Research project aims at achieving a fundamental understanding of heat transfer at interfaces

Brown's Arto Nurmikko and Humphrey Maris are part of a multidisciplinary research effort that is helping to achieve a fundamental understanding of heat transfer at interfaces. A two-year-old Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative effort involving the University of Michigan, Stanford University, Brown University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz is making great strides in achieving a fundamental understanding of heat transfer at interfaces.

"We aim to accomplish this by applying state-of-the-art techniques from several disciplines to arrive at a set of design rules for engineering interfaces with desired thermal properties," said Dr. Kevin Pipe, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan who is leading the project.

Heat transfer is important to the performance, power requirements, and reliability of many military and commercial systems including thermoelectric refrigerators, waste heat recovery systems, heat sinks, power electronics, thermal barrier coatings, and thermal interface materials.

"Recent advances in nanoscience have enabled the precise control of interface physical and chemical structure, but the fundamental physics that link this nanoscale structure with thermal transport is not yet well developed, inhibiting the engineering of interfaces with radically enhanced thermal properties," said Pipe.

Interfaces can decrease a composite material's thermal conductivity by scattering the acoustic waves that are the primary carriers of heat in solids.

"This scattering process gives each interface a thermal resistance," said Pipe.

The researchers have made a number of achievements during the first two years of their research effort, including the development of a high-speed thermal imaging system and a technique to measure the propagation of phonons, the elementary packets of vibrational energy that carry heat, with high signal-to-noise ratio. Using ultrafast laser systems that emit laser pulses less than 50 femtoseconds in duration, Pipe's team creates high-frequency acoustic waves at the surface of a material and in a process similar to medical ultrasound imaging measures how these waves scatter off of buried interface structures.

"In one of our measurements," said Pipe, "we use picosecond x-ray pulses to look directly at atomic motion near an interface as heat flows across it."

By applying precise nanofabrication techniques to create interfaces with known atomic structure, the researchers are able to link measured heat transfer properties with the predictions of atomistic simulations to yield further understanding of the fundamental processes involved.

"By advancing the state-of-the-art in these techniques, we aim to fully characterize an interface and achieve a complete understanding of what controls the flow of heat across it," said Pipe.

"The Michigan MURI led by Professor Kevin Pipe is making extraordinary breakthroughs to understand nano-scale thermal transport by precisely tailoring interfaces using advanced processing techniques and innovative experimental laser based methods to delineate phonon modes participating in the heat transport," said Dr. Kumar V. Jata, Thermal Sciences, AFOSR, Arlington, Va. and Materials Science, Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development, Tokyo, Japan. "In the past we never paid attention to the interfaces and considered them as either perfect or imperfect, one or the other."

Collaborating investigators on the project include Professors John Kieffer, Rachel Goldman, Roberto Merlin, and Max Shtein,University of Michigan; Profs. Humphrey Maris and Arto Nurmikko, Brown University; Prof. David Reis (Stanford University; and Prof. Ali Shakouri University of California at Santa Cruz.

Source: Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Greening the Knowledge District

Brown senior research engineer and senior lecturer Chris Bull was recently profiled in The Providence Phoenix. He discusses sustainable engineering and appropriate technology - timely and relevant topics to help engineers solve real world problems in Providence's Knowledge District.

Christopher Bull is on the engineering faculty at Brown University, but what he teaches is a vision. “We all bear some responsibility in the direction the world goes,” he says, “and we need to accept that responsibility and act on it.”

For Bull, that means promoting sustainability and what he calls “appropriate technology” around the world — technology that directly responds to people’s needs, incorporates their input from the ground up, and protects the environment.

He’s got his hand in a slew of projects, and students in his classes, engineers and not, get drawn in. “I guess I’m more interested in action than study,” he says, “and I think that it’s important that students are engaged in solving real-world problems, not just abstractions.”

Right now, Bull is working on advanced batteries, next-generation electric cars, high-efficiency buildings, even a solar-powered plastics recycling system for Brazil. He also has students teamed up with local nonprofits, and he has just begun a particularly ambitious project in Providence.

It’s called Green the Knowledge District, and its goal is to turn the Knowledge District, nee the Jewelry District, into a model of energy efficiency and environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

The project is sponsored by the Ocean State Consortium of Advanced Resources (OSCAR), an outgrowth of Brown’s partnership with IBM to set up a supercomputer in the state. OSCAR now also includes other universities, hospitals, businesses, and state and city officials; Bull’s project is led by Brown, the University of Rhode Island, and the city’s Planning Department.

What they’re doing, Bull says, is seizing an opportunity: If Rhode Island were not in a slump, developers would be building all over the Jewelry District. But right now, “the economy is so bad that we have the luxury of thinking about sustainability.”

And they’re thinking big, mapping the flow of energy — electricity and natural gas — across the district, as well as the flows of traffic, people, resources, trash. They’re looking at how local businesses, institutions, and the small residential community interact with one another.

Senior Stefanie Lynch, who’s majoring in sustainable engineering and architectural design, is studying the “urban forest” in the district to make recommendations about green space.

As a college student, she says, “it’s easy to get caught up in idealistic visions for the future, which may not be realistic outside of a classroom.”

But with this project, she says, she’s seen “a real change in attitude,” people embracing environmentally sensitive design. “It’s incredibly motivating to know that what I’m working on will have an impact.”

Along with the big-picture analysis, Bull and his students are looking specifically at 70 Ship Street, a Brown biotech lab. They’re mapping energy use for the building and for each room, and correlating it to the weather, time of day, occupancy levels.

It’s only the first of several buildings they’ll examine, but Bull says it’s an important case study because biotechnology is a big part of the plans for the Knowledge District. It also offers a chance to look at sustainability on a smaller scale.

Asked what he expects to come out of these studies, Bull says it’s too early to say. But success in any endeavor, he suggests, can’t just be about technology. It has to be about people.

Bull says he teaches students to engage with end-users, with the public, from the start. And he warns them that even the smartest, coolest devices won’t change the world unless they can change how people think and behave.

“Technology is not the biggest piece of the solution,” he says. “Without the social, cultural, political, economic, environmental pieces accounted for, whatever you do technically isn’t going to make a big difference.”

- Courtesy of The Providence Phoenix/Marion Davis

Briant to be Honored with Distinguished Alumnus Award

Clyde L. Briant, former Dean of Engineering and currently Brown's Vice President for Research, will be honored by his alma mater, Hendrix College with its 2011 Distinguished Alumnus Award. Briant will be recognized on Saturday, April 16, in the 45th annual presentation of the Alumni Association Awards. 


Briant completed the combined engineering program at Hendrix and Columbia University, where he also received his doctorate. Following a post-doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the GE Research and Development Center and was awarded the Coolidge Fellowship, the highest honor given to a researcher. In 1994, he joined the Brown University engineering faculty and served as Dean of Engineering until he became Vice President for Research. In 2010, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.


Hendrix College, founded in 1876, is located in Conway, Arkansas, a suburban city of 57,500 about 30 minutes from Little Rock. 

Larson named inaugural dean for School of Engineering

Lawrence Larson, currently chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California–San Diego, has been named inaugural dean of the School of Engineering at Brown University. Larson is an expert in microelectronics technology and wireless communications.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Lawrence Larson, a pioneer in microelectronics technology and wireless communications, has been hired as the founding dean of the School of Engineering at Brown University, University officials announced today.

Larson currently chairs the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California–San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering and is the first faculty member to hold the Communications Industry Chair. He will begin his work at Brown on July 1, 2011.

Larson’s hiring culminates a nationwide search and comes less than a year after the Corporation of Brown University elevated the Division of Engineering to a School of Engineering. The new school expects to increase its share of external funding for research through faculty growth in areas of national importance and by expanding collaborative efforts with colleagues throughout the University. As the first dean of the School of Engineering, Larson will be responsible for overseeing all facets of the school’s growth.

“Professor Larson has a strong record of achievement as an engineer in the private sector and as a researcher and administrator in the academy,” said Brown President Ruth J. Simmons. “He will be a skillful and committed leader as our new School of Engineering grows, develops, and realizes its full potential.”

Larson said he’s excited to be named founding dean and honored by the appointment. “Engineering in the 21st century is undergoing a fundamental transformation, as the barriers between traditional disciplines disappear and engineers work to solve the complex global challenges in energy, the environment, health care, information technology, and economic development,” he said. “Engineering at Brown is uniquely positioned to lead this evolution on a national and global scale, thanks to its tradition of world-leading research, broad intellectual and social engagement, and entrepreneurial leadership.”

Larson said his primary goal will be to raise the school’s profile and impact by aggressively recruiting new faculty in cutting-edge research areas, developing additional lab space to accommodate growth plans, expanding graduate programs, and creating groundbreaking undergraduate programs in collaboration with other areas at Brown.

“Brown offered one of the nation’s earliest engineering programs,” said Brown Provost David Kertzer, who chaired the search for the inaugural dean, “and engineering continues to be one of the leading areas of academic interest for our undergraduate students. Professor Larson is particularly well suited to lead the University’s School of Engineering, and I look forward to his contributions as a member of the University community.”

Other members of the selection committee included Ruth Iris Bahar, associate professor of engineering; John Donoghue, director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science; Huajian Gao, professor of engineering; Robert Hurt, professor of engineering; Arto Nurmikko, professor of engineering; and Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering. Rod Beresford, professor of engineering and associate provost, served as staff to the committee.

Lawrence E. Larson

Larson joined the UCSD faculty in 1996, after a 16-year career 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.

Larson received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1986. He has published more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences and edited or co-authored three books. He holds 39 patents.

At UCSD, he supervises roughly a dozen graduate students whose research broadly seeks to develop improved integrated circuit techniques and novel device structures for wireless communications applications. The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department is the largest graduate program on the UCSD campus, with more than 500 graduate students.

Larson was director of the UCSD Center for Wireless Communications from 2001 to 2006. 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 is an IEEE Fellow and co-winner of the 1996 Hughes Electronics Lawrence Hyland Patent Award and the IBM Microelectronics Excellence Award.

Engineering at Brown

Engineering Faculty

Brown currently has approximately 40 full-time, tenure-track faculty members in engineering. Externally supported research reported in fiscal year 2010 included:

• Fiscal year 2010 awards totaled more than $20 million
• Graduate research assistants supported: 108
• Current externally funded collaborations with biology and medicine: $58,696,820

Faculty in the School of Engineering account for:

• 16 fellows of professional societies
• 10 recent National Science Foundation Career Awards
• Four members of the National Academy of Engineering
• One member of the National Academy of Sciences
• One fellow of the Royal Society
• Four members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• One fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Engineering Students

Brown currently enrolls approximately 480 undergraduate students and more than 150 graduate students in engineering.

Undergraduates:

• Class of 2011: 96 concentrators (34% women)
• Class of 2012: 108 concentrators (34% women)
• Class of 2013: 138 current students (26% women)
• Class of 2014: 141 current students (28% women)

Ph.D. Students:

• Ph.D. students per full faculty member: 3.1
• All Ph.D. students are guaranteed five years of financial support.
• Brown accepts approximately 12 percent of applicants for engineering Ph.D. programs.

Brown School of Engineering Launches New Website

After more than a year of designs and meetings, the Brown School of Engineering is pleased to unveil its new Drupal-based website. A web committee of professors Janet Blume, Christian Franck, Bob Hurt, Domenico Pacifici, David Paine, and Anubhav Tripathi along with staff from Public Affairs and University Relations, Computing and Information Services, and Engineering Communications have all worked together to update content, improve the functionality and design of the site, simplify navigation, and make the look and feel of the site more pleasing.  

The key differences between the new and old sites are apparent right on the front page. Regular visitors to the site will notice that the introductory story has been eliminated and a smaller piece of it was placed into the picture with a link. This allowed the news content to move ‘above the fold’ – a significant goal since this is the content that changes on the front page. The calendar format was changed to be more easily readable and will be utilized more for seminars and events and will be available on every page. In the footer, there are links to all of engineering’s social media pages – these are now much more visible and easy to find, making it easier for users to connect with engineering in a number of different ways.

Overall, the goal was to simplify navigation with no more than three clicks to get to anything. Some information was moved into the main menu or moved up to accomplish this.

 On the old site, there was some outdated information in several places and that was removed or updated.

The new site is stylistically similar to the main www.brown.edu site and will conform to how future departments will design their sites. The School of Engineering has been a leader in this regard. Overall, only three fonts were used (Vitesse, Lucida Sans, and Georgia), making the site much cleaner and easier to read than the mix of fonts and styles that appeared on the old site.

The site has been live for about two weeks and has received favorable reviews from internal and external constituencies. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions on the site, please contact brownengin@gmail.com.   

Mentors seek to boost passion for the sciences

Each week, students devote hundreds of hours to teaching and mentoring Providence's disadvantaged youth. But these volunteer tutors are facing a problem that even the most dedicated may be ill-equipped to handle.

National science tests show large disparities in Rhode Island, according to the most recent report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Test scores are much lower among minority students than among white students, among disabled students than among non-disabled students and among impoverished students than among the better-off. Rhode Island tested lowest in the nation in 2009 for Hispanic eighth graders, with 74 percent scoring "below basic," according to the report.

The low scores show that "the need to transform our schools is urgent," Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Deborah Gist said in a Jan. 26 Providence Journal article.

Though the report provided numerical evidence of the score disparity, attempting to close the gap is not a new goal for many Brown tutoring programs.

"There are so many factors involved," said Karen Haberstroh, assistant professor of engineering and director of STEM Outreach, a group that sponsors a number of programs bringing together graduate students, high schoolers and their teachers to boost students' understanding of and passion for science.

In one of these programs, Physical Processes in the Environment, graduate students bring weekly inquiry-based science lessons to students in Providence elementary and high schools. Graduate students work "very intensively" to change students' perception of science and to encourage them to pursue it at the university level, Haberstroh said.

Last summer, the program sponsored a collaboration between Providence teachers and University professors and graduate students. They worked to develop class curricula making science more appealing and interactive. The teachers "have been fantastic and so supportive" of the program, Haberstroh said.

"The students are very behind the grade level," said Daniel Prinz '13, a student mentor for Algebra in Motion, a Brown organization that tutors Hope High School students in math. "That's why we go out everyday."  

Katie Williams '11, a student mentor in Brown Science Prep, said that students struggle the most with basic concepts. For example, she said, they understand physics but struggle with the math behind it, such as unit conversions, fractions and ratios. But "they'll pick it up once they are taught," she added.

Williams called her experience with students "mentoring, with science on the side." The program is a science enrichment program in which Brown students mentor and tutor roughly 40 to 50 underprivileged students from several high schools in Providence. Each mentor is assigned to five high school students, teaching basic science skills and helping with schoolwork or college preparation.

The group also plans "exciting lessons," such as chemistry of food or a Halloween lesson on sugar, Williams said. She added that the program tries to expose high school students to college life and promote the study of science at college. They hope to present students' science projects at the Science Center this semester to "make more people at Brown know more about it and (get) the word out about what we do," Williams said. "It is a fulfilling and wonderful experience to teach students who incredibly deserve" the opportunity, she added.

Mark Sabbagh '12, who participates in the program, called the experience "incredibly rewarding" for the student mentors. "We fall between teacher and friend," he said. It is "less of teaching," he said, but really about "being with them."

by Ju Myoung Kim

Brown Daily Herald/Staff Writer

Brown alumnus Love Sarin, ScM '05, PhD '10, CEO and president of Banyan Environmental, profiled in Providence Business News

Love Sarin, ScM '05, PhD '10, CEO and president of Banyan Environmental, was recently profiled in the Providence Business News.

Banyan Environmental, a Providence-based startup founded in 2009, was recently awarded a $200,000 grant from the R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council.

Providence Business News spoke with Love Sarin, CEO and president, who founded the company after completing his Ph.D. studies at Brown University, about the award, its white paper and how new consumer consciousness about the environment will fuel demand for Banyan’s products.

Five Questions With: Love Sarin

By Kimberley Donoghue
PBN Web Editor

PBN: First, tell us about Banyan Environmental.

SARIN: Banyan Environmental is an early stage startup, with a platform technology to capture mercury vapor. We are targeting the energy sector on both ends - the consumption and generation markets. On the energy consumption side, changes in legislation and other factors are resulting in more and more businesses and individuals using energy-efficient fluorescent light bulbs. By reducing energy consumption, these bulbs also lower greenhouse gas emissions.

However, every fluorescent light bulb contains mercury, making the cleaning of broken light bulbs and their disposal potentially hazardous to humans and the environment. Essentially, we have a situation in which hundreds of millions of fluorescent lights are sold into the market but there is no easy way to address the potential mercury hazards.

With Banyan’s unique mercury capture technology, we can not only absorb the mercury but can also stabilize it in a safe manner. We are developing novel and low-cost packaging and clean-up products to prevent consumers and workers from mercury exposure when the lights break. These products will provide the much-needed safety and convenience to the consumers of these energy-efficient lights. Second, on the energy generation side, we plan to target the mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, which are the biggest source of mercury pollution in the United States.

Banyan spun out of Brown University in the fall of 2009 and got an exclusive license to develop and commercialize this powerful mercury capture technology which was invented at Brown. The company was founded by two scientists from Brown, with a dream to use a science-based approach in targeting the world’s impending environmental problems. Our first target is mercury, but we envision the company to grow like a Banyan tree with branches that take root in the ground making the tree stronger and more expansive than before. We recently moved into the Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship incubator and hope to fuel the engine of the knowledge economy in Rhode Island.

PBN: You received a sizeable grant on Feb. 3 from the R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council. What can you tell us about that? I understand Banyan is undergoing a bit of a transformation with this new funding.

SARIN: Yes, in collaboration with Brown University, we have been awarded a Research Alliance grant. Our main focus so far has been on the mercury exposure prevention from broken fluorescent lights. This award will support the research and development work needed to take our core technology to the next level and get it closer for implementation in the mercury emission-control market, which has an even bigger mercury problem. For example, it is estimated that environmental mercury pollution puts more than 300,000 newborns at the risk of impaired neurodevelopment each year in the United States. Currently, the biggest contributors of mercury pollution are coal-fired power plants, which emit about 48 metric tons of mercury annually in the U.S. The EPA is expected to roll out new stringent regulations to regulate these emissions by the end of 2011. Our technology has the potential to efficiently address this problem, and the new RIRA award from STAC has given us the impetus to do that.

PBN: Speaking of funding, since its inception in 2009, what investments has Banyan attracted?

SARIN: Before we spun out of Brown, we were awarded an advanced E-Team grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. In 2009 we received $150,000 in a Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I award from the National Science Foundation, which helped us take our technology from the lab bench to real-scale performance demonstration.

The funding so far has helped us define some important parameters for scale-up, and we have demonstrated the efficacy and potential with some real-scale performance testing. In 2011, we are looking for modest private investment to bolster the momentum to hit the lighting market and get the technology ready to pilot-test for the emission control market.

PBN: You also released a white paper on preventing exposure to mercury, why now? Who should read it?

SARIN: The paper is good reading for anyone who does not know the potential hazards found in fluorescent lights. We have found that there is a lack of understanding regarding the mercury content in fluorescent lamps and what happens with mercury when a bulb breaks. Additionally, the awareness about how the current packaging fails to prevent mercury exposure is also missing. We produced the paper, in part, to address this lack of awareness.

In our analysis, we tested the current packaging for its ability to provide safety from mercury released by broken lamps and compared with our technology. Our results clearly indicate that this accidental mercury exposure can be easily prevented with novel packaging solutions which incorporate our technology. We address both the linear tube-type fluorescent lamps, which are mostly used in commercial buildings, and the compact fluorescent lamps which are used in households and demonstrate that our technology can substantially reduce mercury exposure.

Everyone should read it: household consumers, facility managers in schools, hospitals, commercial buildings and any electrical contractors who handle fluorescent lamps. They should know that there is a solution which can protect them and their workers from accidental mercury exposure.

PBN: What has been the hardest part about getting this venture off the ground, so to speak? What does 2011 hold in store for Banyan?

SARIN: Startups are always challenging, just by the sheer nature of novelty and uncertainty that surrounds them. We are in the clean-tech space, targeting an environmental problem, which makes it even more difficult. There is a preconceived notion that consumers do not want to pay for products that will prevent environmental hazards. We believe that this attitude is changing, however. There is a new consciousness among the consumers. They not only want to hold the big corporations responsible for the environmental impact of their actions, but they are willing to go a step further and consciously make environmental choices. In fact, there is a growing demand for the products that Banyan can provide, in emerging economies too where massive adoption of CFLs is in store. This puts us in an unusually attractive place, where a small startup has the potential to create new jobs in the United States and actually create an export market.

It took us some time to develop the product and [pinpoint] this environmental spirit in the consumers. We expect it to snowball and with some investment hit the shop floor to give them what they need – a choice of safety, to protect them and the planet.

Engineering Staff Recognized For Years of Service at BEAR Day

Five members of the School of Engineering were recognized on Monday, February 7 at Brown Employee Appreciation and Recognition (B.E.A.R.) Day. The event is a community celebration of years of service and performance excellence at Brown University.

Among the engineering staff who were recognized were: Gamze Tunali, a computer programmer with five years of service, Michael Jibitsky, a senior research engineer with ten years of service, and Jim Scheuerman, a computer systems manager with 15 years of service.

Two members of the engineering staff have more than 30 years of service to Brown and were celebrated for their dedication and commitment to the University. Pat Capece, an administrative assistant, and Bill Patterson, a senior research engineer, were both honored for their long-time commitment and service to the School of Engineering and Brown.

STAC Awards Brown Engineers Funding for Collaborative Projects

The Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) announced the awardees of the 2011 Collaborative Research Grant program. The awards will support eight projects representing the efforts of 23 scientists from 13 educational institutions, hospitals and private companies throughout Rhode Island. The Brown School of Engineering had scientists on two of the eight projects. Those projects will receive nearly $400,000 of the $1,435,822 that was awarded.  

Since the program's inception in 2007, STAC has awarded approximately $6.5 million to 38 teams of 97 researchers from 35 organizations -- and the program is returning dividends on this state investment. To date, STAC grant recipients have reported nearly $10 million in follow-on funding from federal and private sources. This outside investment has supported additional research efforts, new patents, new equipment and products and the formation of new companies.

Professors Christian Franck, Janet Blume, and Trey Crisco are working on concussion and traumatic brain injury and collaborating with Cheryl Liu, and Subham Sett from Simulia. They hope to work with companies in designing safer and improved protective gear and to aid the medical community in producing improved quantitative traumatic brain injury (TBI) diagnosis and assessment tools. They were awarded $194,809. 

Professor Bob Hurt and Love Sarin ScM'05 PhD'10 of Banyan Environmental will work to develop new technologies for reducing human health risks associated with anthropogenic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and cement kilns. They were awarded $200,000.

The 2011 award recipients include academic and industry scientists pursuing research in disease prevention, mercury emission control, neurology and engineering and demonstrate the vitality and promise of the state's health, science, marine and technology sectors. Priority was given to high-impact projects that are collaborative across Rhode Island institutions, well positioned to receive follow-on funding, and aligned with the Rhode Island Science and Technology Plan.

Read the full press release (PDF) from the STAC
View presentation by Brendan McNally, Executive Director, RI-CIE (PDF)
Read the Providence Business story on the event
Read the Providence Journal story on the awardwinners

More about the 2011 Collaborative Research Grant Awardees:

Project 1: Development of multi-scale brain injury models for concussion and traumatic brain injury

This team is working to aid companies in designing safer and improved protective gear and to aid the medical community in producing improved quantitative traumatic brain injury (TBI) diagnosis and assessment tools.

Collaborators:
Christian Franck, Ph.D., Brown University
Janet Blume, Ph.D., Rhode Island Hospital
Joseph J. Crisco, Ph.D., Warren Alpert Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital
Cheryl Liu, Ph.D., Simulia
Subham Sett, Simulia

Project 2: Marine biofouling on high-performance molded materials

Researchers will use microscopic and molecular techniques to characterize the development of marine biofilms. By collaborating with a research university, Ametek SCP will be able to evaluate novel coatings and to expand its markets.

Collaborators:
Lucie Maranda, Ph.D., University of Rhode Island
Keunhan Park, Ph.D., University of Rhode Island
William Mildon, Ametek SCP

Project 3: A novel efficient technology for mercury emission control application

This team will work to develop new technologies for reducing human health risks associated with anthropogenic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and cement kilns.

Collaborators:
Robert Hurt, Ph.D.,Brown University
Love Saran, Ph.D., Banyan Environmental Inc.

Project 4: A wound healing product for diabetic ulcers containing choroid plexus growth factors

Researchers will collaborate on development of a topical regenerative product for wound healing and will work to expand and strengthen preclinical research studies on the topic.

Collaborators:
Kim Boekelheide, MD/Ph.D.,Brown University
Moses Goddard, MD, CytoSolve
Chris Thanos, Ph.D., CytoSolve

Project 5: Antigenic targets of Candida albicans specific antibody fragments

The grant will support work to identify the molecular structure on the surface of the fungus Candida albican that are recognized by previously discovered antibodies to stop infection. This collaboration will support infrastructure at Bryant University, preliminary research for future federal grant dollars, and collaboration between universities.

Collaborators:
Joseph Bliss, MD/Ph.D., Women & Infants Hospital
Christopher Reid, Ph.D, Bryant University

Project 6: The inner-space classroom - Innovation for research and education in the ocean state

This group will develop software to provide access to marine science data and information through the University of Rhode Island's Inner Space Center. The grant will provide for increased marine science educational opportunities and enabling of research and education projects for federal funding.

Collaborators:
Dwight Coleman, Ph.D.,University of Rhode Island
Sara Hickox, University of Rhode Island
James Ferguson, RITE-Solutions

Project 7: Tick bite patch: Proof of concept for a first generation immunoinformatics derived anti-tick vaccine with transdermal delivery

This group will work to establish proof-of-principal for a catalytic approach to accelerate bench-to-clinic translation of a novel anti-tick vaccine for humans.

Collaborators:
Thomas Mather, Ph.D., University of Rhode Island
Keykavous Parang, Ph.D., University of Rhode Island
Anne DeGroot, MD, EpiVax, Inc.
William Martin, EpiVax, Inc.
Michael Jordan, Isis Biopolymers, Inc.
Leonard Moise, Ph.D., University of Rhode Island

Project 8: Tracing business-critical web applications

Researchers will develop techniques for comprehensive measurement of the performance of rich web applications by applying causal tracing techniques to both the server and client. This effort will combine the strengths of a university research setting with real client data.

Collaborators:
Rodrigo Fonesca, Ph.D., Brown University
Chris Erway, Ph.D., Tracelytics Inc.