks it is based on sensory data. If the system’s algorithms and sensor calculations cannot agree on the vehicle’s coordinates and location, it is designed to shut itself down. The AUV will rise to the surface and activate the GPS backup to validate its location, before plunging back under and resuming its mission.

“New information is collected and calculated every 5 or 10 seconds,” said Mr. Donovan, depending on the speed of the AUV.

The navigation system developed by Mr. Donovan, called Inertial Navigation System Position Error Correction (INSPEC), will allow AUVs to stay underwater for longer periods without getting lost. He’s spent the last eight years developing the system. AUVs equipped with his INSPEC design have completed test missions, some lasting 24 hours, and everything is looking good. “We haven’t lost any so far,” he said.

“The real goal of the AUVs is they can go into areas where submarines can’t,” he said.

At 12 feet long, the AUVs tested with the INSPEC system can easily slip into shallow waters, where manned vehicles can’t go or might be easily detected because of their size. While the AUV being used in the testing is about twice the length of a man, the INSPEC navigation system is small enough to fit into the slot of a toaster and can be used on AUVs of varying sizes, simply by adjusting some calculations. The INSPEC system can be used on a variety of unmanned vehicles that have all sorts of purposes, Mr. Donovan said.

“AUVs are huge right now,” according to John H. Woodhouse Jr., a NUWC communications specialist, referring to the popularity of the unmanned concept. “Anything we do is going to have a huge interest.” Recognizing the potential impact the INSPEC system will have on AUVs, Mr. Woodhouse said the navigation tool may also have commercial and academic interest.

Mr. Donovan sees his civilian efforts as a bridge to the enlisted men and women who will benefit from his work.

“I view what I do as working for them,” he said. While INSPEC is still considered a prototype, the testing success has promise that “it is something that they can actually use,” he said.

As he continues work on the prototype design, his objective is to expand an AUV’s capability to navigate for days or weeks — work that military officials are watching closely.

Mr. Donovan received his award, along with other 2010 recipients recognized for their service in a variety of disciplines, at a ceremony on June 6 in Washington, D.C.

- by Eric Dickervitz/East Bay Newspapers

Erik Taylor PhD’13 Receives Fulbright Fellowship to India

2011-06-08T10:03:00.000-04:00

Erik Taylor PhD ’13, a biomedical engineering graduate student at Brown University, has been selected for a Fulbright Fellowship. He will conduct research on anti-infection strategies in Mumbai, India, for six to nine months with Dr. Rinti Banerjee from IIT-Bombay through the Indo-U.S. Center for Biomaterials for Healthcare, co-directed by professors Bikram Basu and Thomas Webster.

The title of his project is, “Lipid Nanoparticles for the Treatment of Hospital Acquired Infections”. Medical devices are the standard of care in the United States, and internationally, to improve healthcare. Yet, as the use these devices increases, so does the chance of device related infections (DRI). It is the purpose of this study to apply knowledge of nanotechnology towards a novel therapy for DRI.

On a previous internship to IIT-Bombay, Taylor found in collaboration with Dr. Banerjee that a biocompatible lipid nanoparticle was promising method to treat resistant infections. Additionally, commercial resources were realized with Piramal Life Sciences, a Mumbai based biotechnology company, and Dr. Arun Balakrishnan. It will be the goal of this fellowship to further develop these efforts towards treatment of infections.

The Fulbright Program, the U.S. Government’s flagship international exchange program, is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The Fulbright Program has provided approximately 294,000 participants —chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential — with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research.

The Fulbright Program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide, and approximately 7,500 grants are awarded annually.

The Program was established by the U.S. Congress in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The term "Fulbright Program" encompasses a variety of exchange programs. For further information, please visit http://fulbright.state.gov/.

Lei Yang wins Award from Chinese Government

2011-06-01T14:09:00.001-04:00

Lei Yang, a Brown University engineering graduate student from China was honored by his government on Friday, May 27. Yang received the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad at a ceremony at the Chinese consulate in New York. Yang is one of 506 Chinese graduate students in 29 nations to win the award, which includes $5,000 and a certificate from the China Scholarship Council. Yang graduated this weekend with a doctorate in materials engineering. He studied under School of Engineering faculty members Brian Sheldon and Thomas Webster.

While at Brown, he has been part of 13 peer-reviewed papers, published several book chapters, given more than 24 conference presentations and has won the most prestigious awards in the biomaterials’ field, according to Webster. “Such credentials are truly outstanding and should be entirely attributed to him and the values he learned as a student in China,” said Webster, who was invited to speak at the ceremony.

Brown Engineering researchers create nanopatch for the heart

2011-05-24T09:22:00.000-04:00

Engineers at Brown University and in India have a promising new approach to treating heart-attack victims. The researchers created a nanopatch with carbon nanofibers and a polymer. In laboratory tests, natural heart-tissue cell density on the nanoscaffold was six times greater than the control sample, while neuron density had doubled. Results are published in Acta Biomaterialia.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When you suffer a heart attack, a part of your heart dies. Nerve cells in the heart's wall and a special class of cells that spontaneously expand and contract – keeping the heart beating in perfect synchronicity – are lost forever. Surgeons can’t repair the affected area. It’s as if when confronted with a road riddled with potholes, you abandon what’s there and build a new road instead.

Needless to say, this is a grossly inefficient way to treat arguably the single most important organ in the human body. The best approach would be to figure out how to resuscitate the deadened area, and in this quest, a group of researchers at Brown University and in India may have an answer.

The scientists turned to nanotechnology. In a lab, they built a scaffold-looking structure consisting of carbon nanofibers and a government-approved polymer. Tests showed the synthetic nanopatch regenerated natural heart tissue cells – called cardiomyocytes – as well as neurons. In short, the tests showed that a dead region of the heart can be brought back to life.

“This whole idea is to put something where dead tissue is to help regenerate it, so that you eventually have a healthy heart,” said David Stout, a graduate student in the School of Engineering at Brown and the lead author of the paper published in Acta Biomaterialia.

The approach, if successful, would help millions of people. In 2009, some 785,000 Americans suffered a new heart attack linked to weakness caused by the scarred cardiac muscle from a previous heart attack, according to the American Heart Association. Just as ominously, a third of women and a fifth of men who have experienced a heart attack will have another one within six years, the researchers added, citing the American Heart Association.

What is unique about the experiments at Brown and at the India Institute of Technology Kanpur is the engineers employed carbon nanofibers, helical-shaped tubes with diameters between 60 and 200 nanometers. The carbon nanofibers work well because they are excellent conductors of electrons, performing the kind of electrical connections the heart relies upon for keeping a steady beat. The researchers stitched the nanofibers together using a poly lactic-co-glycolic acid polymer to form a mesh about 22 millimeters long and 15 microns thick and resembling “a black Band Aid,” Stout said. They laid the mesh on a glass substrate to test whether cardiomyocytes would colonize the surface and grow more cells.

In tests with the 200-nanometer-diameter carbon nanofibers seeded with cardiomyocytes, five times as many heart-tissue cells colonized the surface after four hours than with a control sample consisting of the polymer only. After five days, the density of the surface was six times greater than the control sample, the researchers reported. Neuron density had also doubled after four days, they added.

The scaffold works because it is elastic and durable, and can thus expand and contract much like heart tissue, said Thomas Webster, associate professor in engineering and orthopaedics at Brown and the corresponding author on the paper. It’s because of these properties and the carbon nanofibers that cardiomyocytes and neurons congregate on the scaffold and spawn new cells, in effect regenerating the area.

The scientists want to tweak the scaffold pattern to better mimic the electrical current of the heart, as well as build an in-vitro model to test how the material reacts to the heart’s voltage and beat regime. They also want to make sure the cardiomyocytes that grow on the scaffolds are endowed with the same abilities as other heart-tissue cells.

Bikramjit Basu at the India Institute of Technology Kanpur contributed to the paper. The Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum, the Hermann Foundation, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, the government of India and California State University funded the research.

General Motors to Provide $2 Million to Brown to Continue Collaborative Research Laboratory on Computational Materials Science for Next 5 Years

2011-05-11T12:22:00.000-04:00

Providence, RI - General Motors will provide $2 million in funding to Brown to continue the GM/Brown Collaborative Research Laboratory on Computational Materials Science for the next five years. The laboratory for computational materials research at Brown University is one of several collaborative research laboratories General Motors has established worldwide to accelerate the pace of innovation in strategic technology areas. The GM/Brown collaboration has existed for about the past ten years.

The goal of the laboratory is to develop computer simulations that predict the mechanical properties of materials used in automotive applications, and to use these simulations to help General Motors to develop materials with enhanced performance. The computations are guided and verified by experiments. Over the next five years, the laboratory will continue to focus on the development of lightweight materials, an increasingly important topic for all automotive subsystems because it is a key enabler for developing more energy efficient products.

"The CRL is a unique opportunity for Brown students and faculty to work with one of the best industrial research labs in the world," said Allan Bower, co-director of the CRL. "By partnering with GM, we can make sure that the latest advances in computer simulation of material behavior are being used to help reduce vehicle weight and improve fuel economy."

Notable achievements of the laboratory include the development of multi-scale simulation methods to predict the influence of chemical composition on the rate sensitivity of aluminum alloys; improved modeling of the behavior of aluminum during forming and of the microstructure evolution in aluminum-silicon alloys; development and experimental validation of computer simulation methods to predict constitutive behavior and microstructure evolution in aluminum alloys; and the development of wear resistant diamond coatings.

At Brown, the lab is led by professor Allan Bower (co-director) and at General Motors, the co-director is Mark Verbrugge. Together, the two co-directors plan the work of the Collaborative Research Lab.

For further information, please see http://www.engin.brown.edu/facilities/GM_CRL

The Most Influential Schools of Engineering on Twitter - Brown is No. 1

2011-05-10T09:27:00.000-04:00

Which school of engineering has the most Klout? Engineering schools are tech-savvy, but which has the best managed Twitter account and is engaging with alumni, media and friends on Twitter.

For the uninitiated, Klout score is a measurement of your overall online influence and ranges from 1 to 100. Klout uses over 35 variables to measure true reach (the size of your engaged audience), amplification probability (the likelihood that your messages will generate actions), and network score (how influential your engaged audience is).

Not surprisingly, some of the universities that top the academic rankings are also among the best at social media. Here’s the breakdown of the top ten:

1. 47 brownengin Brown University School of Engineering
2. 46 stanfordeng Stanford University Engineering

3. 42 UWMadEngr University of Wisconsin-Madison Engineering

4. 40 ISU_CoE Iowa State University College of Engineering

5. 40 VTEngineering Virginia Tech University Engineering

6. 39 UMengineering University of Michigan Engineering
7. 39 OlinCollege Olin College

8.  38 osuengineering Ohio State University Engineering
9.  37hseas Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
10.  37 uwengineering University of Washington Engineering

Professor Huajian Gao to Receive 2011 Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award from ASME

2011-05-09T12:16:00.000-04:00

Huajian Gao, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Engineering at Brown University, has been selected to receive the 2011 Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for outstanding achievements in mechanical engineering 20 years or more following graduation. Formal presentation of the award is scheduled to take place during the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, to be held in Denver, Colorado, from November 11-17, 2011.

The award, established in 1944 by Pi Tau Sigma in coordination with ASME, honors Charles Russ Richards, founder of Pi Tau Sigma at the University of Illinois, former head of mechanical engineering and dean of engineering at the University of Illinois and later president of Lehigh University. He was a member of ASME and served on its Board of Governors.

Professor Gao received his B.S. degree from Xian Jiaotong University of China in 1982, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Science from Harvard University in 1984 and 1988, respectively. He served on the faculty of Stanford University between 1988 and 2002, where he was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1994 and to full professor in 2000. He was appointed as Director and Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart, Germany between 2001 and 2006. He joined Brown University in 2006. Professor Gao has a background in applied mechanics and engineering science. He has more than 20 years of research experience with 200+ publications.

Professor Gao's research group is generally interested in understanding the basic principles that control mechanical properties and behaviors of both engineering and biological systems. His current research includes studies of how metallic and semiconductor materials behave in thin film and nanocrystalline forms, and how biological materials such as bones, geckos, and cells achieve their mechanical robustness through structural hierarchy.

Kristie Chin '11 Named To Capital One Academic All-District Team

2011-05-09T11:05:00.000-04:00

Kristie Chin '11, a civil engineering and architectural studies dual concentrator, as well as a standout softball player was recognized for her combination of academic and athletic excellence.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The 2011 Capital One Academic All-District softball teams, selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), have been released to recognize the nation's top student-athletes for the their combined performance on the field and in the classroom. Senior pitcher Kristie Chin (Katy, Texas) was a second team selection for District I.

A second-team All-Ivy selection last season, Chin led the 2011 Bears with 12 wins, 30 appearances, 23 starts, 19 complete games, two shutouts and 83 strikeouts in 172.2 innings pitched from the circle. The senior also batted .293 over 58 at-bats, racking up eight runs, three doubles and four RBI.

Chin, a civil engineering and architectural studies major, boasts 3.60 GPA.

2011 Capital One Academic All-District Teams

Janet Blume wins Karen T. Romer Award for Excellence in Advising

2011-05-09T10:52:00.000-04:00

Janet Blume, associate professor of engineering and director of undergraduate programs for the School of Engineering, has been chosen this year to receive the Karen T. Romer Award for excellence in advising. Blume was recognized with the formal presentation of the award on Monday, May 2, at the Teaching Awards Ceremony organized by the Sheridan Center.

This award was instituted several years ago thanks to a generous gift from the family of Brown trustee Marty Granoff. The purpose is to recognize faculty who have shown exceptional dedication, imagination, and commitment in their mentoring of undergraduates. The students who nominated Professor Blume this year (and in past years) praised her work as an advisor in ways that were truly inspiring.

Originally from Long Island, Professor Blume got her bachelor of science in engineering degree from Princeton University in 1982, followed by a Ph.D. in applied mechanics from the California Institute of Technology in 1986. She immediately joined the faculty in engineering at Brown as a member of the mechanics of solids and structures group, doing research in the mathematical issues in the behavior of solids undergoing large deformations.

Professor Blume has taught many engineering courses in the mechanical and civil engineering areas at all levels of the graduate and undergraduate curricula. She often teaches including both introductory engineering classes, EN 3 and EN4. She advises research theses at all levels.

Professor Blume is actively involved in engineering outreach and leads several programs aimed at bringing engineering topics into math and science education at the pre-college level.

Brown Students Win for Third Consecutive Year at RI Business Plan Competition

2011-05-05T13:46:00.000-04:00

Brown professor Danny Warshay's Entrepreneurship & New Ventures ENGN1930x course has translated into great success for students in the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition over the past three years. This year's winner in the student track were Dan Aziz '11, Gordon Hood '11, William Do '12, and Kuni Natsuki '11 who developed the plan for PriWater, a prenatal beverage supplement to help reduce birth defects. Last year, Warshay’s students won with Speramus (www.speramus.com), an online fundraising platform that matches donors with individual support opportunities. The year before, they won with Runa (www.runa.org), a company that produces energy drinks made from the leaves of an Amazonian tree. Runa continues to make excellent progress and has raised over $1 million from investors and has increased distribution into WholeFoods.

Here is the Providence Journal recap of the event:

3 business plans recognized by RIBX competition

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, May 4, 2011

By Kate Bramson

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Their entrepreneurship professor told the three Brown University undergraduates to think big, and he urged them to get out and talk to the people who would eventually use the product they dreamed of developing in his class.

“Danny preaches bottom-up research,” said senior Robert D. [Dan] Aziz about Prof. Danny Warshay, who has taught the class each of his five years at Brown.

As his students began crafting an idea for a prenatal beverage supplement to give pregnant women the vitamins they need without the nasty side effects of large prenatal pills, junior William Do went to the Whole Foods Market on North Main Street and started chatting with a pregnant woman. She told him women have what they call “horse pills,” but no drink supplement.

Warshay said his students then spoke with 150 pregnant women before developing what they call PriWater. The supplement is designed to reduce birth defects, the reason for prenatal pills.

As Aziz presented the group’s product idea Tuesday in the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition at RIBX 2011, he told a crowd of more than 100 what their research revealed. Only 45 percent of pregnant women take prenatal pills because they’re hard to digest and cause constipation and nausea.

“Overall, women hate them, and if you’re a man, you should just try it for your wife,” Aziz said, drawing laughter as he spoke with ease. “We talk about destroying the horse pill forever.”

The judges of the annual competition agreed that Aziz, Do and Gordon Hood have a good idea. PriWater took the top prize in the student track –– $25,000 in cash and $28,000 in services.

It’s the third year in a row Warshay’s students have walked off with the top student prize at the competition, which attracted 103 applications this year, up from 61 last year.

Their project drew praise from one of the competition’s judges, Stephen Lane, president of Ximedica and a member of the state Economic Development Corporation board.

“We need to mint him,” Lane said of Warshay.

Last year, Warshay’s students won with Speramus, an online fundraising platform that matches donors with individual support opportunities. The year before, they won with Runa, a company that produces energy drinks made from the leaves of an Amazonian tree.

Winning the biggest prize in this year’s competition was AmbiLabs, a Warren company that makes systems to monitor air pollution. Named the “green” winner, AmbiLabs won $50,000 in cash and $26,000 in services.

“I’m astounded that we won,” General Manager Andy Tolley said, noting the “fantastic” field of finalists.

At a reception for winners and finalists, Tolley said the reason AmbiLabs entered the competition was to see if others believed in their idea.

Tolley said his company’s work is gaining traction. The Army recently contacted AmbiLabs about its devices, and the company just took an order to provide a pollution-monitoring device in Saudi Arabia, its first international order.

The third winner — this one in the entrepreneur track — was Lucidux, a Providence venture led by East Providence resident Jason Harry. Lucidux, which also won $25,000 in cash and $28,000 in services, is developing software to provide three-dimensional images to help surgeons perform minimally invasive procedures.

Harry told how Lucidux is working to revolutionize what surgeons see with cameras inserted into patients, essentially eliminating what he calls “one-eyed surgery.”

Brown Professor Alan Needleman will receive the 2011 Timoshenko Medal

2011-05-05T10:28:00.000-04:00

Alan Needleman, emeritus professor of engineering at Brown, will receive the 2011 Timoshenko Medal.

Alan Needleman has been a leading innovator in developing the mechanics of large plastic deformation and fracture. His career has been intertwined with the rise of the field of computational solid mechanics. To this field he has made many significant and lasting contributions, usually as the first to demonstrate that computational approaches are both feasible and likely to yield insight.

Needleman performed the first finite element calculations of void growth and coalescence (in early 1970's), of necking in tensile bars (in 1972), of debonding using models which embed cohesive zones (in 1983), and ductile crack growth using models which simulate void nucleation, growth and coalescence (in the early 80's). There are more major contributions. He was one of the first to perform accurate numerical computation of the development of shear band localizations in realistic geometries, and the pictures of emerging bands which came out of the studies where widely regarded as "classics". He has simulated crack growth patterns, including bifurcation and branching, in the dynamic fracture of brittle materials. Most recently, he originated and still drives the effort to develop computational methods to predict macroscopic stress-strain behavior based on discrete dislocation mechanics. In all these cases, his primary contribution has been to lead the way and to demonstrate the feasibility and power of computational approaches to the particular phenomenon.

Needleman is ranked among the most highly cited researchers worldwide, in both the engineering and materials science categories. He served as Dean of Engineering at Brown University, and on the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

Brown Engineering Hosts "Physical Processes in the Environment” STEM Outreach for Local 4th Graders

2011-05-03T15:50:00.000-04:00

On April 29, 2011, approximately fifty children in grade four from the Martin Luther King Elementary School visited the Brown engineering and physics labs of Professor Ian Dell’Antonio, physics graduate student Shawna Hollen, senior technical assistant Brian Corkum, and engineering graduate student Jennet Toyjanova in the Barus and Holley building. The event was organized by Karen Haberstroh '95, Director of STEM Outreach and Assistant Professor of Engineering (Research).

Such tours have further allowed Providence schools to witness graduate fellow and faculty research first-hand, to take advantage of science facilities at the University, and to help bridge the gap between K-12 students and the college experience.

Brown’s Graduate STEM fellows in K-12 education (GK-12) Program “Physical Processes in the Environment” supports Brown graduate fellows who work directly with the Providence Public Schools, along with a series of training and enrichment programs for K-12 teachers and students. Graduate Fellows and partner teachers participate in pedagogical training and professional development workshops, which provide the necessary background for developing and delivering hands-on and research-based activities in line with Rhode Island’s Grade Span Expectations for science. Along with these research-based activities, GK-12 has organized laboratory visits and outreach events on the Brown campus.

Howard Greis '48; entrepreneur was tirelessly creative; at 85

2011-05-03T11:10:00.000-04:00

Howard Greis '48, president of a Worcester-based metal forming technology firm, entrepreneur, and Brown Engineering Alumni Medal recipient in 2002, died on April 21.

Howard Arthur Greis, president of a Worcester-based metal forming technology firm and a former member of the state Board of Education, died April 21 of heart failure in his home in Holden. He was 85.

Mr. Greis went to work on the day he died, and friends and family said he took pride in going to work every day. Colleagues considered him the world’s leading authority on roll forming metals.

“If he were alive today, he would be at his desk solving problems,’’ said Matthew Stepanski, former president of the Central Massachusetts Employer Association. “He was always thinking about the next project.’’

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mr. Greis graduated from East Rockaway (N.Y.) High School in 1943. He entered Brown University through a Navy program prior to attending midshipmen’s school at Notre Dame University. He graduated first in his class and was commissioned as an ensign. He was called into active duty during World War II and was stationed at the Naval Ordnance Lab in Washington, D.C., where he developed rocket fuses.

Mr. Greis returned to Brown, where he was a three-sport athlete, and received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1948. The following year, he earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Harvard University.

Mr. Greis worked for various engineering firms in New Jersey throughout the 1950s, developing products for many industries.

He also began his career as a serial entrepreneur, starting consulting firms HAG & Associates in 1953 and Control Molding Corp. in 1955.

In 1962, Mr. Greis and his wife, the former Virginia Peyton Chivers, started Kinefac Corp. Kinefac, which specializes in metal forming technology, is based in Worcester and has offices in Shanghai. Its work ranges from the forming of wire coils for medical devices to the manufacture of dies and centrifuges used in metalworking.

According to his daughter Leslie of Cambridge, his designs can be seen in a diverse set of products, including mine roof bolts, dental drills, nuclear power plant tie rods, airplane fasteners, and catheter guide wires. Kinefac’s work can be found throughout the world, including, in Paris, the Louvre Museum’s glass pyramid entrance, which is supported by a joint system designed and rolled at Kinefac.

“My father lived the entrepreneurial spirit every day,’’ Leslie said. “He always had a wonderful curiosity about how to create things. At Christmas as a child, I got gifts that I had to get down on the floor and put together, and my father would help.’’

Mr. Greis’s curiosity extended to designing and building the family’s five-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Holden in 1972. The whole family was enlisted in the yearlong project.

“Life was his hobby,’’ Leslie said. “He was enthusiastic about life, whether it was traveling, spending time with his family, or exploring new projects.’’

Mr. Greis wrote many technical articles and papers on mechanical engineering and received numerous industry awards and honors, including the Brown Engineering Alumni Medal given by Brown University for lifetime contributions to the field of engineering in 2002.

Mr. Greis also had a strong interest in education. He was first elected to the Wachusett Regional School Committee in 1965 and became chairman and was one of the original faculty members of the school’s science seminar program, which remains the oldest continuously-run program for gifted students in Massachusetts public high schools. In 1976, he received an appointment from Governor Michael S. Dukakis to serve a five-year term on the Massachusetts Board of Education, and he was appointed for a second term by Governor Edward King.

During his tenure, Mr. Greis dealt with the pressing issues of desegregation and busing in the late 1970s. He was also on the board when it decided to reduce the cost to local communities of implementing the state’s special education law.

Harold M. Lane Jr., a former state representative from Worcester, met Mr. Greis during the 1970s when the latter was working for the Wachusett Regional school system.

“Howard had a strong belief that education would solve everything,’’ Lane said. “He was just as devoted to educating others as he was about running his business, and he gained great respect from others for that.’’

Mr. Greis also believed American industry needed to stay competitive globally in science, engineering, and technology. Locally, he served as a director and vice chairman of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts in Boston and on the advisory board of the mechanical engineering department of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. In addition to regularly testifying before Congress and serving on several special interest committees in Washington, in 1986 he cofounded the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences in Ann Arbor, Mich., the largest research and development consortium serving North American manufacturing.

“Howard felt strongly about America not falling behind,’’ said Rick Jarman, the center’s president and chief executive. “What struck me about him was that he was able to envision what new technologies would come in the future, and how our industry needed to adapt 30 years ago. These are all discussions only beginning to be had these days. He was a true American visionary.’’

In addition to his daughter Leslie, Mr. Greis leaves three other children, Noel of Chapel Hill, N.C.; Frederick of Madison, N.J.; and Carolyn of Chevy Chase, Md.; and several grandchildren. His wife died two years ago.A memorial service has been held.

April 30, 2011|By Talia Whyte, Boston Globe Correspondent

Sarah Huebscher '10 ScM '11 Named Finalist in RI Business Plan Competition

2011-04-29T15:24:00.000-04:00

Brown's Sarah Huebscher '10 ScM '11, who completed her bachelor's degree in engineering and is now a current master's degree student in the Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME), has been selected as one of eight finalists in the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition.

Huebscher is one of just three finalists in the student track. Her proposal was for PriviCare, a business that would provide at home diagnostic devices for common infections and diseases.

The finalists are competing for $250,000 in prizes. Final presentations are scheduled for May 3 at the RIBX business expo at the R.I Convention Center. Winners will be announced following the presentations. A top overall winner will take home a $50,000 cash prize.

Providence Business News story:
http://www.pbn.com/RI-Biz-Plan-Competition-announces-finalists,57682